Abstract
This article assesses some recurrent criticisms, based on respect for traditional culture, levelled at art works that thematise non-heteronormative gender positionalities in South Africa. More specifically, it reconsiders the stormy, local reception of the South African movie Inxeba (The Wound), a queer love story set in the context of the male initiation rites of the Xhosa community. The article focuses on criticisms of the movie based on the alleged misrepresentation and misappropriation of indigenous cultural practices. It aims to reflect on the complicated knot of problematics that queer artists and activists have to navigate in South Africa, including entrenched heteronormative traditions, but also multiculturality and racial privilege. New ways of negotiating these problematics are proposed through the development of a more complex topographical account of the intersections of multiple forms of marginality, as well as through the application of multiculturalist theories regarding ways to assist oppressed minorities in traditional cultures.