12 November 2014
A year ago, Ntombikayise Matyumza of Jeffreys Bay in the Eastern Cape started a Facebook page aimed at gay and lesbian youth. Today she has more than 14,000 followers across the country.
The Confessions of a Bisexual Chick tells the tale of a character called Phumeza and her lifestyle, sexuality and experiences. It has become a platform for readers to communicate with Matyumza and with each other.
Her readers call her Phumeza, Mamzo (mother), or Maroza (a nickname) and she refers to them as her “babies”.
Matyumza says she started the page because she hated the way lesbians were portrayed as victims. “I am a lesbian and I started the page because I wanted to show people that we also live happy lives”.
“I felt we needed to stop telling homophobic people how to treat us. We keep on telling them to treat us like human beings and that are we no different from them but instead they keep treating us as if we’re aliens with some sort of disease. We just have to live life to the fullest and I preach this on my page”, says Matyumza.
One of the main messages she wants to put across is that lesbians shouldn’t behave like victims of crimes like homophobia.
Her page is also read by heterosexual people, like the reader who wrote to say she is straight but learning many things about life and social issues.
Matyumza says her parents separated when she was 13 and she and her brother lived with her grandmother in Port Elizabeth for a while, then with her mother and mother’s boyfriend, before moving back to Jeffreys Bay where she currently lives with her father and stepmother.
Matyumza says in her high school years she realised that she was attracted more to women than to men. “I find women more interesting and I am happy with the sexual choice I have made.”
She enjoys good music and she says that poetry is her first love. She is currently studying Environmental Health at Mahube Training and Development in Kouga Municipality.
Matyumza says she loves writing and hopes one day to write a book.
Her page attracts both applause and criticism. “I do not mind being criticised. It gives me a platform to improve and be challenged creatively.”
One of her readers posted:
Yaz diary yakho ingath uyibhala ngam sum tyms ndizbona ndilila xandiyfunda cz bangath ubalisa ibali lam whn pumeza was raped n gt pregnant ingath wawuthetha nam cz i went thru the same shit bt owam mntana died,pumeza dated her sista mna i dated my czn,mtshato ka pumeza vele watshintsha nje spacin nam relationship yam of 2years vele yaphela nge 2weeks. better person nw cz of idiary yakho i can safely say u are a true blessing kum n nakwabanye abantu keep writting uThixo akwandisele kwinto yonke n Thank you so much..
(When you write your diary it seems as if you are writing about me. Sometimes I see myself crying when you write about Phumeza and her rape and pregnancy. It seems as if it’s my story, but the difference is my baby died. My relationship of two years disappeared as if it had been for two weeks. Because of your diary I am a better person now and I can safely say you are a true blessing to me and to other people.)
Matyumza has written more than 100 episodes of the Phumeza “diary” and her readers are asking for more, but she believes that it is time for her to move on to write other things.
“I feel like the diary has reached its climax. But I am not going to forget where I started.”
She says she is working on a new page where she will tell new stories about gay and lesbian youth.
“I will start by exposing my untold life stories”.
“I can’t reveal much about it as it’s still early days”, she says.
Read Confessions of a Bisexual Chick on Facebook.