Gay Pride in a South African Township

Forget dykes on bikes, marching congregants from "reconciling" faith communities, drag queens and an endless stream of rainbow flags. A gay/lesbian march held last week in the sprawling, impoverished township of Khayelitsha, South Africa was more of an act of courage than a summer celebration. Billed as the "first-ever" pride march in this black township located outside of Cape Town, Khayelitsha's double-digit rates of HIV infection is only exceeded by its soaring level of unemployment and chronic, widespread poverty. Most of inhabitants of Khayelitsha (population estimates vary between 500,000 to 750,000 people) are still waiting for a long-promised tide of opportunity to lift their lives. For the 120 GLBT activists who took to the streets on June 19, that day can't come soon enough. For others, like Zoliswa Nkonyana, it is already too late. Nkonyana, a 19-year-old lesbian, was beaten to death in 2006. The 20 young men who kicked and clubbed her have yet to be brought to trial for her murder. While GLBT Americans are celebrating gay pride in June, in Khayelitsha they are marching for an end to violence targeted at gay men and lesbians, a police force that too often look away from crimes against GLBT people and a justice system that is slow to prosecute perpetrators. Intended to be much broader than a typical pride parade, representatives from South African nonprofit organizations came together to address hate crimes like Nkonyana's, as well as the recent imprisonment of a gay couple in Malawi and the anti-gay statements coming from governments in Zimbabwe and Uganda. Keletso Makofane, one of the coordinators of the march, says that gay people in the townships tend to be invisible and their issues ghettoized. This lack of visibility makes them targets for hate crimes. "Being gay in the townships is very risky. This march is a way to take back the streets and defy the violence." A particularly abhorrent act of violence is directed towards lesbians and occasionally gay men. Mandla Majola, an activist with the Treatment Action Campaign, described a crime that has come to be known as "corrective rape." Lesbians are raped to cure them of their sexual orientation and particularly effeminate men are raped to "enforce their manhood." Often the rapes go unreported. March organizers like Makofane, and activists like Majola, are working to change that. Khayelitsha is years away from organizing the kind of pride parade that Minneapolis will experience this weekend. For the GLBT community there, the priorities are to bring the murderers of Zoliswa Nkonyana to justice, to stop corrective rape and to end homophobia. For now, in Khayelitsha, a pride celebration will have to wait.