to be queer and african

VIAD IN COLLABORATION WITH GALA QUEER ARCHIVE

In South Africa, many LGBTQIA+ individuals experience a painful disconnection between their queerness and their cultural identities. Traditional ceremonies, family rituals, and community gatherings often become sites of exclusion where rigid patriarchal norms silence queer expression. Expectations around dress, behaviour, and gender roles enforce a binary that erases those who live beyond its limits. This year’s IDAHOBIT gathering, hosted by GALA Queer Archive in collaboration with VIAD’s RADICAL | OTHERS, seeks to puncture that silence.

tO BE QUEER IN AFRICAN CULTURES

AND TRADITIONS:

THE POWER OF COMMUNITIES

A FAMILY DAY EVENT HOSTED BY GALA QUEER ARCHIVE IN COLLABORATION WITH VIAD

BREEZEBLOCK CAFÉ, 29 CHISWICK AVENUE, BRIXTON, JOHANNESBURG

17 May 2025

On Saturday, 17 May 2025 the world marks both IDAHOBIT (International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia and Transphobia) and Africa Month. This time is a reminder that queer peoples’ struggles, and African celebrations are intertwined, because to be queer and African is not a contradiction, but a truth often denied.

GALA Queer Archive and VIAD’s RADICAL | OTHERS come together to host a Family Day event at Breezeblock Café on 17 May, at 10am – 4 pm. Celebrating, contesting and affirming, in community, what it means “To Be Queer in African Cultures and Traditions” today. The theme extends the IDAHOBIT 2025 thematic of “The Power of Communities”, to specific African experiences of community. This gathering calls on the transformative power of cultural communities in the African continent to stand against homophobia, biphobia and transphobia!

TO BE QUEER AND AFRICAN:

“MAKING AFRICA POSSIBLE”

AN ONLINE ROUNDTABLE HOSTED BY VIAD IN COLLABORATION WITH GALA QUEER ARCHIVE

ONLINE

14 July 2025
The roundtable concludes the project To Be Queer and African, by which VIAD’s RADICAL | OTHERS and GALA Queer Archive foreground efforts to countering the erasure of queer voices in Africa’s meaning-making. Key artist-researchers gather to talk through the theme To Be Queer and African: “Making Africa Possible”; taken from Keguro Macharia’s writing about the Nest Collective’s documentary, Stories of Our Lives: An Archive of Kenyan Queer Narratives.
The roundtable explores issues of land, climate justice, African migrations and how these contribute to “self” – “other” narratives which hinder the future of Africa.