Gender, Place & Culture

A Journal of Feminist Geography

ISSN: 0966-369X (Print) 1360-0524 (Online) Journal homepage: www.tandfonline.com/journals/cgpc20

Soweto nights: making black queer space in post-

apartheid South Africa

Xavier Livermon

To cite this article: Xavier Livermon (2014) Soweto nights: making black queer
space in post-apartheid South Africa, Gender, Place & Culture, 21:4, 508-525, DOI:
10.1080/0966369X.2013.786687

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/0966369X.2013.786687

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Gender, Place and Culture, 2014
Vol. 21, No. 4, 508–525, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0966369X.2013.786687

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

Africa
Xavier Livermon*

Wayne State University – Africana Studies, 11th Floor, 5057 Woodward Ave., Detroit,
MI 48202, USA
(Received 31 October 2010; final version received 12 November 2012)

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.

Keywords: Soweto; black queer space; usable space; performance; performativity;

stokvel

Introduction
In 1994, South Africa experienced not only a shift in its politics, but also a new geographic
order. However, the establishment of this new order reveals the residues of apartheid
spatial logic. The work of Elder (1995, 2003) has explored the importance of
understanding how the spatial political economies of apartheid were built on regimes of
racialized sexuality. In what he calls a ‘procreational geography’ of apartheid, Elder traces
how the spatiality of apartheid was enforced through racialized heteropatriarchy (2003,
13). For Elder, understanding this racialized heteropatriarchy from an explicitly queer1
and feminist perspective is essential to any attempt to create a more just and socially
accountable South Africa. In fact, his work serves as a searing indictment of how current
policy fails to consider the ways in which it is informed by ideologies of gender and
sexuality which are not far removed from those constitutive of apartheid.
Queer geographers of post-apartheid South Africa have joined Elder and have begun to
adequately take up the challenge of thinking about the implications of sexuality to the
post-apartheid state (Elder 2005a, 2005b; Leap 2005; Magni and Reddy 2007; Oswin
2005, 2007; Rink 2008; Tucker 2009, 2010a, 2010b; Visser 2002, 2003, 2008a, 2008b;
Williams 2008; Matebeni 2011). The relationship between sexuality and the state is
important in light of the formation of a liberal constitution that protects the rights of sexual
minorities. Yet, much of the work concerning queer post-apartheid geographies has been
centered on white queer communities, particularly those of white queer men. Even when
the goal of such work is to analyze forms of white homonormativity and white queer
economic privilege, the limited work on post-apartheid queer geographies has tended to

*Email: [email protected]

q 2013 Taylor & Francis

 Gender, Place and Culture 509

center on white queer communities (Oswin 2007). Fewer studies have been devoted to the
queer geographies created by queers of color, with even less attention to the queer
geographies of South Africa’s black residents (Tucker 2009, 2010a; Visser 2008b;
Matebeni 2011).2
On the other hand, critical geographies of apartheid and post-apartheid South Africa
which have investigated black experience have rarely given much attention to sexuality,
much less to queer sexuality.3 Critical geographies of black experience have tended to
focus predominantly on the segregation that results from continued marginalization from
dominant economies. Much less attention has been focused on the ways in which black
South Africans creatively reconfigure the spatial terrain in which they live, one that is
admittedly imbalanced and inequitable. In what follows, I address what I perceive to be
these gaps in the literature of critical geographies of post-apartheid South Africa. First,
I argue for the importance of examining the ways black queers create space within the
everyday racialized spaces they inhabit in South Africa. Second, I insist on the importance
of performance and agentive appropriation to the study of black queer space. Lastly, I
maintain that the everyday micropractices of black queer sociality are essential to
understanding how black queers in contemporary South Africa exist in and transform
space. To do so, I examine gendered and sexualized spatialities produced in township
party culture. I use an analysis of a Soweto stokvel4 party to illuminate larger formations of
race, gender, and sexuality that are instructive to understanding configurations of space
and power in post-apartheid South Africa. Overall, I aim for an understanding of queer
geographies in South Africa which focuses on black experience through an examination of
how black queers reconfigure the space of the city for their own purposes. In so doing, I am
not arguing that these reworkings completely overturn a spatial political economy that is
both heteropatriarchal and racialized. Instead, I suggest that black queers work within the
available structures to create moments of possibility for themselves and to sustain ‘livable
lives’ (Butler 2004).

Usable space and black queer geographies

When black queers work within available racialized spaces they produce what we might
call usable space. My analysis of black queer spatiality begins with the idea that there is no
such thing as a value-neutral space. Drawing from Lefebvre (1991, 1996), I posit that
space takes on meanings that are intimately connected to notions of race, class, gender,
and sexuality. Queer geographers have done much to expand the ideas of the production of
space to queer bodies and queer communities (Valentine 1996, 2002; Binnie 1995; Binnie
and Valentine 1999). They argue that although spaces are produced in the interests of
heteronormativity, queers can rework heteronormative spaces through appropriation. The
very spaces of disempowerment can be used by those disenfranchised to create
possibilities for autonomy. However, much of the work done by queer geographers with
respect to the production of space has focused on relatively privileged white queer
communities globally (Visser 2008b). As Visser (2008b, 415) notes in his exploratory
study of black queer geographies in Bloemfontein:
black gay and lesbian people often experience multiple layers of oppression, as they contend
with the negative societal reaction to their sexual orientation or gender non-conformity, but
also may experience racial prejudice, limited economic resources and limited acceptance
within their own cultural community.
Therefore, although this study is indebted to the foundational texts of queer geography,
I also rely on scholars that analyze black communities outside of South Africa because
510 X. Livermon

such studies illuminate similarly racialized communities that are less economically and
politically privileged.
Usable space speaks to communities that are multiply marginalized but who find
agentive methods of reworking space in both urban and nonmetropolitan areas.5
Sociologist M.A. Hunter (2010) borrows the concept of ‘using space’ from sociologists
Gotham and Brumley (2002, 268) who describe how U.S.-based inner city residents of
housing projects mobilize space as a ‘constitutive dimension of agency and identity.’
Gotham and Brumley show how residents of inner city housing projects occupy refuse
space, ‘characterized not merely by physical marginality but also by social, political, and
economic marginality’ (Gotham and Brumley 2002, 268). M.A. Hunter (2010) argues that
the notion of ‘using space’ allows him to think about the agentive measures that black
urbanites from spaces of marginality use to reconfigure space for the means of survival.
I build upon this notion of usable space which speaks not only to forms of agency within
space, but also to the creative labor of appropriation and re-appropriation that is central to
the processes of black queer self-making in township space.
Cultural historian Kelley (1997) has argued for the importance of the creative labor of
appropriation as a means through which U.S.-based black inner city residents reconfigure
relations of inequality. Drawing from Willis’s (1990) concept of symbolic creativity,
Kelley demonstrates how blacks in the post-industrial USA use creative expression ‘as a
way to survive economic crisis’ (Kelley 1997, 45). Through examining anti-prison
activism among African-American women, geographer Gilmore (2004, 2007)
demonstrates how spaces of crisis also present opportunities for engagement and
mobilization. The concept of usable space draws on the insights provided by Kelley and
Gilmore to demonstrate how the creative labor of black queer South Africans can be
effectively examined as a site of possibility amidst the dislocations of post-apartheid South
Africa.

Performance ethnography, the situation and the making of black queer space
The making of black queer space at a Soweto stokvel party occurs through a moment that I
call ‘the situation.’ I use the term situation to place into creative tension the moments of
lived expression central to the analysis presented here. The situation is a conceptual frame
through which I examine the ways that pleasure is experienced within spaces appropriated
and coproduced by black queer South Africans. The situation heightens the sensory
perception of the moment; in particular the pleasures of the body which are key to how
space is experienced by black queer South Africans. Thus, the situation provides the way
for me to render textually these moments of pleasure. Pleasure is examined here not as a
social safety valve, but rather as a category of analysis that is important in and of itself. As
Linda Singer notes, ‘with pleasure arises questions of entitlement and desert, excess and
absence, privilege and priority, authority and resistance. Pleasure is therefore already
political and politicized’ (Singer 1993, 72). Spaces of leisure, as central nodes in the
pursuit of pleasure, are also similarly politicized. As Thrift (1997, 2004) reminds us, play
is an activity that demands serious attention because it provides possibilities for the
discovery of new social configurations. In this article, the kind of situation I privilege takes
the form of an ethnographic vignette and is designed to elucidate the different possibilities
for reworking space used by black queer residents of Soweto.
The situation is rendered theoretically and methodologically through critical
performance ethnography. Critical performance ethnography emerges from the insights
provided by Conquergood (2002a, 2002b) and elaborated upon by Madison (2006, 2007,
 Gender, Place and Culture 511

2011) and Johnson (2009). As a theory, performance ethnography has been a central
analytic of black queer theory (Bailey 2005, 2009, 2010; Johnson 2008). For these groups
of scholars, ethnography is an act of co-performative witnessing (Conquergood 2002a,
2002b). Performance ethnography is not participant observation although superficially the
two share similar elements. As D. Soyini Madison explains, ‘participant-observation does
not capture the active, risky, and intimate engagement with Others that is the expectation
of performance’ (Madison 2007, 826). The fact that I was a black queer man in these
spaces (although not black South African) informs how I interpret and theorize the
quotidian experience of black queer nightlife. In a society that remains socially stratified
by race, my blackness gave me access to black South African queer communities.6
Therefore, I am a part of the very experiences of black queerness that I elucidate. As an
African-American queer man who was enmeshed in the black queer social milieu of
Johannesburg and its surrounding townships, I coproduced black queer spaces.
Geographers have mined the insights of Performance Studies in order to expand
notions of performance and performativity into rethinking space and spatiality. For Nash,
performance is central to ‘reorienting cultural geography toward practices . . . [offering]
an alternative to more static approaches to place and landscape’ (2000, 660). Citing Thrift
(1997), she suggests that performance and performativity are helpful in orienting cultural
geography ‘towards understanding the micro-geographies of habitual practices’ (Nash
2000, 656). For Thrift (2002, 296), the engagement of performance with cultural
geography offers exciting possibilities that reveal research as co-production, expand
cultural geography into senses beyond the visual, and create a cultural geography that
shifts based on ‘situation, context, and event’. Importantly, the twin lenses of performance
and performativity allow for a shift in the ethos of engagement, creating ‘a new kind of
political weave in the world, one which attempts to meet despoliation with an ethos of
creation rather than just resistance’ (Thrift 2004, 121– 122 emphasis mine). Through
performance, the political is revealed to be ‘woven into the fabric of life’ (Thrift 2004,
122). For my purposes, performance ethnography is both an analytical approach and a
method which enables an account of the interaction of my own performing body in
relationship with black queer South Africans and the spatialities that I simultaneously
occupy with my interlocutors. Ultimately, performance ethnography reveals the fieldwork
as the collaborative and co-performative practice that it is (Congquergood 1991; Denzin
2003).7
The observations that follow are based on fieldwork conducted for a project on post-
apartheid musical cultures. I completed the fieldwork from 2003 to 2005. During that time,
I spent most of my evenings exploring the nightlife of post-apartheid Johannesburg.
I attended concerts, weddings, funerals, birthday parties, and political rallies; I went to
nightclubs, crashed house parties, danced at street bashes and holiday festivals; and
I generally made myself present at any social occasion in which popular youth music was
being played. Although my focus was on kwaito music, I also made a point of attending
parties that featured house music and hip-hop.8 Geographically, I split my time between
Johannesburg’s townships (predominantly Soweto, but also Alexandra, Katlehong, and
Kagiso), inner city spaces, and the northern suburbs of Johannesburg.9 There were also
trips to Durban and Cape Town, although I did not explore these cities’ townships.

Soweto: black (queer) geographies in post-apartheid South Africa

Before proceeding I propose some brief contextual considerations of Soweto. To begin,
Soweto is not one community; rather, it is made up of different communities, each with its
512 X. Livermon

distinctive character. Its name is a portmanteau for the south western townships indicating
the location of Soweto (33 km southwest) in relation to the city of Johannesburg. Since its
amalgamation with the city of Johannesburg post-1994, specific population details for
Soweto have been difficult to obtain, but it is generally estimated that 43% of the
municipality of Johannesburg’ s population resides in Soweto, thus making the population
approximately 1.7 million people (Loots 2008; Statistics South Africa 2008).10 The
average weighted household income for Soweto residents is about R 3796 per month in
contrast to a provincial average of R 10,226 per month (Loots 2008; Cant et al. 2009,
40).11 The official unemployment rate is about 40%, but it is important to keep in mind that
this statistic does not count those who earn income from the informal sector, an important
facet of the Sowetan economy. Of those who do work in the formal economy, 70% must
travel outside of Soweto in order to do so (Loots 2008). Lastly, although there is significant
economic and ethnolinguistic variegation in Soweto, the population is almost exclusively
black.
As Tucker (2009) notes, in contrast to Cape Town, there is a much longer history of
black queer sociality in the Johannesburg area. McLean and Ngcobo (1995) discuss a
number of variegated ‘gay’ male identities that were present by the 1980s in apartheid
Johannesburg. Some historical studies (Cameron and Gevisser 1995; Gevisser 2011;
Achmat 1993) have suggested the important role played by the mineral revolution in the
Johannesburg area, which created new types of social relations for Johannesburg’s black
communities. These new social relations allowed for the formation of both clandestine and
more overt black queer identities and practices in the post- World War II period.12 Post-
1976 Soweto emerged as a hotbed of national black quotidian resistance to the apartheid
state.13 Many black queers who were active in the anti-apartheid movement were
unwilling to fight for a post-apartheid political order that liberated them as racial subjects
but ignored state mandated homophobia. As a result, by the late 1980s and early 1990s,
several important black queer leaders (among them Bev Ditsie, Alfred Machela, and
Simon Nkoli) emerged who argued for the right to liberation not only as racialized but also
as sexualized subjects. They forced the liberation movement to consider that ‘the gay
community’ in South Africa did not refer only to relatively privileged white gay men.
Many of these prominent national black queer activists were based in Soweto or other
Johannesburg area townships. As a result, post-apartheid South Africa has seen the
emergence of a vibrant, visible, and vocal black queer community. The emergence of this
community, however, has not been without contestation, as I will illuminate in the next
section.
Soweto should not be seen as simply a place, but also a state of mind. As Nsizwa
Dlamini notes, the township is a ‘space in motion’ (Dlamini in Mbembe et al. 2008, 240).
Soweto is marketed as a space of desirability, hipness, and a space of consumer possibility
(Mbembe et al. 2008). Soweto is simultaneously urban, rural, and suburban: ‘in the
township everybody knows everybody else, where they come from, how their parents met’
(Mbembe et al. 2008, 240). For many black queers in South Africa, Johannesburg and
Soweto itself emerge as a black queer space affording opportunities for sociality not
available elsewhere in the country. Soweto allows for the merging of black and queer
identity in a specifically black spatiality.14 Mbembe has noted that there are ‘few
postliberation ethnographies of everyday life in the township’ (Mbembe et al. 2008, 239).
In what follows, I merge Mbembe’s (2008) and Elder’s (2003, 2009) concerns about the
need for ethnographies of everyday life, centered on black experience and attentive to
gender and sexuality. In addition, I draw upon the role of performance to examine how
space is created in order to highlight the microgeographies and micropractices that Thrift
 Gender, Place and Culture 513

(2004) identifies as central to a re-imagined cultural geography. The importance of this

strategy is not solely contingent on post-apartheid political economies. Rather,
understanding contemporary black (queer) lives as agentive, nuanced, and complex is
as equally important as what black queer nightlife reveals about the legacies and aftermath
of apartheid.

The situation: creating black queer leisure space in Soweto

I prefer to hang out here in the township. The people in town are just so full of themselves, the
drinks are expensive and besides I don’t have a car. Plus, I like the township boys, the real
rough men, so why should I go all the way to town to sit around with a bunch of queens when
there are plenty of boys here. And the music, I have to hear my kwaito and township house –
that’s what really gets me moving. (Lucky)
It was Monday night and I had been invited to a stokvel party. Stokvels are informal
savings organizations made up of groups of people that developed in black communities as
a way to pool and create community wealth, particularly for those who have little access to
formal banking structures. In addition:
Stokvels are places where people meet on a regular basis and contribute a small sum of money
to a common ‘pot.’ The business side of the meeting is accompanied by a social gathering
usually involving the sale and consumption of alcohol, with the ‘pot holder’ often also taking
home the profits from the liquor sales of that particular meeting. The result is that poor people
periodically have access to a relatively large sum of money which they can use for large
expenses . . . Furthermore, stokvels often constitute valued friendship groups so that people
look forward to the meetings and members often share strong relationships of friendship and
support. (Campbell et al. 2002, 49, emphasis mine)
Stokvels could be viewed as a legacy of colonial-apartheid inequalities of space and
capital, for they are one of the many ways in which black communities effectively
responded to lack of access to capital and formal banking institutions. But stokvels are
more than just an example of resistance to colonial-apartheid inequalities. Because
stokvels have a social character and play an important role in social support, significant
number of black South Africans still belong to these organizations despite the fact that
formal banking structures have become more available to low-income individuals in the
post-apartheid era. A 2002 study by Finmark Trust revealed that a total of 3.56 million
people belonged to stokvels, representing about 10% of the black population at the time
(Finmark Trust 2002). Stokvels also claim membership among all class categories.15
Anywhere from 8% to 28% of stokvel members by living standard measure belong to more
than one stokvel.
Quoting Sansom, Wojcicki (2002) suggests that stokvels began among male migrant
populations, yet in my observations stokvels consisted predominantly of black women.
The queer men who were my interlocutors were often the only men in their particular
stokvel. Thus in my experience, stokvel membership was gendered like much social
interaction in South Africa. Most stokvels are still township based (even if their
membership is not always so) and the membership is almost exclusively black South
African. Therefore, stokvel meetings and social gatherings are typically held in township
spaces. Determining the exact number of stokvel parties that may exist and how queer
friendly they may be in any given township location is difficult due to the social network
nature of stokvels. If the stokvel had membership that included black queer individuals, it
was more than likely also queer friendly since stokvels rely on social networks to create
profit. If an individual is not socially connected to the members of the stokvel association,
it would be unlikely to know when and where the parties are thrown. My interlocutors,
514 X. Livermon

who were predominantly black queer men, often knew about stokvels that were queer
friendly because they had some kind of social connection (through work, school,
neighborhood residence, familial relations, or actual membership) to the stokvel
association. Due to its social and economic diversity, as well as its sheer size, Soweto has a
great number of stokvel parties compared with other townships in Gauteng Province.16
The Monday night party serves as an ideal site through which to explore the
micropractices of performance and the everyday. Mbembe et al. (2008, 241) note
the importance of Monday evening social sessions to Sowetan community formation. The
quote that began this section highlights the role music plays in creating space and the fact
that a specific genre of music (in this case kwaito) guarantees that a particular type of man,
one who enacts a hypermasculine ‘rough’ performance, will be present. This type of
hypermasculine performance is spatially centered in black townships and nonbourgeois.
Gesture, bodily comportment, attire, and speech acts in the form of intonation and the
command of slang vocabularies are markers used to exert social control over the feminine
and mastery of other masculinities. As numerous (Bhana 2005; Glaser 1992; Langa 2010;
Haupt 2008; Stadler 2008) scholars have discussed, tsotsi or thug/gangster masculinity has
become a hegemonic form of contemporary hypermasculine performance in South Africa.
Hypermasculine performance relates to space in that it seeks to monopolize township
spaces at the expense of others through both direct and indirect threats of violence. The
presence and visibility of this type of potentially dangerous hypermasculinity ironically
serves as the catalyst for the presence of queer men in the space and allows the space to be
queered, yet simultaneously exist as heterosexual. Lucky’s expressed preference for
partners that perform this type of masculinity in the above epigraph is indicative of the
potential of these spaces to reveal the nexus of leisure, performance, and the everyday
central to my analysis.
I attended a typical Monday night stokvel in 2005 that offered a fascinating geography
of gender and sexuality at the house in which it was held. By this point in my research,
I was intimately familiar with the queer spatiality of Johannesburg and its surrounding
townships. In Soweto, I frequented several nightspots that were known to be gay friendly
and attended the numerous gay parties, social functions, and hangout sessions that would
spontaneously occur. I was also well known within these circles because I possessed a
commodity that most black queer men in Soweto did not have: a car. Although a lack of a
vehicle certainly did not impede black queer sociality in Soweto, having a vehicle allowed
for a greater variety of leisure activity. Thus, I was often informed of social events both
ordinary and special, because I could provide the necessary transportation between venues
and from home to venues. I also benefited from having access to a social scene that few
non-black South Africans experience.
Earlier in the day, I had been told about the party by a friend of mine. He assured me
that the party was ‘gay friendly’ and thus gays were welcome in the space. I was told that
the proprietors of this stokvel were two heterosexual women and their gay male friend,
thus accounting for the queer-friendliness of the party. I found that at many parties in
Soweto, gays were not only welcome but were often desired for the atmosphere that they
provided. A party was often not considered a ‘good party’ unless there was queer
contingent, particularly flamboyantly dressed and outrageously performing queer men.
Black queer men are often expected to be the social lubricants of the party, getting the
festivities started with their slick dance moves and providing partygoers with much to
gossip about with their sense of style. As arbiters of class and taste, queer men are often
highly valued in many social spaces in Soweto.17 This particular stokvel was held in a
typical ‘four room’ Soweto home. These four-room homes contain four nearly equally
 Gender, Place and Culture 515

divided rooms: a living room, a kitchen, and two bedrooms. Bathrooms are often located
outside the home proper.
These homes typically have two entrances: a front, rarely used entrance that connects
to the sitting room, and a back entrance that connects to the kitchen. The kitchen was
where drinks and food were being served and so the party proprietors were dominant in
that space and had closed it off to the guests. To enter the party one had to go through the
front entrance of the home. When we arrived, I was a bit intimidated by the space, because
it did not meet my definition of gay friendly, appearing to lack any explicitly queer bodies.
There were only men in this room and it was crowded to the point that it was difficult to
maneuver. Men sat on beer crates, small plastic stools, chairs, and stood around. The
music – a mix of kwaito and local house – was thumping through the speakers, although
clearly in this crowded space there could be no place to dance. I was immediately
concerned that we had arrived at the wrong place. The men in this room hardly looked
queer and their hypermasculine performance was overtly heteronormative. The only
women in the room were the proprietors and their helpers who were busy clearing away
beer bottles, bringing plates of food to be served, and making sure that the flow of
commerce (the selling of food and alcohol) continued unabated.
Rarely did I feel intimidated in black spaces in South Africa, but at this moment, I felt
uneasy. Neither myself nor my companion fit into this hypermasculine mold. Our attire
was more flamboyant, our mannerisms more feminine. I found it hard to believe that there
was anything ‘gay friendly’ about this space. Although I understood these parties to be
overtly masculine and heteronormative, I was even surprised at the lack of women in this
area of the party.18 ‘Where are the women?’ I thought to myself as I glanced around
nervously. More to the point, where were our friends? ‘Follow me,’ my friend said, and
gestured toward one of the bedrooms.
It was almost impossible to make my way through the bodies of men who were sitting
posed within the living room. Trying to make my way to one of the bedrooms I stumbled,
and literally ended up in the lap of one of the patrons. ‘Sorry’ I said, trying my best to
communicate to him that I did not deliberately mean to fall on top of him, a sense of
foreboding dread came over me as I wondered whether he would react violently to this
encroachment of his personal space. However, much to my surprise, he immediately
disarmed my concerns, offering a smile, he made a gesture to allow me to pass. As I moved
past him toward my destination, I could have sworn he placed a subtle hand on my
backside then lightly grabbed my hand to get my attention. ‘I am going there’ I said in Zulu
and pointed to the entrance to the other room. He smirked and then allowed me to pass to
my destination. I thought to myself, ‘was he just flirting with me?’ and if so, perhaps I have
seriously misjudged this space.
Entering the first bedroom, I found the space completely transformed. If the living
room was defined by a heteronormative hypermasculinity that was marked as straight, the
second room was defined as explicitly queer. I found the room full of black queer friends,
mostly men and some women. This room was nowhere near as crowded. Although the
music was loud, there was space for conversation and dancing. There a group of black
queer men and women gossiped, caught up on the happenings over the weekend, and
generally had a good time, completely unencumbered by the aggressive heteronormativity
in the next room. If this party could be said to have a VIP section, we were certainly in it.
We had more comfortable chairs, space to maneuver and dance and freedom to be black
and queer in township space. I noticed that despite our smaller numbers, the group of black
queers also seemed to have purchased a significant amount of food and more expensive
alcoholic beverages than what I noticed from the patrons in the first room.
516 X. Livermon

‘So what types of guys do you like?’ quizzed Sello. Sello was typical of the many
feminine-performing queer men who occupied the room. He wore tight jeans, a tight t-
shirt, and light make-up. Although such gender performance was not that of a cross-
dressing man, or a transgendered woman, it did explicitly mark him as gay in this space of
hypermasculinity. Such feminine performances are strategic, used to attract men and not
necessarily as an expression of gender identity. ‘I like coming to places like this so that I
can meet “straight men”.’ By ‘straight men,’ Sello was referring to gender-conforming
masculine men who were open to relationships with other men. These men and their
attendant masculinities who he found desirable could only be found in these kinds of
spaces. ‘Why would I want to be anywhere else?’ he said. Echoing the sentiments that I
began this section with, this place was free of class-based exclusions, if not overt class
performances. Although most of the attendees were from the surrounding area, there were
a few people who came to this party from middle-class neighborhoods in Johannesburg
and elsewhere in Soweto in order to experience this vibe.
I was interested in what was going on in the second bedroom of the house. So I left
Sello to continue his ruminations on the type of men he preferred and poked my head into
this room, which was connected to the first bedroom by a door. There, I discovered the
answer to my previous question about the presence of women. All of the women who were
present at the party seemed to be in this location. I could not tell whether any of the women
were queer, but they all appeared to be gender conforming in performance. Even the drinks
that they were consuming marked the room as different. Although the men in the living
room drank beer exclusively, the women in this second bedroom drank a variety of drinks
that were marketed to women by the major alcohol companies. These included sweet
ciders, light wines, and other fruit-flavored alcoholic drinks. This final room was a bit
quieter as the music was dimmer in volume in here and one could speak without having to
raise one’s voice. There were no men in this space save one queer man, who I was later
told was one of the three hosts. As I did not know any of the women personally, I did not
stay long in their space. I greeted them and moved back into the area where my friends
were having a good time.
By this time, Sello and his friend Mark were gyrating to the music. They flung their
bodies around, twisting, and contorting them in joy to the thumping bass coming from the
speakers. Although clearly their display was partly for themselves, I had to imagine that
they were also showing off their moves for their newfound male companions who had
appeared stealthily in my absence. Their companions had occupied the space near Sello
where I once sat. They were straight men, and clearly, Sello and Mark intended to make
these men their prize tonight. As I was to find out, Sello and Mark had purchased drinks for
their straight companions. Although sexual exchange was not an explicit part of the
bargain, it was implicit and both the straight men and their queer partners knew this.19 I
became fascinated by the game of cat and mouse that occurred. Straight men from the
other room who either arrived for the evening with few or no funds knew that they could
count on queer men in our queer space to provide them with alcohol. The exchange was
not necessarily quid pro quo. That is, it could never be guaranteed that one of these straight
men would actually agree to go home with any of these queer men, but this was part of the
challenge. The queer man in this exchange would be considered successful if he managed
to take one of these ‘real straight men’ home for the evening. Part of the pleasure involves
the literal commodification and consumption of a particular kind of performative black
heteromasculinity on the part of queer men. These conquests, then, add to the prestige and
standing of the queer man in the black queer community because this type of masculinity
is privileged and highly desirable. Equally important, the queer men must perform a form
 Gender, Place and Culture 517

of class identity associated with black male queerness in Soweto. According to many of
my interlocutors, there is a misconception among many heterosexual Sowetans that queers
have more disposable income than heterosexuals. In this space, such class identity is
performed through the purchase of alcoholic beverages and particular sartorial practices
that emphasize in-demand name brands. In reality, the queer men often have no more
money than the straight men, their fashion sense and alcohol purchased through social
connections formed with other queer men.20 Clothes are borrowed and swapped to make
the perfect impression, and one friend agrees to buy alcohol for the other with the
understanding that the favor will be reciprocated later. Yet, the performance of style and
consumer modernity remains essential to the desire that straight men have for queer men in
this space, even if, as is often the case, such performance is ephemeral or illusory.Thapelo,
a friend of mine, describes the stakes of this illusion:
Gays are perceived as having more money. When these guys show up at the party without any
money or with only a little money they come over to our side. They know that some of us will
be more than happy to buy them beers for the chance of bedding them. Of course, we never
know how sincere they are. Whether we will actually get a chance to go home with these guys,
and if we do get a chance with them where it will all lead to in the end . . . but for those of us
that like ‘straight guys,’ this is how we find them.
Johannes, another friend, problematizes this game:

Everybody knows what’s going on here. You don’t come into this room to hang out with the
gay guys unless you are willing to hook up. These so-called straight guys know exactly what
they are doing. It just upsets me. I don’t date these so-called straight guys and I don’t like the
way they take advantage of us gays, expecting us to buy them beer and provide for them, while
they ignore us or even make fun of us at other times . . . for what reason? So we can be seen
around them? For the chance to possibly go home with them? The whole thing is stupid. I
prefer to date other gay guys. I know what I am getting into then, and I leave these After-Nines
alone.
Johannes uses a popular township term for men who have sex with men, but who do not
identify as either gay or bisexual. The term After Nine’s refers to the time of day. The
saying that many black queer men invoke is that the same men who will ignore you during
the day will openly court you after nine (p.m.). The contrast between day and night also
suggests the clandestine behavior of these men, for they are queer ‘only at night,’ away
from the disapproving moral regulations of the daytime.
I noticed an intense argument had begun between Johannes and one of the straight men
who had joined our queer group. The straight men were angry that Johannes had
encroached onto their space and admonished him. Johannes felt that they were acting as if
they were the only ‘real men’ in the room and told them that he sat where he wanted and as
close to them as he would like. This was not received well by the straight men, who
perceived Johannes’ rebuttal as a challenge to their masculinity that he as a gay man had
no right to make. I was becoming increasingly exasperated with the masculinist posturing
of the straight men in what I had come to feel was ‘our space.’ They had offended my
sensibilities by demanding more alcohol from my friends, and admonishing them not to
touch them since one ‘should not touch the thighs of a man’ as I overheard one of the men
saying. The performative masculinity of these straight men’s posture while they were
seated was remarkable. Despite the fact that the room was becoming increasingly
crowded, these straight men insisted on taking up as much space as possible by spreading
their legs wide open at the knees and stretching their legs out. They complemented this
masculine pose by laying back, spreading their arms out, and thus taking up twice as much
space as anyone else. Both Johannes and I were perplexed as to how queers were not
518 X. Livermon

supposed to encroach on their space, nor touch them anywhere on their body. Their
requests were unreasonable, but this performance was about establishing themselves as the
‘real’ men in the room, something that both Johannes and I found objectionable, although
he being braver (or perhaps drunker) than me, was willing to voice this objection.
As I alluded to earlier, gesture, bodily comportment, and speech acts in relation to
space combine to create the performative masculinity that established these men as ‘real
men’ in contrast to the queer men who were numerically dominant in the room. This
behavior was certainly attractive and of little concern to some of my queer male friends –
in fact, it made these particular heteromasculine men even more desirable in the moment.
For me, however, it was increasingly disconcerting. I decided it was time to leave as I was
increasingly concerned for Johannes’ safety. I spoke with the friend I arrived with and to
Johannes and insisted that we should leave because I was concerned that the escalating
tension between Johannes and these two straight men might turn violent. The fact that I
owned a car allowed me to depart when I chose, as I did not have to rely on a friend with a
vehicle, or walk home, therefore, being obliged to leave in a group so as to mitigate
potential violence. Reluctantly, Johannes, my friend, and I left the party. I later learned
that the two men who had instigated the argument went home with Sello and Mark later
that night, ostensibly returning the favor of alcohol consumption with sexual exchange. I
was simply relieved that in the battle of competitive masculinities that no one was harmed,
because I knew there would be little legal recourse for Johannes if he were assaulted.21
These kinds of interactions between queer men and straight men occur all the time in
township spaces. Black queer men effectively queer the space when their presence is
noticeable in significant numbers at shebeens, Monday parties, taverns, and nightclubs
across Soweto. The space, then, becomes simultaneously queer and heterosexual.
Although it is important to emphasize the performances that queer the space, equally
noteworthy are the performances that heterosexualize it. For many black queers, creating
space in already existing community spaces is the preferred method. They enjoy the lack
of pretension related to these spaces, the affordable costs, the music played, and the type of
men present. The locations of ‘gay friendly’ nightlife shift from year to year. As these
nightspaces are so overwhelmingly populated by men, heterosexual women who attend
usually do not react negatively to the presence of queer men. However, these spaces can be
and have been known to be far more dangerous for queer black women because black
queer women remove their bodies from masculine pleasure and control and they are
potential competitors for the few women who attend nightlife spaces.22 It was unclear to
me whether any of the queer women who were there that night interacted with the women
in the final room. If so, the demarcation of space between ‘straight men,’ ‘queer people,’
and ‘straight women’ served to provide some level of safety for both women and queer
men. Yet, my own recollection of the argument between Johannes and the straight men
who were present in queer space shows that these attempts to create queer space within
black heterosexual space are fraught with a number of dangers.

Conclusion
Through an examination of the ways in which black queers create space in Soweto party
culture, I have demonstrated the recuperative pleasures of township nightlife. The
provisional spaces formed through the practices described herein point to the possibilities
of creating a more socially accountable post-apartheid South Africa for black queers.
However, I would like to assert that the analysis of this space, much like the space itself, is
provisional. Therefore, the practices highlighted in this article should be seen as in
 Gender, Place and Culture 519

process, and open to contingency, revealing the importance of the two organizing analytics
that guide this article; the usability of space and performance. Usable space highlights the
process of innovation, flexibility, and vitality central to black queer survival and livability
particularly if the concept is understood in relation to the black heteronormative spaces
that black queers must inhabit and negotiate daily. Lacking the capital (both social and
economic) to create ‘black gay ghettos,’ or to participate in the predominantly white queer
spaces located outside the townships, black queers have always had to work within and
through black heteronormative space. In post-apartheid South Africa, the new political
dispensation encourages black queers to claim rights and subjectivity through increasing
their visibility as explicitly sexual subjects. In Soweto, black queers have begun to claim
explicit sexual subjectivities with great enthusiasm. Such forms of sexual subjectivity and
their attendant performances are not without contestation. Thus, the concept of usable
space also permits acknowledgment of the racialized, classed, gendered, and sexuality-
based dangers of visible queer performances, being careful not to reduce the lives of black
queers to these attendant dangers.
Performance is also central in understanding how black queers negotiate the new
terrain of post-apartheid South Africa. Performance, particularly the kinds of
performances associated with leisure space examined above, is a key site for
determining how black queer South Africans use space in order to create livable lives.
Thrift (1997, 2004) reminds us that leisure is an activity that demands serious attention
because it provides possibilities for the discovery of new social configurations. The
creation of simultaneous queer and heterosexual black space affirms post-apartheid
social relations as flexible, exposing both the limits and possibilities of the changing
society. One emergent possibility demonstrates that the space of the city allows for
difference through moments of interplay. These moments are not about erasure of
difference or completely harmonious interactions. Rather, the space examined reveals
how rigid social formations of class, gender, race, and sexuality (to name just a few) face
moments of instability.
Lastly, the performance of class is central to constructing the modalities of desire
examined in this article. However, it would be a mistake to suggest that subtle or overt
class performances in relation to sexuality and social relations are a new feature of
black South African life. As several scholars have noted, class performance has been an
important organizer of social relations for black South Africans historically (Dlamini
2009; Nixon 1994; Mattera 1987; Goodhew 2004). Furthermore, the commodification
of social –sexual relations also has historical antecedents (M. Hunter 2010). What may
be changing in post-apartheid South Africa is that men, both queer and nonqueer, are
increasingly subject to these forms of commodified interactions. The object of their
desire, or the economic sponsor – depending on how one views the interaction – may
be either a black woman or a black queer man. Moreover, just as these spaces create
possibilities, they also expose limits. Women who attend stokvels and refuse sexual
advances from heteromasculine men after having drinks bought for them face gendered
and sexual violence (Wojcicki 2002). Heteromasculine men who allow women or queer
men to buy them drinks have the option of refusing sexual advances. For queer men
who occupy spaces like the stokvel, the uncertainty of their interactions with
heteromasculine men promises great pleasure, but also can be the source of significant
pain. Ultimately, the articulation of space to performance for black queer South
Africans is without guarantees (Hall 1986). The outcome is not necessarily in the
service of social justice, even when the performances create the possibility of greater
freedom.
520 X. Livermon

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
 Gender, Place and Culture 521

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.
522 X. Livermon

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).

Notes on contributor
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.

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ABSTRACT TRANSLATIONS
Las noches de Soweto: hacer un espacio queer negro en la Sudáfrica del post-
apartheid
En este artı́culo 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-
geografı́as 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 lı́mites encontrados
por las personas negras queer a medida que intentan construir vidas vivibles.
Palabras claves: Soweto; espacio queer negro; espacio utilizable; performance;
performatividad; stokvel

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。
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）