The canary of the Constitution: same‐sex equality in the public sphere

Nowhere is the paradox between the ideals of the South African Constitution and lived reality more apparent than in public contestations around gender and sexuality. Gay and lesbian equality has come to occupy a symbolic place as a litmus test of the success of constitutional democracy in South Africa. And yet, because gay and lesbian equality is not widely supported, it is also one of the key moral barometers testing the gap between the Constitution and public opinion. This article looks at a series of public hearings held under the auspices of the National House of Traditional Leaders to gauge public opinion on same‐sex marriages. This is used as a case study to explore how sexuality becomes pivotal in debates about nationhood and belonging. Keywords: South Africagay and lesbianConstitutiongendersexualitytraditionalist Acknowledgements This project was supported in part by a grant from the Fund for Lesbian and Gay Studies at Yale University. Prior research was funded by the Netherlands Foundation for the Advancement of Tropical Research (WOTRO) of the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO). Thanks to Phineas Riba for research assistance and translations. Notes 1. See, for example, Posel (Citation2005), Scorgie (Citation2002), Sideris (Citation2005) and Walker (Citation2005). 2. The hearings took place in the last two weeks of February 2005. All six hearings were videotaped by the NHTL and the recordings were made available to me for copying. These were then translated and transcribed by Phineas Riba, who also accompanied me to the hearing in Mpumalanga on 14 February 2005. These transcriptions and the notes based on our observations at the Mpumalanga hearing provide the source material for NHTL quotations used in this paper, unless otherwise indicated. 3. Contralesa submission to the Public Hearings of Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Home Affairs on Tuesday, 24 October 2006, in Cape Town, South Africa. 4. Similar controversy stalks identity politics in the USA, as Henry Louis Gates Jr (Citation1993) has noted: 'This sentiment – that gays are pretenders to a throne of disadvantage that properly belongs to black Americans, that their relation to the rhetoric of civil rights is one of unearned opportunism – is surprisingly widespread'. See also Somerville (Citation2005) for an analysis of the ways in which 'narratives of interracial desire and same‐sex desire have been produced' in US law and policy making. 5. The Fourth World Conference on Women, Beijing, 1995, was seen as emblematic of a global discourse on gender rights which impacted negatively on traditional gender norms and practices, as one man speaking at the Mpumalanga hearing put it: 'A man does not have a right to do certain things because of the rights that women have. They then go to Beijing and say they want rights. In my culture it does not work like that'. 6. Sexuality is a prime locale for contestations around cultural authenticity. See, for example, Boellstorff (Citation2005) on Indonesia; Sinnot (Citation2004) on Thailand; Besnier (Citation2002) on Tonga; Johnson (Citation1997) on the Southern Philippines; and Van de Port (Citation2005) on the search for authenticity in Bahian candomblé. 7. These quotations are included in my unpublished thesis (Reid Citation2007). I used pseudonyms for all my informants. 8. As this anecdote suggests, the use of 'he' and 'she' is inconsistent and contested among gays, which is why I have used 'he' to refer to Nathi in this section, even though church members and the hospital administrator refer to Nathi as 'she'. 9. For an excellent historical perspective on the malleable role of 'the Other', as symbolic referent in the context of broader political processes, see Bunzl (Citation2004). 10. Extract from a special message from Archbishop emeritus Desmond Tutu screened at the 11th Out in Africa Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, 2004. 11. See Ntsebeza (Citation2006) for a comparative discussion on the unresolved tensions between traditional authority and democracy in the politics of land allocation in the Eastern Cape. 12. Quote attributed by The Sowetan newspaper (26 September 2006) to Jacob Zuma who, at the time, was Deputy President of the African National Congress. Zuma apologised, stating that the remarks 'were made in the context of the traditional way of raising children'. He went on to say: 'Our lesbian and gay compatriots are protected by the Constitution and I respect their rights in my capacity as an individual citizen and as a member and one of the leaders of the ANC' (cited in Ismael and SAPA Citation2006).