editorial: don’t fight for liberation for repression of others

By Mashilo Mnisi (BTM Editor)

November 14, 2007: Lately, last week to be precise, I happened to peep through into BTM’s Womyn’s Discussion Forum, and I was disappointed to meet such alarming bigotry from utterances by some members of the forum.

I’m not going to disclose the nicknames they use when chatting in the forum because even if I do, those are not their real names.

The conversation was about the ‘rainbow’ mingle that Behind The Mask has in its staff members. The complaint was particularly on the heterosexual individuals at BTM who seem to consume the organisation according to those members of the forum.

They continued to forget the essence and fundamentals of equality and the rainbow nation – or let me invoke the South African constitution to address this matter – in their conversation when they demurely suggested a petition to rid off the ‘straight’ staff because the commentators believe heterosexual people wouldn’t know anything about gay issues.

This baffled me as editor and started wondering if these people or that particular person construed a thing about equality and the struggle – let alone the constitution when it says we all have equal rights and equal share for participation as citizens.

The utterances could in fact foment the struggle for gay people in this country and the continent as it implied animosity towards the other group of individuals, and – well, it revealed scathing and naïve tone of ignorance and human rights.

There are many people who understand and fight for human rights and other inequalities among communities whether belonging within those particular communities or not. To join the gay struggle, one doesn’t necessarily need to be homosexual – so long there’s an understanding of human rights and equality, and the need to be free.

The African National Congress (ANC) didn’t need only black people to fight apartheid, but also white people who abhorred apartheid had to fight for black South African people.

There were many white people such as Joe Slovo, Jeremy Cronin, Raymond Suttener, Albie Sachs, Johnny Le Grange, Ronnie Kasrils, the late Sheila Wynberg, Alerc Erwin just to mention a few, who were within the forerunners of the South African political organisations struggling and fighting for freedom of the black people.

I guess freedom wouldn’t have been won like that if we didn’t have those people. Involvement of such activists fuelled fear in those within power that whatever that they were doing was abominated and wrong.

So I still insist that solidarity and unity of different colours, nationalities, races, creed and genders will always conquer all – hence I remain to extol BTM’s non-discriminatory and inclusiveness progress.