‘A profound degree of friendship’: the politics of friendship, African feminist methodologies and the One in Nine Campaign's mobilisation against sexual violence in South Africa

This article examines the politics of friendship within the One in Nine Campaign, a South African feminist social movement organisation. The Campaign formed in 2006 in solidarity with Fezekile ‘Khwezi’ Kuzwayo, who had opened a rape case against Jacob Zuma, then Deputy President of the governing African National Congress, and later President of South Africa. The article draws on oral history interviews with past and present members and the Campaign’s scattered archive. It argues that friendship operated as the infrastructure of the Campaign's mobilisation against sexual violence, and reads the activists’ reflections on friendship as feminist theory. It demonstrates, firstly, that friendship was the pathway into solidarity with Kuzwayo and into the Campaign. Secondly, it shows that friendship sustained the members through the emotional labour of anti-rape work and opened spaces of healing. Thirdly, it records the challenges that accompanied these friendships, including the neglect of self-care, generational tensions, and grief. It further reflects on the African feminist methodologies through which this history was gathered, including my positionality as a participant in the 2016 Remember Khwezi silent protest, and argues that the relationship between a feminist researcher and the movement she studies is itself a form of active friendship.