I am looking for pieces of myself in my mother’s tongue. I was named after an Irish Saint and I always knew it was an accident.

A category mistake is a matter of semantics and performance artist Mandla Rae is caught up in the issues of (mis)translation. They grew up Seventh Day Adventist and left the church when a deaconess pulled them aside and told them off for having an undercut: “it’s not a Christian haircut, you need to grow your hair back” she said. In an attempt to reconcile their guilt for choosing a life of sin, Mandla is looking for Zimbabwe’s queer history.

It used to be something I just accepted, without thinking too much about it. We just don’t have words for some things, so we use English. But how can a language that people still speak not be developing new words, surely that’s not the case? Why do I have to slip into isilungu when I want to talk about my queerness?

Mandla knows that BC (before colonialism) gay sex used was viewed as a form of spiritual rearmament in Zimbabwe. Ndebele men would have intercrural sex with each other before going off into battle and Mwari used to be an androgynous divinity.

All I’m looking for are the words. The gay sex was happening, how did we talk about it?

Credits

Written and Performed — Mandla Rae
Video editing — Tao-Anas Le Thanh
Captioning — Sarya Wu

Produced by Fringe of Colour for Fringe of Colour Films

Before the Applause

Listen to Mandla Rae and Briana Pegado talk about Category Mistake on Fringe of Colour’s very own podcast series and audio programme, available on Spotify or on your preferred platform.

Content warnings:
Contains reference to self harm.

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