Table Of Content

For Leigh Davids who died fighting and Stella Nyanzi who is still fighting You have led us! Queer Life in ’A’ frica’s Gay Capital ’’ Edited by B Camminga zethu Matebeni First published 2023 by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2023 University of South Africa The right of contributors to be identiﬁed as author(s) of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identiﬁcation and explanation without intent to infringe. Print edition not for sale in Africa British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 9781032433875 (hbk) ISBN: 9781032433882 (pbk) ISBN: 9781003367062 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003367062 Typeset in Times New Roman by UNISA Press, South Africa CONTENTS Acknowledgements vii Preface viii Foreword x Contributors xii Abbreviations and acronyms xvii Illustrations xix Introduction 1 iKapa Lodumo – An introduction to the infamous Cape Town zethu Matebeni Prologue 13 Queering Cape Town’s posture as “Africa’s gay capital” Stella Nyanzi PART I: SPATIAL MAPPING OF PLACE AND MOVEMENT 1 Uncle Gravel 31 Wanelisa Xaba 2 Of mountains and multiculturalism: The Cape Town tourist gaze 34 Annie Hikido 3 Violent cistems: Trans experiences of bathroom spaces 43 Nigel Patel 4 Drag lives here: A photo essay 59 Lindy-Lee Prince 5 Shifting in the city: Being and longing in Cape Town 65 B Camminga PART II: HERSTORIES PAST AND PRESENT 6 The politics of safety talk and practices: Lesbians constructing belonging and queer world-making in Cape Town 77 Susan Holland-Muter v CONTENTS 7 The GALA archives: Preserving the “queerer” side of queer Cape Town 91 Linda Chernis 8 Phoenix rising above isolation 102 Liesl Theron 9 Unearthing silences about raced and gendered queerness in Stellenbosch 110 Chantelle Croeser 10 The Miss Gay Western Cape Pageant: An alternative black queer space 124 Liberty Glenton Matthyse 11 Black lesbian politics and organising spaces 137 Funeka Soldaat PART III: QUEER PERFORMATIVITY IN THE CITY 12 Graaff’s Pool: A photo essay 147 Dean Hutton 13 Scene of the crime 151 Jaco Barnard-Naudé and Pierre de Vos 14 InterseXion 166 Leigh Davids, Robert Hamblin and Sandile Ndelu 15 Disruption and withdrawal: Responses to 21st century Prides from the South 171 Jessica Scott 16 “Sy is ’n eendjie van ’n ander dam”: Race, class and sexual identity intersections in same-sex marriage 186 Lwando Scott 17 No milk, no honey, no safe space: A review of The Promised Land Fallacy 198 Maneo Mohale Epilogue No Easter Sunday for queers 203 Koleka Putuma Index 209 vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The editors gratefully acknowledge the financial support received from the Heinrich Böll Foundation, Cape Town; The Other Foundation; the Institute for Humanities in Africa at the University of Cape Town; as well as the African Centre for Migration and Society at the University of the Witwatersrand. A special thanks goes to Rifqah Kahn, who supported the project from its inception, and to Meredith Evans for her immense research assistance. Tanya Pretorius enthusiastically assisted with the index and editing. Sketches of Cape Town are drawn by artist Kate Arthur. vii PREFACE Cape Town’s gayness can be exclusionary, stifling and alienating. As a result, while there are many lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex groups and organisations, there is no queer movement. In the absence of such a movement and organising, concerted efforts are necessary to bring a diverse group of people together to enable queer narratives to emerge. Intersecting racial, gender, sexual and class realities pave the way for oppression, transgression and subversion to surface in profound ways when in a gathering of individuals who believe themselves to be marginalised along the same lines. This book is a result of a coming together of similarly marginalised groups and their efforts. In April 2016, 20 Cape Town-based lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender activists, scholars and artists gathered in Stellenbosch, a town 50 kilometres from Cape Town, for a writing and creative retreat. The retreat was to interrogate what it meant for Cape Town to be “Africa’s gay capital” and what experiences this notion surfaced. Over two days of discussion and reflections, new versions of the city emerged. From a distance, the idea of a gay city was both productive and constraining. Some of the participants had lived in Cape Town all their lives and had one story to tell about the city. Others, who had chosen the city because of work opportunities or the possibility of freedom, had a different story to tell. In assembling these different stories, it was clear that there could be no singular story of Cape Town, particularly no gay narrative. This book shifts the view from a universalising “gay Cape Town” image and asserts that queer life runs through the city’s social fabric (Boyd 2003). By October 2016 the creative energies initiated at the retreat had developed into a three-day symposium. Returning to Cape Town, the group of artists, scholars and activists had developed essays, films, poetry, tours and artworks that were exhibited, presented or performed publicly at various locations in the city. The symposium was designed to offer a queer narrative of Cape Town, one that would highlight the close relationship between activism or activist writing and queer scholarship in an African context (Mama 2007). The symposium would also signal new queer perspectives from the Global South. Specific efforts were made to develop new scholarship by working with young scholars and with those not yet fully established in the field. An assortment of analyses, perspectives and creative reflections on queer lives and histories in the symposium intersected with the politics of dis/location in Cape Town. Most of the contributions dealt with the post-apartheid period, and surfaced raced, gendered and classed dynamics. As a result, a new queer archive emerged, focusing on, but not limited to: transgender experiences and perspectives in urban spaces, at university campuses or public facilities; lesbian experiences in the city’s suburbs and townships that go beyond focusing only on hate crimes; dynamics of queer interracial relationships in the city; drag performances and pageantry; pride events in the city; and aspects of tourism. viii PREFACE Ugandan scholar and activist Stella Nyanzi participated in the October 2016 three-day symposium and offered, for this volume, a reflective prologue entitled Queering Cape Town’s posture as Africa’s gay capital. Kate Arthur's map drawings provide visual access to navigating the city. Nyanzi’s narration of the symposium is included here as a gateway to the book and provides a glimpse of the mixture of academic and personal or artistic narratives that have contributed to the project. A queer analysis in Africa cannot exist outside activist engagement or artistic representation and engagement. As Francis E White (2014, 4) asserts, collections that include art, activism and scholarship are ingenious and “make room for optimism … and will leave you able to imagine a world in which we no longer have to struggle to protect queer, sexual and gender non-conforming Afrika”. This book’s queer practice, filled with queer optimism and new directions for scholarship, echoes White’s assertions. The mixture of art, activism and scholarly essays is reflected in various styles and in the varying lengths of contributions. Among the photo essays by visual artists Dean Hutton, Robert Hamblin and Lindy-Lee Prince is poetry by South Africa’s acclaimed poet and creative director Koleka Putuma and activist Leigh Davids. The photo essays and poetry deal with the diverse landscape that is Cape Town and its effects on queer individuals. Each artistic reflection can be read on its own while also in conversation with the scholarly works included in the book. The combination of new authors, and the diversity of lengths and styles, brings new voices to academic debates. We hope you enjoy this queer practice and refreshing scholarship! zethu Matebeni and B Camminga References Boyd, nan alamilla. 2003. Wide Open Town: A History of Queer San Francisco to 1965. Berkeley / Los Angeles / London: University of California Press. [Kindle edition] Mama, Amina. 2007. “Is it ethical to study Africa? Preliminary thoughts on scholarship and freedom.” African Studies Review 50 (1): 1–26. White, Francis E. 2014. “Foreword.” Reclaiming Afrikan: Queer Perspectives on Sexual and Gender Identities, curated by Z Matebeni. Athlone: Modjaji Books. ix