A Love Letter to the Queer Community of Cape Town: Mapping Queer Space in The Pink City

Hesseling, Mira

A Love Letter to the Queer Community of Cape Town: Mapping Queer Space in The Pink City

Thesis / Dissertation

2026

Publisher

University of Cape Town

Department

ANS: Anthropology

Faculty

Faculty of Humanities

Abstract

The introductory chapter provides background information pertaining to the research interest, details about the research questions, an overview of the literature used to formulate the theoretical framework of the dissertation, and a discussion of the methodology used to conduct the dissertation, as well as ethical considerations. In The Old and The New: Dissecting the Development of Queer Visibilities in Cape Town, I primarily discuss how the queer landscape of Cape Town has changed over time – focusing specifically on the effects of colonialism and apartheid in the past; and commodification, tourism and capitalism in the present. This chapter focuses on the geography of Cape Town and its relationship to queer space, as well as engagement with concepts such as hetero- and homonormativity, and the history of inequality within queer spaces through the lens of ‘visibility'. The next chapter, Drinking, Dancing, DOGs and Identity: Rejecting Binaries in Queer Nightlife Spaces, is an in-depth exploration of various nightlife spaces in Cape Town frequented by participants and an analysis of the tensions within these spaces. This chapter primarily discusses the distinction between queer spaces and so-called ‘safe' spaces, and how issues of different queer identities, race, class, financial accessibility and disability manifest within these spaces. Finally, this chapter shows the strides being made for more inclusive nightlife spaces in Cape Town, driven by the queer youth of the city. The Great (Queer) Outdoors: Creating Inclusive Queer Space in Hetero-Masculine Sports outlines the progress that is being made in creating more diverse day-time activity-based spaces for the queer community. Through interviews with members of the Queer Surf and Queer Skate clubs in Cape Town, this chapter reveals the latent hetero-sexism within surf and skate culture and argues for access to diverse and accessible queer spaces in the same way that cisgender and heterosexual people have easy and unquestioned access to these types of activity-based spaces. The concluding chapter summarises the key research findings and introduces a concept of ‘queer home'.

Keywords

queer

community

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Masters

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