KROMOTHERAPY: PERFORMANCE AS

INTERVENTIONSelogadi Mampane, University of Pretoria

–Saskia Wierenga,Urgency Required: Gay and Lesbian Rights are Human Rights, 2009

“There histories are frequently denied them, under the pretext that

lesbianism is a Western invention. Their citizenship is at times virtually

suspended, as in cases where it is said that homosexuality is un-African.

There sexuality is variously classified as unnatural, sick (so psychiatric

treatment is prescribed) or deviant.”

Hate Crimes

• Members of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Intersex and Queer or LGBTIQ community are especially at risk of falling victim to Hate Crimes such as rape and murder

• Di Silvo (2011:1470) explains that ‘corrective rape’ specifically works “to ‘cure’ lesbians of their nonconforming sexual orientation - or correct it - the belief being that homosexuality is an imported white disease”

• However, “poor Black women who live in townships” (di Silvo 2011:1469) are particularly at risk

• More so, being masculine-presenting and subverting the gendered hierarchy in a more aesthetically, socially visible manner, puts one especially at risk of experiencing a Hate Crime.

• This highlights how intersections between race, ethnicity, sex, gender and class, work to subordinate Black, masculine-presenting, female-bodied Queer (in the broader sense of the word) people in many ways

Tokoza, Johannesburg

• This intervention will focus on facilitating conversation about sex, gender and sexual orientation in the township of Tokoza, Johannesburg

• Tokoza is a township in which human rights organisations like Iranti-Org have documented numerous killings and other forms of violence specifically against Black lesbians

• This is an educational intervention, which seeks to:

- tell the unheard and silenced stories of oppression from the LGBTIQ community in Tokoza

- Provide an educational platform which works to unpack the stigma attached to African homosexualitites but more so to Black, Queer, female-bodied, masculinities

Kromotherapy

• Kromotherapy follows the narrative of a Queer, Black, female-bodies person as she navigated her way through her often misunderstood and abject identity within the context of Hate Crimes in South Africa

• Kromo (Chromo) therapy references a complementary medicine method as well as the Rainbow Nation which is supposedly South Africa and the rainbow colours of the ‘universal’ LGBTIQ flag

• The performance as intervention will be a travelling work and members of the community will follow the narrative and performer as she makes her way from a local shebeen (tavern) through the streets of the township to where she meets her death

Kromotherapy, Capitol Theatre, iCapitoli, 2013