1st Edition
Beyond the Mountain Queer Life in "Africa’s Gay Capital"
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 narratives of lived experiences and academic discussions presented by novice as well as experienced scholars. The imagery of beyond the mountain is a depiction of the lives of LGBTQI community and immovable negative perceptions the general public have to them and seeks to expose their world and the kinds of violence and abuse they are subjected to, as well as unveiling the racial discrimination within these communities. The book revolves around five themes: education, emancipation, protection, acceptance, and integration of those who identify as LGBTQI people in society.
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 (2001–2017), 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.
