Introduction

Abstract

The dismantling of the structures of apartheid in South Africa since the 1994 elections over a decade ago, and the ANC’s (African National Congress) gradual move toward democratization, national reconciliation, and full human rights for all South African citizens, has led, in one sense, to the long and ongoing process of the de-racialization of South African social and political institutions, to other claims of identity and solidarity, and to the exposure and critique of other axes of domination, including heteronormativity and homophobia. The transition from apartheid to democracy has also opened up new spaces of “queer” visibility, identity politics, cultural production, and social critique both in South Africa and in the neighboring region. Though there is now a seriousness about lesbian and gay issues in South Africa in ways that were previously not possible, including a constitutional clause that expressly protects sexual orientation, one must nonetheless concede that material conditions still mitigate against the fullest realization of ANC-initiated democratic imperatives and that the status of homosexuality in the region remains a highly complex and contradictory question.¹