Defiant Desire records the lives of lesbian and gay South Africans of all races, lived in the face of censure, denial and oppression, from a drag salon in Woodstock to a gay shebeen in kwaThema; from a church in a Pretoria nightclub to Johannesburg's lesbian and gay pride march; and from Afrikaans love poetry to the new activism. Defiant Desire brings together South Africa's most prominent gay and lesbian writers, activists and academics. The contributors set out to refute beliefs that homosexuality is a white, male or middle-class phenomenon. Their writing makes clear and vibrant the...

When Edwin Cameron announced to a stunned local and international media that he - one of South Africa's most prominent citizens - was himself living with the virus cutting swathes through the population of the continent, the impact was immediate. In Witness to AIDS, Edwin Cameron's compelling memoir, he grapples with the meaning of HIV/AIDS: for him as he confronts the possibility of his own lingering death, and for all of us in facing up to one of the most desperate challenges of our time. In his intensely personal account of survival, Cameron blends elements of his destitute childhood with...