cal appoints new director

 By Musa Ngubane (Reporter)

December 15, 2006: Coalition for African Lesbian (CAL) appoints Fikile Vilakazi as its new director.

Vilakazi is joining CAL from OUT LGBT Well – being in Tshwane where she was an advocacy officer.

Vilakazi’s first involvement with CAL was at its first leadership institute in Namibia where she apparently made her first impression. She had attended this meeting as a representative for the Lesbian and Gay Equality Project. During the deliberations in the same meeting she was elected to be the committee member.

However, when she was elected to sit again this year she refused as she was looking at the bigger picture. “I knew that the director position was vacant and I wanted to take my chances.”  

She affirms that her new position has nothing to do with status. “It is about the realities of lesbians’ state of affairs in Africa and about my commitment to make a change.” She believes that lesbians can play a significant role in pushing forward the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) struggle in Africa. 

Vilakazi is concerned about the lack of lesbians’ visibility in the struggle for liberation. However, she believes that CAL is the right podium to pick up on these issues. She feels that currently, there are lesbian violation cases that need the attention of CAL such as in Cameroon, Zimbabwe, Mauritius and South Africa.

Presently CAL plans to develop its administrations to fortify its relationship with the African commissioners and to increase its reach to lesbians all over the African continent.

While her term only starts in January 2007, Vilakazi already has a good idea of the challenges facing CAL.  “Its mainly locating funding and coming up with activism that relies less on funding as the LGBTI sector draws its funding from the same pool”, she explained.

Her passion in politics and advocacy started when she was still studying at the 

University of the Western Cape where she was highly involved in politics as a member of the student representative council. After studies she did a lot of community work in Gugulethu and Langa in the Western Cape Province.

Shortly after that she became a gender activist and volunteered for youth development organisations. She worked with organisations such as Young Women with Vision which she joined when it was at a stage of transforming its structure.

She joined the Gauteng local government with focus on gender, and she initiated the first gender desk for her ward. She organised her tenure with an objective to ensure that women’s voices were heard internally and externally.   

She then became involved with the Joint Enrichment Project which dealt with the aftermaths of the 1976 rebellions. She influenced the establishment of the Youth Commission in 1994 and she worked with the Basic Income Grant Campaign.

In 2004 Vilakazi’s life took another turn when she found herself having to deal with a lot of major issues that homosexuals were going through such as ‘coming out’ and struggling with family acceptance.

“Being involved with the Lesbian and Gay Equality project made me realise that I am not the only one going through what I was going through. I also found a sense of belonging and of expression there. This also helped on how to relate to my family as I became able to open up to them about the mission of my organisation,” she said.

It is through this experience that Vilakazi became famous as public speaker and a more visible LGBTI activist. She joined OUT LGBT Well – being in 2005.