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While marriage rates in South Africa are exceptionally low, ukuthwala ('abduction marriage,' or 'bride abduction') appears to be increasing in some rural communities despite declining rates of marriage overall. Moreover, contemporary abductions seem to be increasingly characterised by gendered violence. Drawing on 18 months of ethnographic fieldwork in a rural Xhosa village, in this article I link the growing incidence and escalating violence of contemporary ukuthwala to the decline of the migrant labour system, and secondarily, to ideological transformations in desired forms of conjugal intimacy. Grounded in ethnographic fieldwork, I discuss contemporary forms of ukuthwala as an outcome of loss of security and status for older women, masculine economic marginalisation, and a growing conviction among young women that marriage should be premised on autonomous spousal choice. In so doing, I show connections between contemporary ukuthwala and broader issues of political economy, domesticity, and gendered and generational sociality. Situating ukuthwala within broader social, economic, and political contexts, as I do in this article, can offer a richer appreciation of the motivations and moral values that scaffold it, and can contribute to broader conversations about violence, social change, gendered and generational struggles in South Africa today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the practice of ukuthwala, a kind of abduction marriage that occurs in some rural communities in South Africa, notably in the Eastern Cape. While this issue has recently been debated in the legal sphere and in the popular media, these discussions lack grounding in the lived experience of people in communities where ukuthwala is practised. Drawing on extensive ethnographic fieldwork, this paper discusses ukuthwala as a contemporary practice. I show that ukuthwala is a site of negotiation over rights to gender equality in rural communities, which have long been socially stratified according to gender and generation. As such, I show that ukuthwala is a site of anxiety over changing structures of gender power and generational authority. Questions of pragmatic concern for public health in relation to ukuthwala are also raised. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Ukuthwalais traditionally a marriage custom within the amaXhosa culture in South Africa which permits a ‘legal abduction’ of a bride-to-be. Similar customs of ‘bridal abduction’ exist, most notably in Kyrgyzstan, where it is known asala kachuu. Research into these customs necessitates a more innovative approach to explore the impact of this social phenomenon. In this article the authors mobilise a fictional narrative to offer a backdrop for a comparative assessment of the impact of bridal ‘legal abduction’ and assess its contemporary status and role within a multicultural society which celebrates the rights of the individual while recognising the value and importance of maintaining cultural identity and traditions. Cultural dissonance has always been characteristic of modern and post-modern societies as they strive for a workable shared ethos. However, when customs such as ‘legal abduction’ (Mtuze, 1993:50) continue under the veil of cultural rights, the wider social sensibilities and perspectives can be at odds with the maintenance of such activities where these activities contradict the rights of the individual as enshrined for example in what can be seen as a liberal South African Constitution. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article presents a study on the employment of appropriate arsenals on existing laws to fight against human trafficking in South Africa. It mentions that South Africa has the obligation to create a legislative measures and standards that would criminalized human trafficking because the country has signed in the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children (Palermo Protocol). It states that several law provisions can be charged to those people who deal with human trafficking including abduction, kidnapping and murder or attempted murder. It says that law enforcers and prosecution officials should know that human trafficking is not only a single offense but rather a process.

The abduction and sexual violation of adolescents, especially in township contexts, has increasingly made headlines in South Africa. These incidents are evocative of jackrolling , a phenomenon that plagued townships during the apartheid upheavals in the late 1980s. The abduction of adolescents on their school journeys has been reported in several South African townships. In this paper, we report on a study in which we used participatory visual methods (i.e., cellphilms: short videos made with cellphones) to explore how 19 adolescent girls and boys living in the Inanda, Ntuzuma, and KwaMashu (INK) township precinct, outside Durban reflected on their vulnerability to sexual violence. Although the question was broad, our analysis of the visual data suggests that adolescents believed that their vulnerability to abduction and rape was almost inevitable. As such, in their cellphilms, they chose to portray their risk and vulnerability to abduction, rape, and even murder on their daily journeys to and from school. We found that through this methodology, adolescents were able to illustrate and/or articulate their fear of sexual violence. For them, violence was an inescapable reality that created fear and helplessness. This underscores the need for interventions, including the provision of safe scholar transport and visible policing in the community. • Adolescents are vulnerable to abduction and rape. • The unequal dynamics of township communities facilitates violence. • Perpetrators use violence to maintain power. • Storyboards and cellphilms allow for developing rapport. • PVM provides adolescents with visual representations of their vulnerability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]