Soweto nights: making black queer space in post-apartheid South Africa

Abstract

In this article, I examine black queer nightlife in Soweto and its relationship with the making of black queer space in South Africa. Through an in-depth examination of the microgeographies of a Soweto stokvel party, I reveal the complexities of post-apartheid formations of race, class, gender, and sexuality. Employing the idea of usable space, I highlight quotidian practices of leisure as an important site for understanding cultural creativity within the marginalized spaces occupied by black South African queers. Performance and performativity are central to organizing nightlife spaces and reveal both the possibilities and limits encountered by black queers as they try to construct livable lives.

Las noches de Soweto: hacer un espacio queer negro en la Sudáfrica del post-apartheid

En este artículo estudio la vida nocturna negra queer en Soweto y su relación con la creación de un espacio negro queer en Sudáfrica. A través de un análisis en profundidad de las micro-geografías de una fiesta stokvel de Soweto, revelo las complejidades de las formaciones post-apartheid de raza, clase, género y sexualidad. Utilizando la idea de espacio utilizable, resalto las prácticas cotidianas de ocio como un sitio importante para comprender la creatividad cultural dentro de los espacios marginalizados ocupados por personas queer negras Sudafricanas. El performance y la performatividad son centrales para organizar los espacios de la vida nocturna y revelan tanto las posibilidades como los límites encontrados por las personas negras queer a medida que intentan construir vidas vivibles.

索维托的夜晚：在南非后种族隔离时代创造黑人酷儿空间

我在本文中检视索维托的黑人酷儿夜生活，及其与在南非创造黑人酷儿空间的关联性。我透过对索维托的斯多克维尔社团（stokvel party）的微地理进行深度调查，揭 露后种族隔离主义时代种族、阶级、性别与性形构的复杂性。我使用“可运用的空间”之概念，突显休閒的日常生活实践，做为理解南非黑人酷儿所佔据的边缘化空间中文化创造性的重要场域。表演与展演性是组织夜生活空间的核心，并同时揭露了黑人酷儿致力于创造宜居生活时所遭遇的可能性与限制。

Keywords::

• Soweto
• black queer space
• usable space
• performance
• performativity
• stokvel

Palabras claves::

• Soweto
• espacio queer negro
• espacio utilizable
• performance
• performatividad
• stokvel

关键词:::

• 索维托、黑人酷儿空间
• 可运用的空间
• 表演
• 展演性
• 斯多克维尔 （Stokvel）

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Marlon M. Bailey, Mireille Miller-Young, Matt Richardson, Rashad Shabazz, and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this article. I would also like to thank Beverley Mullings for her critical and engaged reading of later drafts of the essay and her unwavering support for this themed section. Lastly, I especially thank Ivy Mills for proofreading and editing help.

Notes

^1. Queer is used in this article primarily as an analytic that allows for the description of nonnormative performances of gender and sexuality and nonheteronormative spaces. Following the work of Marc Epprecht, queer refers not to a sexual identity but to a way to think through how ‘nonnormative [genders] and sexualities infiltrate dominant discourses to loosen their political [and cultural] stronghold.’ See Epprecht (2004). In his later work, Epprecht suggests that queer functions as ‘an antiessentialist approach to researching gender and sexuality that is open to the whole range of human sexual diversity.’ Also see Epprecht (2008). For more on the use of queer analytically in South(ern) Africa, see Epprecht, Hungochani, 11–16, and Heterosexual Africa, 15–20. See also Tucker (2009).

^2. Interestingly, much of the work that deals with black queer subjects has been focused on Cape Town, with much less work on the spatial geographies elsewhere in the country. This is surprising, given that black queer communities are particularly prominent in Gauteng. Visser (2008b) is an exception to the Cape Town bias of the work on black queerness.

^3. Two important recent books begin to tackle the intersection of race and sexuality to space in post-apartheid South Africa. See Hunter (2010) and Tucker (2009).

^4.Stokvels are informal savings organizations made up of groups of people which developed in black communities as a way to pool and create community wealth, particularly for those who have little access to formal banking structures.

^5. Although space does not allow for a full engagement here, I do acknowledge several foundational studies of queer uses of space, including but not limited to Chauncey (1994), Houlbrook (2005), Binnie and Valentine (1999), Phillips (2004), Castells (1983), and Brown (1997). Yet, all of these studies are removed from the experiences of contemporary black queer South Africans who reside in the township metropolis of Soweto and occupy positionalities and geographies significantly different from the target populations central to the aforementioned studies.

^6. Tucker (2009) in Queer Visibilities also discusses the difficulty in gaining access to different racial communities due to the historical legacies of apartheid segregation.

^7. The limited work on black queer leisure space (Visser 2008b; Tucker 2009, 2010a, 2010b; Matebeni 2011) has been based predominantly on interviews with black queer subjects by researchers who are not part of black queer communities. One exception is Matebeni (2011). She is a part of the black lesbian community she studies. Yet, she relies solely on interviews with other black lesbian subjects in order to discuss black lesbian spatialities in greater Johannesburg. Tucker (2009, 2010a, 2010b) makes a forceful argument about the importance of particular forms of gender performance and the creation of social nodes in the making of black queer space in Cape Town. Visser (2008b) details the spatialities of black queer leisure space in Bloemfontein. Yet, as readers we are never given a sense of the authors actually occupying black queer space(s), either as participant observers or as co-performative witnesses. It is my hope that my methodological intervention will illuminate some of the micropractices that can only be made possible through placing my body as a researcher in the spaces that I comment on and analyze. Lastly, my own body limits my ability to account fully for black lesbian experiences within black queer Johannesburg, given that queer communities are themselves gendered. Thus, I focus predominantly on the experiences of black queer men. Black queer women were often a part of the same social spaces that are described in this article. Nevertheless, I do not assume that black queer women experience these spaces in the same way as my black queer male friends or as I did. Please see Matebeni (2011) for more on black queer women's use of space in contemporary Johannesburg.

^8.Kwaito music emerged in post-apartheid South Africa due to the popularity of internationally circulating house music that was being played in newly available club spaces in central city Johannesburg that catered to the rising population of blacks in the city as a result of the scrapping of influx control laws. These house music tracks which were imported on vinyl were not available to the general public. Local aficionados, producers, and DJs began making compilation CDs, slowing down the house tracks (about 20 bpm slower) and adding local rhymes and chants. From this practice, kwaito was born. It quickly became the sound that defined post-apartheid youth culture.

^9. Officially, Katlehong is attached to Germiston and Kagiso is attached to Krugersdorp.

^10. According to Statistics South Africa, the population of Johannesburg Municipality is 3,888,180. Taking the 43% figure, I arrive at an estimated population of Soweto of 1,671,914. I have rounded this up to approximately 1.7 million people. The results of the 2011 Census have not been released. However, even when such figures become available they will not separate the population of Soweto from the rest of Johannesburg Municipality; therefore, population figures for Soweto itself will always be rough estimates.

^11. Loots uses 2006 data on weighted household income for Soweto. Provincial data cited by Cants et al. are based on 2003 data which revealed a weighted average annual income for the province of Gauteng at R 122,720.

^12. Achmat (1993) discusses the emergence of Nongoloza, the leader of a notorious criminal syndicate, and the kinds of same-sex practices that emerged from these syndicates in early twentieth century. He does suggest, however, that the idea of male labor migration creating same-sex sexuality is far too simplistic. Instead, he argues that shifts in the political economy enabled alternative articulations of the body that allowed for changes in the ways that black South Africans expressed sexual desire.

^13. 16 June 1976 is often seen as a turning point in the South African liberation movement. A peaceful demonstration by Soweto-based youth was met with violence by the apartheid state. This event triggered a new wave of resistance to the apartheid state that ultimately culminated in a reinvigorated internally based response to apartheid. For more on the Soweto uprising, see Pohlhandt-McCormick (2010).

^14. In recent years, prominent black queer communities have also emerged in Pretoria area townships such as Mamelodi, and in Midrand, a predominantly black middle-class area of Gauteng situated between Johannesburg and Pretoria.

^15. One popular measure used in South Africa to determine class characteristics is the advertising-based LSM. It measures approximately 30 different categories to determine ‘standard of living,’ ranging from basic necessities such as access to hot running water and to the presence of domestic helpers. According to the Fintrust Study (2002), stokvels drew members from all the LSM in South Africa, while the highest percentages of stokvel membership were in individuals who had an LSM of 5 or 6. LSM ranges from 1 (typically rural households without access to running water) to 10 (typically an individual with high formal sector earnings who owns a house and a car). For comparison sake, about 2/3rds of South Africans occupy LSMs 1–5, whereas the highest LSMs (9–10) are occupied by about 10% of the South African population. LSMs 9–10 are predominantly white (74%), whereas LSMs 1–5 are almost exclusively black (95%).

^16. For more information on stokvels, see Holland (1994), Moodley (1995) and Schulze (1997).

^17. Reid notes that in rural Ermelo, black queer men played a similar role.

^18. As Mbembe et al. (2008) discuss, post-apartheid Soweto has seen a shift in societal attitudes toward women going out alone or with other groups of women. Although in the past this type of behavior was frowned upon, it is now acceptable. Although the authors did not discuss reasons for this change, I suspect it has something to do with the increased visibility of single women with disposable income in leisure spaces.

^19. Writing about heterosexual relations at stokvels, Wojcicki (2002) notes that women who refused sexual advances from men who bought them drinks risked beatings and rapes. When the exchange is between ‘straight’ and queer men, men have a choice not afforded to women.

^20. As to date, there has been no comprehensive study on the economic background of black queer people in South Africa. Most of my interlocutors suffered from the same issues of under and unemployment as nonqueer township residents and lived in and among the black communities of Soweto, suggesting that they had no additional economic resources at their disposal. Many, although not all, professed that if they did have such resources they would use them to relocate to either bourgeois areas of Soweto (such as Diepkloof Extension) or areas outside of Soweto altogether.

^21. The South African police force is notorious for being insensitive to homophobic violence. For more information on police nonresponse or insensitivity to queer victims of violence, see Reid and Dirsuweit (2002).

^22. The dangers faced by black queer women are amply documented in the media coverage of ‘corrective’ rapes and murders of prominent black lesbian community members around the country. For more on violence faced by black lesbians, see Matebeni (2011) and Gontek (2009).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Xavier Livermon

Xavier Livermon is currently assistant professor of Africana Studies at Wayne State University. His current project, ‘“It's About Time”: Kwaito Music and the Performance of Freedom in Post-Apartheid South Africa,’ examines popular music and performance in the context of political change. Xavier's new project, tentatively entitled ‘Queer(y)ing Freedom: Black Queer Subjectivities in Post-Apartheid South Africa’ examines the contested nature of black queer belonging in contemporary South Africa. His research interests include black popular music, black performance, black queer studies, and African diaspora studies.