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The Pride March started in Somerset Road in Green Point and went through the CBD, moved through Adderley Street, and up Wale Street, and then went back to Green Point via Buitengracht Street where there was a huge party. I remember feeling on top of the world during Pride, and marvelling at such a glorious gathering of queer people from all works of life. It was also during this time that I was obsessed with Ntlantla Nciza of Mafikizolo fame’s bug-eye-sunglasses that covered half your face from their Sophia-Town-inspired music and dress during the 2000’s. I remember that I wore the tiniest shorts and a small pink t-shirt on that day. The young Swedes made my first Pride memorable as we went marching through the streets of Cape Town.
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I met up with the strange group of Swedish young people who were friendly and sweet. I had served them at the restaurant I was working at in Port Elizabeth, and coincidentally they were going to Cape Town after their time in PE and we exchanged numbers. I had met a group of Swedish visitors in Port Elizabeth just before I left PE. Cape Town Pride takes place early in the year, February, and so I was just fresh from Port Elizabeth when I attended Cape Town Pride. I was in my first year of postgraduate studies, in other words, I was in my honour’s year at the University of Cape Town. I attended my first pride in 2007 in Cape Town. So, in many ways, my study abroad trip helped to shape the way I saw my queerness and helped me situate the Pride Marches I had been seeing on SABC news over the years. Queer people were not part of the curriculum in school, and even at university, there were no classes that touched on queer people or the sexuality movement’s history. Learning about this history had a great impact on me because growing up, I had only thought there was me and a few others who were queer. The realisation that there were so many queer people in the world was profound. It was here that I was exposed to the history of the Stonewall Riots of 1969 that took place in New York City. I only really understood the history of Pride when I went on a study abroad trip to the United States in my second year of university. Toyi Toyi had been a mainstay of South African society and therefore the news, so that element of the Pride March I could figure out immediately.Īs I grew older, and grew into my queerness, I started to seek queer media like Gay Pages, EXIT, and other international gay magazines, and through these reading materials I would learn more about Pride. As a queer kid in Kwazakhele I wasn’t sure what Pride was, all I saw were people wearing interesting clothes with placards who were involved in something that looked like a “Toyi Toyi” and a Toyi Toyi was something I was already familiar with. So, while I was interested in the Pride March and what I was seeing on television, I did not make my interest known. Growing up I remember seeing the Johannesburg Pride March on the SABC news and hearing people around me passing all kinds of remarks about gay people. The seeds that were being sown at that Pride March would affect the trajectory of my life as a young queer kid growing up in South Africa. When the Pride March took place, I was knee high to a grasshopper and had no idea what was taking place in the country politically. The Pride March was organised by the Gays and Lesbians of the Witwatersrand, led by Beverly Ditsie and Simon Nkoli. Today, 30 years ago, the first Lesbian and Gay Pride March in South Africa was held in Johannesburg.