In the week that Dullah Omar rejected decriminalising relationships between gay men, Ferial Haffajee attended a street wedding
The lobola had been paid. The blue and white striped tent was up. And as good old tradition dictates, the bride was three hours late. But when she emerged from her Meadowlands home in Soweto last Saturday, she was worth the wait.
Polly Motene wore a flowing pants-suit in lime green. A silk scarf tied just so. A vest. And black leather Crockett & Jones brogues.
Her macho groom, Robert Poswayo, wore bottle green. In a double-breasted suit, he was led by a bridesmaid down the dusty pavement to fetch his bride as one of Soweto’s first gay street weddings got under way.
The bright blue spring day provided a perfect backdrop for a celebration. Neighbours and passers-by danced on the street, singing “Polly phutha re tsamayo”, which translates into “Polly take your things let’s go.”
Her retinue was filled with gay men, some flamboyantly decked out in hats and flowing silk perfectly suited to a magazine’s society pages, others in more sobre black suits.
The couple met last year in Cape Town. Motene was everything Poswayo, a former police officer, was looking for after his female girlfriend had ditched him.
Says Motene: “He told me he had been separated from his partner for two years and he was in pain. I was the one who made the pain fade.”
After a whirlwind courtship, they found a flat to buy in Yeoville, near Johannesburg’s city centre, and exchanged rings. Motene chose a twirly woman’s wedding ring, Poswayo’s was all male with a chunky band and a single diamond.
The wedding kiss was exchanged outside the Quaker Centre’s church in Berea. An organisational glitch meant a priest wasn’t available to marry the couple. All the nitty-gritty wedding plans had been left to Motene and she had forgotten to confirm the priest.
Motene looked close to tears. She gripped the hand of her husband-to-be and he gave it a reassuring clench. They decided the wedding would continue; they would return to do the spiritual thing. “Which means I’m not going to throw my bouquet,” said Motene.
The group made their way to a Hillbrow bar for a post-wedding, pre-celebration drink. Gay passers-by stopped to hug the couple, and in the bar revellers danced to soppy love-songs blaring from the jukebox, the more effeminate begging Polly to throw the bouquet so they could be the next to get hitched.
Their very public wedding highlighted a new campaign to legalise gay marriages. Such unions remain illegal, even though South Africa’s Constitution is a world leader in enshrining the freedom of sexual orientation.
Ironically, the wedding took place in the same week that Justice Minister Dullah Omar announced his intention to oppose a high court application by a gay lobby aimed at bringing criminal law in line with the Constitution.
The National Gay and Lesbian Coalition has launched legal action to decriminalise sodomy and to excise outdated statutes. These include laws which make it criminal for gay men to touch or hold hands at a party of more than three people. Omar said this week: “The rights of gays and lesbians and those of the public have to be balanced.”
No more than a handful of churches will marry gay couples, but demand is growing, says Pastor Tsietsi Thandekiso of Hillbrow’s Hope and Unity metropolitan community centre, another church which will marry gay couples.
He puts gay couples through premarital religious counselling prior to the wedding ceremony. “I bless. I teach, I advise. We marry people in church because we believe we have the right to do that, and the government is going to be forced to do it,” says the pastor.
Motene, an executive member of the Gay and Lesbian Organisation of the Witwatersrand, is a long-standing gay activist from the ranks of township activists who have for years lobbied civic associations and African National Congress branches for gay rights.
“I was nervous about what the reaction of the community would be,” he said. “I didn’t wear a white dress. I wore a suit because I wanted the community to see this man-to-man wedding.”
Theirs was a traditional marriage. Poswayo paid R1 000 lobola and when Motene returned home, the elder women took her aside and passed on to her the advice about marriage and sex called ukuyala. Later the couple changed into their second outfits.
They were whisked to a nearby tavern, where they danced and drank the night away. And if Motene ever doubted the community’s complete acceptance, the party confirmed it.
“It was a complete suprise,” he said. “There was wine and champagne. And they bought us lots of presents: plates, a stove and flowers.”