The Cultural Politics of Female Sexuality in South Africa by Henriette Gunkel

Sexual identity has emerged into the national discourse of post-apartheid South Africa, bringing the subject of rights and the question of gender relations and cultural authenticity into the focus of the nation state's politics. This book reflects on the effects of these discourses on non-normative modes of sexuality and intimacy and on the country more generally. While in 1996 South Africa became the first country in the world to explicitly include lesbian and gay rights in a Bill of Rights, much of the country has continued to see homosexuality as un-African. Henriette Gunkel examines how colonialism and apartheid historically shaped constructions of gender and sexuality, and how these concepts have been reshaped both by the idea of homosexuality as un-African and by the post-apartheid constitution and continuing national discourse.