It is an honour to be associated with Shaun de Waal and Anthony Manion’s rich compilation. This book is evocative, colourful, joyful — and rightly proud. In the 13th year of South African democracy, it invites us to reflect on what it means to be ‘proud” of being gay or lesbian, and what it means to assert that pride on a continent that, outside our own country, largely still treats gays and lesbians as we used to be treated under apartheid: as outcasts, criminals and perverts.
I think back to Saturday October 13 1990, when a smallish crowd gathered in the downstairs hall of the South African Institute for Race Relations in De Korte Street, Braamfontein. It was an exuberant and diverse assembly — dykes and queers and gays and lesbians and bisexual and transgendered and intersexed persons and mothers and fathers and supporters and well-wishers (many in more than one of these capacities). My friend Terry and I had ferried my godson Sizwe, a gorgeous and precocious toddler, not yet two, in his colourful walker. The turnout was smallish — I recollect not many more than 100 people. But the atmosphere was festive, and daring. We were in the process of constituting the first gay and lesbian Pride march on African soil.
Under apartheid, same-sex sexuality had been criminalised, pathologised and forced underground. But, in February 1990, the government announced a widespread climb-down from its previous intransigent positions. The commitment to constitutional negotiations for a non-racial democracy held heady promise, and we were determined to savour its benefits. But there was still wide-ranging discrimination against gays and lesbians — which led some marchers to cover their heads with paper bags. The law made it a criminal offence for two consenting adult men to give expression to the most intimate and private of human longings, desires and emotions. Most formalised religions still decried homosexuality as a moral taint and a perversion. Many still regarded gays and lesbians as ‘unAfrican”.
Many within our community felt anxiously that our march was premature, that it would provoke adverse reactions, perhaps even a backlash, against gay and lesbian protections and advancement. Those of us who were determined to proceed considered that all too often anxieties such as these played into majority prejudices and ignorance and — worse — reflected the ambivalent inner self-conceptions of the critics.
So in marching that day we set out to challenge — and (we hoped) to remedy — many wrongheaded misconceptions. We marched for dignity and for respect and for justice. We marched as a joyful assertion of our gay and lesbian selves. And we marched to secure the freedom for everyone to be gay and lesbian without covering their heads.
Joining Simon Nkoli and Beverly Palesa Ditsie as the morning’s speakers, I emphasised that the march had a message, ‘a message to all the law makers and constitution makers of South Africa. Being gay or lesbian is part of being human. To criminalise gays and lesbians is to criminalise a part of normal society.”
As we set out from the hall, a brief but chilly spring shower drenched us, rendering those with paper bags soggy-headed: perhaps an evocative suggestion that the African elements do not necessarily favour concealment. But by the time we reached Civic Hill, the October sun had warmly re-asserted itself and the sky was blue for us. My most vivid recollection is the sense of elated wonder I felt that the traffic cops and police had stopped the entire flow of Saturday morning traffic northwards, out of the city up Rissik Street, just for us. We were asserting our civic entitlements, claiming the run of the city and rightfully invoking the protection of the law in doing so.
It was a wondrous first.
All along the way, Johannesburgers greeted us with shock, surprise, interest and warm engagement. We could not be, would not be turned back.
We marched that day not only for gay and lesbian equality, but also because a society that aspires to respect human rights cannot disrespect people because of sexual orientation. Homosexuality and other non-abusive forms of sexual variance test the fundamental core of human rights philosophy. It is easy to endorse rights such as free speech and dignity and socio-economic benefits in the abstract: more difficult to actualise equality and dignity by according marginalised groups such as gays and lesbians the full protection and benefit of the law. So we marched to assert the spirit of hope that imbued 1990, and we marched to demand our rights as full, proud, productive participants in a fully equal society.
In May 2006 I joined the rest of South Africa in celebrating the 10th anniversary of the ratification of our final Constitution. That Constitution, like its interim predecessor, proscribes unfair discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. The South African Constitution was the first legal Grundnorm in the world to accord express equality on the basis of sexual orientation. Our country is still exploring the meaning of that provision, most dramatically in the context of permanent life commitments between same-sex partners, since the courts have ruled that our constitutional commitments require same-sex marriages to be accorded equal status.
This year marks the 17th anniversary of Pride in South Africa. The history of Pride traverses the period of liberation and democracy in South Africa. Its history and meaning have not always been fully understood. Often over these years newspapers and television media have traded in stock images of Pride. This book re-asserts the mundane truth that Pride was diverse in the very ordinariness of many of its participants. It uses personal testimonies, photographs, contemporary media coverage and artefacts to place Pride in its historical context and to explore recent gay and lesbian politics, culture and history.
The many voices and images the book joyfully collects evoke the diversity of gay and lesbian experience in South Africa, the richness of our race, class and gender differences, and yet — despite and even through these — our connectedness in Pride. The use of personal testimonies allows people to speak in their own voices about Pride, and enables the reader to identify with experiences sometimes very different to, but also comparable with, their own. The book is far from a conventional history: it aims instead to make the past accessible to the general reader.
But the book also shows us how much work we still have to do. The constitutional freedoms of all remain fragile in a vastly unequal society — one that has not succeeded in eradicating poverty or inequality; one in which prejudice against gays and lesbians is still rife, and in which lesbians are still far too vulnerable to dominating conceptions of male sexuality and sexual entitlement. Gays and lesbians still face violence and discrimination and ignorance and fear. And, most menacingly, outside our own country the perverse and unAfrican notion that homosexuality is perverse and unAfrican persists.
This book shows that there is also work to be done among gay and lesbian people themselves, and within ourselves, where deep divisions of race, gender and class remain, and where many remain ignorant or unheeding about HIV and Aids.
Our history as gay and lesbian people has its most potent significance in relation to our future. Within South Africa, we cannot afford to be brash or rash or complacent about the equalities so far won. Within our borders, we must remind ourselves that human freedoms are indivisible, and that so long as inequality and injustice of any kind remain, our own enjoyment of our freedoms must remain suspect. Our commitment to gay and lesbian equality must be a commitment to equality and human rights for all.
And, beyond our borders, too many Africans still suffer oppression and fear because of same-sex identity or activities. To assert our pride in ourselves as gays and lesbians, to claim our equality as dignified citizens, to demand the protection and benefit of the law therefore continue to remain necessary, joyful and self-expressive acts. May this book provide us with fresh inspiration and energy on that journey.
This is an edited version of the preface to Pride: Protest and Celebration, written by Edwin Cameron. Johannesburg’s 17th annual Pride parade starts at 11am at Zoo Lake in Johannesburg on September 30
A fight on two fronts
‘This is what I say to my comrades in the struggle when they ask me why I waste time fighting for moffies. This is what I say to gay men and lesbians who ask me why I spend so much time struggling against apartheid when I should be fighting for gay rights. I am black and I am gay. I cannot separate the two parts of me into secondary or primary struggles.
‘In South Africa I am oppressed because I am a black man, and I am oppressed because I am gay. So when I fight for my freedom I must fight against both oppressions. All those who believe in a democratic South Africa must fight against all oppression, all intolerance, all injustice.
‘With this march, gays and lesbians are entering the struggle for a democratic South Africa where everybody has equal rights and everyone is protected by the law: black and white, men and women, gay and straight.”
From Simon Nkoli’s opening address to the people assembled for the first gay and lesbian Pride march, Johannesburg, October 13 1990