After UN Vote Allowing Gay Execution, South Africa Bears Brunt Of Backlash

Two weeks ago, African nations led a charge successfully removing “sexual orientation” from a United Nations resolution protecting persons from extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions. Now, South Africa, once seen as a refuge for LGBT equality on the African continent, is feeling the brunt of the backlash against its complicity in the blatantly discriminatory vote against gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people.

South African human rights groups and a major opposition political party have publicly castigated the government of South Africa’s President Jacob Zuma for its successful vote and leadership of Southern African countries in the UN General Assembly to remove protection of gays from extrajudicial and summary killings two weeks ago.

For further analysis into this story, read Tanya Domi’s piece, “UN Vote Allowing Gays To Be Executed Result Of Political, Religious Fundamentalism.”

Human rights groups, led by the Centre for Law and Social Justice, have written an open letter to the government of South Africa, asserting that that it has “violated [the] constitution [by its vote] at the UN and is complicit in execution of LGBTI people.”

The Centre’s letter, currently open for signatures, strongly criticizes the foreign policy of the governing African National Congress (ANC) government, alleging that it has “once again violated our constitution and the judgements of the constitutional court.  The government is now complicit in the criminalisation of people on the basis of their sexual orientation and allowing the death penalty against LGBTI people.”  The letter will be presented to the Zuma government on December 10th, International Human Rights Day.

The Democratic Alliance, a major progressive opposition party to the ANC, published a letter last week addressed to Maite Nkoane-Mashabe, the minister of  International Relations and Cooperation, about the vote that “makes a mockery of our constitution, which is widely regarded as one of the most progressive in the world (the only constitution in the world that includes sexual orientation as a protected class.)”  The Alliance said the government’s vote had aligned South Africa with the likes of Iran, Nigeria, Yemen, the United Arab Emirates, Sudan and Saudi Arabia, states that carry the death penalty for consensual sex between adults of the same sex.

The letter, signed by Kenneth Mubu, a member of parliament and the Alliance’s Shadow Minister for International Relations and Cooperation, also expressed disappointment,

for South Africa to be among the 79 states which voted to have the amendment to this resolution passed.  The explanation for this vote offered by South Africa’s UN representative–that the international law is”insufficiently clear on the definition of sexual orientation, according to the official UN minutes–is patently ridiculous.

We have voted to weaken the international community’s response to extrajudicial killings based upon sexual orientation…South Africa should be leading the way in promoting LGBT rights on the African continent, and further afield.  Our foreign policy should set an example.  Instead, we are voting with states that publicly flog and execute their own citizens.

Once considered the human rights leader on the African continent, during the past fifteen years South Africa has steadily forsaken the legacy of former president Nelson Mandela, who promised South Africa and the world in 1994 that “human rights will be the light that guides our foreign affairs.”

Born and raised in South Africa, Clinton Fein, a San Francisco based LGBT activist and First Amendment advocate-artist, said that “Nelson Mandela must be appalled by the South African government’s UNGA vote” and called it “crazy.”

“To have a constitution that specifically prohibits discrimination based upon sexual orientation,” Fein said, “and for them [the government] to vote against [gays] is mind boggling. You would hope South Africa would be a leader–but they are going backwards, instead of forwards.”

The Democratic Alliance and human rights groups questioned the LGBT policies of the Zuma government, including UN representation by Ambassador Baso Sangu and the recent appointment of Jon Qwelane to be South Africa’s ambassador to Uganda, who is well known for his homophobic attitudes. During his campaign for president last year, Zuma bragged that “when he was growing up, an “ungqingili” (homosexual) would not have stood in front of me.  I would knock him out.”

Sadly, for South Africa, the continent and the world, without the political and moral leadership of Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu, two giant figures in South Africa’s journey from apartheid to freedom, it has chosen the low road by actively working against respect for LGBT human rights in its foreign policy.  Instead of being a leader for human rights, it has joined with pariah states who execute homosexuals, without cause. For those South Africans who embrace Nelson Mandela’s belief that human rights would light its foreign policy, and share Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s belief that hate has no place in religion or in the public square,  they have a real fight on their hands.

UPDATE: Protests against the United Nations General Assembly vote will take place in San Francisco and New York City, December 10-11.  For more detailed information see the Petrelis Files.

Tanya L. Domi is an Adjunct Assistant Professor of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University, who teaches about human rights in Eurasia and is a Harriman Institute affiliated faculty member. Prior to teaching at Columbia, Domi worked internationally for more than a decade on issues related to democratic transitional development, including political and media development, human rights, gender issues, sex trafficking, and media freedom.

Image: South Africa’s Coat of Arms, launched on “Freedom Day,” 27 April 2000.