Margins For Error is a cultural programme running from 22nd to 30th November 2025, in Johannesburg.
All events are free! All we ask is that you RSVP
This programme intends to celebrates the social impact of cultural work created by queer artists, writers and activists. Across Africa, queer organisations, authors, and publishers face persistent barriers to the distribution of their work, due to censorship, oppressive laws, and limited access to resources.
Programme Overview
In November 2025, The Pan Africa Ilga (PAI) Conference will be hosted in Johannesburg. The conference is a regional convening of queer activists, organisers, grant-makers and community leaders from across Africa, who come together to consider strategies for building a more just and inclusive society.
To coincide with this moment, GALA Queer Archive is hosting this satellite programme that highlights South Africa's queer arts and culture sector, and creates space for exchange and solidarity with our comrades across the continent.
Screening
Join us for a screening of 3 short documentaries from Mauritius, Mozambique and UK/Somalia.
Stories | Lives | Love (13:23) A montage of beautiful videos by Out Moris, a LGBTQIA+ human rights organisation based in Mauritius.
Dhexdiina Jooga [present among you] (10:40) Directed by Abdimalig Ahmed. This documentary, and the larger body of work it belongs to, was created in collaboration with the Somali LGBTQ+ collective BAXSAN. It explores aspects of what it means to be a queer Somali Muslim person in the UK today. Through community-led storytelling, the work conveys the nuances of our identities — their joys, frustrations, resistance, and hope. In this documentary, I wanted to return to the Somali tradition of oral storytelling: speaking and listening. A sense of dignity and identity ownership emerges through the visual, abstract shots, which refuse to be obscured once more by distorted voices or shadows. As a result, the focus shifts from what you see to what you hear. As a witness, I ask that you sit, listen, and hear us.
Cherry Sasha (13:53) A short documentary, presented by LAMBDA, about Cherry Sasha, A Drag Queen in Mozambique.
Screening | Reading | Performance
Screening: 3 Student Films
Lilita, a young university student, longs for comfort in his body and ultimately, within himself. Through intimate diary sessions, candid conversations, and deeply personal reflections, Mirror Him invites audiences into different spheres of Lilita’s life.
Screening | Discussion
A documentary about Kai ‘Stud Slayer’ Brown, a queer icon who defied societal norms around Black masculine women. Featuring intimate interviews and bold storytelling, Slayed: The Untold Story offers an unparalleled glimpse into the life of a trailblazer who defies traditional views on masculinity and love.
Corner Jorissen and Bertha streets. Braamfontein.
Screening
Dive into the stories of queer Africans leading incredible lives. This documentary takes you on a journey not only of the trials and tribulations but also explores the power, paths to pleasure and triumphs of LGBTQI+ people on the continent. From pilots to pole dancers, drag kings to doctors and everything in between, far from being on the outskirts of African societies, queer people lay at the heart of the zeitgeist. They are living beautifully rich lives, adding to the past, present and future of Africa.
Uno & Hatago (48:49). A portrayal of the trauma and triumph of a young lesbian couple in Namibia as they challenge socio-cultural norms and overcome prejudice and violence in their quest to build the life and the country of their dreams. English and Otjiherero with subtitles.
Date: Wednesday 26 November 2025
Time: 18h00 - 20h00
Venue: The Bioscope. 44 Stanley Ave. Milpark
Screening | Discussion
Through interviews with the activists who lived it, MaThoko's Children chronicles the triumphs and tribulations of a community that, even after apartheid's fall, continues to bravely confront the realities of LGBTQIA+ people. This film is a testament to their enduring fight for safety, dignity, and liberation, ensuring MaThoko's legacy and the foundational struggle for queer rights in South Africa are never forgotten.
Threading Self: A Collaborative Publication Day
6 Verwey St, Troyeville
Join us for a day of collaborative publishing! On the 30th of November, we will be gathering for a day of printing, publication, music and conversation. Block off your calendars from 10:00 a 19:00 for a day at KingKong Building in Troyeville, with Keleketla library
Contributors and collaborators to be announced!
“Threading Self through Existing Publications” is a participatory art installation that explores the queer archive through publication. Instead of reading books in their entirety, we invite visitors to engage with fragments, excerpts, visuals, and texts. INVADE_, our riso masters, will be onsite to facilitate the use of fragments to collage and print collectively, weaving an evolving narrative from existing materials and layering new new meaning.
For any further enquiries, email: galaarchives@gmail.com
Margins for Error acknowledges the vital role of the experimental, unfinished, and uncharted processes when chasing dreams of freedom and equality. The impact of creative production in socio-political movements is difficult to measure, yet we know that it holds a profound, transcendent power to move, affect, and inspire.
Designed as a space for queer creators and activists, Margins for Error fosters generative conversations responding to cultural production within and for queer communities. The programme encourages engagement with queer experiences, ideas, and aspirations through diverse creative processes.
The title of the programme gestures to the multiplicity of communities that it speaks to, the marginalised. It also considers the spaces where innovation and experimentation thrive despite ongoing neglect, as the artistic output produced by/for/about queer experiences tend to be made independently and with limited resources.
In quantitative research, absolute accuracy is understood to be unattainable. Thus, the margin of error represents the range where the truth is predicted to be found. In queer organising, our freedoms are measured by the laws, policies, or societal structures that support equal rights, yet we are too aware that the lived experiences rarely reflect those yardsticks. Margins For Error explores how cultural productions could be the uncertain range that represents a more genuine depiction of the queer communities’ experiences.