Monday, Monday, Monday...

Mondays are typically the bane of my existence here in Cape Town. Now, I hate to complain (other than about the horn that shall not be named), but three hour staff meetings without a venti Americano from Starbucks (which tragically they don’t have in Cape Town) are typically a bit challenging.

This Monday was a different story. Our meeting consisted of a training session by a man named Victor from the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), another NGO here in Cape Town. We discussed the LGBTI movement and culture in South Africa. I = intersex. Did you know that? Neither did I. Anyway, the discussion was incredibly interesting. It was one of those times where I realized how unique this opportunity is – I am really gaining a much greater understanding of the people and the culture here, and even beyond South Africa. We discussed things in small groups, and my group members were from Congo, Burundi and Zimbabwe, respectively. Definitely an experience.

We discussed how in many African countries, particularly Zimbabwe, homosexuality is seen as an imported Western concept that doesn’t happen naturally in Africa because African brains are “wired differently.” To that, the man in my group from Zimbabwe brought up the existence of a very old word in his tribal language which refers to a group of gay men. Clearly, not so imported after all – yet many people here still believe that it is.

We also went through the genes vs. socialization debate – something that would not necessarily be out of place in any other discussion of this sort anywhere around the world.

Another new term I learned today was “MSM” which NGOs use to refer to men who have sex with men, who may or may not classify themselves as gay. The term has been both positive and negative. On the positive side, it can go beyond the gay population to reach all men who have sex with other men (such as sex workers, prisoners, migrant workers) for services such as HIV/AIDS awareness training. Alternatively, as was raised during the meeting, it seems to put a lot of emphasis on the sexuality of a relationship as opposed to all of the other aspects.

Something which struck me particularly, and seems to be a recurring theme here in South Africa, was our discussion surrounding the progressive constitution here that so many people, including the LGBTI community, fought so hard to achieve. Despite the fact that this constitution is in place, and greatly resembles what many people hoped that it would, the changes it was expected to provide simply have not occurred. Although homosexuals have a great many rights on paper here, the discrimination is still quite horrific. It is similar to the situation here with refugees and asylum seekers – although South Africa has one of the most progressive immigration policies in the world (which allows refugees to seek employment, access public health care, apply for funding for schooling for their children, among other things), the situation of many refugees in this country can be similarly desperate to the situation in the unstable, war torn countries many of them are forced to flee.

All of this has really emphasized the fact that in a lot of cases, rights on paper unfortunately do not translate to rights in real life.