politics of resources

By Zanele Muholi

June 13, 2007: You search for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex’s (LGBTI) scholarships of any kind on the internet, and the only place that you can get such is the US or Europe.

I was searching for funding on the internet recently for my Masters studies and I realised that it’s in fact true, South Africa doesn’t render scholarship fundings to LGBTI activists or merely their community members who seek to pursue their studies.

So far what the LGBTI organisations, which are non-governmental organisations (NGO’s), received as major funding from their donors is money to undertake work programmes and not for educating activists.

Hence, now the debate is whether the National Department of Education in South Africa should or not provide new syllabus on sexual orientation and gender at schools.  Previously, if interested, you could only get that kind of discipline at university level, if at all you enrol for Women & Gender Studies. Anything to do with full queer syllabus is still American or European based, even the books that we read for references.

Gay and Lesbian Archives of South Africa (GALA) and OUT LGBT-Wellbeing (OUT) continues to run workshops that focus on gender sensitivity to educators at various schools currently on district level. There are 10 workshops with 20 participants so far totalling to 200 people.  Balancing Act - South African gay and lesbian youth speak out – was published to offer life orientation skills and it is distributed at these workshops to provide more information to educators.

As much as we make demands as the LGBTI organisations to ensure that this is applicable, we need to establish a scholarship fund for our activists within the community.

South Africa needs to invest its resources and energies towards educating its LGBTI community and activists in order to eradicate poverty, illiteracy and unemployment that seem as fraught to the community.

It is important for the constituency to look into this matter by putting funds into these groups which most come from disadvantaged backgrounds. This will assist building a delegation of out-queer African leadership that will be able to fight global issues that affects the local gay community.

To fight homophobia, prejudice and hate crimes, the collective [the LGBTI organisations] need to have a community that will change policies with those in power.

That would be another way to deal with the new problem of scholar versus activism pandemic – meaning to challenge the hierarchy giving way to equality.

There’re so many battles won within the LGBTI movement in South Africa that culminated in the promulgation of the Same Sex Marriage last year. However, this advancement doesn’t mean the struggle is over because our people are still hungry for knowledge.  They are the same people who become the subject of research, and therefore we need to ensure that they’re capable of comprehending the proceedings of such research.

If I were a decision-maker I personally would have put in place a Literacy and Education Trust as a priority.

LGBTI organisations in this country need to join hands with government and the private sector to ensure that education trusts are formed. It does not make sense to have the best Constitution that is not understood by its target group because they lack education.

I have been trying to figure out why other activists left the sector and joined the private sector. The work can be draining sometimes and leaves some sort of strain.  Some people prefer the boardroom instead of the street (protest) toyi-toyi. At least in that way they are guaranteed hefty salaries and bonuses at the end of their sweating term.

According to Lee Mondry, Vice-Chairperson of ACTIVATE at Wits University, he said that we have a lot of activists who cannot afford university tuition, who want to be involved in the LGBTI movements and it would be a wonderful idea to give them access to the fund/scholarship. He added that social upliftment and social mobilization is fostered through university education.

Note: I’d would like to send my gratitude to Busi Kheswa, Mpumi Mathabela, Zethu Matebeni and many others who successfully fundraised (on 040607 at Horror Café’, Newtown) for my study fees. I wish what they did for me is extended to others as well.

*Zanele Muholi is an Activist and Photographer from South Africa. She's also a co-founder of FEW (Forum for the Empowerment of Women), the only black lesbian organisation based in Johannesburg.