Sometimes X, Sometimes Y 

Sometimes X, Sometimes Y

The Joint Working Group for Lesbian, Gays, Bisexuals and Transgender Persons in South Africa has published Sometimes X, Sometimes Y, Always Me, an anthology of lesbian writing from South Africa.

The anthology is dedicated to Zoliswa Nkonyana:

“At the tender age of 19 you were clubbed, kicked and beaten to death by a mob of men.
Why? For being a lesbian.
You were chased, pelted with bricks and finished off with a golf club.
It took two weeks for the story to trickle through to the news.
This happened on February the 4th, 2006, more than 10 years after South Africa’s new progressive Constitution and its accompanying human rights were written into law.
As you lay bleeding in the streets of Khayelitsha, thousands of people were celebrating the annual Cape Pride Festival in the streets of the Mother City.
Yet the shame of your death barely registered a decibel.
You ended up, a small article on page 6 in local newspapers.”

It is a beautiful, moving anthology of personal stories of South African lesbians. There is poetry, stories, letters and autobiography. The anthology deals with issues of coming out, family and peer acceptance and rejection, love and loss, abuse and death.

A few days before I was sent the anthology, ZLHR (Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights) launched their Zimbabwean HIV/AIDS and Human Rights Charter. Even though they were consulted in the development of the Charter, GALZ (Gays and Lesbians of Zimbabwe) are not mentioned in the list of partner organisations. Homosexual transmission of HIV is not discussed. Despite the fact the homophobia is deeply rooted in Zimbabwean culture, and president mugabe himself has dubbed homosexuals “worse than pigs and dogs,” homosexuals are not listed as a vulnerable or marginalised group that needs special attention in dealing with the HIV pandemic. Commercial sex workers are also not listed, and the issue of condoms in prisons is not discussed. These, the presenters argued, are controversial issues which would jeopardise the document’s more universal acceptance. But if they can’t be discussed in a charter on human rights and HIV/AIDS, where can they be discussed?

In the first chapter of Sometimes X, Sometimes Y, a woman discusses coming out as a lesbian:

To come out as a lover of women ... I am reminded of a parable I once heard in a Pentecostal revivalist tent, about an eagle’s egg that was placed under a chicken. Once hatched, the eagle chick waddled around with the chickens. One day he looked up at the sky and saw an eagle gliding on the wind. It made his spirit soar. It hit him like a bolt from the blue: I wasn’t meant to scratch around in the dirt with the chickens ... I was meant to FLY!

“Fly, how exactly?” The editors ask, “if you know you may come down hard, on a rock solid bed of cultural and religious prejudice?”

At dinner after the workshop, five gay human rights activists discussed the closing off of Zimbabwe’s democratic space, and the way it has shrunk the capacity for queer organising. Like women, gays have been told we must wait until after the governance crisis is resolved before we demand our rights. But what is this new Zimbabwe we claim to envision if it has no space for sexual minorities, confronting controversial issues, and standing up against injustice and intolerance, regardless of how popular or unpopular the object of the injustice might be?

Tags: Zimbabwe, Human Rights, Lesbians, Homosexuality

Tue May 30, 2006 6:27 am MST by ggernst | Email Article | |

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