We Need to Think Critically

NYX MCLEAN

IT HAS been 30 years since the first Pride march in South Africa. The first Pride march in Africa. Last year Joburg Pride announced a new venture of theirs: Pride of Africa.

Joburg Pride has been under immense criticism in the past, especially after 2012’s clash with the One in Nine Campaign who were drawing attention to hate crimes, and then ongoing criticism of pinkwashing as the organisers moved Joburg Pride from Rosebank to Melrose Arch and then to Sandton.

I think it is audacious of Joburg Pride to assume that they can hold space for the Prides in Africa – because they are Prides plural, not a singular Pride of Africa.

And yes, South Africa leads on the continent in terms of our constitutional protections but let us not assume that our LGBTQIA+ community is a role model for the rest of the continent. We have much work to do and we need to desperately tackle many issues at home, such as our racism for one.

If we try to imagine what a Pride of Africa would look like now, we may find ourselves with another out-of-touch Pride in which whiteness donned in rainbows and glitter sponsored by alcohol companies and financial service providers dominates.

We seem to be chasing some strange dream of pulling off a New York Pride or a Sydney Mardi Gras. We need a reality check, desperately.

We need to think critically about how we think of Pride, and who we allow to imagine Pride for us. Many of those who organise Prides organise them as if they are branded events.

Pride is not there to be commodified, to turn a profit. Pride is there to take up space, to honour the lives we have lost, to keep pushing against the cissexist and heterosexist violence, and to celebrate our full and whole selves.

Pride needs to be more than gay and lesbian people. It needs every letter of the queer alphabet, and then some because we need to acknowledge that the LGBTQIA+ is something we adopted – the labels, the definitions, and how these are expressed. Let us ask queer people in South Africa how they name themselves, and I am sure we will find a richer, more representative naming than what we have got to go on from the North and West. We need to think critically about what the other ways of naming, knowing and being are.

This is important because if we continue to give people such narrow options for defining themselves, we will forever be stuck with a very white and very bland concept of ourselves, of our community, and of Pride.

We need to make space for everyone to participate in Pride. We must create space for lived experiences of those who attend Pride – their daily struggles, the racism, sexism, ableism, classism, xenophobia, and every other violence they experience. We must also make space for their joy, and their beyond the cardboard cut-out expression of their identities.

When we can create these spaces in South Africa for all members of the community, then

we can begin to speak to the idea of collaborating with other Prides across Africa. We need Pride marches that are inclusive and downright political interwoven with joy and rage and mourning and hope. We need to imagine Prides that will take the lead from the community, and then we need to make the space for the community to take ownership of the Prides of Africa.

Pride(s) of Africa should not belong to one organisation to determine for all people across this continent what Pride looks like. Pride(s) of Africa should belong to every LGBTQIA+ person who calls Africa home, and should be where they feel seen and welcomed. We need an inclusive and ethical understanding of Pride.