“The Devil Slapped on the Genitals”: Religion and Spirituality in Queer South Africans’ Lives

African Studies Keywords: Queer

“…Yet another case in point, in the context of African indigenous religions, is the self-described "lesbian sangoma" Nkunzi Zandile Nkabinde who in their autobiography Black Bull, Ancestors and Me invokes the motif of ancestral spirit possession to legitimize and perform gender-transient Zulu indigenous healing (Nkabinde 2008; also see Stobie 2011;van Klinken & Otu 2017). A similar indigenization of queerness through the category of spirits can be found in Akwaeke Emezi's acclaimed novel Freshwater (2018), which adopts the Igbo concept of ogbanje (spirit-child) as a narrative framework to explore the transient and fluid gendered and sexual modes of being embodied by the main protagonist (Magaqa & Makombe 2021).…”

“…Although this field has been characterized by a strong focus on South Africa as an apparent key site of “the dream of love to come” (Munro 2012; see also Spurlin 2006; Tucker 2009; Livermon 2012; Morison, Lynch & Reddy 2019; Sizemore-Barber 2020; Riley 2021), recent years have witnessed an increasing body of scholarship on queer subjectivities and politics in other parts of the continent, such as Democratic Republic of Congo (Hendriks 2018, 2022), Ghana (Dankwa 2021; Otu 2022), Kenya (Ombagi 2019a; van Klinken 2019), Nigeria (Gaudio 2009; Munro 2016; Onanuga 2021), Mozambique (De Araújo 2021a, 2021b), and Uganda (Rodriguez 2019; Rao 2020). Methodologically and thematically, the focus is wide-ranging, from social movements and community organizing (Broqua 2012; Guéboguo 2008; Mbaye 2018; Nyeck & Epprecht 2013; Lorway 2015; Vrede 2020) to creative forms of visibility and activism, such as through arts (Meiu 2022), literature (Adenekan 2021; Azuah 2009, 2019; Mwangi 2017; Ofei & Oppong-Adjei 2021; Zabus 2013), film (Johnstone 2021; Ncube 2020, 2021; Ndjio 2021; Otu 2021; Scott 2021; Green-Simms 2022), social media (Gunkel 2013; Mwangi 2014; Onanuga 2021), sports (Ndjio 2022), autobiographical storytelling (Baderoon 2015; Oloruntoba-Oju 2021; Ombagi 2019b; Stobie 2014; van Klinken & Stiebert 2021), and material objects (Meiu 2020). Other studies foreground how, in fact, invisibility, silence, and secrecy can afford strategic possibilities of negotiating queer expressions in ways that counter expectations of queerness as defined by overt resistance and protest (Nyanzi 2015; Oudenhuijsen 2021).…”

Queer studies and religion in Southern Africa: The production of queer Christian subjects

“…While some studies show that queer people in Southern Africa sometimes reject Christianity or, more commonly, a particular church (Chamane, 2017; Hodgeson, 2020; Muparamoto, 2016; Phiri & Nadar, 2018, p. 78; Sipungu, 2019; Stobie, 2014, p. 11), the majority of studies are concerned with what queer Christians do when they remain in their Church.…”

“…Queer Christians can also be found to be engaging in religious rites or ritual such as funerals and weddings. In some instances queering these religious rites, for example, through the way in which Zanele Muholi dressed in masculine attire at her mother's Catholic funeral and attributing the Church's lack of protest as acceptance of her queerness (Stobie, 2014, p. 9). Or in other cases producing their own queer religious rites and rituals such as coming out (Chamane, 2017; Homewood, 2016, p. 252) and experiencing their call to the ministry (Dlamini, 2019).…”

“…Particularly interesting is the more embodied and often transgressive nature of the acts attributed to trans subjectivities and/or those who cross and dwell (Tweed, 2006) between Christianity and ATRs. For example, healing is an activity that is more common amongst those who occupy this queer religious space (Hodgeson, 2020; Stobie, 2014). Hodgeson (2020), also offers us a look at the embodied nature of queer dreaming.…”