Johannesburg - The warm winter sun hits her white braids, her glistening big red lips stand out as she glides across the busy street where hawkers sell their wares, taxis swoosh by in their dozens and hundreds of students mill around taking their lunch break.
But Revelation Xakoshe stands out like a sore thumb.
Men who pass her turn to steal another look; women do too. She is beautiful, she oozes confidence. And it is that confidence which makes her even more attractive.
Xakoshe is a far cry from the person she was 15 years ago, living in Sebokeng with her family, friends and community berating her daily for acting like a woman, for wanting to be a woman.
That’s because she was born a boy – with a penis, testicles and prominent Adam’s apple.
But she never really felt the urges of a man. She hated cars, didn’t like soccer. Instead she preferred her sisters’ dolls.
Xakoshe is a transgender and, like thousands of similar people in South Africa, yearned to be recognised as the gender she felt she should have been born.
As the country celebrates another Women’s Month, Xakoshe wants what any person in South Africa wants – to be free to be who she truly is.
It isn’t easy. She faces violence and bullying daily, and she is tired of it all. The message on her descriptive, in-your-face T-shirt echoes how she feels.
“All my life I felt like a woman trapped in a man’s body. I was the quiet child, the good sweet-natured one. Even when I was a baby, people would ask my mother whether I was a boy or a girl. I was cute. I was that child who would never really get into trouble.
“As I grew older, I discovered who I am – I was 6. It was then that I knew that Revelation is a girl. There was no doubt in my mind.”
But Xakoshe was constantly reminded by her mother that she was a boy (especially out in public), with boy parts – and boys are supposed to do certain things.
“I didn’t understand. I had to be reminded that I was in fact a boy. I was just a child. My mother would say to me: ‘Stop crying like little girl.’ She knew I was different. She was trying to protect me.
“When I got older, I had a discussion with her about how I was feeling. I told her that I didn’t feel like what she says I am. I feel I am a girl. I asked her: ‘Why did God give me all these funny parts on my body?’
“She freaked out. She said: ‘Are you saying God made a mistake?’ I was raised in a Christian family. My father obviously didn’t approve.”
Xakoshe wanted to obey her parents, she wanted to be that good child.
“I was determined to be a boy for my parents. But I was just pretending for their sake.” It was a confusing time for Revelation. She would go to bed each night wanting to please her parents and family, lying to herself and denying who she felt she was inside.
“I would lie on my bed and think of ways to be more manly. I thought about how I would go up to a girl and kiss her, and tell her I love her. I was practising how to be boy. I wanted my parents to love me. I wanted their attention, for them to understand me. I would always do things that pleased them.”
In high school, she was teased, called a gay, but she never identified with gay people.
“I am not gay. I am a girl. But I didn’t know about transgender people. Until one day, one of my girl friends urged me on. She said I should start taking this seriously. If I wanted to be a girl, I had to look the part.
“So she did my hair, my nails and my make-up. We dressed up, she stuffed a bra for me to give me boobs. I put on a girly T-shirt and skinny jeans. And it went well, we went out that night, and I passed very easily as a girl.”
But there were those who knew Xakoshe from childhood and people who had criticised and made fun of her growing up would tell her new acquaintances: “Don’t be fooled – that is a guy.”
“People believe what they hear. I am not going to make a point of introducing myself to people by saying: ‘Hi, I am Revelation. I am a girl, but I was born with a penis.’”
Despite her inner turmoil, she realised it was time to be the woman she was meant to be.
Today Xakoshe studies finance at a college in Pretoria, and lives with an aunt in Atteridgeville.
She knows that transgender people die every day due to ignorance. They are assaulted for how they look. This is a particularly bad time for her on campus. A group of students taunt her constantly, trying to alienate her friends from her.
“I am very aware that these things can happen to me. As much as I want to be recognised as a women, the world is not a friendly one. I have learnt that I have to be careful. It is not easy – it’s a constant nightmare, being bullied and teased. I don’t feel that I need to broadcast the fact that I am transgendered.”
Xakoshe is one of hundreds of people on waiting lists at two government hospitals – Groote Schuur in Cape Town and Steve Biko Hospital in Pretoria. The government funds the two institutions to perform just four sex-change operations per year.
Leigh Ann van der Merwe, co-ordinator of SHE (Social, Health and Empowerment Feminist Collective of Transgender and Intersex Women of Africa), says if a transgender person were put on either of these lists today, they would have their operation only in 26 years.
In June, Home Affairs Minister Naledi Pandor, in response to parliamentary questions from DA spokesman on Home Affairs MP Manny de Freitas, said only 95 people had legally changed their gender under the law.
De Freitas asked Home Affairs for information on the implementation of the act after he was approached by a transgender person who, he said, “is battling to resolve various applications for documents”.
The Alteration of Sex Description and Sex Status Act, passed in 2004, allows transgender and intersex people to legally change their gender identity.
“The act doesn’t require surgery, as long as you have had some kind of treatment – whether it be counselling, hormone therapy or gender reassignment surgery. Many people don’t have access to medical treatment or surgical procedures in a country like South Africa,” Van der Merwe said.
But the battle SHE wages for many transgender people isn’t about surgery – it is about being identified as the gender you feel you are.
Van der Merwe, also a transgender person, was ostracised by her family and the small community of Ugie in the rural Eastern Cape.
“I grew up in the Eastern Cape, in a culture of hypocrisy, because many times people would tell me that I am a boy and I should behave like one. I should do certain things, but it was the same people who would ask me to colour their hair on a Sunday afternoon. People like me are seen as deceivers of gender – knock-offs.”
In 1999 she moved to Cape Town, where she finished her last two years of high school and went to study journalism at the University of the Western Cape.
“In my first week of varsity, I went to see a doctor, and he put me in touch with the clinic at Groote Schuur. This was in 2001.”
She first started taking contraceptives 15 years ago. When she was younger she visited the local clinic every month and collected her pills.
The nurses didn’t check what was between her legs, and she didn’t offer them any clues either.
The hormones helped soften her voice, shrink her shoulders and Adam’s apple. The female hormones she takes make her look and feel even more like a woman – the remnants of her male past are all but gone.
Van der Merwe won’t discuss her past or reveal the name she was born with. It reminds her of a time when she was laughed at, sworn at and bullied.
“I don’t talk about that. That chapter is closed for me. Any trans person will tell you, you just don’t want to venture there. It is still an important part of my history. I acknowledge it as part of my struggle, but I don’t go there easily. It reminds me of disturbing incidences and heartache I experienced then.”
Her aim for Women’s Month is to lobby the many women’s movements and activists in the country. She wants transgender people, especially women like her and Xakoshe, to be recognised, and to create a platform for those being sidelined to have a voice and engage on the issue.
“Our society’s understanding of women is flawed. Our idea of a women is somebody who was born female and someone who has reproductive ability. We want to engage the feminist movements in South Africa, not to point out how we are different, but how we are actually the same.
“I recognise that we have a really long way to go in South Africa. But I am confident that we are on our way there.”
- Saturday Star