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You Have to Be Gay to Know God

Siya Khumalo

3.79 · Rating details · 63 ratings · 8 reviews

Siya Khumalo grew up in a Durban township where one sermon could whip up a lynch mob against those considered different. Drawing on personal experience - his childhood, life in the army, attending church, and competing in pageants - Khumalo explores being LGBTQI+ in South Africa today. In 'You Have to Be Gay to Know God', he takes us on a daring journey, exposing the inter ...more

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ebook, 288 pages

Published April 12th 2018 by Kwela

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May 26, 2019 Gerhard rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 2019, favorites, gay-interest, africa

I must confess to not having heard about Siya Khumalo before reading this book. The book did shout out to me when I first saw it at Exclusive Books, and I am glad that I read it. It is a telling reminder of how much South African literature has changed post-1994, and yet how much it still remains the same.

Decades after democracy, authors (and readers) are still debating race and the legacy of apartheid. What fascinates – and haunts – Khumalo though is the intersection of race, religion, sex, and I must confess to not having heard about Siya Khumalo before reading this book. The book did shout out to me when I first saw it at Exclusive Books, and I am glad that I read it. It is a telling reminder of how much South African literature has changed post-1994, and yet how much it still remains the same.

Decades after democracy, authors (and readers) are still debating race and the legacy of apartheid. What fascinates – and haunts – Khumalo though is the intersection of race, religion, sex, and politics. He tackles this subject in what can only be described in the form of an anti-biography.

I do not think I know Khumalo any better as a person after reading this. Much of the detail in a conventional biography is only paid lip service to, and it is hard at times to work out the actual chronology. What emerges is a dialectic between Khumalo and South African society, which makes for some dry and dense sections, particularly towards the end.

The chapter on his experiences at the SANDF in Lohatla in the Northern Cape will ring true to anyone who was conscripted (I initially ended up at 2 Field Engineer Regiment at Bethlehem in the Free State). Khumalo writes poignantly about his childhood and his own tortuous coming-out process, which is contrasted specifically against the patriarchy inherent in African culture and monotheistic religions.

Then, out of the blue, there is a chapter called ‘Love’. “I have loved many times” is the opening sentence. Khumalo then launches into an extended description of sexual intimacy with a single individual. No detail is spared. But instead of coming across as gay porn, which it definitely borders on, this is an incredibly beautiful and vulnerable piece of writing that haunts the reader until the confession right at the end. It shows how powerful a role sexual union plays in bonding a loving couple.

Khumalo then offers a dual analysis of the South African political scene pre- and post- Mbeki, offering his take on why JZ was so popular and infallible – not even rape, corruption charges, and State capture seemed to have fazed him. He also swings by the Garden of Eden to explain how the story of the fall of Adam and Eve actually began the systemic subjugation of women in Christianity, by rendering sexuality a subject of shame and interrogation.

Perhaps Khumalo’s writing is most powerful and angry when he tackles toxic masculinity in South African society, where the incidents of violence and rape against women and children remains unacceptably high. So where does gay rights fit into this picture, which Khumalo calls “the handmaiden of oppression”?

It is precisely because gay rights intersects with so many other issues such as race, sex, and religion that makes it such a powerful rallying call. Despite having it enshrined in the Constitution, the ruling ANC has gone on record as saying the issue is an ‘import’ from the West, that gays and lesbians cannot be perceived as ‘normal’, and that they have no reason to whinge or feel oppressed because they are all wealthy and privileged (white) citizens.

What about the gangs that rove the poverty-stricken and crumbling townships to ‘hunt down’ African lesbians? And how can you possibly come out as a proud African if you are black, poor, and unemployed? (Khumalo also has a go at the DA for using its ‘we are proudly gay-supporting’ as a Trojan Horse to secure its ‘liberal’ credentials.) It is against this context that Mbeki’s famous “I am an African” speech becomes so politically and socially explosive.

Seeing neither redress nor justice in the law, a considerable number of black families tapped into government corruption as one of their revenue streams. Their livelihoods depended on the unconstitutional amalgamation of powers and the cross-pollination of illegal favours across different arms of government. They took the neutered, decentralised state, and made it stand, masculinised. They took the Constitution, which was the castrated Freedom Charter embodied by the mellowed Nelson Mandela administration, and stuck a penis back on it.

Lo and behold, they’d created President Jacob Zuma, the subject of a 2012 painting named ‘The Spear [of the Nation]’ by Cape Town-based artist, Brett Murray. With him in power, this idea of gender equality and gay rights could be disparaged in the open.

Zuma, of course, was himself implicated in a rape scandal. Khumalo also references the horrific July 2013 incident when Duduzile Zozo was found murdered with a toilet brush shoved up her vagina. Hence I am sure this book is bound to generate a lot of debate, which is probably Khumalo’s intention.

We cannot claim to be living up to the ideals of our Constitution if women like Zozo can be murdered simply for their sexual preferences. Lingering in the background is the issue that women who can enjoy sex without men render the role of men meaningless. This institutionalised patriarchy is used to justify all sorts of horrors against some of our most defenceless citizens, our women and children, in the name of the state, the pulpit, and in the name of men. Khumalo’s rallying cry to us all, as victims and perpetrators alike, is an incendiary one: ‘SAY MY NAME!’ ...more

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Aug 05, 2018 Mish Middelmann rated it really liked it

A timely and beautifully written book, full of sharp wit, brilliant commentary, intellectual and political challenge and touching personal experience. I am so glad he persevered to write this book. It's in three parts...

Part One: what it is like growing up gay, black and Christian in South Africa. It is such a painful split – both unfolding a passionate self emerging and “by definition” believing that it is wrong to be gay. Khumalo is lucid about the experience of his sexuality from the first pa A timely and beautifully written book, full of sharp wit, brilliant commentary, intellectual and political challenge and touching personal experience. I am so glad he persevered to write this book. It's in three parts...

Part One: what it is like growing up gay, black and Christian in South Africa. It is such a painful split – both unfolding a passionate self emerging and “by definition” believing that it is wrong to be gay. Khumalo is lucid about the experience of his sexuality from the first pangs of piercing desire and fantasies to the hot satisfaction of consummating loving sexual relationships with men. And in the midst of lightness and joking, he reveals the deep pain of being seen as bad and other – and of doubting and blaming himself.

This in turn drives his theological passion for a redemptive love and acceptance that belongs to all, and his rage at the hypocrisy of forgiving heterosexual violence and abuse while condemning homosexual love.

Part Two was for me a bit of a digression into the celebrity life of the author as columnist, gay pageant winner and popular commentator. What stands out is both the fun and the edginess of life as a famous flaming gay. What I missed was the depth and reflectiveness that was so strongly and beautifully written into Part One.

Part Three works the theological and moral issues in a bit more detail. It’s filled with darting critiques well expressed through Khumalo’s razor-sharp mind and brilliant prose, yet sometimes I felt he dropped the intensity when following through to the consequences of his analyses. He works up to some sharp and fascinating final chapters drawing parallels between the corruption in the Jerusalem religious establishment at the time of Jesus’ crucifixion, and the tangled mess of South African politics within and beyond the ANC of today.

While I am not well enough versed in Christian history and theology to address its finer points as he does, I found food for thought in some of his broader direction. Here’s how he builds on the understanding that racism is one familiar face of a comprehensive set of social constructs that combine to legitimate and perpetuate social and economic inequality:

For Khumalo, homophobia is “the handmaiden of all oppressions.” This is because he finds homophobia deeply linked to a fear of male vulnerability, and the promotion of male aggression. He sees many men and women preferring to uphold male aggression and defendedness as “the natural order” and so fearing and resisting acceptance and vulnerability. He also links it to the heterosexual male “Madonna/whore” complex.

The consequences around the world of leaders refusing to own vulnerability and accept otherness are plain to see. For Khumalo, the fear of these natural and normal parts of life and leadership drives homophobia at a deep level: being physically penetrated by a man is a powerful archetypal experience of receiving and being vulnerable to another person. He traces oppression of heterosexual women and gay men back to revulsion for the vulnerability of allowing and enjoying the experience of being sexually penetrated.

He ties this back to the “support Zuma to the death” phenomenon especially amongst Zulu people: “we would rather die than find fault with our leader.”

In the last few chapters Khumalo goes further into a radical analysis of the neo-liberal shortcomings of South Africa’s constitution – and then makes the telling point that trashing the constitution for its imperfections and its liberalism could easily open the door to a far more repressive regime where minorities of all sorts including gay people are abused far more than under the current dispensation. And ultimately for Khumalo, “minorities … are everyone” – in the sense that an injury to one is an injury to all. Yes!

I am not sure I ever read the words of the title in the body of the book, but the core idea suffuses the entire book: a redemptive god of love welcomes all those who love and all those who move mountains in order to love. In some deep way I get it: Being gay [or oppressed in some way] helps a person to know God. ...more

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Jul 28, 2018 Tiah added it · review of another edition

~The English teacher had told the girls in our class, 'You must run away from a man until you catch him.' I wasn't a girl, but I liked men and I took great notes.~

~If religion, politics and sex were the three things that weren't spoken of in polite company, we were all dying of politeness.~

~'Boys will be boys' really means women are expected to keep patriarchy's tools sharpened by offering their bodies as whetstones: to keep patriarchy's archers competent by offering themselves for target practi ~The English teacher had told the girls in our class, 'You must run away from a man until you catch him.' I wasn't a girl, but I liked men and I took great notes.~

~If religion, politics and sex were the three things that weren't spoken of in polite company, we were all dying of politeness.~

~'Boys will be boys' really means women are expected to keep patriarchy's tools sharpened by offering their bodies as whetstones: to keep patriarchy's archers competent by offering themselves for target practice. Then the patriarchy can co-opt women's bodies into military training and turn around to dump the blame on them for their rape. 'She wore a short skirt'...And when we fail to protect the LGBTI community, we fail to save anyone else from patriarchy's violence either.~

~When humans enthrone a probable rapist and trust in his impenetrability to make them impregnable, they are thrust into by its repercussions: his rapist impulse. When they surrender scapegoats on the altar of his homophobia and misogyny, they open the collective up for violation.~

~Randall Blamer, wrote of a time when Evangelical Christianity wasn't obsessed with abortion. Then evangelical leaders seized on abortion as a hot-button issue not for moral reasons, 'but as a rallying-cry to deny President Jimmy Carter a second term' because 'the anti-abortion crusade was more palatable than the religious right's real motive: protecting segregated schools.' . . . When push came to shove, the issue wasn't 'religious liberties' at all. It was good ol' racism. To this day, the majority of black people I meet don't think the homophobia I've experienced is connected to the racism they're oppressed by. But homophobia is to racism what appetisers are to mains.~

~The blasphemer who condemns gays in the name of God loves neither gays nor God. No one who hates his brother, whom he has seen, can claim to love God, whom he has not seen. For all we know, God could be lesbian.~

~Where there is a suicidal writer, there is faith that there will be a reader even when one hasn't appeared yet.~ ...more

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Mar 06, 2020 Zuki Bolani Buthelezi rated it it was amazing

Shelves: afro_freedom-book-club

Great book. You laugh out loud on the funny parts and cry tears on the sad parts. Well done to Siya for allowing us into his life, his thoughts, his fears and achievements. Beautyfully written.Siya Khumalo ...more

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Mar 17, 2019 Letlhogonolo Mokgoroane rated it really liked it

There are many reflections about this book. All- in - all I think it is a necessary book that deserves to be given attention. It is not a gay book. It is a memoir that reflects on the state of the nation, homophobia, sexism, religion and patriarchy. Siya’s thoughts on patriarchy are interesting.

I got to speak to Siya about this book, here is the episode: https://soundcloud.com/user-404664175... ...more

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Aug 01, 2020 Charlotte Luzuka rated it liked it

3.5 ⭐️

“I don’t share these stories about my colleagues for judgement’s sake. When we weren’t whipping out knives or racial slurs at one another, we were developing a shared sense of unconditional acceptance. It was what it was.”

This was an enjoyable read, it questioned so much in new ways and you could see a lot of thought and research was put into it.

Siya is a formidable writer and clearly a genius, so some concepts went over my head whenever you became technical. I do think he could turn some ...more

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Nov 24, 2020 HyeJin Starlight rated it it was ok

Shelves: autobiographical, queer-books, south-african, black-writers, owned

Check my video review here: https://youtu.be/duaT9tgsUh0

Overall, this book - while meant to be a memoir - did not deliver. While the topics itself are both important and interesting, its writing style is very inconsistent. It starts in a typical memoir fashion, but switches half way to a more journalistic/essay monograph. It has far too many end notes that break the flow of the text, especially if one is not familiar with specific issues and events in South African history...

I would recommend th ...more

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