“All things that are in the constitution, here they don’t mean anything, they don’t translate to our daily lives. People are being killed,” a married black lesbian activist in a Cape Town township says.
A view of Cape Town.
Via: J. Lester Feder/Buzzfeed
When the reigning Mr. Gay Namibia married his Botswanan partner in South Africa in April 2013, Zimbabwe's ZimEye.org declared, "History [made] as Africa witnesses second gay wedding." The first, said the website, happened a week earlier when two men married in a Zulu ceremony in the South African town of KwaDukuza.
Of course, these were neither the first nor second same-sex weddings in Africa. Many couples have married in South Africa since the country legalized same-sex marriage in 2006. But because South Africa has sizeable white and Asian minorities, its same-sex marriages are dismissed by many opponents of LGBTI rights as a foreign import on a continent where 38 governments still criminalize homosexuality. (In South Africa and many other parts of the world, the preferred acronym is LGBTI—Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, and Intersex.) These weddings may take place in Africa, but they are not "African" weddings.
Mr. Gay Namibia, whose name is Ricardo Raymond Amunjera, and his husband, Marc Omphemetse Themba, have vivid memories of when South Africa passed its same-sex marriage law. So they were surprised when news of the private ceremony in a Johannesburg office of the Department of Home Affairs started making headlines around the globe.
"I'm proud that my union to Ricardo and … the wedding itself [have] actually made a bold statement … to the world out there that we are here, we are authentic, and we exist," Themba said. "Homosexuality has never been 'un-African.'"
Themba and Amunjera are lucky. Though homosexuality is illegal in both their countries, they have not been arrested. Nor have they been attacked or forced to leave their home, unlike other couples that have attempted to celebrate their unions on the continent. Both of their families even came to the wedding reception at the Hilton Hotel in the Namibian capital of Windhoek.
"Marc's family accepted me; my family loves him. It was every gay man's dream come true," said Amunjera.
Even still, they are making plans to move to South Africa, which they speak of as a promised land where they can live together with full rights.
"As much as I love my country, I want to be able to live in a country where my marriage is legitimate," Amunjera said.
Ricardo Raymond Amunjera, and his husband, Marc Omphemetse Themba.
Via: Courtesy of Ricardo Raymond Amunjera
Yet for those inside South Africa, the value of same-sex marriage legalization is far less clear. For some, it has transformed their lives in exactly the way Amunjera and Themba believe it will for them. But it hasn't wholly transformed South Africa.
Same-sex marriage was made possible because South African leaders embraced a radical vision of equality to excise the scars of apartheid. But opposition to homosexuality remains deep despite what the law says. Eighty percent of citizens regard homosexuality as "always wrong," according to a survey by the Human Sciences Research Council. This homophobia, along with the divisions created by apartheid, keep South Africa from living up to its promises to LGBTI citizens even seven years after same-sex marriages first became legal.
Black gays and lesbians in the township slums set up by the apartheid regime live under the constant threat of violence. Conservative Afrikaners, whose politicians criminalized same-sex relationships along with interracial ones, have left a legacy of ongoing homophobia for those families who once benefited from apartheid's privileges. Gays and lesbians from the country's longtime Asian communities and newly arrived immigrants alike are fighting not only to find a place in South Africa, but also confront strong homophobic currents from abroad.
South Africa is a paradox. The radical commitment to equality following apartheid made possible marriage equality well before many countries in Europe or the Americas. But it is also shaped by the some of same homophobic currents that are so powerful in other parts of Africa. Depending on where you live, your race, and your income, it can be one of the best places to be a same-sex couple, or it can be uncomfortable and dangerous.
Patting his country on the back in an LA Times op-ed last Thursday, Albie Sachs, the former Constitutional Court justice who authored the 2005 opinion legalizing same-sex marriage wrote, "It seemed so simple, so obviously right that a couple who loved each other could marry…. Today, such unions are commonplace in South Africa."
But the real experience of South African couples shows that there is nothing "commonplace" about same-sex marriage. Though the law makes it easy for same-sex couples to wed, many marriages are stories of struggling to turn an ideal of equality into a reality against a history of division and cultural hostility more powerful than law. And often, they don't have a happy ending.