Transâ1. A prefix occurring in loanwords from Latin (transcend; transfix), on this model, used with the meanings, âacrossâ, âbeyondâ, âthroughâ, âchanging thoroughlyâ, âtransverseâ in combination with elements of any origin.2. A prefix meaning âon the other side ofâ, referring to the misalignment of oneâs gender identity with oneâs biological sex assigned at birth: transgender; transsexual.1
In recent years we have seen a new phenomenon in Africaâs long history of migration: the journeying of people fleeing persecution, violence, and discrimination on the grounds of their gender identity/expression. I term these people âgender refugeesââpeople who can make claims to refugee status, fleeing their countries of origin based on the persecution of their gender identity. âGender refugeesâ are different from sexual refugees in that their issues pertain to their gender identity and birth-assigned sex being perceived as incongruent. This incongruence often poses a threat to their lives and may force them to flee. I am interested in how and why âgender refugeesâ migrate to South Africa from other parts of Africa, how the term âtransgenderâ travels, and in what form it arrives, as compared to the meanings associated with its circulation and contestation in the Global North. I am also interested in how the journeys of gender refugees to South Africa might be constituted and/or constrained by their relationship with the meaning and politics of the category âtransgenderâ.
âTransgenderâ has become a globally applicable term. Historically emerging in the Global North, it is predicated on movement. As an analytical category, it encompasses concepts such as borders, imaginaries, and âhome/sâ. It is at once about an individualâs physical body and the lived experience of the everyday, while also addressing theoretical issues of interpellation and categorisation within the social body. It is, at its heart, presented as infinitely malleable and yet at times, paradoxically, functions as a term that carries a distinctive kind of analytical and ideological fixity. This fixity is often most visible when the category is utilised in relation to mechanismsâsuch as human rightsâwhose functions are often predicated on a dubious conceptual stability. As a term, it is also a site of travel, accruing baggage and meaning through its traversing of countries, cultures, and varied institutional frameworks. It is made mobile through legislative use, through textual incorporation, through popular culture, through bodies who may feel a kinship to it or a means through which to explain a felt sense of self, and by organisations where it flags a specific political allegiance or alignment while concomitantly providing the groundwork for further access to various kinds of material support.
It is my contention that transgender transforms as it travels, taking on meaning in relation to bodies, national homes, institutional frameworks and imaginaries. Yet, there has been little research to date on the journey of the conceptââtransgenderââfrom the Global North, where it originated, to Africa: how and why it travelled, and its impact in a context very different from the one in which it originated. This movement of the category âtransgenderâ is interrelated with the movement of the people who invoke itâalbeit in different ways. Though these journeysâthose of asylum seekers and those of transgenderâmay seem distinct, there is a critical relationship at the intersection of transgender and this particular embodied subject as they migrate and move. In recent years, transgender has begun to pick up greater traction across the African continent, in relation to the contentious notion of human rights, and broad-based organisational and political development. It has also emerged as an individual means of ascribing or describing an element of self or identity. Within these developments, a singular country has come to hold significant recognised political possibilityâSouth Africa.
The Constitution of the Republic of South Africa (1996) unequivocally âenshrines the rights of all people in [the] country and affirms the democratic values of human dignity, equality and freedomâ (emphasis added).2 Rights, then, do not belong exclusively to South African citizens, but to those standing within the South African borderline.3 The Bill of Rights (1996) entrenches the right to freedom of movement, dignity, security of person, and the right of everyone in South Africa to access housing, healthcare,4 and education.5 South Africa is the only country on the African continent that not only recognises but also constitutionally protects transgender individuals; these are rights that acknowledge their very existence. South Africa also offers the possibility of asylum on the basis of persecution due to sexual orientation or gender identity, through the South African Refugees Act (1998) implemented by the Department of Home Affairs (DHA).6 The Act is underpinned by two Conventions: the 1951 United Nations (UN) Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees7 and its accompanying Protocol,8 and the 1969 Organisation of African Unity (OAU) Convention governing the Specific Aspects of Refugee Problems in Africa.9 These define ârefugeeâ as per the Refugee Act (1998), read in conjunction with a Constitution10 that prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex, gender,11 and sexual orientation.12 This, along with the fact that South Africa does not practise a system of encampment, has created a distinctive asylum regime.
The knowledge of this somewhat controversial document called the Constitution is certainly widespread. It has, over time, in relation to the notion of human rights, functioned as a key influence in wider regional reactionary stances most frequently termed âanti-homosexualâ, and a major drawcard for those fleeing persecution. Arguably, as gender refugees traverse borders, fleeing persecution in countries of origin and moving towards South Africa, they move not only to claim something, but also to impact and reflect something of the social and national spaces they inhabit. They also reflect something of the spaces they come to, or hope to, inhabit.
1.1 Themes and Arguments
One of the central themes structuring this book is migrationâthe forced migration of gender refugees and the ongoing movement and migration of transgender. At the intersection of the two lies South Africa, with its distinctive history of colonial heritage, the role of apartheid and the advent of a constitutional democracy relative to the countryâs position on the African continent. This, in turn, allows for a distinctive set of âtransgender phenomenaâ, peculiar to the country. These phenomena can be broadly defined as instances in which the assumed normative/natural linkages between biological sex, gender expression/identity, and sexuality are ruptured, âbringing the unnaturalness of this assemblage into visibilityâ.13 Transgender phenomena become visible in moments where there is an attempt to control what is perceived as transgressive behaviourâan attempt to maintain normative boundaries, binary gender, and social hierarchy. I read these transgender phenomena as instances indicative of perceptions regarding gender and its relation to the body in South Africaâs history. I argue that the advent and development of these phenomena, visible in South Africaâs specific legislative, medical, political, and cultural approaches to bodies, has ultimately made possible the journey of transgender as it emerges in South Africaâfirst as a discourse and, following this, as politics.
The second primary argument sits at the junction between the journeying of the term and the journeying of gender refugees. I argue that the legal-constitutional make-up of South Africa, post-1994, is key to framing the possibilities of transgender as it circulates beyond the countryâs borders. Indeed: that transgender, as it migrates, becomes int...