The history of
gay liberation in South Africa reflects the history of the
country: South African gays were divided along race, class
and gender lines despite their common experience of sexual
oppression. For decades, the public face of the South African
gay liberation movement was white, middle class and male and
as a whole it failed to link itself to the broader liberation
struggle. From today’s vantage point the gay movement was
at best equivocal in opposing apartheid, and at worst complicity
in supporting it.
And in common with
similar movements in other parts of the world, gay organisations
in South Africa struggled to reconcile providing emotional
and social support for their constituency with the need for
a political voice. Until the late 1980s a black gay presence
was muted. It would seem that – denied access to the bars,
clubs and other spaces taken for granted by their white compatriots
– black gays used gay organisations as spaces to socialise
and seldom adopted an overtly political stance. Accordingly,
gay organisations had a spectrum of political views, from
complacency to militancy. And race was not always the determining
factor for an organisation’s political complexion.
But the launch
in 1994 of the National Coalition for Gay and Lesbian Equality
laid the ground for a more unified and representative movement.
Swept along by the momentum of constitutional reform, the
support of the African National Congress, and the more open
political climate of the transition from apartheid to democracy,
the coalition has come closer than previous formations to
authentically representing the majority of the country’s gays.
The desegregation of cities has also stimulated a more visible
black gay presence. For the first time young people have been
able to escape the conservative mores of the townships and
their poor social facilities, to create more neutral and gay-friendly
spaces in the city.
But as gay rights
activists Mazibuko Jara and Sheila Lapinsky argue, there is
no room for complacency. The race, gender and class inequalities
which still divide South Africans need to be reconciled with
a sexual identity which unites them. This will involve the
deliberate construction, through careful use of resources
and appropriate strategies, of a new and more inclusive South
Africa gay identity. It will mean catering in the first instance
for the poorer sectors of the community, and for lesbians.
The outcome may not reconcile all of the gay community’s various
interests – that may simply not be possible given the divisions
of the past – but there will be a more authentic movement.
