South African gays scored a coup when their country became the first to guarantee their rights in its constitution. Now they are gearing for a bigger fight: to change conservative attitudes.
South Africa scored a world first by adopting a constitution guaranteeing gay rights on May 8. A bill of rights guarantees all citizens equal rights and enables them to defend themselves against abuse by the state.
The bill prohibits the state from unfairly discriminating against, directly or indirectly, anyone on the grounds of gender, race, sex, pregnancy, marital status, ethnic or social origin, colour, sexual orientation, age, disability, religion, conscience, belief, culture or language.
It further notes that affirmative action may be implemented to "protect or advance persons, or categories of persons who are disadvantaged by unfair discrimination".
South Africa has outlawed discrimination against gays in the military. Gays are now set to challenge anti-gay legislation that exists on the statute books.
The acceptance of gay rights is a major victory for a small group of gay activists in the ruling African National Congress (ANC) who slotted them into the interim constitution. Indeed, it is a major turnaround for a country with a long history of homophobia and other forms of discrimination.
Gay people claim that in the past their sexual orientation got them kicked out of jobs or barred from certain fields, such as the military and intelligence. Their partners could neither share medical aid nor have succession rights over property when one partner died.
Marilyn Rose, editor of Outright, a gay rights publication, tells the tale of two male lovers who lived together for 27 years. Because they could not register a house they bought together in both their names, they put it in the younger partner's name. But after he died in an accident, his family, who had ostracised him since the relationship began, moved in and threw out the surviving partner. Such incidents should fade into the country's dark history, if gays win their next battle to change laws and society's attitudes.
"This is just the tip of the iceberg", notes Rose. "We still need to put up a big fight. You can still get arrested for lying in bed with someone you love, in the same way a black man would have been arrested if found with a white woman during apartheid."
The statute books still contain laws such as the Sexual Offences Act, which makes it a criminal offence to indulge in homosexual sex. "We still need to enact new legislation which would put into practice the guarantees provided by our constitution. Right now it's only on paper", says Clayton Wakeford of the National Coalition for Gay and Lesbian Equality.
Within the next six weeks the Coalition for Equality will be challenging some of the legislation through the court system, says Wakeford.
Correctional services minister Sipho Mzimela agrees that laws against homosexuality will have to be scrapped. His reasoning is mainly fuelled by a wish to distribute condoms in prisons as South Africa braces for a looming HIV explosion. Speaking in a parliamentary debate recently, Mzimela said it would be impossible for the state to distribute condoms while homosexuality remained illegal and in conflict with the country's constitution.
Gay South Africans must also overcome the hostility of a deeply conservative society. Leading liberation movement activists such as the Pan Africanist Congress' !Khoisan X (formerly Benny Alexander) consider homosexuality a decadent, imported sub-culture.
[Abridged from the ANC Daily Newsbriefing, May 22.]