Imagine a city where every street corner, every building, and every public space is a canvas that reflects the diversity of its inhabitants. Now, imagine if that canvas was suddenly painted over, erasing the vibrant hues of a significant community. This is the ongoing struggle for the LGBTQI+ community in asserting their "right to the city".
The concept of the “right to the city” becomes a potent tool for LGBTQI+ communities in their fight for recognition, representation, and the ability to shape the urban landscape to reflect their existence and experiences. This right is not just about existing within the city, but about asserting one's right to be recognized and represented in urban spaces, thereby contributing to the city's cultural and social fabric.
Conservative groups are upset this international pride month - whether its Woolworths’ Pride collection, or the De Waterkant rainbow crossing, they’re vocalising their discontent with the visibility of queers and queer symbolism.
The painting of a rainbow flag pedestrian crossing is to many nothing more than virtue signaling, or the creation of an instagrammable moment for the city’s “pink tourists”. To others, it is a welcome addition to the range of public art that symbolizes an inclusive public space where LGBTQI+ individuals feel represented and protected - reflective of the core values enshrined in our Constitution.
This Constitutional Right, the right to be queer, does not imply - as many often insist - the right to exist only in private spaces - but also the right to exist publicly, and everything that that extends to - including safety from harassment, murder and to co-create the city.
This is a right that queer people have fought for for generations. In the 1960s, a gender fluid salon owner refused to be moved out of District 6. Kewpie, eventually opened “Kewpie Salon” in Kensington, the second location of the vibrant safe space for LGBTQI+ individuals.
The notion of the “right to the city”, initially posited by French sociologist Henri Lefebvre, has relevance here. This right encompasses the idea that all inhabitants of a city should be able to access, use, and shape urban spaces.
Most people are familiar with the concept due to the work of activist groups in sectors like housing. Groups like “Reclaim the City” are premised on the right to the city, for access to housing, work and the vitality and belonging that being in and of the city, means.
Like other cities, Cape Town is grappling with a homeless crisis, and many of the individuals affected by this are also queer. This community is in need not just of public art that represents their diversity, but of health care, social, public safety and housing services that are sensitive to their particular social and safety needs.
However, the “right to the city” is not an uncontested right.
Public art is often also used by different groups to assert their right to shape the symbolism and aesthetic of their city. And Cape Town’s public art, as part of the modes with which different groups attempt to assert their right to city, has also had contestations in the past - the infamous glasses on the prom, the “light triangle” on Signal Hill, Christian crosses on hills, and of course many apartheid and colonial era statues and monuments.
However, the contestation of, or recognition of these rights are particularly significant to the LGBTQI+ community due to queer communities’ historical and ongoing marginalization generally, and in urban spaces.
Public spaces in cities, and the production of City services, often reflect heteronormative culture, frequently marginalizing non-heteronormative sexualities and gender identities. This is evident in the way that queer spaces are often relegated to the peripheries or to specific “precincts”, or leveraged strategically to support regeneration in a “carnivalesque way”, without taking into account broader needs and intersectionalities.
How the “controversial rainbow” came to exist, and its location, is important in this regard. The project was implemented as a partnership between the City of Cape Town and local de Waterkant businesses. It includes the rainbow crossing, as well as a “pink route” (a pink painted line on the sidewalk “to guide visitors through the neighbourhood and beyond”).
This is an evolution from the days where locals would discretely pick up print copies of “The Pink Tongue” in any cafe or bar in the area, to a somewhat more overt “destination marketing” approach.
"Gay precincts" serve as safe havens for LGBTQI+ individuals, providing a sense of community, acceptance, and visibility that may not be as prevalent in other areas of a city. These areas can foster a sense of belonging and can be vital in building LGBTQI+ community and solidarity.
However, the creation of these precincts also raises critical questions about the “right to the city”. While they provide a secure environment for the community, they might inadvertently reinforce the idea that LGBTQI+ individuals belong in specific, dedicated zones rather than being embedded throughout the city.
This could be perceived as limiting the right to the entire city, as it suggests that LGBTQI+ visibility and safety are confined to these precincts, rather than being a city-wide norm.
In some instances, segregation might also lead to the 'ghettoization' of the LGBTQI+ community, with these areas being stereotyped and stigmatized, further deepening the societal divides. In other instances, the success of these precincts means they are often vulnerable to the process of gentrification.
De Waterkant itself has not been immune to this - while it is still known as the pink precinct, a portion of the more accessible cafes and ‘late night’ establishments have been phased out - replaced by design stores, for example.
Gentrification of "pink precincts", like De Waterkant is almost inevitable if representation is limited spatially and can lead to the erasure of LGBTQI+ culture and history from these areas. While they may bring economic growth and physical upgrades, they also threaten the community's “right to the city” by transforming these areas into spaces that are less accessible, more commercial, and less representative of the LGBTQI+ community in its full diversity, and need.
The “right to the city” should extend not just to protecting the right to “rainbowism” within precincts like de Waterkant, but well beyond these precincts, aiming for a city where all LGBTQI+ individuals feel safe, included, and visible in every neighborhood, not just in designated zones.
This means building civic practices that are open to the inputs of LGBTQI+ views on how spaces and facilities should be designed, training front-line staff such as clinicians, librarians, law enforcement officers and field workers inclusive language, care, safety and data collection, and paying LGBTQI+ professionals and creators for their ideas and work, and so much more.
Finally, to those who think that throwing black paint over a rainbow crossing is going to make queer people disappear, I want to remind you of our long history. Inspired by brave sheros like Kewpie, Cape Town queers have been taking up space since before apartheid ended (and long before). The Mother City Queer Project, started in 1994, and has occupied several public buildings. Pride happens every year, and will continue to. That rainbow you’re bothered by was not the first (ya’ll remember Raptor Room?).
Whether it's cutting out stickers for Stripperoke with cats on our laps, or dancing in the streets to surround the ones who’ve just come out with love, we have the most powerful tool for fighting for recognition, representation, and the ability to shape the city: our un-erasable existence.