NPR

PHOTOS: Drag Queens In South Africa Embrace Queerness And Tradition

Even though they face discrimination, they proudly embrace their heritage in the way they dress.
Belinda Qaqamba Ka-Fassie poses at a community space where women cook and sell meat. She started drag as an escape from oppression she felt at Stellenbosch University for being "black, Xhosa, poor, queer and effeminate." "It is through pageantry and performance that I became more inclined with my queerness and how boundless expression should be," she says. "Drag became the therapist I never had."

When Belinda Qaqamba Ka-Fassie dresses in drag, she doesn't typically go for on the sequins and feather boas worn by performers on . A post-graduate student of education at Stellenbosch University in Cape Town, South Africa, Ka-Fassie might put on a dress that resembles the white blanket typically worn by boys at a traditional male circumcision ritual, called and she might add a multi-colored headpiece and beaded stick,

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