Can you remember the first time you recognised yourself in a book?
For gay South Africans, representation in literature, particularly fiction, has been relatively limited. Despite our progressive and inclusive constitution, only a rare few gay-centric novels have been published in our history. This is finally changing. Within the past few years, the local literary scene has exploded with novels featuring gay characters, written by queer authors. It’s a hugely positive development – but why now, and why is this worth celebrating?
Before the end of Apartheid, queer lives were almost entirely unrepresented in South African literature. The fear of racial mingling was inherently tied to the preservation of the white, heterosexual, reproductive family. Interracial coupling and homosexuality were strictly prohibited and dissenting voices were often violently silenced. “Literature was one of the great victims of this silencing. The reliance on a particular form of patriarchal masculinity, and the strict gender roles which complemented the project of separate development, purposely excluded queer voices and sought to oppress representations of queer lives,” writes Grant Andrews, a postdoctoral research fellow in the English Department at Stellenbosch University, in a research article published in 2009.
Only after 1994 and the re-writing of our constitution could novelists begin to acknowledge and explore the role of queer people in the fabric of our society. In 2006, André Carl van der Merwe published Moffie, a cornerstone work that charted the odyssey of a young gay South African conscript during the Angola bush war. By looking at the history of the country through a new lens, the novel exposed the parasitic nature of patriarchal rule: In trying to repress the existence of queer people, the ruling elite caused physical and psychological damage to even those they were supposed to be protecting.
I read Moffie when I was eighteen, back in 2013. In addition to a history lesson not taught at school, the novel gave me a sense of my place in the world. Here was a story about a young, gay South African grappling with identity in a society that rejected him on principle. Despite the huge differences in our circumstances, I felt less alone. Knowing that I was not the only person in the world who had ever felt this way or been called those names was incredibly freeing. In talking about the book with friends and strangers on the internet, the book also connected me to a wider community. This is the power of representation in media.
“South Africa has had some very brave writers writing queer stories long before they were mainstream. My introduction was the legendary K. Sello Duiker. I think queer stories are finding wider audiences these days, and it’s wonderful to see the diversity of queer stories and experiences being represented. Pushing back not only against the idea that you can’t be queer and African, but showing that there are so many ways to be queer and African, and we are telling all kinds of stories now, from coming out stories to confronting our pain to love stories and even science fiction. It’s an amazing time to be writing about the queer experience,” says Alistair Mackay, whose recently released sophomore novel The Child deals with what it means to be queer, white, middle-aged, mentally unwell, married, and child-free in South Africa.
Speaking on a panel at the 2024 Franschhoek Literary Festival in the Western Cape, Alistair and fellow queer writers S.J Naudé and Wisani Mushwana unpacked the importance of literature in allowing us to see our lives and the world as if we were strangers to both. This is a critical process in helping us to become conscious of how ideas of masculinity and heteronormativity have shaped our lives. Through fiction, we might also discover how we unconsciously perpetuate the very concepts that have inflicted harm on us. Becoming conscious of these impacts is necessary to correct our mistakes as a country and to begin healing as individuals.
“When I hear the statement ‘proliferation of queer literature’, I feel a bit sad that thirty years into South Africa’s democracy, literature that contains queer characters is still “proliferating”; that there are still conditions that continue to regard queer ways of being as ‘non-normative’. But proliferation, in a capitalist sense, also speaks to demand, and that there is demand is a great indication of development and growth,” said Wisani when I spoke to him after the panel. His debut novel A Soft Landing tells the story of a boy from rural Limpopo who must find ways to manage loss and deal with a difficult past in modern-day South Africa.
One reason that the proliferation of queer literature is remarkable is that South African society remains largely socially conservative. Although gay rights are protected in our constitution, the opinions and beliefs of the population have yet to catch up entirely – you only have to hold hands with your boyfriend in a mall to get a sense of public attitude towards homosexuality. The idea of what a man ‘is supposed to be like’ (physically strong; unsympathetic; in charge) runs deep across all our local cultures and race groups. Despite this, writers like David Ralph Viviers, Jared Thompson, Damon Galgut and those quoted in this article continue to publish queer novels. The sheer number of active openly gay authors is unprecedented in South Africa – it’s an exciting time to be a reader.
Still, one glaring issue remains: most of these authors are white and the stories they tell are (often, but not always) from a white perspective. Black queer voices remain largely absent in local fiction. We’ve just begun the work of situating gay people in the literary landscape, but this work can never be considered sufficient until all of our queer brothers and sisters are represented – especially those who have been erased from history.
Wisani adds: “It will take a long time for the South African cultural landscape to deconstruct the remnants of scientific racism responsible for how we’ve come to understand and misunderstand Black queer bodies and queerness at large. This ‘proliferation’ of queer literature in the South African literary landscape is significant as it interrupts colonial myths that haunt queer people and the nurturing of queer ways of being and that deter the making of queer kinship. Literature that centres queer ways of being makes visible that which has always been relegated to the margin and brings forth questions as to why, questions fundamental to the deconstruction of said myths.”
The point is this: literature is the ideal tool for confronting ideas of culture, race, and sexuality. When we see characters wrestle with their identities and with questions of belonging and visibility, they echo within us and reverberate across society. But we can’t leave anyone behind, lest we repeat the mistakes of those who fathered the censorship of Apartheid.
Through literature, we can rewrite history and foster community. The number one benefit of reading fiction is that, by forcing us to see from a new perspective, we learn empathy for those who are different to us, more importantly, we can come to understand that those we thought were different to us are just like us – and that everyone deserves to be a main character in their own story.
