144 national and international debates, as an affront to traditional African values and beliefs, which thereby marks the epithet un-African as an indicator of ‘the perverse’.
Defining SOGI rights as un-African ascribes a certain identity to African states. The post-colonial African state has been constructed as a binary gendered, heterosexual, masculine, patriarchal state protector of moral authority and traditional beliefs, culture and religions. However, this claim represents conservative desires of the political elite and falsely universalises notions of heterosexuality and binary gender identities on a realistically much more diverse population. In this way, it has been demonstrated that un-African makes false claims to homogenised traditions, cultures and religious beliefs whose real purpose is to challenge the advance of liberal, progressive rights-based regimes from the global North. Despite the falsehoods behind the claim, it continues to be used to reject SOGI rights and the states that support them as un-African.
In contrast, African has therefore become a challenge to the encroachment of neoliberal, rights- based norms, which have been framed as neocolonial. The charge of neocolonialism revealed African political anxieties that included the need to overcome the colonial past as well as fostering a cohesive nationalism in states that are marked by considerable social, political and sometimes religious difference. This challenge can also be understood as invoked by a fear of losing agency, sovereignty and self-determination in the face of powerful international pressure from INGOs, donor states and international institutions. In this way African has become defined as the traditional, moral, heterosexual, reproductive state that respects national determination, democracy (albeit narrowly defined as the support of majoritarian opinions on sexuality), sovereignty and anti neocolonial. Therefore, to be African is to be normal, while un-African is perverse.
Thus, un-African has become a figuration intended to exert power to establish continental conformity in opposition to SOGI rights. This figuration implicates all states that vocally support such rights within the UN. South Africa, with its liberal constitution and foreign policy commitments to advancing human rights and pan-Africanism is caught within this framing as both normal and perverse. This has led to inconsistent actions on SOGI rights within the UN and which have characterised South Africa as paradoxical, unpredictable and incoherent on this issue.
145 logics of statecraft enable the interrogation of regimes of discursive power that can account for an inconsistent state identity.
This section employs queer logics of statecraft to consider South Africa’s inconsistencies in the promotion of SOGI rights within the UN. In doing so, it reviews the dominant themes identified in the discourse analysis and explains the South African approach to SOGI rights. It begins by explaining how South Africa has become implicated in the figurations of normal (African) and perverse (un- African) identified above. This highlights the challenges that South Africa faced when it supported SOGI rights in the international system. One of these incriminates it in the claim that promulgating SOGI rights internationally is characterised as neocolonialism. It explores how South Africa seeks to challenge the neocolonial claim by avoiding the coercive tactics identified among other SOGI supporting states and through reflecting the wants and demands of African SOGI activists. It ends by presenting how Weber’s queer logics of statecraft can enable the South African state to be identified beyond monolithic binaries and hold contradictory identities on SOGI rights in the UN.
A state’s history of external relations has a profound impact on its identity and how it is perceived by other states. As the world became increasingly bipolar through the Cold War, South Africa also became crudely divided between an enfranchised (racially identified by the state as white) centre and disenfranchised (racially categorised by the state as black, coloured and Indian) periphery, as reflected in Mbeki’s two nations thesis (Seegers, 2020; Mbeki, 1998b). Historically, the centre wanted to be seen as pro-West, while the periphery, adopting the rights enshrined in the 1945 UN Charter into the 1955 Freedom Charter, oriented itself toward the communist Soviet Union and other African governments on the continent for support.
From the 1960s many ANC exiles found sanctuary within anti-apartheid movements in the global North, while others were displaced throughout the African continent. After the end of apartheid, entrenchment of human rights within the new South African Constitution and foreign policy were largely driven by associations with Western governments and civil society organisations (Gevisser, 2000; Seegers, 2020). However, not only were ANC exiles in Europe influenced, so too were those in training in newly independent African states. This latter group have been credited with the development of sustained anti neocolonial rhetoric of the emerging South Africa and its membership of the non-aligned movement in the UN (Seegers, 2020:54).
In the early 1990s, human rights were desirable to both the centre, to protect their interests (especially economic) once they handed over control of the state, and the periphery, whose rights had been suppressed under apartheid (Mamdani, 2000; Mbeki, 1993). Indeed, the long history of the ANC battle for freedom and human rights (as enshrined in the 1955 Freedom Charter), as well as the ideological links and support gained from developing countries across the African continent and the wider global South, set the foundations for the focus on democracy, human rights, pan- Africanism and global South oriented foreign policy principles (Freedom Charter, 1955; Mandela, 1994:4; Smith, 2016a:134; Alden and Le Pere, 2004; DIRCO, 2011a; 2020a; 2020b). South Africa’s African credentials were demonstrated through Mbeki’s African Renaissance and a foreign policy founded on ubuntu (Mbeki, 1998a; DIRCO, 2011a; 2020b). Meanwhile, South Africa’s moral
146 leadership was premised on Mandela’s international status, a commitment to promoting democracy and the rights of women and the latterly declared support for SOGI rights at the UN (Landsberg, 2004:159; Black and Hornsby, 2016:152; Mandela, 1993; South Africa, 2011d; 2011e).
Adopting a pan-African and pro-human rights foreign policy was essential to reinventing the image of the pariah state on the international stage. Both features of this emerging state identity were developed in direct contrast to its apartheid past, during which South Africa was shunned by newly independent African neighbours and by Western neoliberal democracies that were increasingly embracing a broader range of human rights (Landsberg, 2004:159-162; Alden and Le Pere, 2004:283;
Oswin, 2007a:102; Serrão and Bischoff, 2009:370). Apartheid South Africa had been distinctly un- African and undemocratic in oppressing the black population and its involvement in some counter revolutionary movements within neighbouring states92 as well as its history of extensive human rights abuses, including against sexual and gender minorities.
South Africa therefore re-emerged onto the international stage needing to reaffirm its African and human rights credentials, under great expectations that it would demonstrate moral leadership (Landsberg, 2004:159; Borer and Mills, 2011:78; Black and Hornsby, 2016:152). However, as The Economist noted “[e]ven after the end of white rule, some of South Africa's neighbours regard it as something of a Trojan horse for the West. Hence its desire constantly to affirm its African credentials while playing down any hegemonic ambitions” (“The see-no-evil foreign…”, 2008). The state needed to show leadership, but without fuelling perceptions of hegemonic ambitions.
Acceptance of SOGI rights among the South African political elite and in the Constitution was influenced by two primary sources. Some influence is attributed to liberal democratic ideas adopted by the leadership in exile in the global North, while local black and white activists were lobbying for their adoption, including Ditsie, Nkoli, and the NCGLE (National Coalition for Gay and Lesbian Equality) (Gevisser, 2000; de Vos, 2007; Dunton and Palmberg, 1996; Oswin, 2007a). These activists managed to secure broad cross-party support, with notable exceptions of the ACDP (African Christian Democratic Party) and members of the NHTL (National House of Traditional Leaders) and CONTRALESA (Congress of Traditional Leaders of South Africa), who cited religious and cultural objections (Constitutional Assembly, 1995:3-4; Oswin, 2007a; Dunton and Palmberg, 1996). This adoption of SOGI rights can be understood partially as a desire to be seen as distancing the post- 1994 state from the human rights abuses of the apartheid governments, but also to avoid association with some of the autocratic tendencies of other post-liberation governments on the continent (Constitutional Assembly, 1995:3-4; Oswin, 2007a).
However, whilst the political elite were largely in favour, parliament often had to be whipped to support pro-SOGI legislation and the judiciary has been an important site of progress and protection of sexual and gender minorities, through Constitutional Court challenges, demands for more legislation and within society through the National Task Team on Gender and Sexual Orientation- Based Violence perpetrated against Lesbian, Gay, Bi-sexual, Transgender and Inter-sex persons
92 See, for example, Rousseau (2014) and Esterhuyse (2009).
147 (Gevisser, 2000; Vincent and Howell, 2014; Kganyago, 2019). Successive constitutional challenges ensured great domestic protections for sexual and gender minorities and even made South Africa the first African country to allow same-sex civil partnerships.
Consequently, on the international stage, South African foreign policy sought to reflect these constitutional freedoms and present the state as moral leader on human rights, including SOGI rights, and a leader of the pan-African renaissance. Indeed, initially South Africa expected to be able to lead on SOGI rights on the continent. In 2012, the Chief of the Global Issues Section of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights in New York, Charles Radcliffe, reported
“[t]he South Africans are convinced that if anyone can broaden the circle of conversation on this issue, it’s them. They have gone to extraordinary lengths to engage other African countries, and to get dialogue going” (quoted in Gevisser, 2012a).
However, as evidenced within the literature review, far from leading the continent, analysis of the debates on SOGI rights at the UNHRC and UNGA have demonstrated that South African support for SOGI rights has been inconsistent. These debates were marked by strong opposition from African states, often through statements on behalf of the African Group. In these instances, South Africa was confronted with a choice between supporting African solidarity and promoting SOGI rights. Indeed, Ambassador Matjila noted these issues caused disagreement between the South Africa and members of the African Group (UNGA, 2016e).
Additionally, as argued earlier, African states have deemed SOGI rights support as un-African. This framing of SOGI rights support as un-African implicated South African such that “[w]hen South Africa sponsors [sexual and gender minorities] at the UN Human Rights Council … it is seen as an imperial power on much of the continent” (Rao, 2012). This has presented a problem, “[b]ecause of the new South African elite’s extreme sensitivity to charges of Western alignment/complicity as it has attempted to establish its African bona fides and move beyond the country’s domineering past”
(Black and Wilson, 2004:30).
This has resulted in inconsistencies in South Africa’s actions on SOGI rights. As well as inconsistent voting on the adoption of SOGI rights resolutions, South Africa has also slowed progress by demanding more time to build consensus on these resolutions or to define terms and failing to expeditiously organise the African regional conference. At times the South African delegation has also voted to reduce reporting periods and remove or weaken language in support of sexual and gender minorities in other resolutions such as those cited for extrajudicial killings and protecting the family.
Although these South African actions have clearly been detrimental to SOGI communities, the discourse analysis has demonstrated that the stated intentions during explanations of voting have expressed commitment to SOGI rights based on the provisions of the Constitution. However, that declared support has been predicated on reservations and objections to the coercive approaches, including the imposition of sanctions, of other SOGI rights supporting states and the lack of African voices in the development of these resolutions. Indicative of this approach was the use of an African
148 proverb to explain the decision to abstain on the IE SOGI vote in 2016, “if you want to walk fast, then walk alone and if you want to walk far, walk together and with others” (South Africa, 2016).
This discrepancy between inconsistent actions on SOGI rights and the stated support occurs within a context in which support for SOGI rights is framed as un-African. Therefore, when South Africa voiced support for SOGI rights, the state was implicated as un-African. This conflicted with the parallel aim of reasserting the state’s Africanness. Therefore, this dissertation argues that in those moments, South Africa also sought to reaffirm its African identity by resisting neocolonialism and amplifying queer Africa activist voices. The next section evidences this claim.
7.2.1 Challenging neocolonialism and amplifying queer African voices
African leaders have called out neocolonial coercive tactics of SOGI rights supporting states domestically and within the UN. Sanctions and aid conditionalities against African states have led to backlashes against queer Africans, reduced their support services and reinforced the idea that SOGI rights have been imposed by actors from the global North (Rao, 2012; Currier, 2019:239; Abbas, 2012; Nuñez-Mietz and García Iommi, 2016). Likewise, INGOs have been accused by southern NGOs of heavy-handed interference with little local engagement and their donations have reinforced the argument that SOGI rights were a foreign imposition and supported by locals for financial gain (Macharia, 2010; Rao, 2020:11). Additionally, Massad (2002), Epprecht (2008b) and Gaudio (2009), have all highlighted the way that INGOs from the global North have overstated African homophobia to validate funding and action, which has resulted in denying African agency and increasing the risk of local reprisals. While Currier (2019:248) noted that Tatchell, in particular, repeated spurious human rights violation claims in Malawi that were criticised by both the local police and rights activists.
Consequently, African SOGI activists have called for an end to these coercive methods, as evidenced in the 2011 statement from African social justice organisations against the threat of aid cuts by the UK that would make sexual and gender minorities scape goats for any ensuing hardships (Statement on British …, 2013). Indeed in 2013, when the US based Human Rights Campaign announced it would increase its international SOGI rights advocacy work, Wanja Muguongo, who founded UHAI EASHRI (the Nairobi based East African Sexual Health and Rights Initiative), reacted with "Oh no — as if we don't have enough trouble…We are not sitting down somewhere waiting for salvation to come from the North," adding "Don't come and 'help' us — come and work with us…. There are organizations that are working locally, and they have their own ideas about what the struggle means" (quoted in Feder, 2013).
This reflected the opinion of Robinson, a Caribbean sex and gender justice advocate, who in 2012 warned:
“If Global North advocates wish to be part of the movement to end ‘sexual apartheid’, they must resist the temptation to take the reins. They must engage in genuine North-South dialogue and international solidarity. They need to get behind
149 Global South initiatives and push in the directions carved out by Southern activists”
(Robinson, 2012:3)
Civil society has been an important influence on South Africa positions on SOGI rights within the UN, including prior to tabling 17/19 and before opposing the 2016 African Group attempt to remove the IE SOGI in the UNGA (Jordaan, 2017b:87). The South Africa abstention in the 2016 vote for the IE SOGI occurred immediately after South Africa hosted the African regional conference and published the Ekurhuleni Declaration. Indeed, Voss (2017:17) noted that even NGOs involved in the informal UN debates were divided over whether an IE SOGI was appropriate, given that they can often be seen to single out individual states. Although South Africa abstained on the vote, Ambassador Mxakato-Diseko noted that the role of independent expert was chosen in preference to a special rapporteur to address such concerns (UNHRC, 2019m).
Indeed, calls from South African delegations for African voices to be heard and for coercive methods to stop have reflected the opinions of several African SOGI rights NGOs (Bennett and Reddy, 2015:19-20). South Africa has advocated a dialogical approach to the issue and avoidance of naming and shaming. This approach has been endorsed by African NGOs, such as the coalition of South African NGOs in support of the government approach to the passing of the Ugandan legislation in 2014 (DeBarros, 2014a), and the statement issued by a coalition of Ugandan SOGI NGOs in response to the Uganda Sexual Offences Bill 201993, which requested that state and NGO opponents “[e]ngage in quiet diplomacy with the Ugandan government and its political leaders” (emphasis added, Kivumbi, 2021). However, not only has South Africa represented African SOGI activists, but it has done so in a manner that is purposefully a rejection of neocolonial coercive tactics of the global North and in this way reaffirmed its African credentials.
7.2.2 South Africa the (un)-African State
As detailed above the continental discourses defined two figurations in opposition to each other in relation to SOGI rights. The first defined sexual and gender minorities, their rights and the states that supported them as un-African. The second defined the anti-neocolonial states that rejected the coercive imposition of SOGI rights on other states as African. South Africa, with its dual policy priorities of promoting human rights and pan-Africanist rejection of neocolonialism found itself caught between these binary oppositions.
Additionally, in critiquing Altman and Symons’ 2016 book Queer Wars, which explored the increasing global polarisation of SOGI rights, Weber noted that they reflected the prevailing narrative that Western governments and NGO are leading on the definition and protection of these rights stating,
“it takes Western liberal formulations of LGBT norms as wholly positive benchmarks against which other sovereign nation-states can and should be measured” (Weber, 2017:231). Against this clear binary, South Africa’s approach to SOGI rights has been understandably inconsistent. Looking beyond this binary, through a queer lens, allowed a nuanced view of the South African approach to
93 Clause 11 of which would designate sexual and gender minorities as sexual offenders.
150 SOGI rights, which demonstrated that South Africa’s inconsistent actions on SOGI rights in the UN were a result of trying to balance the need to promote the protections in the Constitution and the desire to be seen as an African state. This became conflicted in an environment in which African partners have perceived the support of SOGI rights as un-African.
By favouring a more dialogical and less confrontational approach, South Africa sought to avoid shaming and coercing states to comply and avoided the homonationalist urges that treat those who have yet to adopt the norm as lesser states, or “the ‘Underdeveloped’ and the ‘Undevelopable’”
(Weber, 2016a). Equally, South Africa also did not concede to the predominant African Group position that advances a myth of cultural relativism and refutes the Africanness of sexual and gender minorities and their rights. Instead, South Africa voiced a principled position on their protection.
However, it also opposed the neocolonial actions of the global North in supporting SOGI rights, which aligned the state with its continental neighbours. In those moments, South Africa voiced support for SOGI rights, an un-African move, but simultaneously sought to reject the neocolonial practices of other pro-SOGI rights states, an African move.
Viewed through Weber’s queer logics of statecraft, South Africa’s inconsistent approach could not be understood through an either/or logic, as either normal (African) or perverse (un-African), because in those moments South Africa was not behaving monolithically. This means that in those moments South Africa’s actions confounded the expectations of either figuration of normal or perverse, while at the same time reflecting both normal and perverse figurations. In other words, to some observers South Africa seemed to be neither outright supporting nor outright rejecting SOGI rights; South Africa could not be understood as either a SOGI rights proponent or opponent. To reflect on Weber’s boy/girl example (2016a:40), South Africa stated support for SOGI rights (thus appearing pro-SOGI), yet doesn’t consistently vote for them (thus appearing anti-SOGI), thereby appearing both for and against them at the same time. South Africa was simultaneously reflecting a voiced un-African support for SOGI rights and a voiced African rejection of neocolonial norm promulgation. South Africa’s actions were perceived both as normal and perverse and normal or perverse. The Barthesian logic of and/or allows South Africa to be understood in those moments as both an African and/or an un-African state.