Act of defiance: remembering those days of risk and resistance

It seems SA's queer history is being erased. As we commemorate Africa's first Pride March, does today's queer community care about that day, when it was still a criminal offence to be gay?

- By Herman Lategan

The first Gay and Lesbian Pride March in Africa was a joyous event held on a sweltering day in Johannesburg in 1990. Nelson Mandela had been released in February that year and there was a new sense of hope in South Africa.

(Gallo Images)

On Saturday, 13 October 1990, the first Gay and Lesbian Pride March in Africa was held in Johannesburg.

That was 35 years ago. I was there. The mood was rebellious; it was a sweltering day. We were loud, proud, defiant.

Nelson Mandela had been released on 11 February that same year. (I was there, too.) South Africa was like a restless teenager, filled with hope; a new dawn was winking.

Onlookers stared at us with disgust as we held hands, kissed and marched down the streets of Africa's economic capital. But does today's queer community even care about that day, when it was still a criminal offence to be gay?

It seems South Africa's queer history is being bulldozed into oblivion. New generations appear uninterested in past struggles, preferring Instagram moments, hollow chemsex and an indifference bordering on rudderless ennui.

Hardly any young queer people I encounter bother to ask about our struggles, the prejudice we endured, the activists who fought for the freedoms they enjoy today. Body dysmorphia masquerades as Muscle Marys; it's an abattoir of meat in the few gay clubs left in Cape Town. Gone are the little pubs, the numerous clubs, the gay ghetto in Green Point.

Once vibrant, now barely legible, its ghosts drift between the neon of nightclubs and the rubble of forgotten places. What began as a struggle for liberation has been flattened into a burlesque parade sponsored by Jägermeister. What was once radical has become decoration.