Chapter 7: Black Queer Lockdown: An Analysis of Johannesburg Black Queer Joy, Home and Isolation Narratives During the COVID-19 Pandemic

This chapter sought to identify how Black queer people in Johannesburg experienced queer joy, home and isolation during the Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) lockdown in the city. Queer lockdown is a key site of this chapter’s inquiry. Using 20 semi-structured interviews with Black queer people in Johannesburg and archival research, the research found that there were nuanced accounts of joy, home and isolation as narrated by participants during the COVID-19 pandemic. There was a general understanding among some Black queer people in Johannesburg that while the pandemic escalated the negative experiences and discrimination of Black queer people, they were able to exhibit queer joy and also queer meanings of home and isolation through their individual and collective agency. The chapter identified queer agency on social media as one of the strategies Black queer people used to create a third space of queer joy, solidarity and belonging during lockdown. Overall, while the chapter posited that COVID-19 in South Africa led to some shifts in the way queer people have always understood and experienced joy, home and isolation, it remembers that the Black queer body is normatively associated with contagion. It is only that, with the pandemic’s spread, contagion became a universal common denominator that required curbing.