Policies and sexual harassment in higher education: Two steps forward and three steps somewhere else

Between the early and mid-1990s in South Africa, focused attention on the urgent need to transform the institutional cultures of universities and (then) technikons included a strong activist and feminist commitment to addressing gender injustices on campus. Sexual harassment was a target of much research and policy-making, and new networks across SADC were formed to combat the mix of sexism, racism and classism embedded in multiple forms of campus-located sexual violence and sexual harassment. This article argues that the climate of higher institutional commitment to this realm of institutional transformation has become muted. It draws on research and a short case study involving a complaint of rape at the University of Cape Town in 2008 to suggest that feminist activism in South Africa needs once more to theorise and challenge overt and covert forms of sexual violence facing higher education communities.