There were more queer nightlife spaces in apartheid South Africa’s urban centres than exist today. My research focuses on providing a comprehensive historical enquiry into these venues’ geographies, musical practices, and cultural lives and exploring the contemporary decline in the post-apartheid era. This PhD will broadly include the exploration of intersectional racial politics of queer nightlife in South Africa, the decay of modern nightlife scenes through gentrification, zoning laws and failing neoliberal economic policies, the sexual geographies of queer ‘subcultures,’ and the musicological phenomena of affect and taste as they affect the growth of queer nightlife scenes.  

My previous research has focused on the queer nightlife of Soweto, South Africa’s largest and most-populated township, and the site of the instrumental 1976 Soweto Uprisings which protested the effects of the Bantu Education Act, which forced black high school students to use Afrikaans as the language of instruction. This research found that queer Sowetans played an important role in the mobilisation of black high school students in the uprisings, and that there was a distinct ‘queer scene’ in 1980s Soweto, with a variety of ‘gay shebeens’ (living rooms illegally repurposed into venues for the sale of alcohol). Further, my research found that the Sowetan gay scene was instrumental in establishing province-wide social networks, leading to the founding of Africa’s first pride parade and first black gay church. Finally, my research explored the ways in which queer Sowetans, through these networks, took part in processes of ‘black-queering’ Johannesburg’s predominantly white gay nightlife scenes in the 1990s as legislation enforcing urban apartheid began to decay.

I have additionally written on the queer nightlife of 1980s inner-city Johannesburg, which was host to a wide array of pop, house, techno and disco clubs which were well-integrated into a broad network of international queer nightlife venues. (Notably, both RuPaul and Divine performed in Johannesburg between the 1980s and 2000s). These venues were more racially diverse than straight clubs, more connected to international trends in dance music culture, and known nationally for having the best nightlife in the city. In addition to this focus on nightlife, my research explored underground queer networks of exchange which allowed for the smuggling of gay literature, ‘queer records’ and HIV medication & educational materials past apartheid censors, as well as the socio-legal strategies employed by predominantly white gay men to subvert apartheid legislation that restricted gay sex, racial integration in nightlife spaces and the convening of queer parties. This research culminated in the production of an interactive digital map of Johannesburg’s queer nightlife venues in the 1980s and 1990s on behalf of the GALA queer archives, Africa’s largest LGBTQ+ archive.