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The recurrence of the theme of sexual violence in recent South African fiction has elevated sexual violence to a symbol of apartheid’s legacy of patriarchy. Although texts that feature sexual violence are often analysed as allegories of the legacy of apartheid’s patriarchal control and racial domination, I argue that texts like Mark Behr’s  The Smell of Apples  de-allegorise and/or de-politicise sexual violence. Rather than read  The Smell of Apples  as an exculpatory narrative of white South Africa’s complicity in apartheid’s atrocities, I argue that Behr’s depiction of sexual violence in a space where the child is supposed to be safe and by a perpetrator who is known to the victim and from whom the victim expects protection complicates the South African rape narrative. Thus, I contend that Behr crafts an ingenious and nuanced register for his witness-protagonist to subvert the muzzling power of the rapist-father to disclose the horror of sexual abuse for both victim and witness.

Autocratic Fatherhood, Violent Sexuality, and Critique in Mark Behr’s The Smell of Apples