ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the intersection of gender, sexuality, and folk religion in narratives of healers/diviners known as sangomas (traditional healers) in twenty-first-century South Africa. Analyzing published narratives about and by lesbian, bisexual, and transgender sangomas, I argue that these narratives reveal changing notions of gender and sexuality, and they also highlight emerging tensions. Most sangomas are assumed to be heterosexual, and many LGBTIQ+ people in South Africa face hostility and violence. However, LGBTIQ+ sangomas and those around them appeal to the power and authority associated with ancestral spirits to explain and legitimate same-sex desire and gender nonconformity in an often-hostile context, even as they reinterpret religious beliefs in light of LGBTIQ+ identities. Because sangomas occupy a liminal space, mediating between past, present, and future, the ways LGBTIQ+ sangomas narrate their experiences invite us to rethink the relationship between spirit, gender, and sexuality more broadly and to consider how individuals creatively negotiate and engage with indigenous African religions in postcolonial Africa.
