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I pay homage to the young ones and pray that what I see on TikTok will translate into a much healthier society that gives everyone space to be who they want to be, writes Matuba Mahlatjie from Soshanguve, Pretoria.
My primary interaction tool with young queer people has been TikTok. From bearded young, beautiful men with their Brazilian weaves, to trans men who are sharing their transitioning stories in detail.
Even with rife hate crimes against the queer community in South Africa, it appeared to me these young people had found safe spaces to exist and express themselves in a way I couldn’t 21 years ago when I was 18. So I am here to pay homage to the young queer people who, unlike me when I was younger, do not live in a binary world and push boundaries to force me to reflect on the life I led away from the limelight.
We were socialised in a terribly hetero way of life that we were forced into boxes of whether we were top or bottom. And you’d get accolades for managing a secret relationship with a man who identifies as straight, but was happy to be in a sexual relationship with us. The more straightforward term for these men would the "After Nines".
This is definitely not a universal way of life for all Black gay communities, but the young queer people made me reflect on my lived experience as a gay man who formed part of a community that was just obsessed with "dating" men who only had time for us when it was time to go to bed. It was only the "resourced" gays who could show off their masculine boyfriends because it came with a high price.
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It was a glorified transactional sex life for gay men with cars and good-paying jobs. Sometimes not good-paying jobs, straight men were just prioritised as a must-have and so budgets would be adjusted.
I was one of those men and I was conscious of how little I got from the relationship I had, and ended up making demands from this man who ended up having a blog and documenting our life together. He had a fallout with his family because of our relationship and he chose his family over me, and he went on to marry a woman later.
Much more liberated
But the "2000s" as they labelled, at least the ones I experience seem to be much more liberated than we were. There are effeminate tops and masculine tops now and it’s a beautiful thing to watch. I am not talking about watching sexual activities, but I am talking more about the openness of their identities which were taboo where I come from.
A masculine man would be ridiculed for wanting to be the submissive sex partner. And my experience is that it stems from a misogyny which has been normalised. The queer 2000s will not have a history of being asked, "who’s the man and who’s the woman", when approached by straight people. I don’t know if it’s because the homophobes are repenting or if these young ones are just too strong to be tamed by the status quo we endured. There’s probably a book that should be written on the evolution of queer life in South Africa. We never saw ourselves in the media represented honestly.
After wrestling with my sexuality all by myself as a teenager, I looked for people who would understand that what I felt wasn’t a phase of some sort. There was nowhere to validate my identity as a gay young man. Instead, I grew up at a time where Black gay bodies were pathologised as being carriers of Aids and Sexually Transmitted Diseases.
My identity crisis didn’t last long after I met Jay Matlou, a friend I met through other friends while searching for a safe space to be gay. He worked for an NGO that advocated for the rights of the queer community. That gave me access to literature and people like Bev Ditsie, Steve Letsike, and Thami Dish Dish, to name a few. Many golden circles were formed, meaning I was maturing as a gay man too. And I wasn’t looking for validation, because there was an entire small universe that gave me the courage to be honest with myself about what I wanted, and who I wanted to be with.
Today, I pay homage to the young ones and pray that what I see on TikTok, or what I experienced during my Grindr days, will translate into a much healthier society that gives everyone space to be who they want to be.
- Matuba is a former journalist, now working in communications in public service and civil society. He lives in Soshanguve with his partner Peter, his recently widowed mom and their Jack Russell Bruno.
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