gala takes lgbti history to public

By BtM Correspondent

February 16, 2006: Many of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersexual (LGBTI) people witnessed the flaunting of Gay and Lesbian Archive's (GALA) work at the unfriendly Apartheid museum in the Gold Reef City near Johannesburg on Valentine's Day.

In what is called 'Balancing Act: South African Gay and Lesbian Youth Speak Out', as this year's theme adapted from a book of the same name, the exhibition's aim is to mark the tenth anniversary of South Africa's Constitution - which widely prohibits discrimination among people based on sexual orientation.

Running until May this year, the exhibition has some exclusive displays that include ten photographs and excerpts from oral history interviews with LGBTI youth. According to the GALA website, "The exhibition collects a group of young people whose account of their lives affirm their identities as sexually different, and claim their right under our Constitution as equal and proud South Africans."

After a warm welcome, director of the museum Christopher Till touched on some of the museum's purposes that is to preserve and document the ways in which South Africans "overcame the tyranny of apartheid."

Former MEC of Education in the Gauteng province Professor Mary Metcalfe, who's currently head of the University of the Witwatersrand School of Education, says apartheid certainly restricted the full expression of many people regarding their identities.

A crucial difference between the apartheid and post-apartheid Constitutions, according to Metcalfe, lays in the latter's protection of individual liberties, unlike the former, which safeguarded the rights of one racial group, which were the white people.

Although she heralded the strides the democratic government and LGBTI movement had made in securing rights for all people, Metcalfe stressed that individuals still have to fight bigotry in the mass media with respect to sexual orientation. She also appealed on prominent politicians and leaders to come out and publicly identify themselves as LGBTI persons.

In her story captured in the Balancing Act book and exhibit, Yanda Tolobisa shares her experience of how this work has changed her. She concedes that, "change starts with you and me." For Tolobisa, the exhibit and the book helped her to grasp the difference between tolerance and acceptance. "Tolerance is acceptance without peace. Acceptance is coming to an understanding of someone else's truth", she explains. Tolobisa maintained that the stories in the exhibit were meant to demonstrate the different journeys to happiness and that "being a survivor is an everyday job."

Founded in 1997, GALA's main purpose is to capture and preserve the history of LGBTI communities.