Associated Press - November 19, 2006
Terry Leonard

They share a secret.

The bar, or shebeen, in the black township of Soweto in Johannesburg, is a place where young, black gays don't have to hide who they are, where they can talk openly, and find safety and companionship in an often hostile neighborhood.

Last week South Africa's Parliament legalized same-sex marriages to comply with its 1996 constitution that was the world's first to ban discrimination based on sexual orientation.

But reality often collides with these liberal intentions.

Democratic post-apartheid South Africa has the most open gay community on a continent where homosexuality is usually driven underground and portrayed as un-African - an unwanted legacy of colonialism and white culture.

But while white and black gays who escape the poverty of the townships enjoy a high level of tolerance, those left in places such as Soweto often lead lives of loneliness, fear, rape, violence and even murder.

"I've been raped six times, five times just because I am gay. I was raped by men I know, who wanted to show me what it means to be a woman. They thought it would change me, that it would keep me from being gay," said a young black lesbian from Soweto who asked not to be identified for fear of reprisals.

While gay men are more likely to be ridiculed than physically abused, 19-year-old Zoliswa Nkonyana paid with her life, chased by a mob, beaten with golf clubs and bricks and stabbed in a township outside Cape Town in February.

No one was arrested, said Donna Smith, the head of the Forum for the Empowerment of Women and a member of the Coalition of African Lesbians.

At a meeting of women to launch an anti-hate-crime campaign in the townships, "we asked how many had been the victims of a hate crime, or had first-hand knowledge of one, and everyone in the room put her hand up," said Smith.

During a gay pride march last year, she said, bottles were thrown at the forum's float because it portrayed homosexuality as a natural part of African culture.

Anthropologists have found evidence that homosexuality was widely tolerated in many parts of pre-colonial Africa. E.E. Evans-Pritchard, an eminent pre-World War II researcher, reported that until the practice died out in the early 20th century, male Azande warriors in the northern Congo routinely married male youths who functioned as temporary wives.

"What is un-African is homophobia," said Smith. "Some people believe homosexuality is an idea brought here by the white man. But it has always been here. What the white man brought was homophobia clothed in religious doctrines that we did not have before."

At the gate to the Soweto shebeen, owner Gundi "Scotch" Dube, a short, jovial man wearing a large gold chain on his neck, greets new arrivals at the gate and looks out for undesirables.

He welcomes a newcomer with a warm embrace and announces: "She is a policewoman ... but it is OK because she is one of us."

"This is the new South Africa," says a middle-aged man. "We were all in the anti-apartheid struggle together and now nobody cares if you are gay or straight." But in almost in the same breath, he asks to be identified only as Cassie lest outsiders learn he is gay.

"The problem with gay men in the townships is they are so promiscuous. It is killing us. AIDS is killing us," said Cassie, who is mourning the recent death of his partner of 18 years.

South Africa, after India, has the second highest number of HIV-infected people. In this region, most transmission of AIDS is by heterosexual contact, but a study in the eastern port city of Durban estimates a third of South Africa's gays have the virus.

"I'm HIV-positive because of one of the rapes," said the woman who said she had been raped six times. "I'm just angry. I'm angry all the time. And it is lonely. You are so lonely when you are gay and afraid in the townships."

She said she has turned to writing and poetry.

"The smell of hate never goes away. The thought of betrayal stays and remains within my thoughts, sight, senses and deep within my soul and spirit. It has created continuous and uncontrollable anger. It has filled me with hate. It has made me think and feel I am mad and sometimes it hits me like I am worth nothing," she wrote in an essay.

At the Nunbither restaurant on a busy Soweto sidewalk, Temba Mabaso drinks cocktails and says she doesn't care what others think.

"I struggled for 14 or 15 years with being gay," she said. "I am not going to struggle anymore. I don't expect people to love me. But I do expect them to understand me and respect me and to understand that I am not going to go away."

Smith said in most of the rest of Africa gays have been driven underground by discriminatory laws and politicians' invective, highlighted by Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe calling gays "worse than pigs or dogs."

South Africa's new marriage law passed by 230 votes to 41, but had powerful opponents.

In a September speech for which he later apologized, Deputy President Jacob Zuma said same-sex marriages were "a disgrace to the nation and to God." He also said: "When I was growing up a gay would not have stood in front of me. I would knock him out."

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