“Kumele bazi ukuthi nathi singa Bantu”: Queer African Youth Speaking Back to Harmful Practices in Township Contexts

Abstract

Despite the growing research investigating queer youth experiences, little is known about how adults respond to and support those in township contexts as significant others in their lives. Drawing on Simon Nkoli’s writing on what it means to “come out” to parents as gay, this article examines the experiences of queer African youth of how adults in their lives (including teachers, parents/guardians) responded to their queerness and how these responses enhanced or inhibited their well-being. Our analysis draws on data from a study that used participatory visual methods (PVM) with 10 queer African youth to investigate how they experience, respond to, and resist queerphobic violence in and around township schools. We used two visual methods to generate data: drawings and cellphilm making. In this article, using textual and thematic analysis, we analyse data from the cellphilms produced by the 10 participants. The findings suggest that norms and values related to religion and culture (unequal gender norms and values) intersect with societal inequality and endemic violence, particularly in township contexts, to impact negatively and dehumanise queer youth. This results in a lack of support from adult caregivers (teachers and parents/guardians) and queerphobic violence in many spaces, including schools and communities. This has implications for contextually bound interventions that target parents/guardians, teachers, and community members in developing and implementing strategies for nurturing the well-being of queer African youth.