Cape Town - “Resign, step down, recuse yourself.”
These sentiments were expressed by a group of UCT students who took to Facebook on Tuesday to call for UCT SRC acting president Zizipho Pae to resign.
Photographs of students and representatives of student organisations at the university bearing the call on placards were posted on the social media platform on Tuesday.
Pae sparked the uproar with a Facebook status update slamming a US Supreme Court ruling last week legalising same-sex marriages.
Pae’s status, which came two days after the court’s decision on Friday, reads: “We are institutionalising and normalising sin! Sin. May God have mercy on us.”
The comment has riled the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community, who have expressed their dismay in the 232 responses to her statement.
Attempts to reach Pae for comment were unsuccessful.
Late on Tuesday the post, which has received 159 “likes” and 29 “shares” on the social media platform, had not yet been removed.
South African Students Congress (Sasco) UCT branch chairperson Siyabonga Ntombela said about 30 representatives of UCT’s LGBT community gathered at the SRC’s offices on Tuesday, calling for Pae to step down.
“It’s sad to me as a member of the LGBT community and I wholeheartedly feel that she must step down. As Sasco, we are also calling for her to resign. Other student bodies here include Rainbow UCT, Rhodes Must Fall and various others,” Ntombela said.
UCT SRC’s chairperson of Transformation and Social Responsiveness, Thato Pule, has resigned to protest against Pae’s statement.
“As a queer body, as a black body and as a trans body, I have failed. The acting president’s conduct is just evidence of how that space is suffocating and violent to my body. I am resigning so I can go heal,” Pule said, adding that although she connected with Pae politically, when speaking about queerness “she is not an ally, she is an oppressor”.
UCT’s SRC president Ramabina Mahapa, who is away on holiday, has since confirmed that the SRC would investigate.
Mahapa said the SRC was also investigating previous complaints cited as homophobia by members of the SRC and other UCT students, separate from Pae’s status update.
“The SRC recognises, upholds and fully supports Ms Pae’s right to religious and personal expression. However, the SRC strongly condemns and distances itself from the reckless and irresponsible public statement made by Ms Pae on June 28, especially pending her position as the head representative of the entire UCT student population.
“The SRC apologises for the hurt and alienation Ms Pae’s statement, in her position as acting SRC president, has brought upon the queer community and its allies, as well as the broader South African community,” he said.
Mahapa said the SRC had organised sensitisation workshops, but attendance by elected representatives had been dismal.
“We saw a general unwillingness by the majority of student leaders to recognise the queer community at UCT and the violence they experience. The fact you hold power means you have to problematise every action that inflicts violence on the people you represent.”
UCT Feminist and Gender Egalitarian Collective spokesperson Mary Racter said Pae’s comments were disappointing: “As someone with power and whose words have visibility, her comments add to a hostile environment experienced by LGBT groups despite a small legislative victory in a culturally relevant country.
“However, her comments are devastating if made in a political context, and if they are intended as an extension of the SRC’s view on the matter.
“There is the classic principles of separation between church and state, between one’s own opinion and what is made law, and we need to be careful not to let people in power violate those principles.
“Pae is not representative of women, or black women, or women in power.”
UCT spokesperson Pat Lucas said management supported the LGBT community and upheld the right of each individual to responsible freedom of speech and to voice their opinions respectfully.
Cape Times