One of the residents arrived at the shelter after fleeing a small town in KwaZulu-Natal where her life was threatened.It is not what I expected. The address is correct. But as I stand outside the tiny, nondescript house from which the laughter of women sounds, nothing about it hints that it is a shelter — especially not one for destitute queer people.
On the day I meet them, the women are gathered in a three-bedroom house in Ekurhuleni, east of Johannesburg, to pray for the newly established queer shelter, Turning Tides. “After that, I’ve been renting out the house,” Msezane says, “but the tenants have treated it badly. You know, the last tenants, after they left, I found footprints with mud on the ceiling. The sink was rotten. I have spent so much money on this house.”
Unathi became homeless in 2020 because of “the abuse and rejection that I endured at home”. Reaching out to her friends and people on social media, she gathered enough money to secure temporary shelter. But in 2021, she was yet again without a home. “It was then that I was fortunately referred to the shelter by [activist and filmmaker] Bev Ditsie.”
“Here, it’s just like a family unit. Yes, everybody has their own issues. But it’s not like it was before, where you feel like you are an outsider. You feel like you don’t belong, you know? And I think that’s been one of my things: belonging.” Running a shelter is not only physically and emotionally taxing, it also costs a lot. “We run this on a wing and a prayer,” Nandi says, adding that the shelter has secured some funding from grant-making organisation The Other Foundation, their only donor so far. They would like to build partnerships with companies that have a commitment to LGBTQIA+ work.
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