Apostles of Civilised Vice

South Africa might now have a constitution that enshrines the rights of gays and lesbians, but it was not always so. In this irreverent but historically accurate document, Achmat unpacks the little known, inexorably tangled, tragic and often ironic queer history of South Africa. It resets the landscape through interviews with present day activists Phumi Mtetwa, Kevan Botha, Beverley Myburgh, Edwin Cameron and Out in Africa’s Theresa Raizenberg, and re-enacted historical vignettes: The ‘gay’ affair of Dr. James Barry and Lord Charles Somerset, mock marriages between allegedly heterosexual miners, a tea party attended by Dr. Louis Leipoldt, and the pre-equality gay culture in District Six, among many others. An important film, cunningly presented, endlessly revealing, it reclaims and rewrites the place of gays and lesbians in history, presenting a new one that is celebrated, not criminalised or marginalised.