The ‘Perils’ of Sex and the Panics of Race: The Dangers of Inter-Racial Sex in Colonial Southern Rhodesia
Tamale, Sylvia (ed.) African Sexualities: A Reader London: Pambazuka Press; 2011
15 Pages Posted: 6 Aug 2012
Date Written: July 1, 2011
Abstract
Between 1910 and 1920 there were a number of episodes of mass panic among the white settler communities of South Africa and Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe), that were all motivated by a hysterical fear of inter-racial sex. These manifestations of social anxiety and panic were serious enough to conjure up rampaging lynch mobs, whose dispensing of violent retribution was fuelled by newspaper campaigns and strident rhetoric from politicians, church leaders and other influential social figures. These panics about sex and race were identified as social problems threatening the social order of colonial society, and the moral fibre of the 'civilising mission', and they resulted in draconian legislation aimed directly at restoring the sexual and social distance that was necessary for the survival of racial hierarchies in the colonial order.
This article is centered on its analysis of a detailed report written in 1915 by a Superintendent in the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) of the British South Africa Police (BSAP) - the report is entitled "Black and White Peril" and is entirely preoccupied with the dangers of sexual interaction between white women and black men. Whilst reflecting the many different contexts in which these relationships took place, its primary interest to us today is its accurate and contemporaneous account of the reactions that these relationships evoked - that can only be characterised as 'moral panics'.
Reading accounts of these critical episodes of social anxiety today invariably produces a sense of astonishment at the almost surreal simplicity of the crude politics of race and desire that underlie them. Detailed analysis by scholars such as McCulloch (2000) reveals a complex jostling for access to power and a re-positioning of gender and race in the nascent structures of colonial society. The principle aim of this chapter, then, is to offer a broad account of the great fears, fantasies and forces that so characterised sexual relations between white settlers and colonised black subjects in the early years of Southern Rhodesia. These striking dynamics vividly illustrate the powerful under-currents that framed relations of sex, race and gender in the process of colonisation. Readers might like to consider the extent to which the legacy of these highly charged moments of panic in the then newly established settler society is remarkably manifest in the furore around sex that so often erupts in post-colonial relations today.
Keywords: sexuality, sexual violence, race, gender, criminal justice, post-colonialism, colonialism, vigilantism
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation