The Politics of the Penis: Post-Apartheid Zulu Nationalism and Martial Masculinity, ca 1999 to 2018

ABSTRACT

In 1989, Jean-François Bayart published the now foundational text, The State in Africa: The Politics of the Belly, introducing the Cameroonian idiom ‘la politique du ventre’ (the politics of the belly), which draws on the idea that having a belly in the African context connotes not only wealth but also power. Lynn Thomas adopted Bayart’s idiom for her Politics of the Womb (2003, 3–4), flipping the idiom to explore ‘the particular capacities and powers attached to the female belly or the womb to demonstrate the centrality of reproductive struggles to African history’. While the politics of the belly confronts the propensity of political figures to hoard resources and the politics of the womb demonstrated young women’s autonomy over their own bodies, the politics of the penis expose how former South African president Jacob Zuma utilised his masculinity as a tool to fortify power and material wealth. From this vantage point, this paper explores the ‘politics of the penis’ that characterised Zuma’s presidency, deploying this phallic idiom to examine the consolidation of Zulu political tribalism, Zuma’s public displays of masculinit(ies) and heavily sexualised politics.

KEYWORDS:

• masculinity
• Zulu
• Jacob Zuma
• sexuality
• ethnicity
• nationalism

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Benedict Carton, Jill Kelly and the anonymous reviewers for feedback on previous drafts.

Disclosure statement

No conflict of interest was declared by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Liz Timbs

Liz Timbs is an assistant professor of history at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. She earned her PhD from Michigan State University in 2019. Her current book project, entitled The Regiments, reconstructs how Zulu amabutho (age-grades, regiments) shaped male youth socialisation over the past two centuries in South Africa. Her work has appeared in the Journal of Southern Africa Studies, South African Historical Journal, and Journal of Natal and Zulu History.