Who Own Black Lesbian Herstory?
Sekwanele: It's enough!
by Zanele Muholi

Can we take back what is our herstory, and have it published, after almost 18 years of queer pride in South Africa?

Black lesbians, I ask this question again and again.

Our lives are told by outsiders, by foreign people living at home and abroad. Yet we are so many of us, visible in this country, on this continent, precisely because of our hardships. It is our very experiences of social injustice and oppression that become the reason to be for international forums—those feminist, lesbian, queer— and yet most of us are still hungry for knowledge! Worse, we are still starving as we work to make ends meet, though our lives bring power to the academics who (re)search us, feed those who are sanctioned to lead us to liberation and to our ‘rights.’

I ask you Black lesbians of South Africa: Where is your Herstory?

Where are you?

How much do you know about your mothers, our great-great grandmothers who struggled against slavery, colonialism, apartheid?

How aware are you that your foremothers fought for, and were sometimes even successful, reclaiming the land exploited by the British, the Dutch, Americans?

Are we repeating the same mistake of the past by allowing our her/histories, our stories, our own queer selves and cultures to be taken abroad and sold?

How come you are researched?
And how come you refuse to come forward and reclaim your space, make demands at the Feminist table, at their forums that are supposed to be spaces for us all?
Are you scared for being lashed and sworn at, rejected for BEING who we ARE?

Didn't we say that confirming our IDENTITY is political?

How is it that we are so uneasy with the personal that we can’t politicize it? I'm not pointing fingers here, but I find few answers among the many of you I ask such questions to.

Living in 2007 with one of the best Constitutions in this world, we are politically allowed to express ourselves freely, yet we still do not have reading and visual materials or visual that young queer women can identify with. There are no resources that are commissioned/written/researched by us, something that speaks to us and in solidarity--material that service providers could understand and use to educate our children, our nation. Instead, our eyes are blinded by American Lesbian Eroticas and L Word, etc., but we can hardly understand those writers' culture as it is not our own.

Will international or our local donors fund us for our projects, or it will it always depend on who is who, on how many degrees one has, or on how well one speaks English?

We need to acknowledge that fact there is so much hypocrisy that is going within the queer and feminist and gender sectors. All we have to do is look at the current books that are published with mostly international funding—we do not feature there as anything more than “informants”, never as experts.
A good example is Tommy Boys, Lesbian Men and Ancestral Wives edited by Ruth Morgan & Saskia Wierenga (2006). Though the book is a good resource which looks at same sex practices in Africa, it is not owned by us. At the end of day, it is piece of disembodied text. Balancing Act (2005) and Invisible Ghetto (1995) are two other well known examples. We black gays seem to be invisible as knowledge producers, but are very present when it comes to being identified as who is in need to be researched, who needs to be mobilize for protests to fight for ongoing queer rights.

Do we perhaps lack knowledge to make ourselves heard, while we constantly feed our learned colleagues who take us when it suits them and rejects us when they do not need us? Maybe we should acknowledge that before anything else we need to teach ourselves basic political skills of identifying who we are, identifying our histories, and then look at what our community needs are. Then we can arm ourselves with other skills such as preparing proposals, public speaking, application writing, etc so that we can fend for ourselves and make sense of our lives. After that wee need to research and analyze our own.

As I'm writing this, I'm reminded of a question I was asked during one of many interviews I have given where one of our popular writers questioned if we had lesbian icons in South Africa. I answered that most are out without the ‘informed research’ that allows many others to obtain PhDs. I can name a few right off hand who have freed us and given us a space to express ourselves—warrior women and heroines who took risks in their own lives. Few that I think of:

The late Buhle Msibi, a gender rights activist, a poet, a writer, a lesbian mother (like many) who was vocal without fear.

Mary Louw who repeatedly told her story of poverty, motherhood, and survival, but still cannot secure a job in our sector.

Marco Patricia Ntuli, poet who survived severe bashing twice in August 2006, and lost the case against her perpetrators.

Nhlanhla Zwane, a comrade, a lesbian mother, a survivor.

Kebarileng Sebetoane, a young outspoken survivor of hate crime who refused to be silenced and spoke against the injustice of the system that failed her.

Joyce Malope, an HIV positive mother and gender activist who in 1998 climbed Kilimanjaro Mountain to prove that life goes on and one can still achieve a lot even when the doctors told her that she had only a few years to live.
Ms. Lesbian 2003 & 2004 respectively—Mammu Pooe & Matsheko Kekana—both lesbian mothers from Alexandra who refuse to be in the closet.

Funeka Soldaat, a survivor and activist and who still continues to push the struggle in Cape Town for black lesbians in the townships.

Mapaseka "Steve"Letsike, young lesbian mother and survivor of hate crimes.

Kekeletso Khena, young survivor who spoke out openly about how she survived multiple hate crime incidents during our Rose Has Thorns campaign launch in 2003.

Hlengiwe Buthelezi, a multiple Gay Games medalist for both the 2002 Sydney and the 2006 Chicago Gay Games.

The Chosen FEW soccer team who managed to represent the country at the 2006 Gay Games regardless of their prior difficulties with visa applications, lack of resources from home. They are confirmed to be the only out lesbian soccer team, even Banyana Banyana players cannot take that risk! The guys won bronze and made our country proud.

Rev. Nokuthula Dhladhla, a Hope Unity Metropolitan Community Church minister who is one the very few black female lesbians to be ordained in this country. She is also a survivor, a mother, and has tackled the issues of spirituality and sexuality regardless of how others use the Bible as a scapegoat for their own prejudice.

Jama who highlighted the existence of lesbian sangomas in Everything Must Come to Light, a Gay And Lesbian Archive (GALA) production.

We do exist, but perhaps it is because we are afraid to lead. Or because we are silenced indirectly by those who are on top of the hierarchy in academia, in the gender and LGBTI, sector, at the NGO level? Is it a class issue where working class and poor black women will never be allowed to speak for themselves and to themselves due to lack of basic resources in a capitalist society? Maybe we are scared to talk about the multiple layers of our oppression. Maybe we think that our cousins will hate us when we raise issue of race and representation? But I refuse to say that we are incapable! I will pinpoint, however, finger ‘resource politics’ that turn those potential candidates against us instead of helping, so that we can talk as a collective.

I'm reminded once again of how we cannot manage to have a magazine like WOMYN (which shut down in 2002), and yet we have many brilliant writers and critical thinkers within the black lesbian community, and many non-homophobic feminist friends who will write to support the ongoing struggles we identify and face
.
My head is full of the poverty stricken lesbians who will do anything to support campaigns like the 1 in 9 Campaign, and yet at the end of the day they have no jobs unlike me and many of our working sisters in the sector who have full-time employment, coated with good salaries.

I dream of a country--YES even dream about this country with the BEST CONSTITUTION—where Feminist, lesbian, cultural and visual activists, sport women, writers and poets and queer mothers of our nation will be out and speak and share their experiences and knowledges with each other. In that way, I will know that Yebo, Sekwanele. It will be at that time that I will be assured that WE ARE HERE, CAPABLE and can capture and preserve our own LIVES better than anyone else for our future generation of lesbians, women, South Africans.

But until then let us face this reality and think about it carefully:
We do not yet collectively own our Black Lesbian herstories.

_____________________________________________________________________

I am dedicating this article to my two dear friends who have passed on: Buhle Msibi (24) in April 2006 and Busi Sigasa (25) in March 2007. They are two poets who never lived to see their own works published because of the pandemic that stole their lives at an early age.

Mpho Setshedi (27), who in April 2006 was killed in a house she shared with her girlfriend and others.

Not wanting to forget the young Zoliswa Nkonyana (19) of Khayelitsha, Cape Town, who in 2006 was stoned to death for being a lesbian, I write also to honour you.

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