Usable Traditions: Creating Sexual Autonomy in Postapartheid South Africa

Abstract

This article examines the relationship between African customary practices and queerness in post-apartheid South Africa. I argue that black South African queers reconstitute African “tradition” and customary practices through various forms of cultural and discursive labor that function to contest the un-Africanness of same-sex sexuality and insist on visibility and communal belonging. Examining customary practices ranging from circumcision to lobola and traditional African religions, I argue for African “tradition” as a set of living practices constantly in formation. The contestation between queerness and African custom reveals a set of practices that are reconstituted. These set of reconstituted practices form “usable traditions” for black South African queers and their allies. Usable traditions forge an important space for understanding how black sexual autonomy is formed within communal understandings of self.