Parliamentary Bureau
How do gay men and women have sex?
This a question that continues to puzzle Inkatha Freedom Party MP Jeanette Vilikazi who this week interrupted an earnest debate about the contentious Promotion of Equality and Prevention of Unfair Discrimination Bill to demand how gay men and women had intercourse.
She needed the information so she could decide whether to support gay people's call for stronger protection against discrimination.
IFP MP Jeanette Vilikazi said that in the rural areas she represented, homosexuality didn't exist, so she needed to know the details.
"You are talking about something we can't comprehend fully," Ms Vilikazi told Shuaib Rahim who was representing the National Coalition for Gay and Lesbian Equality.
Mr Rahim tried a general explanation.
"Well, we are referring to sexual identity, the issue of who it is that you are attracted to," Mr Rahim said.
But Ms Vilikazi complained that Mr Rahim was evading the issue.
"I say society doesn't understand what it is all about," she insisted. "Define it, have pictures, even you know, how you do sex and all those things. It must come out. Then we'll support what we know."
Pan Africanist Congress deputy president Motsoko Pheko supported Ms Vilikazi.
"I want to agree with the previous speaker," said Mr Pheko, "this is a controversial subject."
Mohseen Moosa, chairperson of the special committee which is
considering the Bill, closed the debate by suggesting: "If anyone wants to know exactly what gays and lesbians lifestyles are about, I'm sure there are people who will be able to explain to you privately."
Nevertheless, Ms Vilikazi raised the issue again, when the Commission on Gender Equality came to make its presentation on the Bill which outlaws unfair discrimination on 17 grounds, including gender.
The Bill defines gender discrimination as "any distinction, exclusion or restriction on the basis of sex, pregnancy, marital status, domestic or family responsibilities or sexual orientation which is aimed at or has the effect of impairing or nullifying the enjoyment or exercise of human rights or fundamental freedoms".
"I was born and brought up in the rural areas," said Ms Vilikazi. "I don't want rural women to be bound with homosexuality. Homosexuality doesn't exist in rural areas."
Faried Esack, of the Commission on Gender Equality, acknowledged that research showed people had a negative attitude towards homosexuality.
He pointed out that the Constitution prohibited discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.
"If we were to go to our people on every issue, capital punishment would be entrenched and the right to private property would be outlawed," Mr Esack said.
"The only thing we have that holds us together as South Africans is our Constitution. We must uphold that constitution, including its provisions that there should be no discrimination on sexual orientation."
But for traditional leaders like African National Congress MP Patekile Holomisa, straddling constitutionally-enshrined rights and traditional beliefs is a tricky balancing act.
Mr Holomisa, an advocate, is president of the Congress of Traditional Leaders of South Africa and was this year installed as chief of the Ama-gebe in the Eastern Cape.
"I think homosexuality should be ignored," says Mr Holomisa. "Rural people would be against it. People are concerned about what result such relationships have on children.
"As an ANC member I would advise people about what the constitution says - that people should not be discriminated against on the basis of their sexual orientation. They are human beings but homosexuality is not something that should be encouraged. As a traditional leader, homosexuality is not part of my culture."
Outlawing discrimination based on sexual orientation is one of several other practices which may conflict with tradition.
The Bill prohibits any practice - including traditional, customary or religious - which unfairly violates the dignity of women and undermines equality between men and women.
In South Africa where the system of traditional leadership co-exists with modern forms of representation, the Bill is likely to exacerbate tensions between tradition and modernity.
The maxim that a king is a king because of his people and a people is a people because of its king, theoretically captures the nature of a democratic monarchy.
But it does not help to resolve the dilemmas which confront traditional leaders like Holomisa who straddle both forms of representation.
The Bill has also drawn criticism from a wide range of organisations for
omissions, vagueness or inconsistencies.
But all political parties have rejected calls for the Constitution to be
amended to allow more time to redraft the Bill.
Mohseen Moosa, chairperson of the parliamentary committee dealing with the proposed law, has asked the drafters to work on a new definition of "unfair discrimination" to replace several different definitions currently in the Bill.
Mr Moosa has also instructed them to re-examine chapters outlawing discrimination in specified sectors of society, saying these could be accommodated in a schedule or annexure rather than the Bill itself.
The Bill aims to give expression to the equality clause of the Constitution.
According to this clause, neither the state nor any person
may "unfairly discriminate directly or indirectly against anyone on the grounds of race, gender, sex, pregnancy, marital status, ethnic or social origin, colour, sexual orientation, age, disability, religion, conscience,belief, culture, language or birth".
According to the Constitution government must pass national legislation to prevent or prohibit unfair discrimination before February 2000.