1st Edition

Beyond the Mountain Queer Life in "Africa’s Gay Capital"

Edited By B Camminga, zethu Matebeni Copyright 2023
238 Pages 21 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

238 Pages 21 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

238 Pages 21 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

Beyond The Mountain: Queer Life in "Africa’s Gay Capital" contributes to the body of knowledge on the lived experiences of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and intersex (LGBTQI) communities in Cape Town. The book provides insight on the lives of the LGBTQI communities in Cape Town and challenges the stereotypes and prejudices against these communities. The chapters consist of both... Read more

Introduction: iKapa Lodumo - An introduction to the infamous Cape Town

zethu Matebeni

Prologue: Queering Cape Town’s posture as “Africa’s gay capital”

Stella Nyanzi

PART I: SPATIAL MAPPING OF PLACE AND MOVEMENT

1 Uncle Gravel

Wanelisa Xaba

2 Of mountains and multiculturalism: The Cape Town tourist gaze

Annie Hikido

3 Violent cistems: Trans experiences of bathroom spaces

Nigel Patel

4 Drag lives here: A photo essay

Lindy-Lee Prince

5 Shifting in the city: Being and longing in Cape Town

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

Susan Holland-Muter

7 The GALA archives: Preserving the “queerer” side of queer Cape Town

Linda Chernis

8 Phoenix rising above isolation

Liesl Theron

9 Unearthing silences about raced and gendered queerness in Stellenbosch

Chantelle Croeser

10 The Miss Gay Western Cape Pageant: An alternative black queer space

Liberty Glenton Matthyse

11 Black lesbian politics and organising spaces

Funeka Soldaat

PART III: QUEER PERFORMATIVITY IN THE CITY

12 Graaff’s Pool: A photo essay

Dean Hutton

13 Scene of the crime

Jaco Barnard-Naudé and Pierre de Vos

14 InterseXion

Leigh Davids, Robert Hamblin and Sandile Ndelu

15 Disruption and withdrawal: Responses to 21st century Prides from the South

Jessica Scott

16 "Sy is ’n eendjie van ’n ander dam": Race, class and sexual identity intersections in same-sex marriage

Lwando Scott

17 No milk, no honey, no safe space: A review of The Promised

Land Fallacy and Maneo Mohale

Epilogue: No Easter Sunday for queers

Koleka Putuma

Biography

B Camminga (*they) is post-doctoral fellow at the African Centre for Migration and Society, Wits University. Their research interests include transgender rights, particularly in relation to migration and asylum; the bureaucratisation of sex/gender; and transgender history in South Africa. Their first monograph, Transgender Refugees and the Imagined South Africa: Bodies over Borders and Borders over Bodies, in 2018. In 2018 they were runner up for the Africa Spectrum: Young African Scholars Award, which honours outstanding research by up-and-coming African scholars, for their article “Gender refugees in South Africa: The ‘common sense’ paradox.” B treads the fine line of being a queer and a trans activist academic.

Zethu Matebeni is African Humanities Program Fellow. While at the University of Cape Town (20012017), Zethu developed the Queer in Africa series, artistic and scholarly interventions which interrogate queer life in Africa. Included in Zethu’s long list of publications are Reclaiming African: Queer Perspectives on Sexual and Gender Identities (Modjaji Books, 2014) and the co-edited Queer in Africa: LGBTQI Identities, Citizenship and Activism (Routledge, 2018). Zethu is a queer scholar activist, a documentary film maker, the curator of the Queer Tour in Cape Town and a writer on African queer realities. In June 2019 zethu joined the Department of Anthropology and Sociology at the University of the Western Cape.