ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates whether international and human rights discourse, and international frameworks and legal developments, could and should be used as a lever to support African women's struggles for greater sexual freedom and autonomy. The first section of the chapter gives an overview of the current state of the global debate on the advantages and potential benefits, as well as the numerous obstacles and problems with human rights discourse, particularly when these are invoked in postcolonial contexts. The second section is devoted to considering South African women's ongoing struggle for sexual freedom. The chapter shows that the same paradox identified in the global debate on human rights, is at work in our local context, and analyzes this tension through the lens of monumental versus memorial moments of constitutional interpretation in South Africa.
