Pride and struggle: gendered and sexual freedoms in south africa
- Episode 24- Transcript
Georgie Williams, voiceover: Trigger warnings for this episode include the discussion of drug overdose, drink spiking, suicide, murder, police brutality, torture, surgery, castration, racism, transphobia and homophobia. Please proceed with caution.
Nelson Mandela, speech: We dedicate this day to all the heroes and heroines in this country and the rest of the world who sacrificed in many ways and surrendered their lives so that we could be free. Their dreams have become reality. Freedom is their reward. We are both humbled and elevated by the honour and privilege that you, the people of South Africa, have bestowed on us, as the first President of a united, democratic, non-racial and non-sexist South Africa, to lead our country out of the valley of darkness. We understand it still that there is no easy road to freedom. We know it well that none of us acting alone can achieve success. We must therefore act together as a united people, for national reconciliation, for nation building, for the birth of a new world. Let there be justice for all. Let there be peace for all. Let there be work, bread, water and salt for all. Let each know that for each the body, the mind and the soul have been freed to fulfil themselves. Never, never and never again shall it be that this beautiful land will again experience the oppression of one by another and suffer the indignity of being the skunk of the world. The sun shall never set on so glorious a human achievement! Let freedom reign. God bless Africa!
Georgie Williams, voiceover: When you think of South Africa, where in history does your mind go? For many residing outside of this country, there is one period in South Africa’s history that will be the first port of call- the era of Apartheid. Spanning from 1948 to the early 1990s, most adults in the contemporary world will have been exposed to South Africa through the lens of this violent political struggle. The Apartheid system, conceived on the foundations of brutal, dehumanising racial inequality, came to an end with the first South African multiracial election in 1994- through which the African National Congress took political power, under the guidance of President Nelson Mandela. For many outsiders, their awareness of South African history ends here.
But the end of Apartheid- and the achievement of that end- is a complex story within which the fight for human rights is a multifaceted, interwoven tapestry. To understand South Africa today is to delve into what has been achieved in the past 30 years of political resistance- to understand how the political climate of this diverse, often-misunderstood and misrepresented country- has evolved in the wake of momentous social change. In this episode we will explore how gender and sexuality equality were matters ingrained within the fight for racial equality and justice during Apartheid- and what gender and sexuality expression looks like today- beyond the borders of race. Across time periods, political parties, across cultures and backgrounds, we are going to the heart of the fight for gendered and sexual freedoms in South Africa. Welcome to Episode 24 of /Queer. You’re here with me, your host, Georgie Williams.
For the final few months of travel for Season Two of the /Queer project, we made land in South Africa- having started out first in Cape Town before heading inland. Our base for over two months was to be Johannesburg- and this felt like a good location from which to enact our boots-on-the-ground approach to this research. Johannesburg is South Africa’s largest city, with an inner city & metropolitan area population of 11 million. Approximately 64% of the population are Black Africans- a small number of whom are migrants from neighbouring countries such as Lesotho, Botswana and Mozambique. Of the twelve official languages of South Africa, Zulu is the most widespread first language of Joburg’s residents, followed by English.
Understanding Johannesburg as a concentrated- if not wholly representative- sample of wider South Africa is important to this episode because it represents both a hub of inequality but also a site of historical and contemporary resistance of said inequality. In this episode our intentions will be to, as best as possible, look at South Africa’s journey of social justice- and some of our examples will centre around historical events both in the city of Johannesburg and in the nearby administrative capital of the country, Pretoria.
In our previous episode, our first in South Africa, I talked about positionality- and how my individual lens as a white, half-South African, queer researcher may influence the analyses and findings conveyed in the content of these episodes. I would like to take the chance to reiterate that, as we delve deeper into the sociopolitical complexities underpinning the experiences of modern day South Africans. There are aspects of life in South Africa which are unknown and unknowable to me, based on my background- and as you consume the content presented in this episode I would ask you to remain mindful of how race, colonialism, nationalism and social class are factors deeply influencing matters of gender and sexuality inequality.
If you are unfamiliar with South Africa’s history of Apartheid, it would be impossible to succinctly summarise this period in the space of one podcast episode. Apartheid is an Afrikaans word which translates in English as apartness or apart-hood. This term was used to describe a system of widespread racial segregation in South Africa imposed for over 40 years until the early 1990s. This was a minoritarian system- meaning that the minority population of White South Africans held all socioeconomic and political power during this period. A hierarchy existed with white citizens at the top, followed by Indians, Asians and ‘Coloureds’- a term still used to describe citizens of mixed racial ancestry- with Black South Africans at the very bottom. This system was resisted and protested by many groups throughout this period of violent inequality- amongst these protests was the Soweto Uprising of 1976, where Black school children- in one of the poorest townships of Johannesburg, Soweto- peacefully protested the enforcement of Afrikaans as the language of instruction in their schools. This language was predominantly spoken by White and Coloured South Africans, and on the day that around 20,000 secondary school students took to protesting this imposition, the police responded with a level of brutality so severe that, to this day, only an estimation has been made of the number of fatalities. Some of these estimations are as high as 700 victims, some as young as twelve years of age.
Social activism in South Africa has, especially for those most marginalised, often come at a heavy cost. During my time in Joburg I was driven past the Johannesburg Central Police Station many times- my chaperone was Nikki Coward, an editor at Newzroom Afrika, who was an invaluable source of local history. The first time we drove past, Nikki pointed out the slats mounted over the exterior facade of the building- and mentioned how before their installation, Joburg police had been known, during Apartheid, to throw anti-Apartheid activists from the windows to their deaths. Of the 73 known deaths of activists in police custody during this period, 8 of these deaths occurred just on the grounds of Joburg’s police station. Even deaths reported as suicides were retroactively reclassified as induced suicides due to the extensive use of torture uncovered during post-Apartheid investigations. Resisting social inequality in South Africa has, even in very recent history, been an incredibly dangerous practice.
In the face of these dangers, South Africa’s emergence from the Apartheid system is best understood as the fruits of tireless efforts by prominent activists. Since the end of Apartheid, the push for equality outside of the scope of racial equality has continued- and, like many countries around the world, the early 2000s was a period which shaped South Africa’s reputation for LGBTQ+ rights. Some of the voices behind this period of transformation are better known than others; and the voice you’ll be hearing next is one whose contributions are both of great significance and have received very little coverage in the arena of South Africa’s struggle for LGBTQ+ rights.
Mark Gory, in interview: Hello everyone. My name is Mark Gory and I'm currently 61, so [indiscernible]. I'm a South African. I belong to the Caucasian grouping, if you're interested in that, and I identify as a gay man. I'm a restaurateur, I mess with food, I live my life with my dogs and my old cars.
Georgie Williams, voiceover: As has been the case since right back in Season 1 of /Queer, serendipity is this project’s friend. Whilst on location in South Africa, I had been discussing the project with a family friend, who immediately jumped at the chance to tell me about his friend Mark, who he said had been involved with LGBTQ+ inheritance rights back in 2006. The case that Mark brought to court, known as the Gory v Kolver case, sought to contest the decision for biological relatives to inherit the estates of individuals in long-term same-sex relationships who could not legally marry their partners. The case preceded the legalisation of gay marriage in South Africa- and the outcome of Mark’s case was actually decided upon one week prior to gay marriage being legalised for South Africans. Naturally, this was a story that I wanted to hear in Mark’s words- so we headed out to get his story on record. At the time of interview, Mark was running a dog-friendly, dog-themed pub & bistro out in Henley on Klip- a small town south of Johannesburg in Gauteng province. We started our conversation by discussing the difficult circumstances that led to his court case.
Mark Gory, in interview: Henry, and I, Henry Harrison Brooks IV, no less, was my late husband and he and I had been together in a relationship for about two and a half years at the time of his passing. He died very suddenly from an accidental overdose from drinking a spiked drink in a bar in Melville. And when he didn't come home that night, I wasn't too worried because he was with a mate. But the next morning I started to get fretful and I had to go to work, which I did. And I came back and then I was really concerned and started looking for him. and eventually I found the body in the car, parked at his friend's house. His friend had also drunk the substance GHB, which is a popular recreational drug, particularly in gay clubs, but it's also a rohypnol type of drug, so it's very date rape prone. If only it was just a sexual thing, I could have coped with that. But as it was, I lost the person I loved, the person I had eventually decided was the one. He was 10 years younger than me at the time. And yeah, so that's what started, I mean, that was the thing that kick -started it all. Besides all the horror of grief and all of that, which I won't bore you with, I was hoping in the process to wind up his affairs and to at least just get on with my life somehow. It's a very difficult thing to do. I'm sure many people know the feeling of when half of you gets cut away and the other half has got to go on and particularly in gay relationships which take a lot of hard work to succeed.
His family almost immediately the next morning wanted to come to our home. Henry and I had bought a house together only about eight months before he died, but the house had been eventually registered in Henry's name because then as now I was HIV positive and it wasn't likely that I would get a mortgage or insurance as things were then and at the time I'd been positive for... 94 to.... about 11, 12 years and at the time it just wasn't likely. So we agreed to put the house in Henry's name because he had a better income than me and we agreed to just sign a document which reflected that we jointly owned it. Unfortunately, that did not come to pass, neither did Henry make a will, and this was the crux of the issue.
In South Africa, there is a piece of law called the Interstate Act that exists for the purpose of assigning inheritance in the absence of a will. At the time, the Interstate Act, which was last updated in 1981, or published in 1981, had no provision for same sex life partners and after a particularly dreadful eight months of warfare or lawfare shall we call it with the family who were of the opinion that I should just get the hell out of the house and they should just take it all and do what they liked with it. In fact they did sell it and I had to leave the house because it wasn't registered in my name and I had no right under law, despite the fact that they knew we were a couple and all of that, as far as they were concerned, our rights weren't formal.
So eventually, I found myself taking some advice from a solicitor, or lawyer as we call them here, who specialized in same -sex issues. And along with the advocate that she consulted or briefed, who is also a gay man, and with whom she had changed a lot of South African law already for same -sex couples. There had been a number of pieces of law changed, notably the sodomy law, which had been on the books until 1996, I think. In the old days, that was punishable by the death penalty. To everyone's great relief that was changed, but this solicitor was the best person to talk to about these things and they elected to sue the government and a variety of other respondents to have this piece of law declared unconstitutional, because the 1994 -96 constitution obviously hadn't been taken into consideration. So that's what we did, we sued the government. And they did it on contingency, which meant basically that I didn't have to find the spectacular amounts of money to pay them, and they were going to hope to get a cost award in the court. .
Firstly, we started in what we call the High Court here, and then the High Court adjudicated that indeed I was correct, and that the law needed changing, and I asked for a variety of other things, but that was just periphery stuff, like the removal of the executor, etc. Just for the purpose of this interview, we wanted the law changed. That was the fundamental bottom line. That's a variety of other things. And so we did, and the court ruled in my favour, and the law had to be changed. In South Africa, Parliament can only change a law if instructed to do so by what we call the Constitutional Court, our version of the Supreme Court. And it has at least 10 or 11 justices when it sits on a full bench.
So after the High Court victory, if you like, we had to then go and brief the Constitutional Court justices, and the instructions of the lower court had to be confirmed by the Constitutional Court, which they duly did. It was quite a gruelling experience, and I won't bore you with the details, but all that really matters is we succeeded, and the piece of law was changed, and the judgement was handed down by the Constitutional Court, a full bench, so there were no dissensions. They all agreed that basically everybody had to be included, and so the piece of law was changed. So whereas it once read, husband, wife, spouse, or children shall inherit the estate, the estate of the deceased. It now reads husband, wife, spouse, or same -sex life partner with a duty of care.
At the time, which was 2006 by then, gay people still couldn't get married. Same -sex couples couldn't get married. And that piece of law was handed down within two weeks of my judgement being handed down. Because it was in process at the time. But while Henry lived, we couldn't get married because there was no legal instrument to do it with. So our basic thing in the court case was, if we could have, we would have, but it wasn't right, it wasn't able. So that's how we won the case. And for those of you who are interested in looking it up on Google or Wikipedia, it's Gory versus Kolver, K -O -L -V -E -R, and then the two words N -O and others, it's all very legal. Gory is spelled G -O -R -Y, simple four letter word. Gory versus Kolver is this piece of law. And just as a plus, it's been challenged in that same constitutional court twice, because people claim that now that same -sex people can get married, they don't need this protection. and twice it has very successfully been defended. So it's a good strong piece of law.
And the last bit about the cons court is up to recently heterosexual couples who were not married, because when you're married in South Africa you have something that the law calls a duty of care. That's what married people do, you have to look after each other. And the duty of care, if not solemnised in a sort of a marriage or a civil union has to be proved. And that's what I was doing in my court case. I had to go and prove my duty of care. And it was laborious, it was expensive, it was heartbreaking, it was just quite a soul -shattering experience all in all. But that piece of law has now very recently been extended to heterosexual people as well. So heterosexual men owe me big time. [Georgie laughs]
Georgie Williams, in interview: Yes, they do.
Mark, in interview: Bless their hearts.
Georgie Williams, voiceover: The state of LGBTQ+ rights in South Africa during this period of Mark’s life was complex and, as mentioned by Mark, South Africa’s anti-sodomy legislation was only overturned in 1998. But even by this stage, both during and post-Apartheid, the movement had benefited from some prominent and powerful voices. One of these best known voices was Desmond Tutu, former Bishop of Johannesburg and Archbishop of Cape Town. Tutu was outspoken against Apartheid throughout his early career and his humanitarian work earned him a Nobel Peace Prize in 1984. But Tutu was also staunchly pro-gay rights, and his reputation in this arena earned him much international coverage. In 2007, Desmond Tutu openly criticised the Anglican Church and derided the work of the UK’s Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams for not doing enough to welcome members of the gay community into the church. Amidst presenting these criticisms, Tutu famously stated that, “If God, as they say, is homophobic, I wouldn't worship that God." Tutu also actively advocated for the inclusion of sexual orientation in the non-discrimination clause of South Africa’s post-Apartheid constitution. In Tutu’s words, “it would be a sad day for South Africa if any individual or group of law-abiding citizens in South Africa were to find that the Final Constitution did not guarantee their fundamental human right to a sexual life, whether heterosexual or homosexual.”
This recognition of sexual freedoms in the South African constitution in 1996 was seen as recognition of a larger truth. In Somewhere over the rainbow nation: Gay, lesbian and bisexual activism in South Africa, LGBT rights scholar Ryan Thoreson wrote that South African human rights activists had “insisted upon the inseparability of the struggles against apartheid and homophobia”- and that this clause in the constitution was tantamount to evidence of this. Two such activists credited with making this inseparability a recognised reality are Simon Nkoli and Beverley Ditsie. Nkoli and Ditsie organised South Africa’s first ever gay and lesbian pride parade in 1990- making it the first event of its kind on the entire African continent. Nkoli himself had founded the Gay and Lesbian Organisation of the Witwatersrand, otherwise known as GLOW, and in addressing the 800-strong crowd of this historical event he made his stance on racial and sexual rights transparent. Nkoli stated that “I'm fighting for the abolition of apartheid. And I fight for the right of freedom of sexual orientation. These are inextricably linked with each other. I cannot be free as a black man if I am not free as a gay man.”
Nkoli’s activism focused on the very intersection that he lived within- the experiences of black people, gay people, and people living with HIV and AIDS. There was no separatism in this work- Nkoli presented a narrative where all three facets of one’s life affected and corresponded with one another. Bart Luirink, a Dutch journalist and former neighbour of Nkoli’s, wrote extensively about Nkoli’s impact as part of his archival work on LGBT African history- a project known as Behind the Mask. In his work, Luirink states that Nkoli’s work demonstrated how “homosexuality is not a western import, not ‘un-African’ and not contrary to culture or tradition.” In a country still recovering from its history of colonial oppression, still reeling from racial apartheid, Nkoli cemented gay narratives into the heart of African and, specifically, South African lived experience. Nkoli died of AIDS in 1998 in Johannesburg, aged 41.
Alongside Nkoli in many of his endeavours, his close friend and fellow activist, Beverley Ditsie, who is gender non-conforming and now goes by multiple pronouns, was at the time the first openly lesbian woman to address the United Nations on the matter of LGBT rights in 1995. Ditsie continues to be a champion and representative for South African gender and sexuality equality. Ditsie’s name is one of many often denied global recognition in the fight for gender and sexuality rights- and there are many stories we could tell about the complexities of this fight in the 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s. Zackie Achmat also stands out, as a gay activist fighting for the equitable distribution of antiretroviral drugs for people living with HIV during a time when these medications were only being made available to expecting mothers. There is not enough time in any podcast to do the litany of stories interwoven into South African LGBTQ+ history justice- but speaking these names and honouring the intersectional, multifaceted nature of their battles is the least one can do when striving to present the nuanced climate gender and sexuality diverse South Africans faced during this tumultuous political period.
Returning to Mark’s story, I wanted to hone in on how this complex climate was reflected in his personal experiences and his court case- to what extent he faced resistance and to what extent he received support from wider communities. As one may expect, this period generated tensions within the LGBTQ+ community which made Mark’s fight for legal recognition of his relationship even harder.
Mark Gory, in interview: Tragically… well, let's get to the resistance first. Firstly, the family were basically in there and they wanted everything. I don't think people are necessarily bad or evil, But we all grieve differently, and Henry's mother was behind most of what I endured. I can't imagine what it must be like to lose your child at the age of 34, and I will generously put down her sort of various uncharitable deeds, thoughts, and actions while the balance of her mind was disturbed, because that is a pretty horrible thing to do. but it doesn't make it okay to vilify and to basically treat somebody who was, you know, we'd done the ring thing and we'd actually had a little ceremony. It wasn't much of a ceremony, it was just basically putting a ring on my finger, but for the law's purpose, interestingly enough, that was more than sufficient.
The day we fetched this ring from the jeweller where it had to be made a bit large, because he bought it quietly without telling me, and then it wouldn't fit was a little on the small side, so it had to go back and be enlarged, and on that day in a jeweller in Sandton City, there was a chappie, an Indian chappie, had the most very garish kind of place, but Henry had bought this platinum ring because I told him I wanted platinum. He tried plastic and I sent him away, so he had to, and he put it on his credit card over six months and ironically I wound up paying for it, but anyway that's another story. It'll always be the ring he gave me. But while we were in that jewellery shop, somebody was taking photos just before Christmas. One of his staff was, you know, hopping around. And I said to her, “oh, excellent!” I said Henry, here you go. You get a chance. Put the ring on my finger. And I have a photograph of that. Fortunately, she phoned me when she heard about what had happened, because I remembered him. And they were very sad to hear what had occurred. And she said to me, you know, I have a photo of you. And it turns out that that was a very persuasive photograph, because the law requires, you don't have to go to church to get married, or do a justice thing, but you do have to make some kind of action, I suppose, or do something in public. And at the time it was under-roof as well. And we were in a shopping mall, so that was good. And I now have a photograph of Henry. I don't know what has happened to the photo, I think the original is in the legal documents, heaven knows where. But I've got copies of it and bittersweet memories.
The family were, they just said to me, look, we can't argue with the mother because it's not worth it. So they were a bit cowardly, bless their hearts. And they employed a very nasty attorney to prosecute the winding up of the estate. And he was a monster and terribly arrogant. And he just said, well, you have no rights, so up yours, and hand over everything or else. So eventually we won the item. Literally they came to fetch all the furnishings, all his possessions, and they took it away. But in the court case, the judge handed down a judgement that it should be returned to me. So eventually it came back to me, and I think it's worthwhile pointing out that Henry's estate was insolvent. We had no money. So all we had between the two of us was the house. So when I eventually won the estate, and when I was named the beneficiary, all I really inherited was debt. So that was an interesting part of the setup in that there was no financial gain. It was entirely a matter of principle.
So, yeah, at the end of the day, there was… a lot of people were quite curious about motive because there was no money to be had. But it was, it was, I'm not much of an activist, but I hold very clear, I hold very clear opinions on doing the right thing. and I felt that denying our relationship, the precious thing that it was, denying that and reducing it to just a titillation of nerve endings and a sexual relationship, which indeed it was. I rather miss it, but it was a deep and abiding love that we cherished for each other. I couldn't understand why he wanted an older, fatter man, and it's anyone's guess why people want what they do, but I was darn glad that he did, you know, so, um, and it doing the right thing doesn't, it's, well, it can be very expensive. Um, it's, it's not a luxury that most of us have a lot of the time. So there was the family and they were not obnoxious, but they hid behind the lawyer and they did dirty stuff and took me out of my home and took away. They wanted everything they saw. And my grandmother at the age of 95 had to handwrite a list of things she had given to me, which I'd contributed to the home. Notably old crystal glasses and stuff, which the family were pretty keen on.
In terms of support, I have a wonderful family. My mom, although nobody really understood what the hell was going on because legal stuff is a little bit convoluted, but I was just doing what had to be done for the sake of people came after me and I never had access to any part of the remains after the cremation. I never managed to go through that process of farewell. So this piece of law stands as a remembrance of a deep and abiding love. It also stands as something that benefits other people going forward, which I think is probably the best kind of memorial you can have for someone that you love.
Unfortunately, the gay population or the same sex, I mean, on one-on-one, I had wonderful support from individual people. Um, but if I could use the word corporately, I was just disappointed and quite distressed that there was so much indifference. It wasn't just, it's just like, eh, well, whatever. Yeah. Yeah. And I, and I kept on saying to people, but I'm doing this for other people like us, you know, to try and right wrongs or to stop them from perpetuating. And I found that very sad because we don't have a huge gay press here. And I knew the editor quite well of the one, and I made sure that I let him know of the progress. And indeed, when the judgments were hand down, I actually communicated and said, please print something about this. I don't wish, You know, I mean, I don't wish to be splashed all over the media personally, but people need to know that these remedies exist, because it happens too often, not just with gay people, but for the purpose of our discussion, same -sex people are notoriously shoddy about finalising or solemnising their relationships, and shit happens, you know. And many people live together for 20 or 30 years, and then the family walks in as if you don't exist- and in Henry's case particularly, he was really not fond of his family. In fact, I was the one who stood up for them, ironically. But I found myself very saddened by the ambivalence and the so-what of the gay population.
And interestingly enough, the lawyer who was representing me worked in a tiny little office and they had no money, okay, and her photocopier machine died. I can't remember what actually happened, but they were in deep dwang financially, and I couldn't pay them anything. So my very close friend and confidant Thys, Thys Botha, sat down and wrote a letter to a number of people he knew, and just said, look, this is what we're trying to achieve, and is there anything you can do, even if it's just a few, like 50 bucks or whatever, we're not asking for. I mean, yeah, if you want to give hundreds of thousands, fabulous. But at the moment, at the time, I think what we were trying to raise was 24,000 Rand, which isn't money in the scheme of things, but it was life or death at that time. And the blessed irony is that of all the people who very quickly came to the party and donated, only two people were gay. The rest were all heterosexual. Friends, you know, who just said, This is meaningful. We want to be a part of it." And still, they went ahead and it's just like a lot of scary moments in the whole process, because you're not doing it for money, but you need money to do it, you know, kind of thing. So I wish that same -sex people had cared more, but maybe it is human nature not to be concerned about it if it isn't happening to you.
Georgie Williams, in interview: And I think a lack of preparation for death is a big thing in the community as well, that you don't think you're going to go through the same motions of having a partner, settling down, and then losing that person.
Mark, in interview: It's a blessed irony in so many ways in terms of what you're talking about, preparing for death, you know, because gay people have borne the brunt of things like AIDS and so many other horrendous COVIDs and things, and probably very few groupings of the population have such intimate and regular experience of parting with people they love, and it's, yeah, nobody really wants to kind of think about it, but the long story short is, you know, no one gets out of life and just write a piece of paper saying this, this, this, this, this, to so-and-so, to my dogs, a bank can have their debt back, that's fine, you know [Georgie laughs] and all of that, but people are reluctant to contemplate, you know, their mortality, and you'd think that people like us, as well as many others, but specifically to people like us, people like myself, for example, it's now 27 years since I was told by a doctor that I was going to die, and that I had six months to live, and I had to get my shit together. So many of us live with that reality, and it's just an irony that people who are so regularly faced with the brutal reality of life on so many levels are the ones who are seemingly so reluctant to make provision, even if it's just a communication. And it doesn't matter if you don't have money, it doesn't matter, you know, because too many fights and arguments, certainly in this case, had to do with things like bathroom mats and just nonsense, you know, and sentimental items. So this is not about, you know, somebody retiring luxuriantly, this is just about closing chapters and dealing with horrendous sadness that permeates every part of you.
Georgie Williams, voiceover: The frustration Mark expresses about lack of support from the wider gay community is upsetting but not necessarily surprising. When talking about the hesitation of LGBTQ+ individuals who face arranging end-of-life provisions, we have to talk about how HIV and AIDS motivated the fight for gay marriage. In the 1980s and 1990s, many partners of gay men suffering from AIDS were denied the right to even sit in a room with their dying loved ones when their partner’s biological family intervened. Where married couples were afforded next of kin and inheritance rights, gay partners could be cut out of the lives of their loved ones with zero legal protections. Although marriage is a religious institution, it is so inextricably tied to state rights across much of the world that non-religious couples must still predominantly access kinship and inheritance rights through marriage. But that doesn’t make opening that door to state involvement easy for LGBTQ+ couples.
In Human Rights in an International Context: Recognizing the Right of Intimate Association, civil rights lawyer Catherine E. Blackburn writes about state intrusions into the personal lives of citizens- and the justifications that must be made for those intrusions. Blackburn writes this in the context of Roe v Wade, the US Supreme Court ruling that secured access to abortion in the US in 1973- before it was overturned in 2022. Of this, Blackburn states the following:
“Thus, in Roe, the Court makes it clear that governmental intrusion into an individual's lifestyle is permissible only when the state shows that such intrusion is "warranted”. However, it is also clear from the decision that the state must show that the governmental intrusion is necessary to achieve compelling state objectives.”
When we bring this back to the context of sexuality-based discrimination in the late 1990s and early 2000s, we can understand the hesitation many gay couples expressed in involving the state and government in their relationships. This involvement, in the form of legal recognition of relationships through unions or wills, becomes exposure that, if it can be defended through ‘state objectives’ can be exploited. The right to privacy and a private life is a fight all of us face when confronted with encroaching state powers; but it is a battle harder fought by those dehumanised on the grounds of their identity. The desire for LGBTQ+ couples to distance themselves from legal recognition of their relationships is a complex one. It is a battle that has been hard-fought by many LGBTQ+ people for many decades, but acknowledging one’s own mortality becomes much harder when an epidemic was allowed by national governments to wipe out hundreds of thousands of your people.
Mark Gory, in interview: And yeah, where are we now? We're pushing 20 years, nearly, you know. He died in ‘05, so yeah.
Georgie Williams, in interview: 17 years.
Mark, in interview: 17 years. 17 years and counting. And yeah, it never goes away. That's the nature of loving people. that, and you deal with it probably a bit better, but other than that, and people say to me, yeah, but he's dead now, and you go, but part of him just never dies, you know, part of him just never dies, and I have every expectation of having some pointed discussions with him when I get to the other end, about what the fuck he was doing [Georgie laughs] but we'll leave that for when it happens. Meantime, I have very carefully made my own will, again, not because I have money, just because I don't want anyone to sit with a mess. Because one of the worst things about what happened to me was that I never got around to grieving properly because I was too busy fighting this war. And yes, I was doing the right thing and I was doing it for the right reasons, but by the same token, I suffered enormously and I never completed that process. And that's probably why it continues in part to this day. And don't weep copiously in the lines of supermarkets, but there is a very tender place in my heart for him. And there's, since I'm now quite a bit older, gosh, I wonder what it would have been like, you know, if things had been different. Who's to say? I mean, I might have been divorced, who knows? But I mean, the point is, one wonders.
I think, you know, also gay people just are people with historically low self -esteem. And I don't know if that'll ever change. I don't know if the hostile world we live in will ever permit us to change it. And maybe they think they deserve to suffer. I don't know. It's anyone's guess. You know, I can only speak for myself. But am I glad I did it? Yes. I really believe it needed to be done. And it's just a legal footnote now, but I mean, my lawyers got into the law review magazine, which is quite a thing here. She had to have her hair done. [Georgie laughs] Yeah, it's what they call a landmark ruling, so that was my 20 seconds of fame on the steps of the Constitutional Court on Hospital Hill in Johannesburg wearing a borrowed outfit from my friend Thys. I was dressed by the House of Botha, because I didn't even have appropriate clothing and you've got to kind of get toffed up for that very august institution.
So it's a long time ago now and I'm really grateful it continues to be meaningful for other people. And I really believe then that I didn't do it in vain. And all the horrors of the experience are justified because it's something I hold as a memorial, you know, to Henry. And I like to think he would be happy about it too.
Georgie Williams, voiceover: The Gory v Kolver case changed the landscape of gay rights in South Africa. Its impact- spreading far beyond the arena of LGBTQ+ activism and into the broader frontier of protecting non-married couples- has bolstered the protections afforded to all coupled South Africans. But as we proceed with this story, we need to address the heterogeneity- the diversity- that exists under the label of ‘South African’. There is a conversation to be had about how gender and sexuality diversity presents itself outside of predominantly White South African circles.
The majority of LGBTQ+ activists mentioned thus far in this episode have been Black- and their experiences have sat at the intersection of LGBTQ+ activism and anti-racist activism. But there is a history of whitewashing at the centre of the South African LGBTQ+ rights movement and an incorrect centring of white activists in South African fight for gender & sexuality equality. We talk often on /Queer about a decolonial lens; and through this lens we must look at current LGBTQ+ movements and ask, are we asking gender and sexuality diverse people to assimilate into Western ideals? Do gender and sexuality based protections require people to fit neatly into boxes of LGBTQ+ identities?
As we have learned throughout the course of this project, gender and sexuality in non-White cultures rarely fits into these rigid parameters defined within White cultures. South African culture is one built on the interplay and enmeshment of different racial backgrounds, ethnic practices and cultural traditions- and this is what we mean when we talk about the heterogeneity of South African identity. Naturally, this means that at the borders of tradition and modernity, genders and sexualities are often expressed and experienced in ways which defy convention and definition.
It was through Nikki Coward from Newzroom Afrika that I was made aware of our final interviewee for our time in South Africa. A story had emerged out of the Eastern Cape about a transgender woman who was to undergo a traditional Xhosa rite of passage to mark her journey into adulthood- a rite of passage which would recognise her authority, as a man. Understanding this story better meant discussing it directly with the woman at the centre of it- and Nikki’s brilliant colleague, Siphosethu Booi, was the correspondent on location who procured the necessary contact details to make this interview happen.
Cwenga Titi, in interview: Um, my name is Cwenga Titi, I'm 18 of age, and I'm a student at Thembalethu High School. I'm currently doing grade 12, and the thing that I'll be talking about, or the topic that I'll be talking about, is being a transgender woman.
Georgie Williams, voiceover: Cwenga lives in Makhanda, a town in the Eastern Cape, where over 72% of residents speak Xhosa as a first language. Xhosa is both a language and an ethnic group- and Xhosa people, sometimes referred to as amaXhosa, are the second-largest ethnic group found across Southern Africa. Xhosa is a Bantu language- and the family of Bantu languages comprises around 600 languages spoken by bantu peoples across Central, Southern and Eastern Africa. Cwenga’s identity; straddling the traditions of Xhosa culture and the modernity of the Western concept of ‘transgender’- defies the preconceived notions many of us have about what diverse gender expression looks like. As we have learned thus far, what it means to be South African is contingent on so many variables; racial, ethnic, gendered, sexual. Understanding Cwenga’s perspectives on identity felt like an opportunity to disavow the binaristic view many of us ascribe to notions of modernity and traditionalism- where the latter must always give way to the former. My first question to Cwenga was kept very open; what was it like to grow up as a transgender girl in Xhosa culture, and what do gender roles look like within her community?
Cwenga, in interview: Growing up as a transgender, firstly I thought that I was a girl because I used to play dress up and dolls with my sister. I never knew that I was a boy. Since I was four I was acting like a girl, behaving like one. And then the stage came away, the puberty stage. My sister started growing breasts, hips and everything. And I asked myself why can't I be like her? Then I started researching that, know that I'm a transgender, and it's something that I lived with for many years.
Back then, in Xhosa cultures, people used to say that a woman must stay in her lane by washing dishes and parenting, and even for men, same applies to the men, but now people are getting advanced. They want to know about people's sexualities and behaviours, and this has changed a lot in our communities.
Georgie Williams, voiceover: The initiation Cwenga is voluntarily participating in, to mark her transition into adulthood or, more specifically, manhood is not without risk. Known as Ulwaluko, this non-mandatory initiation often involves penile circumcision and since 1995, almost 1000 initiates have died of both circumcision-related and unrelated causes, such as exposure. The initiation also involves the controlled exclusion of particular foods from one’s diet and a period of seclusion. Conversations surrounding this practice have been complex- Desmond Tutu, who was himself Xhosa, called for the involvement of licenced medical practitioners to “enhance traditional circumcision practices”. Many complications arise when initiation school leaders are ill-experienced in this traditional surgery- and the issue has become so dire that South Africa is one of the leading countries in the world for the demand of penile transplants.
It would be easy to allow exoticism to fan the flames of hysteria in this context; although harm is evidently done to numerous initiates, circumcision is a routine practice in many cultures and countries around the world- and in the US, where it is estimated that over half of 2,000,000 male-sexed babies born every year are circumcised, complications allegedly occur in around 1 in 500 procedures. That means around 2,000 babies in the US every year experience some form of harm- from partial amputation to death- from non-consensual genital surgeries. There is no doubt that the risks in initiation-related circumcision for Xhosa people are high; but these practices are not as distanced from Western norms as we may believe, and these anatomical decisions are at least made with the consent of patients.
In the context of Cwenga’s experience, however, there was even more nuance to be considered. I was anxious to know how people inside and outside of her community responded to her wanting to take part in the initiation, as a transgender woman.
Cwenga Titi, in interview: The people were negative. They asked, why can a transgender do this traditional ceremony? And it's something that I wanted to learn about. And the people's reaction were very, very negative. And luckily I had support from my family and friends. That's why they gave me courage to do this process, this traditional process. So that's why, you know, that kept me going to pursue this thing of becoming a man.
Oh, coming back to the initiation part, the people in my community, they rejoiced and they are proud of me going to the mountains to become a man. And it's something that the Xhosa people love to rejoice for. And especially my friends and family were there to support me in this journey that I was in.
Georgie Williams, voiceover: Our interview with Cwenga, due to time and geographical constraints, meant that our glimpse into the complexities of Xhosa culture would be short lived- and thus it felt important that she have the final say on how her culture- and her own perspective on gender and sexuality- was understood.
Cwenga, in interview: I wanted everyone to follow their tradition, no matter what their sexuality is. And by doing that, or learning through a person about their personality or perspective, and seeing others as human beings, that's what I wanted to spread with the world, and to make this world a better place.
Georgie Williams, voiceover: Cwenga’s approach to her own identity allows her to move seamlessly between the expressive facets of womanhood and the cultural traditions of manhood that belong to her culture. As an outsider, we may be inclined to apply the diametrical opposition of ‘male vs female’ to a culture we don’t understand. But as we learned back in Season One with our episode on Bugis culture in Indonesia, many pre-colonial communities resisted the notion that what is male could not be female. Instead, when considering the perspectives of people such as Cwenga, we have to consider how identities can be formulated of femaleness and maleness, femininity and masculinity, without one neutralising or negating the other. Gender systems where men and women are absolute in their differences are often colonially-informed systems.
As mentioned in previous episodes, the LGBTQ+ acronym- and the term queer- are both grounded in English language and Western ideas about gender and sexuality; and we often assume that in Non-Western countries, a movement towards gender and sexuality expression signals a move towards Westernisation; but this perspective holds little space and, sometimes, little tolerance for the exceptions in those rules. A perfect example is IsiNgqumo- a type of secret language created in the 1980s as a means of communication for homosexual speakers of Bantu languages across South Africa and Zimbabwe. In ‘Gay and Zulu, we speak isiNgqumo’: Ethnolinguistic identity constructions, linguistic anthropologist Stephanie Rudwick describes isiNgqumo as a “bicultural” code- derivative of both Zulu culture and gay culture. This language is no more Zulu than it is gay, no more gay than it is Zulu. What makes it gay does not dilute what makes it Zulu and vice versa. It is a development and extension of both cultures. What people like Cwenga are doing, when they embrace both foreign identity concepts and home-grown cultural practices, is the same. Neither is diluted. Both grow and change as a consequence.
Between Cwenga and Mark we see just a glimpse of the array of identities which are both diverse in gender and sexuality, but also fundamentally South African. Both have had to push back against reductive ideas- ideas resisting self-identification, ideas restricting the definitions of family and commitment. These are two stories in a sea of many others; stories about what the future of a gender and sexuality diverse South Africa could look like. Neither has carved out their space with ease; freedom is a hard-fought, precarious thing.
During my time in South Africa, President Cyril Ramaphosa announced a national state of disaster in response to the loadshedding crisis. Loadshedding, which is the implementation of scheduled, rolling power blackouts to help manage the ongoing South African energy crisis, means neighbourhoods can go without power for hours at a time multiple times a week- and prolonged outages can affect access to clean running water. Although many misconceptions exist about the culture, values and political state of South Africa, there are undeniable concerns about quality of life for many citizens.
But people like Mark and Cwenga represent the change happening in South Africa that deserves to be received with enthusiasm and even awe. South Africa was the 5th country in the world to legalise gay marriage and remains in the stark minority for countries who uphold inheritance rights for LGBTQ+ couples who have chosen not to marry. South Africa also upholds a gender-neutral policy for blood donation, where many other countries still enforce a ban on gay male donors. There is still much yet to be done within their LGBTQ+ movement- for example, an overhaul of The Alteration of Sex Description and Sex Status Act, which requires transgender South Africans wishing to change their documented gender to undergo medical interventions such as hormonal replacement therapy. Mark himself references some of the struggles- as seen in countries across the world- faced by HIV positive individuals in South Africa, facing discrimination and social stigma. But the outdated and fundamentally racist notions of South Africa as a culturally regressive country are unfounded. South Africa faces many of the same LGBTQ+ rights battles as states and countries across the US and Europe- and, in many cases, far fewer battles.
There were no means through which an episode on South African gender and sexuality could have been shorter, more concise than this. There were no means through which an episode such as this could ever communicate the complexities, nuances and challenges that exist within South African gendered and sexual social systems. This is the way of South Africa- there is no reduction to simplicity, there is no homogeneity or uniformity. This is not what the human rights activists of South African history have fought for- and striving for it would only be a disservice to their cause. As spoken by Desmond Tutu, “we are different precisely in order to realise our need of one another.” This country does not exist without its cultures and its people, in all their differences. It does not exist without its painful past. But more than anything, this country does not exist without the promises laid out thirty years ago- for a free and brave South Africa. The only way through is forward.
This episode of the /Queer Podcast was edited by Sam Clay, transcribed by Bronya Smith, scripted, produced and hosted as always by me, Georgie Williams. A very special thanks to Mark Gory and Cwenga Titi for their insightful interviews and to Siphosethu Booi from Newzroom Afrika for her fieldwork. A huge thanks also to Nikki and Donald Coward for their research assistance and logistical support.
Many thanks, for the penultimate time, to our Patreon subscribers- we stand on the precipice of our final episode of Season 2- 25 episodes and 5 years into this project. Thank you for being the driving force that keeps us moving forward in challenging and uncertain times. It means the world to us. If you want to support our research with any size of donation, you can find our Patreon at patreon.com/slashqueer. That’s S-L-A-S-H Queer. You can also find our /Queer merchandise on Threadless and we are still accepting donations via Ko-fi- the links to all of the above are in the description for this episode.
This episode was recorded on location in Johannesburg, South Africa. Music in this episode was composed by our resident audio king, Sam Clay and all rights to the Nelson Mandela speech audio belong to SABC News. If you enjoyed this episode or have any feedback, please get in touch on Instagram or Twitter at @SlashQueer or email us at info@slashqueer.com. As we move forward- stay kind, stay radical and stay queer.