Federation of Gay Games Legacy Award winner in report on "corrective rape"

The Federation will be honoring Ndumie Funda and her organization Luleki Sizwe with a Legacy Award for Social Justice at its Annual General Meeting later this month in Toronto. Here is a report from Salon/Global Post on the cause for which we are recognizing Ndumie, her fight against "corrective rape":

CAPE TOWN, South Africa — Just as Nono was beginning to understand her lesbian sexual identity at the age of 18, a male cousin began to rape her.

Before the first attack, he admonished, “Now I am going to teach you how to be a lady.” He threatened to kill her if she told anyone.

Nono, who has asked that her last name not be used, learned two years ago that her cousin had been shot and killed in an unrelated incident.

“In my heart I was so happy,” the 29-year-old said of her cousin’s death. “I thought, ‘Now I can live my life like I want as a lesbian.’”

Nono said she never reported her abuse to police. She belongs to a silent majority of gay South African women who have been victimized by “corrective rape,” a controversial term describing the practice of straight men raping lesbians to “correct” their sexual orientation.

[...]

Organizations like Luleki Sizwe, a Cape Town non-profit organized to fight violence against lesbians, have focused their attention specifically on the problem of “corrective rape.” Last year the group started an online petition on Change.org that garnered 170,000 signatures from activists around the world. The petition along with protests and pressure from other gay rights groups motivated the government to partner with the organization last June to appoint an interim task force on gender-based violence.

[...]

The homophobic violence LGBT people face in South Africa stands in stark contrast to the comprehensive legal rights and protections accorded them in their country’s constitution, which took effect in 1997.

Those rights are rooted in the struggle to overthrow apartheid, and the violence in the legacy of apartheid. “We are terribly violent as a culture,” said the activist Melanie Judge, who co-edited To Have and To Hold: The Making of Same Sex Marriage in South Africa. “That is one of the most horrific scars of apartheid. A violent system begat a violent population.”

The successful mass movement to abolish apartheid was built on a vision of a society based on equality. South Africa’s post-apartheid constitution was the first in the world to outlaw discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation; in addition a host of laws were enacted forbidding discrimination in the work place, public accommodations and services. In 2006, South Africa became only the fifth country in the world, and the only country in Africa, to legalize same-sex marriage.

However, translating these rights into reality for the majority of South Africa’s gay citizens has been difficult in part because homosexuality is widely seen as alien to the religious beliefs and cultural norms of South Africa, which remains a largely conservative society.

“We are treated like we are not expected to be in this world,” said Ndumie Funda, founder of Luleki Sizwe.

Read in full HERE.