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Systems of domination across the world rely on fear for both the reasons and strategies for oppression. These systems are also highly defensive and paranoid. To sustain positions of dominance, laws were created that set boundaries between the feared and those that fear them. It is upon this history of fear and domination, and of lifetimes of creative tactics that touted the superiority of people of European descent over all other groups, that the latest Regulations issued by the IAAF rest.
This approach to the practice of white supremacy has been recycled for centuries, propelled by monopoly over science, God and the law.
The inferiorisation and exploitation of indigenous knowledge systems, black spirituality, black bodies, and customary laws became the central feature of colonial monopoly over indigenous people.
African spiritual belief systems were demonised while Western religious systems gained popularity. African knowledge were concurrently stolen and obliterated. Laws governing African customs were ridiculed and distorted.
Concurrently, African femininity in its variant shapes and dispositions was pathologised as salacious, to support the perverse curiosities on the black body and the sexual tortures of black women by white men. Scientific racism was also used to create tropes of black men as violent sexual savages whose sole life-goal was to kill white men and rape their women.
Even after Jesse Owens shattered the notion of European physical superiority at the 1936 Berlin Olympics at the height of the Nuremberg system of racial bigotry under Adolf Hitler, scientific racism continued to champion the notion of white supremacy.
Black female bodies too, have historically been dehumanised and regarded as grotesque and animalistic. This is evident in the horrific lived reality of Sara Baartman, whose black body was hypersexualised through state-sponsored scientific racism in the early 1800s. From South Africa, to London, to Paris, she became a widely sought-after international prostitute. So perverse was the Western gaze on Baartman that she was used to measure Western self-reflection.
That centuries after Baartman’s death the historical subjectification of black women’s bodies prevails in contemporary society demonstrates the relentless historical timelessness of fear. Like Baartman, black women in all societies continue to be subjects of the use of law and scientific racism to justify western fear and control of black beings.
Perhaps the key impact, and danger, of these paranoid systems is their element of distraction. Our history is littered with centuries of diverse, and highly creative material and symbolic strategies used by oppressive systems such as racism and sexism to “distract” people from enjoying their experience of living.
As writer Toni Morrison once observed: “The function, the very serious function of racism, is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining, over and over again, your reason for being. Somebody says you have no language, so you spend 20 years proving that you do. Somebody says your head isn’t shaped properly, so you have scientists working on the fact that it is. Someone says you have no art, so you dredge that up. Somebody says you have no kingdoms, so you dredge that up. None of that is necessary. There will always be one more thing.”
What makes Sara Baartman a historically noble figure is her brave resistance – during an age of unforgiving slavery – of racist, sexist distraction.
Despite attempts by systems of masculinist domination to reduce her to an animal, she danced, sang, was a popular social being, and she was a confident fighter against western scepticism of her humanity.
Enslaved and displayed as sexual caricature, Sara became a subject of dehumanising atrocities. Despite all these, she continued to resist natural scientist and zoologist Georges Cuvier’s attempts to conduct genital assessments on her. Cuvier, who was well-acclaimed, influential, and a close friend of Napoleon Bonaparte, was compelled to wait until her death to realise his intentions of unbridled pervasion over her body. He performed the genital examination on her corpse, made a plaster cast of her body and placed her brains and genitals in jars for display at a museum.
What differences are there between Georges Cuvier and the International Association of Athletics Federations?
Like Cuvier, the IAAF continues to rely on science and law to justify the subjectification of one group of women over others. Yet like Sara Baartman, Caster Semenya’s fierce bravery against such oppressive systems will follow her into the books of history as an iconic fighter for the right to claim her black being.
Caster and Sara landed on global stages at around the same stages of their human development. Whereas Sara was around 19 years old, Caster was 18 in 2009 when she set “swart gevaar” in a frenzy with her remarkable performance, physique and humble confidence at an international stage. Had Caster lost that race that catapulted her into international stardom, one wonders how much would have been written about her, or whether the IAAF’s recent regulations would ever have been drafted.
The international, racialised gaze that followed her highlights the stubborn nature of systems of white supremacy, and speaks to the continuous dehumanisation and ridicule of the black body. This gaze is not different to that extended to athletes like Serena and Venus Williams.
In an act of dutiful devotion to a history of the caricaturisation of black women’s bodies, the IAAF subjected Caster to “science” through so-called “gender tests”, whose results remains unknown even to her, but were “leaked” to an Australian tabloid.
Predictably, the scientific tests ushered in a “law” that was successfully challenged by Indian sprinter Dutee Chand. In 2015, the Court of Arbitration for Sport found that levels of natural testosterone are insufficient scientific evidence to prove sustained performance advantage, let alone bar anyone from participating in competitive sports.
The court granted the IAAF two years to scientifically prove the correlation between high performance and naturally high testosterone. Instead, the IAAF has attempted to avoid the question of “scientific proof” by rather reinventing the same regulations with the categories Chand competes in omitted – perhaps in the hope that evidence of their scientific claims would no longer be requested. Dutee Chand has defiantly responded to this absurdity by offering Semenya her legal team.
At most, Chand’s legal challenge exposed the “swart gevaar” influencing the establishment of the IAAF’s hyperandrogenism regulations. At best, the “new” regulations demonstrate that dominatory systems have lost their knack for creativity.
As society continues to react to the IAAF, it is important to also remember that the struggle is against systems of western global hegemony over science and law – and not against white men in particular. A sharp reminder of this fact was presented by the resignation of Professor Steve Cornelius from the disciplinary tribunal of the IAAF shortly after the announcement of the new regulations. Professor Cornelius asserted that the new regulations were “objectionable” and legally and ethically flawed, driven by a “warped ideology”.
And Caster concurs!
She has consistently refused to be distracted by the regulations and “gender tests” – calling them an “annoying” and “boring” nonsense.
At a post-race media interview in 2017, she confidently asserted that “those are the issues I don’t focus on … it’s their business, not my business.”
She continued to add that “I do not work for IAAF. I am Caster Semenya. I’m an athlete. For me such allegations are not my business … I do me, they do them … I am focused on me.”
Upon the announcement of the new regulations, she retorted by stating: “I am 97% sure you do not like me, but I am 100% sure I don’t care.”
It is this attitude of bravery and continued refusals to be distracted from being ourselves – as demonstrated by Semenya, Baartman the Williams sisters and many others – that will lead us to the promise of a world where black women’s bodies are no longer objectified.
It is also through the global and local systems of resilience against domination, such as rising voices against the IAAF that will ensure that the status quo is transformed.
To those who want to render colonial pathologies over black people historically timeless, we reiterate the warning of the Mother of our Nation, Comrade Winifred Nomzamo Madikizela-Mandela, against any attempts to distract Semenya from expressing her athletic prowess: “To the world out there, who conducted those pseudo tests to test our gender: they can stuff their insults. This is our little girl. Nobody is going to perform any tests on her. We have defeated difficult situations in the history of this country. Don’t touch us. Do NOT touch us. Because (if) you dare … we will repeat it again if those who want to challenge us continue to insult us using our own people.”
Indeed, through the lived experience of Caster Semenya, Madikizela Mandela’s spirit of resilience against “swart gevaar” has multiplied.
Forward ever Caster. Backward never!
• Bathabile Dlamini is the Minister in the Presidency Responsible for Women.
