Youth and Contemporary Notions of Sexuality in South Africa

Speakers
More speakers will be announced soon.

Amir Shroufi is a medical doctor and Public Health specialist, he is the medical director for Doctors Without Borders (MSF) in South Africa and Lesotho, overseeing projects in KZN, Khayelitsha and Rustenburg. This includes supporting programmes on HIV prevention, case finding and management, MDR TB management and the medical response to sexual violence in Bojanala district, North West, through decentralized care. As a medical humanitarian organisation, MSF works with the Department of Health in the North West piloting innovative ways to increase access to sexual violence services for survivors. Email: msfocb-capetown-medco@brussels.msf.org.

Anastasia Koch is a junior research fellow at the Molecular Mycobacteriology Research Unit (MMRU) and the Institute of Infectious Disease and Molecular Medicine at the University of Cape Town. She is also the project manager at Eh!woza.
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Bianca Masuku is a PhD candidate in Social Anthropology working in the Molecular Mycobaceriology Research Unit (MMRU) at the University of Cape Town. Her current research project explores a youth-based TB community engagement project (Eh!woza) in the township of Khayelitsha. It looks at how the project navigates and explores knowledge of TB and experiences of TB illness in the township through the interscection of TB science, art and film, and youth education. Her research interests include youth and health, gender, sexuality, and reproductive health. Email: biancamasuku@gmail.com.

Danai Mupotsa is lecturer and head of department in the department of African Literature. She is working on a book titled “White Weddings”, and her debut poetry collection “feeling and ugly” will be launched in May 2018.

Dean Hutton is a genderqueer* artist in Joburg interested in portraiture as co-authorship; social media as narrative; technology as self-reflection and provocation; private narratives, public conceits & queer identity as body of work, and issues of surveillance. Dean has just completed a Masters of Art with the Institute for Creative Arts, and Michaelis School of Fine Art (University of Cape Town) on a Mellon fellowship. Their practice is invested in the project of decolonising and radicalising social relationships through art practice, by creating relationships and gathering collaborators to make our public and intimate spaces safer through artist-led creation, mentorship and community organising. They make work which is often provocative and seeks to democratise the creative process, helping people to develop a language to articulate their conditions and provide a platform to express imagination.

They have worked extensively and collaboratively with the media, art institutions and artists locally and internationally across photography, video, social media, performance and community action since the late 1990s. Dean was chief photographer of the Mail & Guardian, a Ruth First Fellow, one of the 200 Top Young South Africans, awarded an Africa Centre Residency in the US. Dean co-curated the #notgayasinhappy #QUEERasinfuckyou Film Festival in 2015. Dean’s performance of the avatar Goldendean broke the internet in Ghana in 2016 and their interventionist live performances continue to instigate conversation in innovative and necessary ways. Dean was a finalist in the Gerald Kraak Award and anthology in 2017. Email: queerasinfu@gmail.com.
*Genderqueer is a non-binary transgender identity. Please use They/Them gender-neutral pronouns.
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Deevia Bhana is the South African Research Chair (SARChI) in Gender and Childhood Sexuality at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. Her research focuses on sexualities, gender and young people in schools and families. Her approach in addressing young people’s investment in and vulnerability to sex and sexuality, HIV, teenage pregnancy, violence and inequalities spans interdisciplinary fields such as sexuality, sociology, critical masculinity studies, political economy, health and childhood studies. She has authored several books in the field. Her latest book published in 2018 is titled Love, sex and teenage sexual cultures (Abingdon, Routledge).

Duduzile Dlamini is a human rights defender;a activist who participates in the fight for the decriminalization of sex work. She has been a part of Sex Workers Education and Advocacy Task force (SWEAT) for 8 years. She began as a peer educator and progressed to a program manager and eventually founded an organization – Mother’s for the Future and Sex workers Empowerment. Ms. Dlamini is also a National Organizer/ Mobiliser for Sisonke – a union for Sex Workers in South Africa. She also a Board Member of SHARISA- Sexual Health and Rights Initiative of South Africa. Ms. Dlamini is on the steering committee of the Sexual Reproductive Justice Coalition (SRJC) where she represents sex workers who are mothers. Ms. Dlamini also sits on the Parliamentary Joint Committee desk in South Africa and is a Civil Society Adviser for the United Nations. She is also a Lobbyist for Congress of South Africa Trade Unions (COSATU) and Federation of Union of South Africa (FEDUSA). She is a member of the Working Committee on National Strategic Plan for Gender Base Violence in South Africa. Ms. Dlamini has lectured for South African College of Applied Psychology (SACAP) on Sex work and Decriminalization and is an active member of Civil Society on Parliament Watch. She is a Parliament Watch as a parliament monitor; an Ambassador for Children Affected by HIV&Aids.

Dumisani Dube is a Zimbabwean living in South Africa. A Christian and a human rights activist, Dube has a passion in fighting for LGBTI rights across all spectrums. Dube has been involved in the LGBTI activism for the past 20 years. Having worked for an LGBTI organisation in Zimbabwe from 1998. He has a wide range of experience in campaigning for LGBTI rights in different religious houses. He is also actively involved in issues of HIV/Aids within the LGBTI and MSM sectors. Currently he is involved in training NGOs and religious sectors on the Protection and Prevention of Sexual Minority Refugees’ survivors of SGBV. Dumisani is also working as a communications and advocacy consultant. He is the founder and Directorof Dialogues for Change an NPO that seeks to facilitate dialogue with religious leaders and the sexual minorities. Email: dumie72@gmail.com.
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FAKA is a cultural movement established by Fela Gucci and Desire Marea. It has come to represent more than the “performance art duo” descriptor that has defined the collective since their inception in 2015. The artists explore a combination of mediums ranging from sound, live performance, literature, video and photography, to create an eclectic aesthetic with which they express their ideas about themes central to their experience as black queer bodies navigating the cis-hetero-patriarchy in post-colonial Africa. Their hybridised mode of practice and challenging subject matter as artists has lead them to being invited to perform at various international festivals – such as the 9th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art (2016); Unsound Festival Poland (2016); FLOW Festival (2017), and Digging the Global South (2017) amongst many others. In October 2017, FAKA released their much anticipated sophomore EP titled “Amaqhawe”, a three track offering that “explores the intricacies of love and romance within the black queer experience, with songs touching on everything from self-love, unrequited love, childhood love and transactional love.”

Glow Makatsi is an aspiring entertainer / artist born in the Free State in a small town called Ficksburg. After matriculating, she pursued studies in Anthropology and Psychology, later majored her postgrad in Psychology but chose a completely different route to what she had originally planned: media. She dreams of a world that is more honest with itself and others, a world that is just and as a self-defined trans rights activist, she hopes to at the least steer the direction of our love relations into a purer more embracing form. She has been featured by publications such as Vogue World, I-D Magazine and Cosmopolitan Magazine. She was also one of the vocal voices on the MTV documentary: People Vs Patriarchy. When she’s not savoring the lime light, she is tucked in between the pages of subjects such as numerology, astrology, occult theories and ancient meta psychical knowledge among other subjects of interest.

Photographed by Primedia.

Gugulethu Mhlungu is the deputy editor of BONA magazine (the highest selling women’s consumer magazine in the country), and host of NightTalk (Monday to Thurs 10pm – midnight, and Fridays 8 – 11pm) on talk radio station 702, based in Johannesburg. She is also a writer with an interest in discussing structural issues and popular culture through an intersectional black feminist lens. She is also an MC and panelist. Gugulethu has bylines in City Press, Mail & Guardian, Cosmopolitan, Destiny Magazine and Marie Claire. She holds a BA and post grad diploma in media management from Rhodes University and is a National Arts Festival silver award winning journalist.

Ishtar Lakhani has been working as a feminist, activist, free radical and trouble-maker in the field of social justice advocacy for over a decade. Currently Ishtar is the Advocacy and Human Rights Defence Manager at the Sex Worker Education and Advocacy Taskforce (SWEAT), a South African based organisation that advocates for the rights of sex workers and for the full decriminalisation of sex work. She along with the advocacy team works to create platforms and capacitate sex workers to advocate for their rights and ensure when rights are violated, there is recourse.

Jo-Ann Passmore PhD, is an Associate Professor in the Division of Medical Virology, Institute for Infectious Diseases and Molecular Medicine (IDM), University of Cape Town and Medical Scientist with the National Health Laboratory Services. She heads the Mucosal STI and HIV laboratory in the Division of Medical Virology at the University of Cape Town. Jo-Ann also heads the Mucosal Immunology program at CAPRISA, Durban. Her research focuses on studying genital tract adaptive and innate immune responses associated with protection from or susceptibility to sexually transmitted viral diseases including HPV and HIV. Identifying women at risk for HIV infection, development of POC tools to screen for HIV risk, and the role of PreP in HIV protection also forms an important focus of research in this group. Jo-Ann has published over 80 papers on mucosal immune responses to HIV, HPV and identified mucosal factors predicting HIV risk. Email: jo-ann.passmore@uct.ac.za

Kerry Mangold is the HIV Prevention Programme Manager at the South African National AIDS Council. She has experience in developing, coordinating and managing the implementation of national HIV prevention programmes; in designing and conducting research; in developing evidence-based social and behaviour change communications for key populations, and in ensuring operational and financial compliance of project work for international donors and development partners. Kerry was awarded her BSc undergraduate degree from Rhodes University and then went on to obtain her BSc Honours (Microbiology and Biotechnology) from the University of the Witwatersrand, and a Postgraduate Diploma in Management from the Wits Business School. Kerry is currently completing her Master’s Degree in Anthropology at the University of the Witwatersrand. Email: kerry@sanac.org.za.

Photographed by Ihsaan Haffejee.

Lebohang Masango is a Master’s candidate in Social Anthropology at the University of Witwatersrand, South Africa. She is also a children’s book author, feminist, poet, freelance writer and social commentator. Her research interests include gender, popular culture, representations and new digital media. Lebohang is the recipient of the “From Digital to Sexual Revolution: Youth and Mobile Phones in India and South Africa” scholarship for 2017, granted by the National Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences (NIHSS). Her current MA research focuses on young, digitally–connected African women in Johannesburg who challenge patriarchy by subverting “sugar daddy” tropes to curate their experiences of love, intimacy and sex. She has self-published her debut children’s story Mpumi’s Magic Beads (Thank You Books, 2017) about friendship, self-esteem, discovery and beautiful hair in Joburg city. Email: hello@lebohangmasango.com.

Lee Burgers is Head of Operations at SMAC Gallery, working between Cape Town, Johannesburg and Stellenbosch. After completing a Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree (hons) at the Michaelis School of Fine Art at the University of Cape Town in 2012, Burgers went on to practice as a sculptor for two years and thereafter as an art advisor to private collectors. Her position at the gallery includes working closely with artists to realise their works – from concept to form. In addition, Burgers project manages, and oversees all logistics for SMAC Gallery; working as a liaison between artist and gallery and effecting the successful presentation and running of each exhibition. Email:lee@smacgallery.com.

Lenore Manderson is Distinguished Professor of Public Health and Medical Anthropology in the School of Public Health at Wits, and Distinguished Visiting Professor in Environment and Society at Brown University, Providence, RI. She was a founding member of the International Association for the Study of Sexuality Culture and Society (IASSCS) and was President from 2001-2003, when the conference Sex and Secrecy was held at WISER. Her publications on sex, sexuality and gender include Sites of Desire/Economies of Pleasure: Sexualities in Asia and the Pacific (with Jolly, 1997); Technologies of Sexuality, Identity and Sexual Health (2012); and Disclosure in Health and Illness (with Davis, 2014). Email: lenore.manderson@wits.ac.za.
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Lisa Vetten has worked in the field of violence against women in a variety of capacities for over 20 years. She holds a Master’s degree in Political Studies and is currently a Mellon Doctoral Fellow of the Wits City Institute. Her PhD is being completed in Wits’ Psychology Department and provides a genealogy of rape in South Africa since 1976.
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Loren Loubser is a young womxn of colour brought up by her single mother and determined to be an actress that drives change. In 2008 Loren became a youth leader, began working with youth organisations, and volunteered her time to create social change. Loren then went on to study to achieve her Bachelor of Arts in Theatre and Performance Acting and graduated from the University of Cape Town in 2012. She currently works as an activist using her training in performance within the Non-profit industry. Loren is currently a volunteering Public Relations Officer for an NGO called Children A’loud based in Ocean View and has been working with the NGO since 2013. Loren is also one of the Co-Directors and Co-founders of FEMMEPROJECTS NPC. Femmeprojects focuses on sexual health, sexual rights, consent, gender education, education, empowerment & mentor ship. Loren also runs an online platform called Lekker Lollas, an online platform that Loren has created to use laughter as a way of confronting our every day experiences & teaching everyone how public transport works. Loren believes that our education system is oppressive & lacking in honest, truthful, open & vital information regarding sex, bodies, sexuality, identity & gender. Email: lorenloubser1@gmail.com.

Photographed by Sarah Schafer.

Nico Athene is a body of colliding personas and intimate intricacies: of political and personal, immediate and distant, academic and under-qualified. Born and raised in Cape Town South Africa, she has two degrees under her formal identity, neither directly related to art. She worked a number of years in the creative film industry before giving up her ‘real name’ to become a stripper in a Cape Town club. She blames patriarchy and glass ceilings, ‘I figured that if I was going to be sucking cock for cash, I may as well be doing it for proper pay.’ Actually it’s because she always wanted to be a dancer. It was here that she was born – a stripper/whore whose only mandate is to use artists and their institutions to up her cultural capital: a hyperbolised comment on demonised female stereotypes, sexuality and transactionality that constantly flits between the surreal and mundane. Nico has a BA in Social Anthropology (UCT) and a Masters in Public Health (University of Edinburgh). Follow her work on Instagram: @nicoathene.
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Nicolette Carboni is currently a student psychologist completing her Masters at the University of the Witwatersrand. Nicolette was the former Head of Life Orientation at Roedean School. She has a Masters degree in Education (UKZN) in which she investigated how young people learn about sex and sexuality in relation to technological and media advancements, such as sexually explicit materials, and published on the methodological difficulties faced in conducting said sexuality research, in South African schools, in the journal Sex Education. Her research interests focus on young people’s sexualities and agentic practices at the intersection of online technologies, gender and sexual consent.

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Nigel Patel (B.Soc Sci) is a student activist from Malawi. An organizer in the Trans Collective and Shambhala Scholarship recipient for queer leaders, Nigel identifies as gender queer and uses they them pronouns. They are currently studying towards a law degree and have written for several different platforms which include Afropunk and the Mail & Guardian. Their particular areas of interest are race, sexuality and gender. Email: nigeltpatel@gmail.com.

Nirvana Pillay is a part-time PhD student working on a study exploring issues of agency and decision-making for young mothers aged 18 – 20. Her study, titled Adjusting Aspirations: exploring agency in early motherhood is situated in Alexandra, Johannesburg. Nirvana is interested in exploring how young women, following the birth of their babies, mediate structure and create opportunities for agency in relation to their personal life, work, education, and their babies. Her supervisors are Professor Lenore Manderson (SOPH Wits) and Dr Nolwazi Mkwhanazi (Anthropology Wits). She is also an independent consultant and part time lecturer at the Department of Sociology, Wits. Her consultancy work focuses on capacity development and research, particularly evaluation studies – interest areas include the health and wellbeing of farm workers, migration and health, HIV and AIDS (particularly sexual and reproductive health), and peer education. Email: nirvana@sarraounia.org.

Nolwazi Mkhwanazi (PhD) is a senior lecturer in Anthropology at the University of the Witwatersrand, and presently a senior researcher and director of the Medical Humanities programme at WiSER (Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research). She obtained her PhD in Anthropology from the University of Cambridge. She is co-editor, with Deevia Bhana, of Young Families: Gender, Sexuality and Care (HSRC Press, 2017). Broadly speaking, her research interests revolve around youth, gender and reproductive health issues. Her current research projects include a a collaborative and comparative project on young people’s use of mobile technology to form sexual, intimate or romantic relationships in India and South Africa; and the Wellcome Trust funded study on experiences of sexuality among youth and its effect on the uptake of sexual health interventions in South Africa. When not doing research or writing, Nolwazi enjoys painting friezes of chickens, some of these can be seen at Phophonyane Falls EcoLodge in Swaziland: http://www.phophonyane.co.sz
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Nosipho Mngomezulu is from Pietermaritzburg and holds a PhD in Social Anthropology from the University Currently Known as Rhodes University. Her PhD research, entitled “Re-imaging the Nation” focused on young people’s constructions of nationhood in Mauritius during the first Truth and Justice Commission to focus on slavery and indentured labour. Her doctoral research examined the specific ways in which young people, often marginalized in state discourse, construct nationhood (an abstraction) in their everyday lives. Nosipho is a Mandela Rhodes Scholar with a keen interest in social justice, youth development and re-imagining development practice. She has taught “Community Engaged Learning” at the University Currently known as Rhodes University in Grahamstown; “Communication for Social Change” at MICA (Ahmedabad, India); “Introduction to Critical Race Theory” at the Stanford Bing Overseas Studies Program in Cape Town and Social Anthropology at the University of Cape Town. She is currently a lecturer at University of the Witwatersrand.

Nozipho Mvune is a fourth-year PhD candidate at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. She holds a Master’s Degree in Gender and Education. Her research work focuses on gender and sexuality of young people, with a special interest in rural context. Her PhD study titled ‘Teenage fathers: Fatherhood, masculinity and schooling in rural Kwazulu-Natal’ focuses on the experiences of 20 teenage fathers, how they understand their roles and responsibilities as fathers. Nozipho is a senior education specialist at the KwaZulu-Natal Department of Education (KZNDoE) within Special Needs Education Services (SNES). Email: noziphomv@gmail.com.

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Pierre de Vos is Claude Leon Foundation Chair in Constitutional Governance in the Department of Public Law at the UCT. He is a recipient of the UCT Social Responsiveness Award, author of the blog Constitutionally Speaking (which is syndicated by the Daily Maverick), and is widely quoted in local and international print and electronic media on legal and socio-political issues. He has published more than 80 articles in academic journals and in academic books on a wide range of constitutional law topics and is the co-editor of the book South African Constitutional Law in Context (published in 2014 by Oxford University Press). He is the chairperson of the Board of the Aids Legal Network and also serves on the advisory Council for the Council for the Advancement of the South African Constitution (CASAC) and on the Board of PEN South Africa. Email: pierre.devos@uct.ac.za.

Rebecca Hodes is a medical historian. She is Director of the AIDS and Society Research Unit, University of Cape Town, and Honourary Fellow of the Department of Social Policy and Intervention, Oxford University. Her current research focuses on the histories of science, race and sex. She is the co-principal investigator of the Mzantsi Wakho study, about the health practices of teenagers in South Africa. Email: rebecca.hodes@googlemail.com.
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Saiqa Mullick is the director of Implementation Science at the Wits Reproductive Health and HIV Institute. She is responsible for leading the development and implementation of a large portfolio of programmatic research and technical assistance. Her qualifications include a medical degree, two Masters level degrees in Public Health Methodology and in Public Health in Developing Countries and a PhD in Infectious Disease Epidemiology from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. She is also a member of the Institute of Directors of Southern Africa (IoDSA). Dr Mullick has over 16 years’ experience in clinical services, implementation science, programme monitoring and evaluation, reproductive health and HIV, technical assistance and capacity building in developing country settings across the African continent.

Tamara Shefer is a professor in the Women’s and Gender Studies Department, Faculty of Arts, University of the Western Cape. Her scholarship focuses on gendered, intersectional power relations with particular emphasis on young people, including sexualities education, HIV/AIDS, gender-based violence, masculinities, memory and apartheid, gender and care, gender and dis/ability, and social justice, feminist pedagogies. She is currently particularly interested in performative activism and activist performance in gender justice scholarship and practice.
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Thulile Gamedze is an independent artist, writer, curator and member of the collective iQhiya, currently based in Cape Town, South Africa. Her research around ‘impossible paradigms’ locates histories of collective pedagogy and cultural work as urgent creative practices that both critique and de-link themselves from pervasive western coloniality. She has published in local and international art-based publications and catalogues as well as on a number of news platforms. Thuli’s practice is concerned with education and collectivity, and the potential of collaborative knowledge production as the central strategy for liberation. Email:thulilegamedze@outlook.com.
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Tiffany Kagure Mugo is the intoxicatingly scary gatekeeper of HOLAAfrica, a Pan African queer womanist community dealing with sexuality and all things woman. She is also a writer, media consultant and freelance journalist who tackles sex, politics and other less interesting topics. Once upon a time she was an Open Society Youth Fellow and now has dreams of studying some new things. During weekends she is a wine bar philosopher and polymath for no pay. Email: tiffanymugo@gmail.com.

Zondentle is a filmmaking trio consisting of Zimkhitha Mekile, Zintle Mekile And Ondela Kobese. The group directed and produced THIS.IS.WHO.WE.ARE, a film that highlights perspectives of young lesbian women living in Khayelitsha. The project was conceptualised in 2016 and produced throughout 2017 and early 2018. Zimkhita and Zintle matriculated from Harry Gwala Secondary School, Khayelitsha in 2017, and have recently enrolled for a Business Administration course. Ondela matriculated from Sinako Highschool in 2017 and is currently studying film and media at AFDA, Cape Town. The group enrolled in Eh!woza in 2015, and since then have collaborated to produce 3 films. THIS.IS.WHO.WE.ARE formed a project independent of the core Eh!woza workshop programme.

Zondikazi Mtonjeni produced the film entitled PAM during the 2017 Eh!woza workshop period. The film tells the story of a woman living in Nkanini, Khayelitsha and her experience of living with HIV, TB and sexual violence. Zondi is a matric student at Harry Gwala Secondary School and enrolled in the Eh!woza workshop programme in 2016 and 2017. After matriculating, Zondi plans to study nursing or law.

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