Writer: Noluvuyo Mjoli | Photographs: Cottonbro Studio
This is a reflection about using toilets in Durban clubs. I have observed the treatment of women at bars and clubs in metropolitan and township spaces of Durban, especially of the LGBTQI community. I have been staying in Durban for three years now. I keep noting how aggressive and dangerous the guys at the door (bouncers) are. On two occasions, I have been physically violated. On the first, I was beaten up for peeing in the male restroom. The second time, they abused me and two other ladies for entering a toilet dorm in a group.
While born and raised in the South Coast region of this province, I spent the rest of my pre-teen and teenage years in the east of Johannesburg. My student days and early 20s were all spent in central Cape Town. I briefly stayed in the Cape Flats too, but ran back quickly to central. I returned to Johannesburg when I was approaching my thirties, returning to the southern parts. I am here now, approaching my mid-30s, and also thinking about calling it quits with the nightlife.
I am making these specific regional markers for a reader who travels around a lot. With travelling, one’s eyes are open to how East Joburgers behave in comparison to how the northern, southern, and greater outskirts of that very city would behave. This is often taken for granted, especially by Westerners when they name-drop about the kinds of people they have met when they have visited one specific part of a country only once. I blame the Denver Expedition for this.
I have certainly had my fair share with Cape Town and Johannesburg’s night lives, but it is nothing compared to Durban’s. There are groove activities left, right, and centre! People take out personal loans in Durban just to afford an endless weekend of outings. Kuyabhengwa eThekwini akudlalwa! People go to groove even on Tuesday nights, some still carrying the skhaftin they had taken to work. There are even kasi set-ups that reserve a place for you to freshen up and iron your clothes, because the bash begins on a Thursday and finishes sometime in the early hours of Monday.
One thing I note about the conduct of bouncers around here is that, whilst any club’s security personnel is expectedly tough and very unapproachable, I find those here conducting their business with cruelty, antagonism, and extreme violence and aggression. The men that guard the doors in the fountains we drink in execute their work with fierce violence. It matters very little whether you are a woman—when they beat, they beat you up and then toss you out of their premises.
On two separate occasions, I have witnessed the harshness of the bouncers. In 2023, at a club known as Koko’s, two husky men threw one heavy punch on each side of my face for, apparently, ‘thinking I am a man’ by using the male toilets. This is behaviour I was used to: at Piggs and Swizzle, at Kitcheners, and in clubs in Berlin, I always entered any unoccupied toilet I found. I prefer male toilets because they are never crowded. Female ones are always full of women who take long pisses, women who scroll through their phones amidst the long queue. Others do their make-up and change their sanitary pads for centuries. Above all, they are always dirty, and, if unlucky, blocked with Einstein’s faeces.
And so, on this night, it did not occur to me that Durbanites take this distinction to heart. I still doubt very much that one would be punched, later pepper-sprayed, and chucked out of the club for a mere wrong toilet piss. Another part of this issue had to do with the fact that I was wearing a Yoruba-designed hat. I was therefore mistaken for a ‘kwerekwere’. KwaZulu-Natal has a present history with Afrophobia. I will delve into that someday.
The second violent encounter I had with bouncers in this city was this year, at the Durban July After Party at another big establishment named Exit. There, the place was overcrowded. I have no doubt that they made over R50k just on that night’s presence alone. Likewise, with club owners and their greed, the toilets are few and barely accommodate the number of people. My amnesia with Koko’s led me once more to risk entering the male toilet. There were fewer people there, as usual. This time, two brave ladies entered too. We then decided to form a women’s league, thus locking ourselves in one of the toilets, just to keep the hissing dicks’ complaints out. Singakaliginyi, gqi the bouncers! They were two, like the last time.
One was very furious; his nostrils were having a heart attack. He appeared by the window, pushed it open, threw a violent finger, and threatened to unlock the door. I suddenly froze. I was taken back to my two attackers. I could feel the fear and intimidation he was sending out, but I did not back down. I straightened my head and told him that would not be happening. I then pointed to the woman whose buttocks were still uncovered from the piss she was still taking. He was frantic for a good 60 seconds. It felt longer. He finally pushed the door, despite it being locked, and dragged us out like three naughty children. In the first attack, they also dragged me out. My body was mopping dirty, alcohol-smelling floors all the way to the door, where they threw me and then kicked my ‘Nigerian’ hat before spraying my eyes with acid. I was in agony for a good 30 minutes, unable to see or walk anywhere.
This time, the two bouncers dragged the three of us to a distance and then put us through an interrogation. One said we had locked ourselves in so that we could take cocaine lines. The other accused me of trying to fuck the feminine-looking women. Again, like the bouncers at Koko’s, he assumed I was trying to be a man just for being queer. That is another issue I will delve into one day—Durban and its intolerance of gay women.
These two incidents are not the only times I have violently engaged with bouncers. I have picked these two because they are unbearable to the memory. There were times when I was lifted and thrown out for being aggressive to men who try to grab you while you dance, or for men who try and steal your stoko when they can’t seem to be getting any. Ultimately, I have never been handled this violently anywhere else but here. The Covid shutdown soldiers that used to beat us for not wearing masks do not come close to this experience. Not even when I was at fault at Zevolis in Cape Town for being found making out with another stud in the female toilet. I am indeed troubled by the pitbull behaviour of bouncer men in the clubs of Durban. It must be checked. People have also been beaten to death by these bouncers, and these cases disappear.
