Cape Town[1]

Dear Laura, these are my comments for the research project: I think that you should make reference to the intersectionality between race and ethnicity on the one hand and gender and sexuality on the other, much earlier on, in the paper. I wanted to add the following passage to the comment about colouredness in the South African context: Page 4 – The racial category coloured was officially defined as “those who could not be classified as either white or African”. This negative definition illustrates the category’s function as a means to maintain and police the boundaries of racial purity between white and black. The official differentiation between seven types of ‘coloured’ categories (which included differentiations such as ‘Cape Malay’; “Other Coloured” ; “Korana”; “Griqua” etc) assisted officialdom to capture all types of people who were otherwise unclassifiable. These differentiations further enhanced the racial designation’s cleansing and policing aspect. The slippery nature of the category ‘coloured’ could not be so easily policed in real life. Consequently, individuals who ‘could pass for white’ often distanced themselves from their communities of origin and their early social histories, moved cities and were incorporated into white communities where they were socially accepted as members of that race. Thereafter, they applied for official reclassification from coloured to white. Comment Page 7 “ where many blacks still believe that homosexuality is a white disease” should read “where many blacks still believe that the assertion of homosexual identity is a white or western disease” I think that it is important to distinguish here between a homosexual identity and same sex practices. The former is relatively new; the latter is often acknowledged as historically occurring in black communities in Cape Town (though not often spoken about), without it necessarily being linked to the assertion of an alternative homosexual identity, or indeed as a threat to heterosexual identities. A description of Cape Town to be included on page 9: The geographic landscape in the city of Cape Town is inscribed with its social history of racial and class domination, as well as of the creative cultures of resistance and subversion. Colonial and apartheid city planning and landscaping has racialised space in the city, and informed the visible distinctions between multiple, prosperous centres that overlap more or less with whiteness while its many impoverished margins coincide with the diverse shades of blackness1. However race is only one facet of social space. Space is also gendered and sexualised so that certain spaces such as Green Point and De Waterkant, just outside the city centre are mainly associated with the small, though prosperous, mainly white professional gay community. This community’s economic independence has enabled them to establish an almost exclusively gay neighbourhood, that is however permeable to other marginal populations. The fairly reliable systems of public transport make areas like these accessible to black gay men who frequent the exclusive night clubs or who are engaged in inter-racial relationships. I use blackness in the generic South African sense, to include people who were classified as coloured, Indian or African under the old apartheid system, as well the new foreign African immigrants. 1

The multiple gradations of marginality in the city periphery are marked primarily by the violence and criminality of a misogynistic male gang culture as well as contemporary racial contestations between and within working class coloured and Xhosa speaking inhabitants over scarce social resources such as education, healthcare, housing and land. These contestations are further inscribed by other social conflicts. These include the conflict between lower middle class and very impoverished working class coloured communities over the ideologies and economic practices that are considered to be both necessary for survival yet also sustain notions of respectability. The spatial peripheries are also further marked by the ongoing heterosexual gender conflicts that are expressed in the high incidences of rape and intimate femicide. Yet at the same time, socio-economic marginality also enables and nutures the rich expression of counter-culture especially amongst the youth. These include the various aspects of popular culture such as the clubs where break dancing, hip hop and kwaito are found, the more traditional ministrel carnival clubs, the aesthetics and practices of those who self define as moffie2; working class women’s sports and their beauty contests. They also include the ongoing cultural expressions of political protest that involve mainly young women. Dances such as the toyi toyi, previously utilised to protest against apartheid are now performed to to object the slow delivery of anti retrovirals or to draw attention to the corrosive effects of HIV/AIDS.

Moffie is a colloquial indigenous term used to refer to men who either cross-dress, prefer same sex partners and/ or are considered to be excessively effeminate. Unlike prosperous mainly white gay men, these individuals often reside within communities on the Cape Flats and are accepted within their communities albeit as lesser persons. 2