Columnists :: Holding The Center
Hard lessons by Richard J. Rosendall
contributing writerTuesday Nov 6, 2007The end of this month marks the first anniversary of the legalization of same-sex marriage in South Africa. The same day, Nov. 30, is the ninth anniversary of the death of South African gay rights pioneer Simon Nkoli from AIDS at the age of 41. The coincidence of the two anniversaries brings thoughts on the cost of freedom.
Nkoli, whom I met in 1994, was a true revolutionary who had participated in the student uprising in Soweto in 1976 and was a defendant in the Delmas Treason Trial in 1986 along with United Democratic Front leaders Terror Lekota, Moss Chikane and Popo Molefe. Later he wrote about the torture he had endured, and how he came out as a gay man to his co-defendants during their pre-trial detention. He credited his acquittal largely to his "gay alibi," which was that he hadn’t attended a key conspiracy meeting because he was at a Gay Association of South Africa event.
Nkoli’s résumé gave him good standing with the African National Congress when the time came to draft a new constitution in the 1990s. When he and others successfully pressed for the inclusion of "sexual orientation" in the non-discrimination clause, they made South Africa the first nation ever to include such a provision in its constitution. That paved the way for further advances including marriage equality.
It is hard for comfortable Westerners to imagine the context of violent upheaval in which gay rights were won in South Africa. When Nelson Mandela began his secret negotiations with the government from his prison cell, the armed resistance was his leverage. The guerrilla attacks by the ANC’s military wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe ("Spear of the Nation"), had been labeled terrorism. What was omitted by the labelers was the fact that the ANC’s earlier peaceful efforts had been met with implacable state repression. And when Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher called Mandela a terrorist, they conveniently overlooked their own countries’ bloody histories. As Talleyrand said, what is treason but a matter of dates?
Athol Fugard’s 1989 play, My Children! My Africa!, an acclaimed production of which recently finished its run at Washington’s Studio Theatre, is set in the Apartheid-era Bantu educational system in South Africa’s Eastern Cape in 1984. It is a tragedy in which a teacher, Anela Myalatya, passionate about his profession and opposed to insurrection, cannot dissuade his star pupil, Thami Mbikwana, from joining a boycott that shuts down the school. [Spoiler Alert] Mr. M, as the teacher is known, cannot accept the slogan "liberation before education," is accused of being a government collaborator, and ends up being "necklaced" with a rubber tire doused in gasoline. Thami, who loves his teacher despite having chosen a path that Mr. M rejects, is unable to save him from the mob.
’Rights that cannot be exercised are dead rights. The challenge is not the passing of a constitution. The real challenge lies in changing public perceptions.’ Fugard gives strong voices to both characters. Mr. M treasures his dictionary. He considers words sacred and magical. "If the struggle needs weapons give it words Thami. Stones and petrol bombs can’t get inside those armored cars. Words can. They can do something even more devastating than that ... they can get inside the heads of those inside the armored cars."
The trouble is that Mr. M’s dictionary is English. Thami is finished with Apartheid classrooms. "We know now what they really are -- traps which have been carefully set to catch our minds, our souls." He has found "another school ... anywhere the people meet and whisper names we have been told to forget, the dates of events they try to tell us never happened, and the speeches they try to say were never made." My friend Antonio relates how a mostly black Johannesburg audience in 1989 stood up and shouted Thami’s rallying cry, "Amandla!" -- Xhosa for "power."
One of the dates Thami cites is June 16, 1976. As I recognized the date of the student uprising, the theater became haunted by Simon Nkoli. On the one hand, as he knew all too painfully, armed struggle is sometimes necessary. On the other hand, with peace comes a subtler struggle to change people’s minds.
At South Africa’s first gay pride march in 1990, Nkoli said, "I am black and I am gay. I cannot separate the two parts of me into secondary or primary struggle. They will be all one struggle." But as Natalie Oswin wrote this year in the Journal of Women in Culture and Society, "Despite Nkoli’s inspiring words ... the constitutional lobbying effort took a deliberately conservative approach that has been characterized as elitist, unrepresentative, and male dominated."
Kevan Botha, the chief lobbyist for the National Coalition for Gay and Lesbian Equality, stated after ratification, "Leaving the precincts of parliament, I was struck by the enormity of the work that lies ahead. Rights that cannot be exercised are dead rights. The challenge is not the passing of a constitution. The real challenge lies in changing public perceptions, empowering our own community to exercise those rights, and safeguarding the democratic principles that allow freedom and equality to flourish. That is the challenge to every gay man and lesbian woman in South Africa. We’re going to need a strong gay movement after all."
When we lobby our government, it is worth recalling the blood that was shed to gain us the privilege. If our victories are imperfect, there is always another bill, another day, another lesson. In doing that work, we are the best sort of collaborators.
Richard J. Rosendall is a writer and activist whose work has appeared on Salon.com and the Independent Gay Forum (www.indegayforum.com). He can be reached at rrosendall@starpower.net.
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