Military mutilation: the aversion program in the South African Defence Force in the apartheid era

Abstract

This chapter profiles the aversion program as a secret SADF project that was administered to "treat "the homosexuals. The authors argue that the program contributed to positioning the homosexuals as a particular political subject a subject that is deviant and consequently needs to be constrained. The authors also argue that the emergence of the homosexual through this structure of oppression engendered a discourse in which the homosexual became a productive subject, one who not only accounts for the experience of violence, but also actively transforms the discourse to challenge the oppressive, militarized political order of the apartheid state. Through the public process of healing that the TRC from 1996-1998, the homosexual subject has contributed in an important way to the construction of post-apartheid national identity.