He is wearing a well-cut black suit, its buttons undone to reveal a black T-shirt clinging to his taut body. Shaven-headed and moustached, he looks like one of the buppies who network at the Park Hyatt Hotel in Rosebank, Johannesburg.

But tonight he's unleashing his new elite super-confidence on the man he's jiving with at the Black Pride afterparty of the Gay Pride march.

The dance floor is packed. From the dread-locked trendy, his red tartan vest revealing pumping muscles, to the sweet-smiling girl in the loose shirt and jeans clutching her girlfriend, they're almost all gay, and black.

Some took part in the march earlier in the day. Then, the spirit of the motley crowd - from children and middle-aged gays and lesbians to the predictably outrageous drag queens, including some unexpectedly African-styled ones - was one of camaraderie. But come nighttime, it's different.

This year Gay Pride didn't organise an official afterparty, leaving it up to individual entrepreneurs. And the result shows a split. About 5 000 people, predominantly but not exclusively white, were at the six clubs/bars which make up the gay Heartland in Henri Street, Braamfontein. More than 1 000 were at the Black Pride party at the Horror Café in downtown Johannesburg.

It wouldn't be such a big deal if this weren't post-apartheid South Africa.

So why are black people hosting their own jol?

"It's a music thing," says 19-year-old Ishmail "Ish" Yoshen-McClean from Yeoville. The part-time film student who works on a gay website, sports a 24-carat diamond engagement ring from his lover, a rising soccer star. After the Pride march, they left what Ish calls "the black space" for "the white space".

Ish is black, even if he somewhat disparagingly refers to himself as an Oreo (like the biscuit, black on the outside and white on the inside) . His boyfriend is also black but for Ish that doesn't mean they have to party only with other black people.

"I'm famous, I know everyone there," he brags about his regular presence in the Heartland. Some people moan that the Heartland clubs discriminates against black people but Ish loves the music there.

"I have never had a problem at all," he says, although he admits some of his friends have been turned away from the door at Therapy, the only Heartland venue which has a cover charge. And only last weekend a patron claimed he was physically dragged out of Purple Fly by a bouncer who said they didn't want black people there.

Shane, co-owner of the Heartland, hotly denies his gay village is racist. (Surprisingly, he declines to reveal his surname or be photographed, saying he'll lose business in his other company which markets goods to a conservative sector of the community) .

"Heartland doesn't have a black club; we open our doors to anyone. We can see if a person is gay or not - we know our gay crowd here - but we do ask certain questions like what they read," he says. "It looks like it's racist when two to three guys get turned away at the door but what we won't tolerate is streetguys.

"We have 150 to 200 black people who are part of the Heartland family - doctors, lawyers," he says, adding that they turn away white people too if they feel they're not dressed "right".

Heartland patrons are never a lily-white crowd, but there are some who believe its management just hasn't recognised the new look of the rising middle-class black gay man.

And someone like Ish does make a concerted effort to conform to the Heartland look, even if it's a non-defined one. "I make sure when I go there that I look funky -- more than the white boys do," he says, referring to his image that includes bandanas and stetsons.

"I do not believe in Black Pride. I do not wish it to be encouraged ever again," says impish Ish, who says he welcomes the broad social trend towards living side by side.

But bubbly 30-something Cathay Trow, one of the trio behind Black Pride, is on a different tack.

"This whole buzz about the rainbow nation is nothing but a concept. We are diverse people and yes, as black people we do have our own tastes.

"Being black doesn't mean going in our skins and having a Shaka Zulu outfit in order to affirm our blackness," she says, pointing out Black Pride's Moulin Rouge theme.

"This Pride happened when we looked at the events created, events that the black community could not really enjoy themselves at," she says, referring to the inferior kwaito and R&B rooms at previous official Pride afterparties. "And it's definitely going to exist for a very long time," says Cathay who, although straight, chooses to work among gays because she sees it as part of human rights activism and an expression of tolerance.

Judging by Cathay and her friend's website, there is a strong need for a space where black gays and lesbians can interact. Billing itself as Africa's only black gay and lesbian site, outafrica.com has a database of more than 15 000 people. "And they're all middle class and educated," says its president, Andile Vinjiwe.

But it would be far too easy and simplistic to split gays and lesbians along race and class lines. As Daniel Somerville, one of the Gay Pride organisers, puts it: the only thing that separates homosexuals from heterosexuals is that they have consciously had to assess their sexual orientation. For the rest, they're diverse. "So you have gay gangsters, gay priests, lesbian sangomas and lesbian roadworkers," he rattles off.

Yet sometimes even the stereotype provides surprises. Flamboyant Zenja, dancing in a micro-mini and a flowing handkerchief-style top on the stage of Purple Fly, is a former first team rugby player and deputy head boy of his Boksburg school. For 22-year-old Zenja, alias Henning Joubert, being gay is his life. It's his work, his friends, everything he does.

Yet for others, it's just a small part of their identity. Many suburban 30-something gays and lesbians believe they're too divorced from what they call "the scene" to be interviewed about their homosexuality, as if their openly-gay lifestyles are not in themselves a form of activism.

Others don't see their sexuality as defining exclusively who they are.

Writer and journalist Mark Gevisser calls it "post-gay". He says he's happy to socialise anywhere, with two provisos: his homosexuality must not be regarded as an issue, and he must be able to express it freely. "I do think of myself as post-gay in that way. I don't need to be part of a gay subculture."

So what ever happened to the gay scene, the select clique?

The truth is there isn't one, and there never has been: there are many.

In 1994, Gevisser and Edwin Cameron, now a Constitutional Court judge, wrote in the collection of essays about South African gay and lesbian life they co-edited, Defiant Desire: ". . . there is no single, essential 'gay identity' in South Africa. What has passed for 'the gay experience' has often been that of white, middle-class urban men."

Today Gevisser says: "There are as many types of gay people in South Africa as there are people.

"Maybe as a result of the Constitution and the equality clause, there is more integration of gay identity and subculture into mainstream identity and culture, which I think is quite a good thing" -- a perception which suggests the concept of a gay community has eroded even more.

"In a society where there's discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, I do have something in common with the Afrikaans gay man from Pretoria and the lesbian from Katlehong.

"But in a society with no discrimination, we have little in common," Gevisser says.

Carrie Shelver, 28, director of The Lesbian and Gay Equality Project, agrees it's a good thing that there isn't a definable gay and lesbian community. "We would stand the risk of ghetto-ising ourselves," she says.

"Although it's simplistic to say so, the majority of gays and lesbians are black, poor and unemployed," she says, identifying the sector of society which is the most invisible.

Lesbians within that sector are probably the most invisible of all, but not if Nhlanhla Zwane of Kwa-Thema, on the East Rand, has her way.

Living with her 19-year-old school-going girlfriend, Thuli Msipha, in a backroom of the latter's family home, the 30-year-old family counsellor makes a point of living her life openly.

"When Thuli comes to fetch me at work, I'm not going to leave without kissing her. When we're next to the shop, I kiss her again."

"And," pipes up Thuli in her Equality Project T-shirt, "if they insult us, we kiss each other even more."

"Me and Thuli do what we want," says Nhlanhla, who stepped out of the closet when she was pregnant with her fourth child. "This is our life. I am free.

"I am in the struggle and I am going to make people understand and respect me. If I'm going to hide myself, nobody will respect me."

That's why she started the Kwa-Thema Gay and Lesbian Supporting Group in November last year. They meet once a fortnight at the community room of the Kwa-Thema Civic Centre and although they know they'd get more than a handful of participants if they included booze, Nhlanhla insists on keeping it a serious forum.

Nhlanhla and her friends, such as 28-year-old Norman Msiza, who swans around the township boasting his "Out and Proud" and "I can see Queerly Now" badges, live with daily insults such as stabane (moffie), trassie (a person with both sexual organs) and sis-boetie (sister-brother).

Although they didn't attend the Black Pride afterparty - Norman went to Therapy - they like the idea. Nhlanhla says it will help people understand that their sexual orientation is not a white thing, or even the "dirty thing that happens in Joburg" but is "also from our culture".

Compared with Nhlanhla and her friends's daily fights to be openly gay, those in the suburbs seem to have it easier - once they're crossed the hurdle of family acceptance.

Cindy Lee, 31, from Killarney, epitomises the word "kugel" as she zoots around town in her Mercedes SLK convertible and expensive clothes. But she doesn't think she's one. "Aren't kugels the women who depend on men?" she asks.

As her family have been surrounded by gays for years, she had no hassles "coming out" and says she doesn't live in a gay world. "If there is a gay community, they've forgotten to tell me," says the witty copywriter.

With this contrast of needs and priorities between the likes of Cindy and Nhlanhla, it's no wonder there isn't a unified gay movement.

In December 1994 various organisations came together to form The National Coalition for Gay and Lesbian Equality to lobby for the sexual orientation clause in the Constitution. But the diversity of its affiliates - from those who saw gay rights as part of the fight for human rights, to those who were more politically conservative - led to tensions.

Today there are four main disparate organisations, all in major cities, and no over-arching spokesperson.

"Is it ever possible to build a movement when looking at people across different social, economic, gender and race divides?" asks Carrie from The Equality Project. "It's a completely fragmented people."

She believes that a group like Nhlanhla's is one of the few which functions as a community.

But in this technological age, websites are starting to operate like organisations. Yeoville-based mask.org.za even includes an online counselling service and, with 2 000 to 3 000 hits per day, it's attracting attention and proving that, despite our progressive Constitution, some people will always need a forum.

The stories on the website from the rest of Africa, such as Uganda where gays and lesbians face life-time imprisonment if exposed, are horrifying.

But is South Africa that different? Has the new Constitution changed people's lives?

Discrimination still rules. From the lesbian who, when she was being gang-raped in Kwa-Thema, was told it was because her attackers wanted to see if she had male and female sexual organs; to the British guy who, when applying for permanent residence on the basis of his South African partner, watched as a Home Affairs official took a lighter and burnt his application form.

Perhaps Nhlanhla is right when she says that, despite benefits such as a medical aid for same-sex spouses, little has changed because "we don't exercise our rights".

Click here for a picture gallery and the diaries of the journalists involved in the Living Here series .