Queer in Africa

Zethu Matebeni is a Senior Researcher at the Institute for Humanities at the University of Cape Town, South AfricaSurya Monro is a Professor of Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Huddersfield, UKVasu Reddy is Professor of Sociology and Dean, Faculty of Humanities at the University of Pretoria, South Africa

This is a very welcome and wide-ranging set of original essays that will add to our rapidly expanding awareness of African sexualities. Both academic and activist, the essays help both clarify and move beyond traditional Western theories and categories.Ken Plummer, Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the University of Essex, UKQueer in Africa is a powerful intervention in the roiling debates around sexuality in the region. I hope it gets widely read on the continent and beyond, not only because it gives a platform to a diverse range of fascinating scholars and activists from countries outside of southern Africa - toward which the literature on queer themes has historically been skewed. But also because the evidence and arguments it presents so forcefully challenge the heterosexism or passive acceptance of gender and sexual binaries that still prevail in so much scholarship (and art) from and about the continent. It is a disturbing fact that "Africa" is often treated as a footnote in queer theory in the Global North, or its supposedly monolithic homophobia as a rhetorical football in homonationalist self-congratulations. Yet even scholars of gender in Africa commonly continue to ignore contests around non-normative sexuality and identity in their research, and to justify their disinterest by the somewhat misleading claim that sexual minorities are a hard-to-reach population. Yes they are, except when one knows or intuits where to look and how to ask questions respectfully. I congratulate the editors of Queer Africa for assembling such a rich tapestry of respectfully asked questions. Marc Epprecht, Professor and Head of the Department of Global Development Studies, Queen's University, Kingston, Canada

• Introduction by Vasu Reddy, Surya Monro, and Zethu Matebeni The human and the non-human: African sexuality debates and symbolisms of transgression by Senayon Olaoluwa Creaturely lives and sexual exposure in African prison writing by Taiwo Adetunji Osinubi ‘She who creates havoc is here’: a queer bisexual reading of sexuality, dance and social critique in karmen geï by Cheryl Stobie Beyond identity: Queer affiliation and the politics of solidarity in Gordimer’s None to Accompany Me and Duiker’s The Quiet Violence of Dreams by Derrick Higginbotham ‘Queer/white’ in South Africa: A troubling oxymoron? By Jane Bennett Practices of non-heterosexual masculinities among MSM in Nigeria by Abisola Balogun and Paul Bissell Lesbian students in the academy: Invisible, assimilated or ignored? by Mary Hames Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer (LGBTQ) forced migrants and asylum seekers: multiple discriminations by Guillain Koko, Surya Monro and Kate Smith Experiences of transgender people in Swaziland by Velile Vilane