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queerlatest news & developments
Before Bobrisky, the anti-corruption watchdog successfully convicted actress Oluwadarasimi Omoseyin in February on the same charges. On conviction, she was given
the option to pay a fine instead of going to prison.
(Photo credit should read STEFAN HEUNIS/AFP via Getty Images)

Transgender celebrity Bobrisky jailed in Nigeria

She was convicted for ‘spraying’ bank notes into the air but even her detractors believe she is being punished for defying the country’s conservatism regarding gender and sexuality

The size of South Africa’s LGBTI market — comprising lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex people — contributes at least R250 billion to the economy every year. (RAJESH JANTILAL/AFP via Getty Images)

Ubuntu is for all people including the LGBTQ+ community

The rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex and asexual people are recognised by many nations including South Africa, but a rise in homophobia is…

The Tomorrows/Today exhibition brings together 10 artists who will be tomorrow’s leading names in art. An exhibition’s use of the title In and Out of Time is that of the poem of the same name by Maya Angelou, which speaks of everlasting love and suffering. Photo: Supplied

Cape Town Art Fair brings together 10 top artists of the future

The Tomorrows/Today exhibition includes tapestries by Talia Ramkilawan, sculptures by Githan Coopoo and Joanna Choumali’s embroidered images

Scenes from the Johannesburg Pride march last month (Delwyn Verasamy, M&G)

Women and LGBTQIA+ people amplified in new Voice of the Year awards

Four out of five expert opinions are given by men. A nonprofit wants to change this

(Tony Karumba/AFP/Getty Images)

The queer icons that paved the way for safer sexual expression

June is Pride Month and we’re looking beyond the rainbow-themed campaigns and logo changes, to turn our attention to the movement’s icons.

(RODGER BOSCH/AFP via Getty Images)

OPINION | Pride month: Social attitudes still have a way to go

Let us celebrate this event together and move towards a fully inclusive world.

(Tony Karumba/AFP/Getty Images)

OPINION | How film can shape our understanding of African queer realities

‘Inxeba/The Wound’ is but one of the films of the growing body of literary and visual texts which have focused on queer lived experiences in Africa.

Acceptance: A memorial service for Desmond Tutu. During his life the archbishop rejected homophobia. (Rajesh Jantilal/AFP)

Most churches in the LGBTQ+ Dark Ages

Homophobia persists in mainstream churches despite the acceptance of the queer community by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Archbishop Njongonkulu Ndungane and Bishop Paul Verryn

Statistics South Africa fieldworkers use their tablet computer devices as they prepare to conduct surveys on homeless people during the population and housing census at Marabastad in Pretoria on February 2, 2022. South Africans will be counted digitally for the first time from 3 February to March 2022 as part the fourth census since the of end of Apartheid. – South Africa will overnight Wednesday launch its once-in-a-decade population census to collect data that will help the government’s policy formulation and planning, the statistics agency has said. (Phill Magakoe /AFP via Getty Images)

Nonbinary? SA’s census excludes you

In legal history male terminology shifted after centuries to include females, but now we need to use nonbinary pronouns to include sexual identity

‘A fundamentally queer continent’: Pastor Jean de Dieu Uwiragiye’s God’s Church in Africa in Rwanda (above) is an inclusive church for the LGBTIQ+ community.(Photo by Simon WOHLFAHRT / AFP)

Queer Africa has always been an other

If to be ‘normal’ is to be Western European, North American, male, white, middle class, able bodied and heterosexual, then all our attempts at normativity fail

n this handout picture released by the John Templeton Foundation shows the 2013 Templeton Prize Laureate, Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu during the Templeton Prize ceremony at St. George’s Cathedral on April 11, 2013 in Cape Town. South Africa’s Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu has been awarded the 2013 Templeton Prize by the US-based Templeton Foundation for his work in advancing spiritual principles such as love and forgiveness. (AFP PHOTO /TEMPLETON PRIZE / Ilan Godfrey)

Tutu’s dream of a church where all belong made real

Exclusion remains real for many LGBTIQ+ Christians – but there are committed activists trying to change that

What’s your flavour? Whether your tastes run to virtual sex, sixty-nining, or bondage, you don’t have to be cishet or gender nonconforming to enjoy a touch of novelty. (Photos & illustrations: Siphumeze Khundayi and Katia Herrera)

‘Touch: Sex, Sexuality and Sensuality’ — the erotic in action

Full to the point of rupture, Touch still leaves the reader yearning for more

Abigail Phiri demonstrates sensory play with candle wax. (Photo: Siphumeze Khundayi for the Gerald Kraak Anthology, 2018)

We’re queer and we’re fucking here

Just in time for Pride Month, a mythbusting guide to queer sex for the straight guy (and gal)

A negotiation: Nakhane, pictured in their garden in London in October, 2021. (Photos: Nakhane)

Nakhane: ‘Why do they care so much?’

The artist Nakhane is fatigued by the idea that lifestyle choices are ‘other people’s business’

Three years ago the release of John Trengove’s Inxeba (The Wound) set tongues wagging in South Africa.

Art’s part in being African and queer

Cultural productions give voice to what’s hidden, marginalised and often illegal

Who do South Africans think does the raping in this country — the level of rape that one sees in active conflict zones? The scale of rape that it gets to be called by what it is — a femicide?

The threat of rape helps keep the vulnerable in line

Using an ever-present danger works to benefit men — no matter their education, profession, class or outward social behaviour

Snapchat celebrity and Nigerian Barbie, Bobrisky, poses on November 7, 2016 in Lagos. (Stefan Heunis / AFP)

Nollywood demonises queer people

Nigeria’s legislation prohibits same-sex marriages and the film industry helps to fuel sometimes violent homophobic attacks

Laverne Cox as seen in the new Netflix documentary, ‘Disclosure’. (Ava Benjamin Shorr/Netflix.)
Video

The things Hollywood taught us to think about trans existences

Disclosure, a Netflix documentary examines the world’s transphobic legacy as portrayed in film and television from as early as 1901

(John McCann/M&G)

What it means to be kitoed

Homophobia in the digital space has violent real-world consequences for Nigeria’s queer community

(John McCann/M&G)

The covert social effects of Covid-19

The manner in which some Senegalese people talk about homosexuality and how they discuss Covid-19 bears a disconcerting resemblance