‘They Couldn’t Achieve their Goal with Me’. Telling Rape During the South African War

Samenvatting

About two months before the South African war officially ended (31 May 1902), affidavits were taken from women about transgressions experienced at the hands of British soldiers and their armed black groups: plunder, killing of stock, abduction, sexual assault and rape. This essay is the first scholarly focus in terms of narrative and agency on the 32 affidavits of 24 incidences of sexual as­ saults and rape since a 25-year embargo on these documents was lifted in 1982. The shelving of these affidavits is indicative of how even multiple transcultural processes failed to create a sexual violence discourse in both colonial and post­co­ lonial South Africa.