Activist performance and performative activism towards intersectional gender and sexual justice in contemporary South Africa

Abstract

Democratic South Africa post-1994 boasts an impressive constitutional and legal commitment to human rights, including the enshrinement of sexual and gender rights. Notwithstanding, a growing body of work documents continued widespread homophobia, heterosexism and violence against gender and sexual non-conforming people that intersect with other inequalities. However, there is also a rich terrain of resistance to intersectional gender and sexual injustices evidenced by proliferating decolonial, feminist and queer activism and art. Located in the South African post-apartheid and postcolonial context, this article draws on the last few years of decolonial, feminist and queer engagements, focusing in on two current examples of activist performance and performative activism. The article explores the socio-political possibilities of interventions which transgress, disturb, disrupt and queer contemporary rigid and re/calcifying gender and sexual normativities for the larger decolonial, feminist and queer sexual and gender rights and justice project, as well as for critical scholarship directed at such goals.