ABSTRACT
In January 1966 the gay community was raided during a large party in one of Johannesburg’s affl uent suburbs, a party that was attended by approximately 350 white gay men. Until that point the gay subculture had been subject to constant, but not severe surveillance. The Forest Town raid was one of the biggest raids in South African gay history and certainly the most well known. Gay private parties were not unusual at the time. These parties were a crucial element of the subculture at a time in which there were not many public spaces available and it was not possible to be openly ‘gay’ or ‘lesbian;’ disclosure of such an identity was likely to bring social and economic, but also legal hardship. As such, parties like the one in Forest Town-in this case a ‘bring your own bottle party’—generally took place in the white suburbs, in private, and thus beyond the scope of the law, since the Immorality Act of 1956 covered only public offences of the ‘antisodomy law.’ As this was a private venue, in which few men were actually caught in a sex act, the raid posed no real possibility of legal prosecutionthat is, except against nine men for “masquerading as women,”1 one man for “indecent assault on [a] minor,” and the two hosts for selling liquor illegally (Gevisser 1995).
