Rethinking the boundaries of blackness
South Africa’s visual culture reveals that its racial categories were never fixed, while the history of indenture complicates the terms of solidarity and exclusion.
LGBTQ
Helen Zille’s transphobia
In echoing the anti-trans panic sweeping the Global North, South African political heavyweight Helen Zille joins a reactionary tradition of racialized sex policing.
The verdict against womanhood
From trans bans to racial exclusion, the hard-won gains made in women’s football are being rolled back under the guise of protecting women.
The un-African mechanisms of queer repression
Anti-queer laws in Africa are often framed as cultural defense—but their roots lie in colonial legacies, religious nationalism, and global reactionary alliances.
Good revolutions talk back
As political discontent rises in Kenya, silencing women’s and queer rights in the pursuit of economic justice risks compromising the movement entirely.
Why I’m done talking to straight people about homophobia
Homophobia doesn’t start with violence—it begins with silence, erasure, and everyday destruction. But straight people only seem to notice when it’s too late.
Rolling with the punches
Removed from the facts, the firestorm around Algerian boxer Imane Khelif is the latest attempt by the right-wing in the West to find fodder for its culture war.
Socialismo pink
A solidariedade socialista na Angola e Moçambique pós-coloniais tornou as pessoas queer invisíveis. Revisitar esse apagamento nos ajuda a reinventar a libertação de forma legítima.
Pink socialism
Socialist solidarity in postcolonial Angola and Mozambique rendered queer people invisible. Revisiting this erasure helps us imagine liberation anew.
Le droit d’être différent
La Côte d’Ivoire peut-elle devenir un havre de paix pour les communautés LGBTQI+ en Afrique de l’Ouest?
The right to be different
Could Côte d’Ivoire one day become a safe haven for LGBTQI+ communities in West Africa?
What about queer joy?
Telling one's story as a black queer person isn't yet the luxury it is chalked out to be, especially when it remains dangerous to be queer in the world.
Against exceptionalism
Although visibility is important, contemporary queer African literature reveals how easily representation privileges narratives of the resourceful and upwardly mobile.
The specter of homophobia
How does it feel to be gay in an environment where homophobia is mundane and rampant, and where gays are silenced, ridiculed, and assaulted in everyday life?
The historical archive of HIV
Kayo Chingonyi's latest poetry collection is a powerful meditation on the cycle of infection, death, and mourning wrought by HIV.
Through the lens of queer Indian South Africans
Queer Indians are largely invisible in South Africa's LGBT discourse. But representation is not enough, we need political transformation and multi-racial class solidarity.
Afrobeat is bigger than Fela
In the second of five articles on Afrobeat music in South America, political scientist Simon Akindes writes about the all women and nonbinary Brazilian band, Funmilayo Afrobeat Orquestra.
We are all potential advocates
Director Shameela Seedat’s film about trainee lawyers provides a sort of celebration of youth on this continent and a vision of the next generation of Africans.
Navigating queer utopia
A new book presents an empirical challenge to the myth of South Africa as the “pink capital” of Africa and contributes to building an archive of queer, African, and religious narratives.
Imagining new stories, new freedoms, and new joys
Lindsey Green-Simms’ book "Queer African Cinemas" explores the intersections of postcolonial thought, queer theory, and screen media.