To Be Queer in African Cultures and Traditions: "The Power of Communities"- PANEL 2

In Africa and the African Diaspora, many LGBTQIA+ individuals experience a painful disconnection between their queerness and their cultural identities. Traditional ceremonies, private rituals, and public community gatherings often become sites of exclusion, where rigid ethno-patriarchal and heteropatriarchal norms silence queer expression. Expectations around dress, behaviour, and gender roles enforce a binary that erases those who live beyond these limits. In Africa, 31 out of 54 countries continue to criminalise homosexuality. This year, GALA Queer Archive in collaboration with VIAD’s RADICAL | OTHERS, seeks to counter that erasure through the project, “To Be Queer and African”. The project commenced on International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia and Transphobia (IDAHOBIT) on 17 May 2025 and was titled ‘To be Queer in African Cultures and Traditions: "The Power of Communities"’. This event was made up of two panels – one of which is shown in this recording. In this video we see PANEL 2. PANEL 2 explored queer organising and community-creation, the loneliness and agency of finding oneself through coming-into-activism.

Discussing independent ways of entering into activism and the work of advocating for queer people and queer spaces, PANEL 2 offered a view into the everyday work of being queer and African; where mediation between family members, action against organisations and solidarity from schools and other groups help create more inviting environments for young queer people and older members of their society at large.

Aurora Krotoa Moses, Marange Molete and Mme Salome Sebidi had an open discussion and invited others to connect the dots between queer organisations around them.