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Vavilicious Scandal: The Politics of Sexual Harassment in Post-Apartheid South African Trade Unions
In July 2013 the General Secretary of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) (the largest trade union federation in South Africa), Zwelinzima Vavi was accused of rape and sexual harassment of a junior female colleague. While the rape allegations were later withdrawn by the accused, Vavi was subsequently suspended and investigations into the allegations of sexual harassment are being conducted by the federation. Much focus from the South African media is on the power struggles within COSATU and attempts by Vavi’s enemies to capitalize on the scandal to remove him from his position. However, the significance of the incident for this paper is that it highlighted the patriarchal, unequal and hierarchical gender relations dominant in the South African trade union movement (Scott, 1986). Unions are organizations of power, which is often defined in masculine terms.
The incident also reminded us of the need to publicly acknowledge the importance of sexuality in organizations (Acker 1990:139), where women and men are perceived differently and assigned roles according to how they are perceived. The Vavi scandal has brought to the fore the embeddedness of sexual harassment within the masculine organizational culture of the federation and its affiliated unions. The paper aims to discuss the politics of sexual harassment in the post-apartheid South African unions, where women continue to be marginalized from leadership positions in-spite of constituting almost half (48 per cent) of the union membership (COSATU 2011). The paper seeks to understand the significance of women’s composition in COSATU unions in terms of raising their voices and challenging dominant patriarchal practices. What is the significance of the increase in women’s membership in terms of their struggles to reconfigure the dominant masculine culture of trade unions?