Missing Mobilizations: Theorizing Namibian Feminists’ Invisibility in Organizing against Carceral Sexual Violence

Although mobilization against carceral sexual violence remains limited and sporadic in Namibia, carceral sexual violence is a human rights violation that incarcerated people and detainees frequently experience in police holding cells and prisons. In this paper, I use the absence of feminist organizing in southern Africa to male-male carceral sexual violence to make a case for looking for “missing mobilizations” as a generative way to illuminate little-understood features of African gender and sexuality movements. I view the missing-mobilizations framework as a chance to think differently about how politics might have unfolded in different directions and pathways. Qualitative fieldwork from 2019 consisting of interviews with Namibian activists and carceral sexual violence survivors informs my analysis.