Violence and prejudice exists in South Africa, but the Constitution says something different. Photo: AFP
There are moments that change the course of a life. They arrive suddenly, without warning. They seem small at first — a chance encounter, a few words spoken, a glance that lingers. Later you see they were not small at all. They were the axis on which your entire story turned.
I am a man from the US who spent more than 20 years working in cultural advocacy and LGBTQ rights. I believed I understood the landscape. I believed my experience was enough to grasp the struggles of others. Then I went to Africa. Then I met a man in Ghana. And everything I thought I knew shifted.
We had only three days together in Ghana. That is all. Three days that could have been dismissed as passing time. Yet what grew from those days was a year of letters, calls and confessions. It became a cross-continental exchange that redefined my understanding of devotion.
At the end of that year we made a choice. We chose South Africa because it offered legal recognition and relative safety. We believed Johannesburg could hold what Ghana could not. We believed our love deserved more than whispers and fear.
For four days in South Africa we tried. The country gave us a fragile sanctuary. Its contradictions were obvious. Violence and prejudice still lingered, but the Constitution promised something different. It was not perfect, but it gave us streets to walk without constant fear, cafes to sit in, nights to speak without the heavy silence of criminalisation. For those four days it gave us a glimpse of what might have been.
But those four days also revealed the truth. What I forgot was his story. I became caught in my own idea of what our love was, what it could be, what it symbolised. I failed to remember the depth of his struggle, the history that shaped him, the fear that still followed him even in South Africa. My story was not his. My privileges, even when limited, were not his. In forgetting that, I failed him. And in that forgetting, we were destroyed.
It is easy to romanticise the cross-continental love story. It is harder to admit where it broke. I had believed that love was enough to carry us through the differences in our lives. But love cannot erase history. It cannot erase fear born in childhood or silence practised for survival. It cannot erase the weight of living queer in Ghana where love is criminalised and silence is safety.
My advocacy had taught me to fight. It had taught me to demand rights, to seek justice, to speak boldly. But it had not taught me to listen with the humility required to carry someone else’s story fully. In South Africa, I learned too late that listening is as important as fighting.
Africa taught me what two decades in America never did. It taught me that resilience is born in silence as much as in speech. It taught me that love is risk, not only in its expression but in its survival. It taught me that three days can become a year and a year can become a lesson written on your heart forever.
The end of our story was not what I hoped for. Our bond did not survive. My forgetting cost us what we built. Yet the memory remains and so does the responsibility. The responsibility to tell the truth of what I saw. The responsibility to honour the man who showed me what courage looks like. The responsibility to support organisations like The Fruit Basket in Johannesburg that make survival possible. The responsibility to listen before I speak.
Africa is not a single story. It is not only danger and despair for queer people, though those realities exist. It is also resilience and strength, whispered prayers, laughter in secret and love that survives against impossible odds. It is both the silence of fear and the sound of a voice daring to rise.
My testimony is imperfect. It is marked by failure and gratitude. Gratitude for Ghana where our story began. Gratitude for South Africa where we tried to save it. Gratitude for every queer person across the continent who chooses life even when the world says otherwise. And gratitude for love itself, brief as it was, because it revealed truths no speech or policy ever could.
This is the story I carry now. Not a perfect story, but a true one.
Kenneth Figuly is a writer and advocate who has spent more than 20 years working on cultural and LGBTQ issues across international contexts.