“‘If we had to make ourselves, we would all have been perfect men – or women.’ When we got into town, they spotted two of their friends who had been in exactly the same position but now have had their sex change operations. They are sisters Muriel and Sharon (formerly, Peterson) and were on their way to buy air tickets.”- Drum Post, September 1965 Without digging into the archives, it’s easy to believe that this era is the first time in history that LGBTQIA+ visibility in South Africa is making headlines. Growing up without elders and icons that represented me, I latched onto any semblance of diversity that I found in the Western media. As activists, archivists and researchers work to reframe history, audiences like ourselves are astounded to discover the generations of gender diverse South Africans, who were always a trending topic in the media. From pre-colonial records to Apartheid and Post-Apartheid South Africa, the media’s lens on queerness and transness is everchanging. What is a constant is the existence and resilience of people of diverse gender and sexual identities. Age-old biases that claim LGBTQIA+ experiences are ‘un-African,’ Western innovations are far past their expiration date. Earlier this year, Minority Africa’s Cassandra Roxburgh exposed the colonial influences of the constructs of transphobia and homophobia, which continue to prevail in contemporary society. While these biases have been long-standing in South African culture, the existence of gender diverse people in historical media also points out a societal tolerance and interest. South African archival evidence of same-sex relationships from pre-colonial times is hard to find, partly due to the way data is categorized or uncategorized. On a quest for evidence of gender and sexuality diversity in pre-colonial times, author of Hungochani: The History of a Dissident Sexuality in Southern Africa, Marc Epprecht hunted between an array of records on Shona culture. In a 2013 seminar for the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC), Epprecht describes the treasure he discovered in his research: “I stumbled upon a hidden gem – documented proof of the first known use of the word nkotshane more than 100 years ago (from which today’s word for homosexuality in chiShona derives), and transcripts of trials where African men speak to us from generations past to tell of their love for each other.” Across the African continent and throughout history, gender and sexual diversity have existed without being labelled under the same constrictive language that we employ today. While it’s encouraging to think of the endless pool of evidence in the archives that confirm the rich LGBTQIA+ history in South Africa, it often poses a challenge to researchers like Epprecht, since little of the evidence is categorized or indexed. Before the establishment of criminal labour systems, same-sex relationships were not criminalized in South Africa. As colonial rule was established, laws developed, becoming increasingly prejudiced towards queer people. As Apartheid laws progressed, the atmosphere of homoantagonism became more rampant. In 1966, the South African police force raided a gay party in Forest Town, Johannesburg, serving as the impetus to create the first explicitly anti-homosexual legislation. Author of the acclaimed book Defiant Desire: Gay and Lesbian Lives in South Africa, Mark Gevisser’s work reveals another event that year that contributed to the increasingly queer antagonistic policy changes. In the book, he explains, “On a weekend in January 1966, police arrested nine men for masquerading as women and participating in ‘indecent activity.’ The raids and arrests at this time had gained public and media attention, further contributing to colonial-enforced gender and sexuality biases.’ Three years after the Forest Town Raid, the Immorality Amendment Act, 1969 was put in place. Featuring an explicitly anti-homosexual agenda, Section 20A, commonly known as the ‘men at a party clause’ remained in place until 1998, at which point, the Act was ruled unconstitutional. While the LGBTQIA+ community in South Africa has always included a spectrum of diverse identities, the framing of the Act was centered on cisheteropatriarchal biases that further enforced rigid gender identities. In reality, all the ‘men at the party’ could have included a spectrum of non-male attendees, including non-binary people and women who were misgendered as male. Further, Section 20A of the Immorality Amendment Act outlined prohibitions for ‘males’ only, highlighting the erasure of gender and sexual diversity in legislative framing. During the 1940s, District 6 (or District Six) in Cape Town was a flourishing hub of culture that housed diverse people from across the Asian and African diasporas.