Defiant Desire

by Edwin Cameron (Editor)

Defiant Desire records the lives of lesbian and gay South Africans of all races as they have lived in the face of censure, denial and oppression. The history of gay identity in South Africa is here in its past and present from a drag salon in Woodstock to a gay "shebeen" in kwaThema; from a church in a Pretoria nightclub to Johannesburg's lesbian and gay pride march; from Afrikaans love poetry to new activism. The book is a document of lesbian and gay struggle, and indispensable for those interested in the sexual politics coursing beneath the country's troubled passage to democracy.

Genres: South Africa, Nonfiction, LGBT, Queer

406 pages, Paperback

First published January 13, 1995

About the author

Edwin Cameron is a South African Rhodes scholar and retired Constitutional Court Justice. Cameron served on the Supreme Court of Appeal from 2000 to 2008 and was the first senior South African official to state publicly that he was living with HIV/AIDS. He was inspired in this by the stoning and stabbing to death of Gugu Dlamini after her admission on a isiZulu-language radio that she was HIV positive.

Reviews

[Francois · Rating 4 out of 5]

A deeply moving and insightful anthology of articles and essays about queer life in apartheid South Africa, published on the eve of democracy in 1993.