Cape Town - Lesbians living in the townships need to be vigilant at all times about where they socialise and how they portray themselves in their communities, cautioned Ndumie Funda, director and founder of Luleki Sizwe.
“The reality is that the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex community is not yet free, especially in the townships. Until we know we are safe from homophobic attacks, we need to exercise caution,” said Funda.
Funda is one of a handful of activists who are at the forefront of raising awareness about corrective rape. Luleki Sizwe is a charity organisation that assists lesbian, bisexual, and transgender women in the townships.
Funda said that although not everyone was homophobic in the townships, some people - especially men - were angered by seeing women being openly affectionate towards each other.
She said that she did not mean that gays should not display their love in public, but that to avoid being targeted they should take precautions by avoiding being “explicitly promiscuous” in public.
Funda urged gay people to be more active in their communities without “forcing their sexuality” on them.
“It’s a sensitive issue that needs to be approached sensibly. We need to ‘think human’ and stop sidelining ourselves. Getting involved in communities will give people an opportunity to know the person without the label ‘I am gay’.”
She also cautioned against cataloguing each assault against lesbians as a hate crime. “Hate crime is there, but we need to start looking deeper and weighing the issues surrounding an attack. It’s becoming easier to label each attack homophobic, without knowing the personalities involved... sometimes the attack has nothing to do with the person’s sexuality,” she said.
Funda was speaking in the wake of six lesbians attacked and beaten by a man at a petrol station in Gugulethu last Sunday. The friends have since opened a case of assault at the Gugulethu police station.
Police spokesperson Lieutenant Colonel Andre Traut said on Friday that the case was being investigated and no arrests had been made.
At a conference on crime reduction held in Sandton last week, Kerry Williams, partner at law firm Webber Wentzel, said that the country needed special legislation for all forms of hate crimes.
She said it would be helpful to have hate crime legislation because the legislature could give some guidance in how to handle these crimes.
Currently, hate crimes are not recognised in the country, unless they become a recognised crime category, they cannot be recorded at police station level. This makes it difficult to get a true sense of their prevalence.
The Hate Crimes Working Group, in partnership with other civic organisations, has identified 450 hate crimes in five provinces since 2005, among them KwaZulu-Natal, Gauteng, Western Cape, Limpopo and Eastern Cape.
Cape Argus