(Re)considering the Rainbow

McLean, Nyx

doi:10.13169/intecritdivestud.2.1.0024

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International Journal of Critical Diversity Studies

Volume 2, Issue 1

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(Re)considering the Rainbow

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Author(s): Nyx McLean

Publication date (Print): 1 June 2019

Journal: International Journal of Critical Diversity Studies

Publisher: Pluto Journals

Keywords: LGBTIAQ, Rainbow Nation, nation building, Joburg Pride

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Abstract

This article seeks to interrogate the Rainbow Nation Project and its ties to the LGBTIAQ movement in post-1994 South Africa. In particular, the paper looks at Joburg Pride between 1990 and 2013, and explores the fragmentation of Pride, and how this was tied up with the Rainbow Nation project. Joburg Pride is South Africa's longest running Pride event, and is unique in that it was the first LGBTIAQ Pride march in South Africa at a time when there were no legal protections for lesbian and gay South Africans The paper proposes that the LGBTIAQ community in South Africa were strategically granted rights in order to further the Rainbow Nation project, and through this came to participate in the erasure of the pain and violence experienced by South Africans under apartheid rule. This research was conducted through a critical discourse analysis of Exit articles, Exit is South Africa's longest running gay newspaper. In addition, interviews were conducted with people involved in the organizing of Joburg Pride and Johannesburg People's Pride.

Content

Author and article information

Contributors

Nyx McLean

Journal

Journal ID (doi): 10.2307/j50020082

Journal ID (jcode): intecritdivestud

Title: International Journal of Critical Diversity Studies

Publisher: Pluto Journals

ISSN: 2516-550X

ISSN: 2516-5518

Publication date (Print): 1 June 2019

Volume: 2

Issue: 1 ( doiID: 10.13169/intecritdivestud.2.issue-1 )

Pages: 24-40

Affiliations

Information Technology, Cape Peninsula University of Technology, Cape Town, South Africa

Article

Publisher ID: intecritdivestud.2.1.0024

DOI: 10.13169/intecritdivestud.2.1.0024

SO-VID: f8086195-6566-4d4e-a242-89d8943f06bd

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All content is freely available without charge to users or their institutions. Users are allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles in this journal without asking prior permission of the publisher or the author. Articles published in the journal are distributed under a http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

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lang eng

ScienceOpen disciplines: Social & Behavioral Sciences

Keywords: nation building,Joburg Pride,LGBTIAQ,Rainbow Nation

References

Aganthangelou, A. M., Bassichis, M. D., & Spira, T. L. (2008). Intimate investments: Homonormativity, global lockdown, and the seductions of empire. Radical History Review, 100, 120–143.
Anzaldúa, G. (1987). Borderlands: the new mestiza = La frontera, San Francisco, CA: Spinsters/Aunt Lute.
Bornman, E. (2014). The Rainbow Nation versus the colours of the rainbow: Nation-building versus diversity in post-apartheid South Africa with some notes on the role of the media. Inaugural lecture, University of South Africa, Pretoria.
Burns, K. (2012). Cosmopolitan sexual citizenship and the project of queer world-making at the Sydney 2002 Gay Games. Sexualities, 15(3/4), 314–335.
Cameron, E. (2006). Foreword. In S. De Waal & A. Manion (Eds.), Pride: Protest and celebration (pp. 4–6). Johannesburg: Fanele.
Collins, D. (2009). “We're there and queer”: Homonormative mobility and lived experience among gay expatriates in Manila. Gender & Society, 23(4), 465–493.
Craven, E. (2011). Racial identity and racism in the gay and lesbian “community” in post-apartheid South Africa. Master's thesis, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg.
Crenshaw, K. (1989). Demarginalizing the intersection of race and sex: A black feminist critique of antidiscrimination doctrine, feminist theory and antiracist politics. University of Chicago Legal Forum, 140, 139–167.
Dhamoon, R.K. (2011). Considerations on mainstreaming intersectionality. Political Research Quarterly, 64(1), 595–607.
Duggan, L. (2002). The new homonormativity: The sexual politics of neoliberalism. In R. Castronovo & D. Nelson (Eds.), Materializing democracy: Toward a revitalized cultural politics (pp. 175–194). Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Exit. (1990). GLOW turns 2. Exit, May/June, p. 7.
Exit. (1996). Pride '96: be there. Exit, September, p. 1.
Exit. (2001). Pride: out there, everywhere. Exit, October, p. 9.
Exit. (2013). Whither Joburg pride? Exit, May, p. 1.
Foucault, M. (1977). Discipline and punish: The birth of the prison (A. Sheridan, Trans.). New York: Vintage Books.
Foucault, M. (2002). Archaeology of knowledge, Abingdon: Routledge.
Gevisser, M. (1994). A different fight for freedom: A history of South African lesbian and gay organisation—the 1950s to the 1990s. In M. Gevisser & E. Cameron (Eds.), Defiant Desire: gay and lesbian lives in South Africa (pp. 14–86). Braamfontein: Ravan Press.
Gevisser, M., & Cameron, E. (1994). Defiant desire: Gay and lesbian lives in South Africa. Braamfontein: Ravan Press.
Gevisser, M., & Reid, G. (1994). Pride or protest?: Drag queens, comrades, and the Lesbian and Gay Pride March. In M. Gevisser & E. Cameron (Eds.), Defiant Desire: gay and lesbian lives in South Africa (pp. 278–283). Braamfontein: Ravan Press.
Ghaziani, A. (2011). Post-gay collective identity construction. Social Problems, 58(1), 99-125.
Gibson, A., & Macleod, C. (2012). '(Dis) allowances of lesbians’ sexual identities: Lesbian identity construction in racialised, classed, familial, and institutional space. Feminism & Psychology, 22(4), 462–481.
Gqola, P. (2001). Defining people: Analysing power, language and representation in metaphors of the New South Africa. Transformation, 47, 94–106.
Groenmeyer, S. (2011). Intersectionality in Apartheid and Post-apartheid South Africa: Unpacking the narratives of two working women. Gender, Technology and Development, 15(2), 249–274.
Habib, A. (1997). South Africa—The Rainbow Nation and prospects for consolidating democracy. African Journal of Political Science, 2(2), 15–37.
Hengeveld, M., & Tallie, T. J. (2012). “This is my route!” Race, entitlement and gay pride in South Africa. Retrieved from http://africasacountry.com/2012/10/this-is-my-route-race-entitlement-and-gay-pride-in-south-africa.
Jakobsen, J. R. (2002). Can homosexuals end western civilisation as we know it? Family values in a global economy. In A. Cruz-Malave & M. F. Manalansan (Eds.), Queer globalisations: Citizenship and the afterlife of colonialism (pp. 49–70). New York: New York University Press.
Johal, G. S. (2005). Order in K.O.S. on race, rage and method. In G. S. Dei & G. S Johal (Eds.), Critical issues in anti-racist research methodologies (pp. 269–290). New York: Peter Lang.
Johnson, C. (2002). Heteronormative citizenship and the politics of passing. Sexualities, 5(3), 317–336.
Judge, M. (2015). Violence against lesbians and (IM) possibilities for identity and politics. Doctoral thesis, University of the Western Cape, Cape Town.
Kates, S. M., & Belk, R. W. (2001). The meanings of Lesbian and Gay Pride Day: Resistance through consumption and resistance to consumption. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 30(4), 392–429.
Knight Abowitz, K., & Harnish, J. (2006). Contemporary discourses in citizenship. Review of Educational Research, 76(4), 653–690.
Lakhani, I. (2016). Interview with the researcher, Cape Town, February 9.
Lynch, I. and Maree, D. J. F. (2013). Negotiating heteronormativity: Exploring South African bisexual women's constructions of marriage and family. Feminism & Psychology, 23(4), 459–477.
McLean, N. (2015). Zwischen Party und Protest. Sudlink, 174, 17.
Myambo, M. T. (2010). The limits of rainbow nation multiculturalism in the new South Africa: Spatial configuration in Zakes Mda's Ways of Dying and Jonathan Morgan's Finding Mr. Madini. Research in African Literatures, 41(2), 93–120.
Narrain, A. (2007). Rethinking citizenship: A queer journey. Indian Journal of Gender Studies, 16(41), 61–71.
Oswin, N. (2008). Critical geographies and the uses of sexuality: deconstructing queer space. Progress in Human Geography, 32(1), 89–103.
Payne, R., & Davies, C. (2012). Introduction to the special section: Citizenship and queer critique. Sexualities, 15(3/4), 251–256.
Phamodi, S. (2016). Interview with the researcher, Johannesburg, March 21.
Phamodi, S. (2017). Movement building is the technology for feminist resistance. Retrieved from https://www.takebackthetech.net/blog/movement-building-technology-feminist-resistance.
Puar, J. (2013). Rethinking homonationalism. International Journal of Middle East Studies, 45(2), 336–339.
Rape Crisis Cape Town. (2016). Annual report 2015/2016. Retrieved from http://rapecrisis.org.za/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/AnnualReport2016.pdf.
Reygan, F., & Lynette, A. (2014). Heteronormativity, homophobia and “culture” arguments in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. Sexualities, 17(5/6), 707–723.
Ritchie, J. (2015). Pinkwashing, homonationalism, and Israel–Palestine: The conceits of queer theory and the politics of the ordinary. Antipode, 47(3), 616–634.
Smit, S. (2014). Challenging desire: performing whiteness in post-apartheid South Africa. Doctoral thesis, Rhodes University, Grahamstown.
Stella, F. (2013). Queer space, pride, and shame in Moscow. Slavic Review, 72(3), 458–480.
Steyn, M. (2005). White talk. In A. J. Lopez (Ed), Postcolonial whiteness: A critical reader on race and empire (pp. 119–135). Albany NY: State University of New York Press.
Steyn, M. (2003). White talk: White South Africans and the strategic management of diasporic whiteness. Doctoral thesis, University of Cape Town, Cape Town.
Stratton, J., & Ang, I. (1998). Multicultural imagined communities: Cultural difference and national identity in the USA and Australia. In D. Bennett (Ed.), Multicultural states: Rethinking difference and identity (pp. 135–162). New York: Routledge.
Teal, J., & Conover-Williams, M. (2016). Homophobia without homophobes: Deconstructing the public discourses of 21st century queer sexualities in the United States. Humboldt Journal of Social Relations, 38, 12–27.
The Civil Union Act, Act 17 of 2006.
The Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, Act 108 of 1996.
The Gay and Lesbian Archives. Retrieved from http://www.gala.co.za.
The Immorality Act. Act 5 of 1927; Act 21 of 1950.
Thoreson, R. (2008). Somewhere over the Rainbow Nation: Gay, lesbian and bisexual activism in South Africa. Journal of Southern African Studies, 34(3), 679–697.
Trengove-Jones, T. (2001). Is Joburg's Pride mainly in vain? Exit, October, p. 10.
Trengove-Jones, T. (2007). Dreams, denial and pride. Exit, November, p. 12.
Trengove-Jones, T. (2008). Pride: the politics of the party. Exit, November, p. 12.
Trengove-Jones, T. (2009). Who needs what Pride?” Exit, October, p. 14.
Trengove-Jones, T. (2010). Make a point of pride. Exit, October, p. 13.
Trengove-Jones, T. (2012). Who are we now?” Exit, September, p. 4.
Vaid-Menon, A. (2013). Rainbows are just refracted white light: Settler homonationalism in neo-apartheid South Africa. Honors thesis, Stanford University, Stanford, CA.
Van Vuuren, D., & Khan, G. H. (2014). Grappling with Gauteng's pride problem. Retrieved from http://www.mambaonline.com/2014/10/16/grappling-gautengs-pride-problems/.
Van Zyl, M. (2015). A sexual politics of belonging: Same-sex marriage in post-Apartheid South Africa. Doctoral thesis, Stellenbosch University, Stellenbosch.
Wells, H., & Polders, L. (2006). Anti-Gay Hate Crimes in South Africa: Prevalence, Reporting Practices, and Experiences of the Police. African Feminisms, 2(3), 20–28.
Wong, C. M. (2019). The history and meaning of the Rainbow Pride flag. Retrieved from https://www.huffpost.com/entry/rainbow-pride-flag-history_n_5b193aafe4b0599bc6e124a0
Yue, A. (2012). Queer Asian mobility and homonational modernity: marriage equality, Indian students in Australia and Malaysian transgender refugees in the media. Global Media and Communication, 8(30), 269–287.

Comments

Comment on this article

[1] Aganthangelou, A. M., Bassichis, M. D., & Spira, T. L. (2008). Intimate investments: Homonormativity, global lockdown, and the seductions of empire. Radical History Review, 100, 120–143.

[2] Anzaldúa, G. (1987). Borderlands: the new mestiza = La frontera, San Francisco, CA: Spinsters/Aunt Lute.

[3] Bornman, E. (2014). The Rainbow Nation versus the colours of the rainbow: Nation-building versus diversity in post-apartheid South Africa with some notes on the role of the media. Inaugural lecture, University of South Africa, Pretoria.

[4] Burns, K. (2012). Cosmopolitan sexual citizenship and the project of queer world-making at the Sydney 2002 Gay Games. Sexualities, 15(3/4), 314–335.

[5] Cameron, E. (2006). Foreword. In S. De Waal & A. Manion (Eds.), Pride: Protest and celebration (pp. 4–6). Johannesburg: Fanele.

[6] Collins, D. (2009). “We're there and queer”: Homonormative mobility and lived experience among gay expatriates in Manila. Gender & Society, 23(4), 465–493.

[7] Craven, E. (2011). Racial identity and racism in the gay and lesbian “community” in post-apartheid South Africa. Master's thesis, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg.

[8] Crenshaw, K. (1989). Demarginalizing the intersection of race and sex: A black feminist critique of antidiscrimination doctrine, feminist theory and antiracist politics. University of Chicago Legal Forum, 140, 139–167.

[9] Dhamoon, R.K. (2011). Considerations on mainstreaming intersectionality. Political Research Quarterly, 64(1), 595–607.

[10] Duggan, L. (2002). The new homonormativity: The sexual politics of neoliberalism. In R. Castronovo & D. Nelson (Eds.), Materializing democracy: Toward a revitalized cultural politics (pp. 175–194). Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

[11] Exit. (1990). GLOW turns 2. Exit, May/June, p. 7.

[12] Exit. (1996). Pride '96: be there. Exit, September, p. 1.

[13] Exit. (2001). Pride: out there, everywhere. Exit, October, p. 9.

[14] Exit. (2013). Whither Joburg pride? Exit, May, p. 1.

[15] Foucault, M. (1977). Discipline and punish: The birth of the prison (A. Sheridan, Trans.). New York: Vintage Books.

[16] Foucault, M. (2002). Archaeology of knowledge, Abingdon: Routledge.

[17] Gevisser, M. (1994). A different fight for freedom: A history of South African lesbian and gay organisation—the 1950s to the 1990s. In M. Gevisser & E. Cameron (Eds.), Defiant Desire: gay and lesbian lives in South Africa (pp. 14–86). Braamfontein: Ravan Press.

[18] Gevisser, M., & Cameron, E. (1994). Defiant desire: Gay and lesbian lives in South Africa. Braamfontein: Ravan Press.

[19] Gevisser, M., & Reid, G. (1994). Pride or protest?: Drag queens, comrades, and the Lesbian and Gay Pride March. In M. Gevisser & E. Cameron (Eds.), Defiant Desire: gay and lesbian lives in South Africa (pp. 278–283). Braamfontein: Ravan Press.

[20] Ghaziani, A. (2011). Post-gay collective identity construction. Social Problems, 58(1), 99-125.

[21] Gibson, A., & Macleod, C. (2012). '(Dis) allowances of lesbians’ sexual identities: Lesbian identity construction in racialised, classed, familial, and institutional space. Feminism & Psychology, 22(4), 462–481.

[22] Gqola, P. (2001). Defining people: Analysing power, language and representation in metaphors of the New South Africa. Transformation, 47, 94–106.

[23] Groenmeyer, S. (2011). Intersectionality in Apartheid and Post-apartheid South Africa: Unpacking the narratives of two working women. Gender, Technology and Development, 15(2), 249–274.

[24] Habib, A. (1997). South Africa—The Rainbow Nation and prospects for consolidating democracy. African Journal of Political Science, 2(2), 15–37.

[25] Hengeveld, M., & Tallie, T. J. (2012). “This is my route!” Race, entitlement and gay pride in South Africa. Retrieved from http://africasacountry.com/2012/10/this-is-my-route-race-entitlement-and-gay-pride-in-south-africa.

[26] Jakobsen, J. R. (2002). Can homosexuals end western civilisation as we know it? Family values in a global economy. In A. Cruz-Malave & M. F. Manalansan (Eds.), Queer globalisations: Citizenship and the afterlife of colonialism (pp. 49–70). New York: New York University Press.

[27] Johal, G. S. (2005). Order in K.O.S. on race, rage and method. In G. S. Dei & G. S Johal (Eds.), Critical issues in anti-racist research methodologies (pp. 269–290). New York: Peter Lang.

[28] Johnson, C. (2002). Heteronormative citizenship and the politics of passing. Sexualities, 5(3), 317–336.

[29] Judge, M. (2015). Violence against lesbians and (IM) possibilities for identity and politics. Doctoral thesis, University of the Western Cape, Cape Town.

[30] Kates, S. M., & Belk, R. W. (2001). The meanings of Lesbian and Gay Pride Day: Resistance through consumption and resistance to consumption. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 30(4), 392–429.

[31] Knight Abowitz, K., & Harnish, J. (2006). Contemporary discourses in citizenship. Review of Educational Research, 76(4), 653–690.

[32] Lakhani, I. (2016). Interview with the researcher, Cape Town, February 9.

[33] Lynch, I. and Maree, D. J. F. (2013). Negotiating heteronormativity: Exploring South African bisexual women's constructions of marriage and family. Feminism & Psychology, 23(4), 459–477.

[34] McLean, N. (2015). Zwischen Party und Protest. Sudlink, 174, 17.

[35] Myambo, M. T. (2010). The limits of rainbow nation multiculturalism in the new South Africa: Spatial configuration in Zakes Mda's Ways of Dying and Jonathan Morgan's Finding Mr. Madini. Research in African Literatures, 41(2), 93–120.

[36] Narrain, A. (2007). Rethinking citizenship: A queer journey. Indian Journal of Gender Studies, 16(41), 61–71.

[37] Oswin, N. (2008). Critical geographies and the uses of sexuality: deconstructing queer space. Progress in Human Geography, 32(1), 89–103.

[38] Payne, R., & Davies, C. (2012). Introduction to the special section: Citizenship and queer critique. Sexualities, 15(3/4), 251–256.

[39] Phamodi, S. (2016). Interview with the researcher, Johannesburg, March 21.

[40] Phamodi, S. (2017). Movement building is the technology for feminist resistance. Retrieved from https://www.takebackthetech.net/blog/movement-building-technology-feminist-resistance.

[41] Puar, J. (2013). Rethinking homonationalism. International Journal of Middle East Studies, 45(2), 336–339.

[42] Rape Crisis Cape Town. (2016). Annual report 2015/2016. Retrieved from http://rapecrisis.org.za/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/AnnualReport2016.pdf.

[43] Reygan, F., & Lynette, A. (2014). Heteronormativity, homophobia and “culture” arguments in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. Sexualities, 17(5/6), 707–723.

[44] Ritchie, J. (2015). Pinkwashing, homonationalism, and Israel–Palestine: The conceits of queer theory and the politics of the ordinary. Antipode, 47(3), 616–634.

[45] Smit, S. (2014). Challenging desire: performing whiteness in post-apartheid South Africa. Doctoral thesis, Rhodes University, Grahamstown.

[46] Stella, F. (2013). Queer space, pride, and shame in Moscow. Slavic Review, 72(3), 458–480.

[47] Steyn, M. (2005). White talk. In A. J. Lopez (Ed), Postcolonial whiteness: A critical reader on race and empire (pp. 119–135). Albany NY: State University of New York Press.

[48] Steyn, M. (2003). White talk: White South Africans and the strategic management of diasporic whiteness. Doctoral thesis, University of Cape Town, Cape Town.

[49] Stratton, J., & Ang, I. (1998). Multicultural imagined communities: Cultural difference and national identity in the USA and Australia. In D. Bennett (Ed.), Multicultural states: Rethinking difference and identity (pp. 135–162). New York: Routledge.

[50] Teal, J., & Conover-Williams, M. (2016). Homophobia without homophobes: Deconstructing the public discourses of 21st century queer sexualities in the United States. Humboldt Journal of Social Relations, 38, 12–27.

[51] The Civil Union Act, Act 17 of 2006.

[52] The Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, Act 108 of 1996.

[53] The Gay and Lesbian Archives. Retrieved from http://www.gala.co.za.

[54] The Immorality Act. Act 5 of 1927; Act 21 of 1950.

[55] Thoreson, R. (2008). Somewhere over the Rainbow Nation: Gay, lesbian and bisexual activism in South Africa. Journal of Southern African Studies, 34(3), 679–697.

[56] Trengove-Jones, T. (2001). Is Joburg's Pride mainly in vain? Exit, October, p. 10.

[57] Trengove-Jones, T. (2007). Dreams, denial and pride. Exit, November, p. 12.

[58] Trengove-Jones, T. (2008). Pride: the politics of the party. Exit, November, p. 12.

[59] Trengove-Jones, T. (2009). Who needs what Pride?” Exit, October, p. 14.

[60] Trengove-Jones, T. (2010). Make a point of pride. Exit, October, p. 13.

[61] Trengove-Jones, T. (2012). Who are we now?” Exit, September, p. 4.

[62] Vaid-Menon, A. (2013). Rainbows are just refracted white light: Settler homonationalism in neo-apartheid South Africa. Honors thesis, Stanford University, Stanford, CA.

[63] Van Vuuren, D., & Khan, G. H. (2014). Grappling with Gauteng's pride problem. Retrieved from http://www.mambaonline.com/2014/10/16/grappling-gautengs-pride-problems/.

[64] Van Zyl, M. (2015). A sexual politics of belonging: Same-sex marriage in post-Apartheid South Africa. Doctoral thesis, Stellenbosch University, Stellenbosch.

[65] Wells, H., & Polders, L. (2006). Anti-Gay Hate Crimes in South Africa: Prevalence, Reporting Practices, and Experiences of the Police. African Feminisms, 2(3), 20–28.

[66] Wong, C. M. (2019). The history and meaning of the Rainbow Pride flag. Retrieved from https://www.huffpost.com/entry/rainbow-pride-flag-history_n_5b193aafe4b0599bc6e124a0

[67] Yue, A. (2012). Queer Asian mobility and homonational modernity: marriage equality, Indian students in Australia and Malaysian transgender refugees in the media. Global Media and Communication, 8(30), 269–287.