By Moyiga Nduru
JOHANNESBURG, Feb 23 2006 (IPS)

As a community relations officer for the Johannesburg-based Forum for the Empowerment of Women, a non-governmental organisation, Zanele Muholi has become all too familiar with the prejudice against lesbians that exists in South Africa.

Over recent years, says Muholi, she has spoken “to more than 50 victims of rape and hate speech”, and recorded five major cases of violence against lesbians.

The latest incident occurred in Cape Town earlier this month. It involved a 19-year-old woman, Zoliswa Nkonyana, who was stabbed and stoned to death by a mob of young people in a predominantly black residential area of the coastal city, Khayelitsha.

This was not the first time that a gay woman had been attacked in the area. In 2003, another woman was seriously injured in the same place, notes Muholi.

In Soweto, the largest black residential to be established in Johannesburg under apartheid, attitudes towards lesbians are similarly hostile.

“It’s scary. Whenever people see lesbians holding hands or kissing in the street, they react by unleashing a torrent of verbal abuse which amounts to hate speech. Some of them would want to hit you physically,” a woman who lives in Soweto told IPS in a telephone interview from the neighbourhood.

She declined to reveal her identity for fear of being attacked. “We live in fear. Anything can happen to us, anytime,” the woman said.

Muholi believes “ignorance, arrogance and disrespect” lie at the heart of prejudice against gay women. Matters are worsened, she adds, by a culture of impunity: “They (attackers) know that they will get away with it (violence against lesbians).”

Rape is seen as an act that can alter the sexual orientation of gay women. Apart from scarring them psychologically, however, sexual assault can also serve as a death sentence: “Some end up catching sexually-transmitted diseases like AIDS or becoming pregnant,” says Muholi. According to the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS, about one in five adults in South Africa has contracted HIV.

But while lesbians face prejudice in the streets of Khayelitsha, Soweto and elsewhere, their rights are being entrenched in South Africa’s legal system.

Last year, the constitutional court ruled in favour of same-sex marriage in the country. Members of parliament have been given until the end of this year to amend the law accordingly.

In 2002, the court also ruled that gay couples had the right to adopt children, reportedly making South Africa the first African state to legalise such adoptions. South Africa’s constitution outlaws discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.

The constitutional court’s 2005 decision was roundly condemned by religious groups.

“The legalising of same-sex marriages is doomed to have a morally deleterious effect on the institution of the family, traditionally defined as the permanent union between husband and wife,” the Catholic Church said in a statement issued Dec. 7, 2005.

Njongonkulu Ndungane, the Anglican archbishop of Cape Town, voiced similar sentiments. “We do not regard partnership between two persons of the same sex as a marriage in the eyes of God,” he said.

However, Ndungane acknowledged that many might disagree with the Anglican Church’s standpoint on this matter.

“We recognise that we live in a country which is home to many beliefs, cultures and practices,” he noted. “It would be arrogant and presumptuous of us to attempt to force our values and viewpoints on people who think differently from us.”

Elsewhere in the Southern African region, gays and lesbians are also confronted with prejudice – as evidenced by Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe’s statement, made several years ago ago, that they were “worse than dogs and pigs”.

Canaan Banana, Zimbabwe’s first post-independence head of state, was convicted for sodomy in 1998, and jailed for a year. The court proceedings revealed that he had abused other men while in office.

Former Namibian president Sam Nujoma has also spoken out against homosexuality.

Back at the Forum for the Empowerment of Women, Muholi expresses the hope that – this time – Nkonyana’s killers will be brought to book.

“I hope those guys will be arrested and tried. I feel sorry for Nkonyana’s friend who ran away during the assault. She needs trauma counseling,” she says.

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