Hashtag Feminism: Challenging Rape and Femicide in South Africa

The disappearance, rape, and murder of women and children is high in South Africa (SA). Anger and outrage followed the 2 September 2019 discovery of the body of University of Cape Town student Uyinene Mrwetyana, who was missing since 24 August 2019. She was raped and murdered in a post office (located near a police station) by a man who worked there. After Uyinene’s death, women shared their fears, frustrations, and experiences of sexual abuse and femicide on traditional and social networking sites, which sparked the #AmINext? movement. This chapter examines rape culture and femicide in South Africa by exploring how News24 responded to the ‘difficult deaths’ of women who have died as a consequence of gendered violence through its documentary #IamNene: How Uyinene Mrwetyana’s Murder Ignited a Movement (2019). This chapter examines the documentary and the online social movement of #AmINext? together to explore the positioning of rape and femicide in SA as difficult deaths that reveal marginalization and engrained social inequalities, whilst also showing how they reveal the resistance that has emerged in response to such difficult deaths. It places these deaths into historical and cultural context alongside the documentary and online social movement.