Making an afrocentric sense of sex related scandals of the post- 1994 South African political leadership

Abstract

As far back as the time that historians can recall, sex related scandals have been one of the mperatives that have defined leadership in all the corners of the world. Such scandals have often been costly to most of the affected leaders in different sectors including the political and religious fraternity. While this subject has received scholarly attention in Europe and North America, a quick cursory of academic literature reveals that not enough and accessible academic research and writing has been done about sex related scandals in the post-1994 South African political leadership. However, this is a subject that has fairly received the attention of journalists in South Africa and beyond. The little that has been produced by the media has been  framed within a Eurocentric worldview. It gives a wrong impression that in the case of South Africa, the post 1994 Black leaders have a monopoly on sex related scandals. Against this setback, this desktop paper seeks to employ Afrocentricity as an alternative theoretical lens to explore the cause and effect of sex related scandals of the post-1994 South African political leadership. The central question grappled with in this paper is: why do certain South African political leaders survive sex related scandals while others do not? I argue that this paradoxical situation can be best  understood when located within a historical context.

Keywords: Afrocentricity; political leadership; scandals; sex; South Africa.