Unnatural', 'Un-African' and 'Ungodly': Homophobic discourse in democratic South Africa (original) (raw)
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Unnatural, unAfrican, unGodly. Homophobic Discourse in Contemporary South Africa
Sexualities
On 28 November 2006, South Africa's legislature passed the Civil Union Act , which legalised same-sex marriages or civil partnerships. While South Africa was fifth in the world to recognise the right of people of the same sex to marry, the country is by no means free of homophobic attitudes. However, we argue that an examination of the discourses embedded in the public discussion of gay marriage shows that the post-1994 period has not simply been a case of homophobia as usual. The altered context has given rise to the need for new ways of homophobic discourse to position itself. The rights enshrined in the Constitution represent a powerful set of ideas about the distinction between the democratic state and its apartheid predecessor. These ideas provide the dominant framework for political debate in the current context and it is therefore within this overarching framework that anti-gay sentiments must find a way to express themselves that has legitimacy. Our finding is that the reinscription of homophobia in an era of the ascendancy of human rights discourse has been chiefly in terms of three potent legitimising tropes -homosexuality as 'unAfrican', 'unGodly', and 'unnatural'. It is only by deepening our understanding of the terms in which homophobia is being articulated in the current period that we can develop effective counter discourses
"Unnatural", "Ungodly" and "UnAfrican". Homophobic Discourses in Contemporary South Africa
On 28 November 2006, South Africa's legislature passed the Civil Union Act , which legalised same-sex marriages or civil partnerships. While South Africa was fifth in the world to recognise the right of people of the same sex to marry, the country is by no means free of homophobic attitudes. However, we argue that an examination of the discourses embedded in the public discussion of gay marriage shows that the post-1994 period has not simply been a case of homophobia as usual. The altered context has given rise to the need for new ways of homophobic discourse to position itself. The rights enshrined in the Constitution represent a powerful set of ideas about the distinction between the democratic state and its apartheid predecessor. These ideas provide the dominant framework for political debate in the current context and it is therefore within this overarching framework that anti-gay sentiments must find a way to express themselves that has legitimacy. Our finding is that the reinscription of homophobia in an era of the ascendancy of human rights discourse has been chiefly in terms of three potent legitimising tropes -homosexuality as 'unAfrican', 'unGodly', and 'unnatural'. It is only by deepening our understanding of the terms in which homophobia is being articulated in the current period that we can develop effective counter discourses
Gay Marriage in South Africa: A Human Rights Legacy? An (Anti-) Apartheid Legacy? Or Both?
How could a country infamous for institutionalized inequality become one of the first countries in the world to legalize same-sex marriage? This essay explores two hypotheses for the legalization of same-sex marriage in South Africa, and concludes that a confluence of “external” and “internal” factors brought about this landmark legislation. The external factors hypothesis posits that one consequence of a half-century of transnational anti-apartheid advocacy, led in part by the United Nations, was a domestic legal context steeped in human rights norms. The South African Constitution was drafted against this backdrop legal context, borrowing from international human rights law and progressive constitutions elsewhere in the world, resulting in an Equality Provision that included a prohibition on sexual orientation discrimination. The internal factors hypothesis posits that generations of non-white South Africans, growing up dehumanized by South Africa’s racist legal regime, were pre-conditioned to agree with South Africa’s indigenous gay rights activists and to reject the notion that rights may be denied based on difference. For the majority of South Africans, the post-apartheid South Africa would have to include protections for all groups that might be subject to discrimination and to the whims of the powerful. The truth, of course, lies somewhere in between the external and internal factors, relying on the internalization of human rights norms by an anti-apartheid elite. On the one hand, it is clear that international pressure and human rights law informed the anti-apartheid movement, that the human rights community and international human rights law currently assert rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex (LGBTI) persons, and that South Africa’s Constitution-drafters borrowed from international law and foreign constitutions which established individual liberties. But South Africa’s 1993 Interim Constitution pre-dates some of the earliest efforts to establish human rights for LGBTI persons. Before South Africa became the first African country to legalize same-sex marriage, South Africa was the first country anywhere in the world to outlaw sexual orientation-discrimination as a constitutional matter. No international legal instruments contained explicit protections for LGBTI persons, and there was almost no extant human rights jurisprudence favorable to sexual minorities. I argue in this essay that both international human rights law and the post-apartheid context were necessary to bring about same-sex marriage in South Africa, but the influence of each was limited to South Africa’s political and legal elite. Transnational advocacy and international human rights law contributed directly and indirectly to the end of apartheid that opened up space for a constitutional moment. In that constitutional moment, an elite that had been influenced by human rights norms during the anti-apartheid struggle borrowed from international human rights law and norms to draft the South African Constitution. At that same time, the nascent gay rights movement in South Africa pressed for inclusion of sexual orientation in the list of protected grounds of the Constitution’s Equality Provision. Because the transitional moment was a moment during which any form of discrimination was viewed as a vestige of apartheid, making it fundamentally implausible for discrimination to be perpetuated into the future, South Africa’s gay rights activists were able to capitalize on the nation’s human rights legacy and its apartheid legacy. With the prohibition against sexual orientation entrenched in the Constitution, a litigation strategy could be carefully managed, developing the sexual orientation jurisprudence that made the landmark gay marriage holding in Fourie seemingly “inevitable.”
The legalisation of same-sex marriage in South Africa in November 2006 made the country the exemplar for gay and lesbian rights in Africa. The advocacy of, struggle for, and finally winning the right to marry was a euphoric victory for numerous gay and lesbian people. The various steps that had to be negotiated in order to pass the Civil Union Act are documented in To Have and to Hold: The Making of Same-Sex Marriage in South Africa (2008, hereafter To Have and to Hold). The blurb at the back of To Have and to Hold describes the book as " invaluable for understanding [the same-sex marriage] journey and its legal, social, cultural and religious ramifications ". The editors of the volume, Judge, Manion and de Waal, add that the various stakeholders that supported same-sex marriage " adequately interrogated the role and function of marriage " (Judge et al. 2008: 12). In this article, I put this claim to the test by interrogating the legal, social, cultural and religious reasons put forward in favour of same-sex marriage in To Have and to Hold. From a queer point of view, same-sex marriage is problematic because it ignores the regulatory power of the state, the fact that marriage is a public tradition, the argument that the supposed " respectability " bestowed by marriage is a farce, and the contention that legal benefits should be given to people regardless of their marital status. I use queer linguistic tools to deconstruct the claim by the editors that the text represents a " critical engagement " with same-sex marriage (Judge et al. 2008: 1). I conclude the article by showing how, rather than opening a space for the " recognition of diverse sexualities and relationship forms " (Judge et al. 2008: 12), the Civil Union Act is limited to those people who self-identify as gay or lesbian.
A PROGRESSIVE CONSTITUTION MEETS LIVED REALITY: SEXUALITY AND THE LAW IN SOUTH AFRICA
By examining two cases of homophobic hate crime in post-apartheid South Africa, this paper illuminates how activists have used the legal system to address the violence faced by many LGBTQI South Africans. Drawing on court transcripts, the experience of the lawyer in one of the cases and on interviews conducted with activists in South Africa, the article also draws attention to some of the challenges faced by those seeking to secure justice for LGBTQI people. The authors argue that recognising forms of violence motivated by prejudice as ‘hate crimes’ can serve as a powerful legal tool. The article provides a brief overview of the use of the term ‘hate crime’ in the South African context and offers concise accounts of the case studies and observations drawn from them. It also provides a series of recommendations regarding sexuality, violence and the law for state actors (ranging from police officers to judges and policymakers), for LGBTQI activists and educators, and for donors.
HERMES - Journal of Language and Communication in Business, 2023
The most abhorred population group in Africa (and by extension in Namibia) is the LGBTQI community. Nonheterosexuality is largely condemned in most African countries for political, religious, cultural and legal reasons. Couched within Appraisal Theory, the paper examines how linguistic resources are exploited in manners that evince how homophobia is politically and legally framed in two Namibian daily newspapers-The Namibian and New Era. For example, while the world has reacted to the realities of the departure from the traditional binary definitional parameters of sexualities and sexual identities, Namibia still remains largely homophobic, together with at least 47 other African countries still criminalising homosexuality. In 2001, for example, a video documentary quotes the then President of Namibia, Dr Sam Nujoma, expressing the sentiments that "Lesbians and homosexualism, these we condemn-we reject them. In Namibia there will be no lesbian, no homosexualism" (Blecher, 2001). In August 2005, Minister of Home Affairs, Theopolina Mushelenga, publicly denounced the human rights of Namibian gays and lesbians and also asserted that "homosexuals were responsible for the HIV and AIDS pandemic" (Lorway, 2006, p. 436). Homosexuality has generally, thus, been regarded as an uncultural, unAfrican, uncommon and unacceptable phenomenon in Africa, including Namibia. In Namibia, as in other African countries, the penalty for homosexual behaviour is imprisonment. Many Namibian political leaders have publicly expressed that homosexual rights go against the legal, religious and cultural values of the country. There are political and legal imports to the rejection of homosexual behaviour patterns in Namibia as evinced in news reporting cultures. Homosexuality in Namibian political and legal discourses is largely imagined as either an 'unAfrican' behaviour or attributed to western influences on Africa. Linguistic expression by many Namibian politicians also evince a revulsion of homosexuality.
The ‘Inevitability’ of Same-Sex Marriage in South Africa’s Post-Apartheid State
South African Journal on Human Rights, 2007
This article argues that the adoption of the Civil Union Act, extending marriage rights to same-sex couples, does not represent the inevitable and triumphant victory of a long legal and political struggle for the emancipation of gay men and lesbians in South Africa. A combination of luck, wise strategic leadership and fortitude eventually led to the adoption of full marriage rights for same-sex couples. The article traces the roots of this legal and political victory back to the debates about the inclusion of the sexual orientation clause in the South African Constitution and points to the importance of the distinct (conservative) legal strategy employed by the National Coalition for Gay and Lesbian Equality in achieving full partnership rights for all. The initial jurisprudence developed by the Constitutional Court created the basis for later legal victories and brought along judges who might have had some misgivings about the extension of marriage rights to same-sex couples had the issue arisen earlier on. The Constitutional Court's judgment in Fourie left very little room for Parliament to manoeuvre because it emphasised the symbolic value of marriage and confirmed that a 'separate but equal' partnership law for same-sex couples would not pass constitutional muster. However, this important legal victory will not have any direct and immediate bearing on the lives of many gay men and lesbians in South Africa as they face social, cultural and economic hardship in ways that cannot be easily addressed through the legal reform of partnership laws. The improvement of the lives of ordinary gay men and lesbians will go hand in hand with changes in societal attitudes towards minority sexualities, which to a large extent will be dependent on grassroots activism and organisation. Because the battle for full marriage rights was a well directed, elite-based legal battle, it failed to build a sustainable, vibrant, grassroots movement to take on this task but the symbolic space created by the same-sex marriage reform may well begin to allow for the fostering of such a movement and thus for true emancipation of gay men and lesbians.
The recognition of same-sex unions in South Africa
2009
With the abolition of apartheid and the introduction of a new constitutional dispensation, the state's totalitarian exclusion of homosexuals from legal recognition was relegated to a past era. The constitutional commitment to human dignity and equality and the inclusion of sexual orientation as a prohibited ground of discrimination led to the recognition of same-sex life partnerships and, inevitably, same-sex marriage by means of a civil union regime. The object of this study is to investigate the scope of the legal consequences provided to same-sex couples by the Civil Union Act 17 of 2006 and to determine the legal standing of same-sex couples who fall outside the ambit of the Act. The study includes constitutional arguments pertaining to the continued recognition of same-sex life partnerships and a critical analysis of the constitutionality of the Civil Union Act as a separate measure to govern same-sex marriage. This investigation is conducted with reference to relevant legislation and case law. KEY TERMS sexual orientation human dignity equality permanent same-sex life partnership same-sex marriage Civil Union Act 17 of 2006 Constitution totalitarianism gay men lesbian women 'With the introduction of a constitutional democracy in 1994, South Africa entered a new era characterised by values, such as respect for the dignity and privacy of all its citizens, a principled commitment to equality, recognition of diversity of different groups in our heterogenous society and, last but not least, a particular emphasis on bringing the most vulnerable groups in society within the ambit of constitutional protection'. 1 1 INTRODUCTION 1.1 BACKGROUND Sexual orientation is defined by reference to erotic attraction: in the case of heterosexuals, to members of the opposite sex; in the case of homosexuals to members of the same sex. 2 The notion of sexual orientation includes both personal and individual identity and also social and emotional relations. 3 The social and legal system of apartheid did not protect sexual minorities who expressed an erotic attraction to members of the same sex. Because their sexual orientation differed from the majority norm which was based on Christian beliefs, homosexual conduct was condemned and punished by law. 4 The political and legal systems of pre-1994 South Africa were specifically noted for the totalitarian invasion of the state in the private sphere of people's day-today lives. 5 With the abolition of apartheid and the introduction of a new constitutional dispensation, a democratic, legal and intellectual framework was created that allowed historically marginalised groups, for example, gays and lesbians, to challenge the religious and ideological hegemony that dominated South 1
Philosophical evaluation of South Africa strategy in confronting homophobia
African Renaissance, 2019
The strategies by South African government in addressing gender discrepancies have yield no results because there are prevalent gender discriminatory practices and attitudes, which have already culminated into homophobia. Thence the main objective of this paper is to evaluate the government remedial strategies against cultural matrices as determined by patriarchy and homophobia. In addressing the objective, the study deployed qualitative research method, wherein relevant documents, journals, as well the South African Constitution (1994) pertaining to LGBTI matters were consulted. The outcome was that despite significant measures by the government and other institutions in African Renaissance