Emeka Nwandiko
There is something strange about the cars parked outside the Boy Scouts and Girl Guides building at Delta Park.
Its occupants dressed in shirt and ties get out and look around furtively before they start walking. Some just sit in their flashy cars and wait.
Equally strange are the large black capital letters painted on the wall that form a screen around four toilets, which are 300m away from the guides’ building.
It reads: “SODOMY, ORAL SEX, MASTURBATION AVAILABLE HERE! ASK ANY OF THE BOYS IN THEIR PARKED CARS NEARBY FOR FURTHER DETAILS.”
Neither side is prepared to give way. The Non-Perverted Delta Park Users (NPDPU), which painted the sign, is outraged at what it calls the indiscretion of gay people looking for “fast love” in the park toilets and in the grounds of the bird sanctuary.
The gay men, nicknamed tycoons by the workers who clean up after them (because of their fancy cars and smart clothing), are defiant and prefer to be “outside” during lunch hours and after work.
The NPDPU says that its campaign, which began at the start of the month, to restore the park to normalcy, will continue unabated. An NPDPU poster outside the toilet warns that it will photograph men entering and leaving.
“I want to know what kind of people are sitting in cars taking pictures of people. Haven’t they got anything better to do?” asked an irate tycoon trying to hide from the Mail & Guardian’s camera in the bushes of the bird sanctuary, which adjoins the park.
Toilets in many of Johannesburg’s public parks have become no-go areas for people who prefer not to watch others having sex while using the facilities.
Yesterday it was Emmarentia Park and Zoo Lake, today it’s Delta Park.
“The state of the toilets on some days is absolutely disgusting. There are condoms and all sort of rubbish strewn all over the place,” says Geoff Lockwood, manager of the Delta Environment Centre which provides environmental education at its facility for thousands of Johannesburg schoolchildren every year.
Although there has been a long history of cruising in Delta Park, Lockwood says he has noticed a change in attitude of the men. “About a year ago they became aggressive and began to intimidating people. Other people felt they had to give way to gays.”
He said that between 10 to 11 cars are parked nearby the toilets during the day.
Residents whose homes adjoin the park have mixed views on their visitors.
“People are entitled to do what they want to do provided they are discreet. If people are blatantly carrying on with sex in public, that’s not on,” said a resident whose house borders the park and did not want his name disclosed.
His wife agreed: “If there are [used] condoms lying around where children are playing you do not want them to be exposed to that sort of thing.”
Another had a different view: “That’s the one thing about South Africa, you can do what you like.”
The tycoon hiding in the bushes said the urge justified the need. “People who want to get their rocks off know where to go.”
He said that most of the people who frequented the park were married men who had a need to be satisfied. He added it would be difficult to stop cruising because: “People get a kick doing it a place like this.”
Jonathan Berger of the National Coalition for Gay and Lesbian Equality said of the gay men cruising: “It is irresponsible to give people looking for an excuse to hate [gay men] ammunition. He added that it “almost gave an incentive to bash”.