“How sex and gender continue to be conceptualised in the African context requires further investigation. There still remain many gaps in understanding African people’s lives and realities that are not limited to the gender binary. The dominance of Western terminologies overshadows local realities and interpretations of sex and gender diversities. In many African countries we have seen how verbal language has been used as ‘backlash and as forms of excluding sexual and gender non-conforming persons’. One of the challenges that the gender and sex order faces currently is the rigid binary brought by Christian colonialism, which polices and legislates what and who is deemed outside of the ‘normal’ and thus furthest from the image of God.”

Global Blackness Reading Group II : “Queering Spaces, Blackness & Gender Formations in South Africa”, with zethu Matebeni

Led by sociologist, activist and writer Zintombizethu (zethu) Matebeni, this Global Blackness Reading Group will engage with interventions that have critically disrupted dominant structures that maintain the heteronormativity of spaces, sexualities and the gender binary. Over three sessions we will collectively think and work towards alternatives able to sustain Black queer life in the South African social, spatial and cultural landscape.

All readings are accessible via the links below and group participants are asked to engage with the set readings in advance of each session. Sessions 1 and 2 will run online, via Zoom, whilst Session 3 will run as a hybrid event, with an in-person gathering in Johannesburg and remote access via our YouTube channel (link). Videos of all sessions will also be available on our channel.

As with with our previous (inaugural) Global Blackness Reading Group, we hope to cultivate a close and interactive transnational community. Consequently, numbers are limited for these small-group sessions. Should you wish to join, please follow the link below and sign-up to the dedicated Global Blackness Reading Group II RSVP mailing list.

Session 1: “Articulations in queering Spaces”

Thurs 28 April ‘22 : 18:00 SAST / 12:00 EST

Session 1 invites collaborations for reimaging physical spaces in the academy, in queer politics and in the cities in which we live. Inspired by the late Binyavanga Wainana, we image a queer African space that “offers new and exciting things”. 

Session 2: “Black bodies, sexuality and visual pleasures”

Thurs 19 May ‘22 : 18:00 SAST / 12:00 EST

Session 2 looks at the ways sexuality and the Black body have appeared in queer discourses, women’s health, visual representation and in engagements with race. We focus on the visual to expand understandings of queerness particularly for Africans as they create spaces of joy, safety, pleasure and freedom. 

Session 3: “Revisions - gendering in South Africa”

Thurs 9 June : 18:00 SAST / 12:00 EST

This session is for necessary work in progress - seeking to undo the gender binary that restricts movements, articulations and possibilities for African emancipation. This session asks for bold, risky and limitless theoretical interventions.

Our guide, zethu Matebeni…

Zintombizethu (zethu) Matebeni is a sociologist, activist and writer whose research focuses on the development of African Queer Studies. She has worked at different universities in South Africa and has been part of decolonizing interventions, including #RhodesMustFall and the Black Academic Caucus at the University of Cape Town. zethu has edited and co-edited various volumes on African LGBTQI life, including Reclaiming African: queer perspectives on sexual and gender identities (Modjaji, 2014); Queer in Africa: LGBTQI Identities, Citizenship and Activism (Routledge, 2018); and Beyond the Mountain: queer life in 'Africa's gay capital' (UNISA Press, 2021). Since 2020, she has been a visiting professor at the Nelson Mandela University’s Centre for Women and Gender Studies. zethu holds the National Research Foundation South Africa Research Chair in Sexualities, Genders and Queer Studies at the University of Fort Hare. Full bio