Aids Quilt

Today I saw a panel from the Aids Quilt. I have seen a few around the town - they are out for the first AIDS conference in the U.S. since 1987. Today I had an opportunity to really look at one. In the center, in bright block letters , "Papa". On one side 1952 - 1993. He would have been 3 years older than my mom.

I wondered about the love and the anguish in each stitch of that thing, and what it meant to today touch that thing woven from love, and woven from anguish. My mother keeps a set of about 6 ornamental teaspoons bound by 40-year-old masking tape. Her passed-on mother bound them, and she refuses to unbind them. Some of her mother's love, she says, is in that strange arrangement.

I wondered about the magic of things. Their power to transport us back to them, and to transport them forward to us.

I love
all
things,
not because they are
passionate
or sweet-smelling
but because,
I don't know,
because
this ocean is yours,
and mine;
these buttons
and wheels
and little
forgotten
treasures,
fans upon
whose feathers
love has scattered
its blossoms
glasses, knives and
scissors -
all bear
the trace
of someone's fingers
on their handle or surface,
the trace of a distant hand
lost
in the depths of forgetfulness.

--Neruda

Insomnia and stuff

Picture is from here

Its past midnight and I am devastatingly awake. I had planned to be good today; to go to bed at 10 (which became 11ish after facebook) and get up at 6 and write. I have a strange phantom burning smell going on. I hope its not a real burning smell. I don't think it is, it started over the Pride Weekend when, instead of making gay memories at one of the biggest Pride festivals I might ever experience, I was in bed self-medicating and making sure to cover all surfaces with a thin layer of aerosol-snot.  I also remember the phantom burning yesterday in the movie theatre. I have only just decided that the smell is burning (and not B.O., for instance) because I showered fairly recently and googled "phantom burning smell". It is a real thing. The internet says I should go and see a doctor, "preferably a neurologist" about it. I decided to stop asking the internet and to just go to bed and think about it tomorrow (after writing what I have to write).


This blog began as a travel journal-like thing. I came to the 'Murrica and felt compelled to share my experiences, etc. Then it occurred to me that a) probably few people care and b) writing about my time here in travelogue form might force me to be in tourist mode and not living-here-for-two-years-and-having-arguments-with-the-laundromat-guy-because-he-lost-my-bag-and-wouldn't-compensate-me-so-I-made-a-scene-and-stormed-the-fuck-out mode; you know, every day life mode. Anyways, I have experienced major changes recently and so I return to travel journal-like writing, at least for this post.


I just started a new job in Oakland, California. It is in the Bay Area, and it's close to its more famous cousin, San Francisco.  They say (or maybe I say) New York is to San Fran as Jo'burg is to Cape Town. One is a bit faster, one is a bit more beautiful. One is less frenetic, and one is less drug-induced. My job is to do research on gay men (and other "men who have sex with men") and HIV, and also to help improve access to services to gay men (and other "MSM") to health services amongst other things. A lot of my work will be focused on a few African countries, and it will pay attention to how human rights environments shape people's risk. It's all the stuff that I think about and blab about in my spare time, except now someone is paying me to do them, and I am in an organization of people who have amazing track-records at this kind of work. It's all very exciting. I am a fully-fledged professional gay now. I am gay all day.


 I have been working from New York until now. I am going to continue until the International Aids Conference in Washington DC (finally possible because travel-bans on HIV positive people have been lifted, but not travel bans on sex workers unfortunately) where I will learn a lot of stuff and meet a lot of people who do amazing things.


I think I have bored myself to sleep with all this writing by now (I hope it can be similarly useful to you). John, if you are reading this, sorry for being late, I am suffering extreme writers block for the things that matter, but not for the things that don't. I am waking up early to do that other thing. I cant even apostrophize.


Guys, it can get hot in New York. I even saw grown men wearing a nat waslap on their heads the other day. True story.


K




Oh, I graduated (yay!) so now I am an adult. And I don't know why I thought this post would be in travelogue form, or even what that means really. Such is life, etc.

Miss Colombia

"I am an artist because I design smiles on the faces of other human beings"

We saw Miss Colombia at the entrance to the gay beach last Saturday. She was standing in the narrow path between the beautiful but dilapidated coastal station, and the overgrown baseball diamond. In order to get there, you have to edge past one of those waist-height metal barriers the police put up when they want to control people on the street. The barrier has a no-entry sign on it. One gay, or maybe two, at the beginning of this summer, or maybe during the last, shifted the barrier just enough to let people through, but not enough to make the sign itself seem disused. It still seems to be there on purpose. Miss Colombia introduced herself and gave us a twirl and then introduced us to her bird, perched cheekily in her rainbow hair. She had many things with her, and seemed like she was going somewhere important.

Umtheto ka Sokisi: the original gaymarriage

Gold miners, Johannesburg, South Africa, photo by Margaret Bourke Smith
stolen from here.

Many people think that the idea of gay-marriage or gay relationships is new in my part of the world (Southern Africa). The truth is, though, that there is a long history of same-sex relationships that precedes today's 'modern' (sometimes heavily Western-inspired) gay identities. Not only does this history help to shake the idea that African sexuality is and has always been strictly heterosexual, it also "contribute[s] to our understanding of how cultural change around intimate personal life occurs in relation to the global political economy". In other words, we are reminded that our intimate and sexual lives are not fixed through time. As our economic and political circumstances change, so too does the way we organize our intimacy and sexuality. Mine marriages are a great example of just how quickly and dramatically our intimate lives can adapt to our circumstances.

In the late 1800s gold had just been discovered on the Witwatersrand and Diamonds had been discovered in Kimberley. Big players in diamond mining such as De Beers emerged and implemented the closed-compound system to control their labourers - effectively imprisoning miners for the duration of their contracts and consequently keeping them away from women. Though on the Witwatersrand, men were allowed to move freely in and out of gold mines, police and native administrators kept women and children away from the growing settlements around the mines. (In 1896, for instance, there were 90 known Tsonga women in the Johannesburg area, compared to about 30,000 Tsonga men.) Beyond that, migrant miners on the Witwatersrand were fearful of venereal disease (particularly syphilis) from town women, and violence from gangs of local men. So, having only limited access to women because of their circumstances (and also their fears), miners looked towards other men for intimacy and sex.

"The practice of taking boys or youth as temporary wives quickly became the norm, or at least unremarkable in this context. But people often like to put a name and a face to big changes to help understand them better. And so it is that oral history refers to one man in particular who popularised the practice - Sokisi or Ishe (Lord) Socks. Sokisi was a Tsonga migrant working at a Brakpan mine in the early 1890s. He so preferred izinkotshane [boy-wives] that a new exprssion entered the language in his honour. Umteto ka Sokisi, meaning 'Sokisi rules' or 'the rules of mine marriage', was a code of conduct that defined the precise kinds of behaviour that were allowed between males in a sexual relationship in the mine hostels. They prohibited anal penetration, for example, in favour of between-the-thighs sex. As in male-female hlobonga [thigh-sex], the rules stated that the inkotshane had to remain passive and could not reciprocate the sex act; in other words, only the husband could enjoy and orgasm. The wife, sometimes called nsati (which literally meant woman or wife) or umfaan (young boy), also performed other feminine duties such as cooking and fetching water and firewood. Over time, the males who filled this role even became feminised in appearance, for example, by adopting feminine dress, wearing false breasts made of coconut shells, putting on scent and keeping well shaven."

The mine marriages were similar to 'traditional' marriage in various ways besides the obviously gendered allocation of sexual and domestic roles. A lobola-like payment was often delivered to the wife's family before the marriage. Men would court potential wives and these potential wives would, for the most part, enter willingly into a mine-marriage. "Dances, feasts and wedding processions added to the sense of fun that was otherwise so lacking in the bleak environment of the industrial compounds."

So there it is - gaymarriage began not in Cape Town, but Brakpan, and not with some debonairly Dutch seamen, but our very own tantalizingly Tsonga Sokisi. Sokisi was so bitchin' that when his king, Gungunyana, ordered his return to Mozambique in order to punish him for his infamy, Sokisi decided instead to rename his principal inkotshane Sonile, after Gungunyana's principal wife.


Written from Epprecht, M. 2008. Unspoken Facts: a history of homosexualities in Africa. Gays and Lesbians of Zimbabwe (GALZ)

Happiness

Zinzi and Tozama II - Zanele Muholi 2010

This Valentines morning in Uganda, Fr Simon Lokodo, minister of Ethics and Integrity tried to bully a group of activists into silence. The activists were holding a capacity-building workshop at a hotel - likely speaking about kill-the-gays-bill. The Catholic priest accused the activists of "recruiting children into the gay life" (spot the irony). Some articles report that one of the participants was arrested and released, and others say that everyone managed to leave the hotel safely.

I have only deep respect for Kasha and Frank and all those who take great risks to work towards the happiness of people.

I return to my own work towards happiness: one power-point slide at a time, one email, one conversation, one citation... Now you get to yours.

A resolution adopted by the United Nations General Assembly - August 2011
65/309. Happiness: towards a holistic approach to development

The General Assembly,

Bearing in mind the purposes and principles of the United Nations, as set forth in the Charter of the United Nations, which include the promotion of the economic advancement and social progress of all peoples,

Conscious that the pursuit of happiness is a fundamental human goal,

Cognizant that happiness as a universal goal and aspiration embodies the spirit of the Millennium Development Goals,

Recognizing that the gross domestic product indicator by nature was not designed to and does not adequately reflect the happiness and well-being of people in a country,

Conscious that unsustainable patterns of production and consumption can impede sustainable development, and recognizing the need for a more inclusive, equitable and balanced approach to economic growth that promotes sustainable development, poverty eradication, happiness and well-being of all peoples,

Acknowledging the need to promote sustainable development and achieve the Millennium Development Goals,

1. Invites Member States to pursue the elaboration of additional measures that better capture the importance of the pursuit of happiness and well-being in development with a view to guiding their public policies.

2. Invites those Member States that have taken initiatives to develop new indicators, and other initiatives, t o share information thereon with the Secretary-General as a contribution to the United Nations development agenda, including the Millennium Development Goals;

3. Welcomes the offer of Bhutan to convene during the sixty-sixth session of the General Assembly a panel discussion on the theme of happiness and well-being;

4. Invites the Secretary-General to seek the views of Member States and relevant regional and international organizations on the pursuit of happiness and well-being and to communicate such views to the General Assembly at its sixty-seventh session for further consideration

'69

Boys getting down like its 1966 (pic stolen from here)

Immorality Amendment Act of 1969

3. The following section is hereby inserted in the principal Act after section 20:
“Acts committed between men at a party and which are calculated to stimulate sexual passion or to give sexual gratification, prohibited.  

20A. (1) A male person who commits with another male person at a party an act which is calculated to stimulate sexual passion or to give sexual gratification, shall be guilty of an offence.
(2) For the purposes of subsection (1) ‘a party’ means any occasion where more than two persons are present.(3) The provisions of subsection (1) do not derogate from the common law, any other provision of this Act or a provision of any other law.”.

In the same year as the Stonewall Riots in New York City, the South African Immorality Act of 1957 which infamously criminalized sex across colour lines, was amended to curtail gay people's freedom to assemble. This was the result of a moral panic that was sparked by a party in a suburb of  Johannesburg.

The Forest Town raid of January 1966

"Police had heard that a party for gay men was being planned in a quiet suburb of Johannesburg. Undercover agents posing as guests infiltrated the party where they were stunned to find more than 300 mostly white men dancing, kissing and cuddling each other. They called in a raid and made arrests. The scandal made headline news and sparked further undercover operations to find and round up suspected homosexual networks." 

"The Minister of Justice, P.C. Pelser, went so far as to warn parliament that the survival of the nation was at stake. Referring to the ghosts of ancient Rome and Sparta, he thundered: 'Formerly glorious civilizations are lying in the dust and South Africa should beware of a similar fate.  The canker of Sodom has to be sliced out before it ruins the moral fibre of the nation.'

"In 1967, Pelser submitted a proposal to parliament that would give policy sweeping new powers to crack down on homosexuals.  A Select Committee on the Immorality Amendment Bill was then formed to study the issue and make recommendations. For over four months, the Committee heard conflicting evidence from a range of experts about the nature and extent of the homosexual threat. On the basis of these, it finally concluded that the state did indeed need greater ability to repress what it called 'immoral, indecent or unnatural acts'."*

Such is the power of our dancing, kissing and cuddling. 

*Epprecht, M. 2008. Unspoken Facts: a history of homosexualities in Africa. Gays and Lesbians of Zimbabwe (GALZ)

(I didn't change Epprecht's wording, but cut some sentences out)