On the Scene in Soweto: Navigating Queer Nightlife and Social Networks in Soweto, 1980 - 1999

Abstract

This dissertation represents the continuation of my academic project to chart the largely unwritten histories of queer nightlife practices in South Africa, this time with a focus on the practices of Queer Sowetans in the period following the 1976 Soweto Uprising. As a result, this dissertation begins with an exploration of the social and musical practices that went into crafting the scene in Soweto, before exploring the translocality of queer Sowetan nightlife practices, both through the construction of province-wide social networks, and the eventual migration of many queer Sowetan’s into Hillbrow, an area which has previously been written to have been a statically white queer nightlife district. This dissertation is primarily organised by the concept of queer nightlife scenes, and as such, also represents an intervention in ongoing debates about conceptualising queer practice through various concepts including subculture, scene and club culture. In doing so, this dissertation challenges a number of trends in the existing literature, and gestures towards new and evolving historical practices in the writing of South African nightlife practices. Through a number of original oral histories, the re-reading of a wide array of archival interview transcripts and extensive archival work, this dissertation seeks to establish new histories which, while existing in the archives, have yet to be written in any cogent, nightlife-focused study. The major findings of this dissertation show that not only did Soweto itself possess a distinct and vibrant queer nightlife scene, but that this scene was distinctly translocal, fluid and participatory in nature. It further shows that, in tandem with the development of a ‘new’ South African youth culture in the period following the Soweto Uprisings, queer black youths were developing new ‘modern’ cultures and practices within queer sexual politics. By bringing to light histories lost within the archive, this dissertation explores the nightlife scenes within which queer Sowetans lived out the identities which were being asserted for the first time.