Lerato Marumolwa is preparing for her personal World Cup. Next month she and her colleagues from "The Chosen Few", South Africa's only openly lesbian football team are flying to Cologne, Germany to take part in this summer's Gay Games.
Considering the Rainbow Nation's much praised post apartheid constitution was the first in the world to ban discrimination based on sexual orientation, Marumolwa and the rest of the Chosen Few endure a depressingly tough time. They train in their native Johannesburg, on dusty, dirty, puddle-riddled waste ground only a few hundred metres from that city's constitutional court – and bastion of gay rights.
The 21-year-old Marumolwa fully appreciates the irony. "It's the only spot we could find to train," she says. "We tried many places but no one wanted us, they didn't let us stay. In the townships we get discriminated against, we get raped, we get beaten up, people swear at us."
Marumolwa's sanctuary is the Chosen Few. Founded in 2004 by the Forum for the Empowerment of Women (Few) it is the focal point of the 25 woman squad's lives and, perhaps appropriately, has its office in Johannesburg's former apartheid era women's prison, now mainly a museum, situated next to the constitutional court.
"Few is my family," Marumolwa says. "It's a space where I feel at home. I can be myself. My team-mates all come from different backgrounds but when we are together we are one big family. At home we have to watch what we do, watch what we say. We don't go around at night so Few is a good space for us."
She is a star of a team that won bronze medals at the 2006 Gay Games in Chicago and the 2008 International Gay and Lesbian FA Cup in London and trains religiously twice a week. Every session begins after a burst of singing and dancing and concludes with a group huddle followed by a recitation of the Lord's Prayer.
The squad certainly felt their prayers were answered four years ago when, after a three-month immigration wrangle, the US authorities finally allowed this group of unmarried and largely unemployed township women to fly into Chicago and take their place in the tournament. For most of the party, who are not paid to play but receive funding to cover expenses largely from overseas, it was the first time they had travelled abroad.
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