ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on colonial and apartheid histories of race, class, gender, and sexuality, and contested sexual identity politics which have come to the fore in their wake. In the postapartheid landscape, descriptive and prescriptive means of identifying selves and others are morally and politically charged. Just as the words ‘stabane’ and ‘lesbian’ can sound dignified and undignified in the contemporary, social meanings and trends are traceable through these historical moments and narratives of different words, images, ideas, and modes of being. In an era of increased rights and visibilities, different actors have taken center stage as voices of authority on sexuality in KwaZulu-Natal, including political leaders and organizations that serve gender and sexual non-conforming individuals. How to materialize and capture queerness has come to the fore in debates over categories of identities, their problems, and their politics. Such contestations find contextualization both in personal narratives of sexual identifications and in refusals of them. In addition to refused identifications, the chapter discusses how subtler relational constructions of gendered selves served as dignified descriptors of relationships, practices, and identities.
