Gays Reap Rewards Slowly in Post-Apartheid South Africa
By Jessie Deeter

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CAPE TOWN — With the first all-race democratic elections in South Africa, in 1994, Nokwanda Ruiters expected her life as a mixed-race woman to change for the better. But she never thought that it would lead to her marriage to fellow lesbian activist Funeka Soldaat.

Six years ago, lesbians and gays were unable to marry because they had no legal rights and no recognized place in society. Sodomy was against the law. Nokwanda's black partner was not allowed to vote because of the color of her skin.

Gays and lesbians constitute a small minority of South Africa's population, but their struggle for equality since apartheid is a window on the nation as a whole. Like the majority of the country's residents, homosexuals have seen their rights increase since the end of apartheid, but like most others, they are still waiting for a better day.

On their wedding day in a township about 30 kilometers west of Cape Town last December, Funeka and Nokwanda worried that their marriage would not be accepted in their close black community. Nokwanda, who guesses her age at 24 or 25, was afraid that her neighbors would throw stones at her borrowed car. A stocky woman with cropped tinted red hair and the light brown complexion that designated her as “colored” rather than black, she was resplendent in a traditional Western white wedding gown and veil. She nervously drank three glasses of water before joining her “groom”outside. Funeka Soldaat, 38, a Xhosa woman who, with her shaved head and wiry build, could pass for a man from behind, wore a khaki-colored suit.

“We were trying to show them that we're people and we can live together,” said Nokwanda, who took the Soldaat surname despite the fact that her marriage was not legal.

The neighbors got the message. Three hundred predominately straight friends, relatives and neighbors showed up to celebrate the wedding of the two lesbians that day. Those would could fit inside took over the cramped house, catered with chicken, samosas, pies and sausage rolls for half as many people. The rest partied outside in the sandy streets, periodically cheering to the health of the new couple.

Since Nelson Mandela's release nine years ago, his country has been transformed from a land of apartheid, where blacks caught without the passbooks they were required to carry at all times could be imprisoned, to a nation with one of the most liberal constitutions in the world. Once treated as the world's pariah, South Africa, with its Truth and Reconciliation Commission, has become an international model of forgiveness.

The constitution implemented in 1994 guaranteed enfranchisement to every single person of voting age. It officially ended the hated notion of government-designated “homelands,” declaring the choice of where to live a fundamental human right. It stated that there is equality between “men, women and people of all races,” and additionally prohibited discrimination on the basis of age, disability, belief, or sexual orientation.

“Not only are (gay) couples better off (since 1994), they're suing the government,” said Martin Nel, editor of “Q Online,” a well-known web site for gays.

Gays and lesbians have won several major court battles based on the constitution's sexual orientation clause since 1994. They have overturned the sodomy law, ended discrimination against homosexuals in the military, and, most recently, won the right for immigrant partners of gay men and women to live and work in South Africa.

This nation after apartheid is now in many respects a gay-friendly place to be. It is the home of a new Gay and Lesbian Alliance Party, an openly gay Supreme Court judge, and Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who publicly supports the rights of homosexual priests. Organizers expect 15,000 marchers at this year's gay pride parade in September, nearly seven times the number who attended the first parade ten years ago.

Although there is more open public support for the gay community in post-apartheid South Africa, there are still those who are opposed to the whole idea of homosexuality.

“We would condemn the practice of homosexuality as we would condemn the practice of adultery,” said Reverend Terry Rae, General Secretary of the Baptist Union of South Africa.

“We encourage our churches to minister to people in need or in trouble-if a person was a practicing gay we would try to minister to that person and help that person.”

Lesbian activist and academic Ann Smith tells of homophobia she experienced at home. Her neighbors, discussing a man and his lesbian daughter, said to her, “Well, he is such a horrible racist man and his daughter's a pervert-that'll serve him right.”

“My father was a liberal white man and his daughter's a pervert,”Smith told them.

Smith, who teaches courses on “queer theory”at University of the Witwatersrand, said that what bothered her most was that the neighbors expressing these homophobic views were women and Indians, of two traditionally oppressed groups themselves.

While voices of dissent seem to demand a call to gay activism, the country has more pressing issues to resolve.

South Africa is still subject to the problems of a developing nation. An influx of immigrants from neighboring African nations like Mozambique and Zimbabwe has prompted a xenophobic reaction from black workers who fear losing their jobs. Less than a quarter of the nation's 40 million residents are employed, and a quarter of the working population earns only $90 US dollars or less a month. The African National Congress, the party that piloted the country to democracy, is accused of corruption, education standards remain abysmal, and 1,500 South Africans are infected with the AIDS virus every day.

In this environment many of South Africa's gays and lesbians have chosen to wage a gradual campaign for future rights like gay marriage. Presently, weddings like that of Funeka and Nokwanda are not recognized by the state. And yet, on the eve of South Africa's second multi-party elections in June, leading gay activists aren't pushing the ANC to change the laws.

“We don't think that (marriage) should be an election issue,” said Kevan Botha, legal advisor to the National Coalition for Gay and Lesbian Equality. “Election issues must be around poverty and the important issues of reconciliation.”

Botha said that the Coalition plans to wait until the election has passed to try cases like the right to legally wed.

“I think we're going to win the (marriage) case but I don't think it's going to be a walk-over,” said Matthew Chaskalson, lawyer for the Center for Applied Legal Studies.

Chaskalson will be one of the attorneys who eventually takes the case to court. He said that the Coalition's strategy of carefully timing gay rights cases and choosing sympathetic plaintiffs might have made his job easier.

“There was something to be said for the strategy of choosing the easiest case and building on it,” he said.

Unlike their more vocal American counterparts, South African homosexuals have a history of either quietly aligning themselves with the ANC's anti-apartheid cause or staying out of politics all together.

Without her background in the ANC's youth league, said Funeka Soldaat, coming out as a Xhosa lesbian would have been extremely difficult.

During Winnie Mandela's kidnapping and assault trial in 1991, the slogan “Homosex is Not in Black Culture” was internalized by many blacks who still believe that homosexuality is a white “disease.”

Funeka suffered the additional stigma of being born a hermaphrodite.

“I was not interested in boys and scared to go out,” said Funeka, who underwent an operation to make her a “full woman.” She used to fear for her safety when she left the house. The first digit of her ring finger is missing, because her family cut it off to protect her from evil.

Funeka found her salvation in the ANC's youth league, where she was first able to test her political wings. “I tried to build that trust between members and myself,” she said. That trust later made it easier for her to come out to her activist friends.

“At first there was shock but in the end there was absolute support,”she said.

Both Funeka and Nokwanda believe that their community accepted their gay union so readily because they were known as activists first.

“Gays and lesbians should be involved in general politics,” said Funeka.

The Soldaats represent the blend of possibility, fear and courage that is the new South Africa.

Until recently, the Xhosa and the colored woman headed a one-room household of 15 lesbians who had been kicked out of their homes for being gay.

“Shame,” said Nokwanda Soldaat softly as she laughed at the thought of a visitor getting lost on the way to her home. The house she shares with Funeka lies in a labyrinth of similar tin-roofed houses that crisscross the landscape for as far as the eye can see. A lone Kelly green phone booth is shared by the entire community. Black power lines stretch overhead, bringing “borrowed” electricity to these houses from the other side of the main street.

With a 6500-Rand (about $1080.00 US dollars) donation from a local gay and lesbian non-profit organization, the Soldaats built their current four-room house right next door to the old one. The brick-red concrete floor in the main room is cracked and pitted, the walls are made of thin wood panels and the smell of creosote permeates every nook and cranny, but this new place is home.

Most of the lesbians who were living in the cramped house are gone now, having found work or permanent places to stay. Funeka works full time at the Triangle Project, which offers counseling and career services primarily to lesbians. Nokwanda is looking for work and planning her next wedding, the legal one.

Next time, said Nokwanda, she will wear the traditional African dress of her country.

“I want to show the black lesbians out there you can be gay and African,” she said.