Cape Town’s New Masculinity

Young South Africans, most visible in urban centers like Cape Town, are playful in the ways they present themselves to the world. They have eschewed European designer labels, made for consumerism, in favor of local designers, many of whom have caught the spirit of the moment.

That Cape Town has become a front in the war on Western gender roles is somewhat fitting. It’s where the Dutch and, later, the British began their colonization of South Africa in earnest. Colonialism still hangs thick in the air. Not even the Cape Doctor, a powerful summer wind thought to relieve the city of pollution, has been able to clear it.

It’s no coincidence that this rebellion against gender and Eurocentrism has been led by queer, trans and gender-nonconforming young people. Their protest is a means of self-preservation.

The rejection of gender norms has been raging for some time all over the world, but there is something distinctly pro-African in the character of the city’s sartorial resistance.

It has sprung forth from the realities of life in cities and the townships that surround them, from having no choice but to fight back against daily violence, threats and intimidation these young people face for their outward expression of their sexual orientation and gender identity. In a recent study conducted by Out LGBT Well-Being, 88 percent of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people who have experienced violence do not report these episodes.

Young people often escape through night life in Cape Town. Even traditional gay clubs are hostile to nonconformity, so alternative spaces have begun to emerge.

The buzz cut on the androgyne, the textured wig on the femme doing a power gwara gwara on the dance floor, the variety of colored and textured plaits, braids, box cuts, high-top fades and Afros — they speak to a decidedly local phenomenon.

The moment seems to signify the rise of a fresh image of African gender and masculinity that rejects the dominant masculine ideal of toughness, even in a hostile world.