Sex and Politics in South Africa

Book excerpt: This book tells how South Africa came to lead the world in enshrining sexual equality in our Bill of Rights, which forms part of the Constitution. The achievement, which has been hailed as a model for the rest of the world, did not come about without a long struggle. This was spearheaded by gender activists and movements during the 1980s, whose campaigns on the one hand evoked hostility from the apartheid state and were also dismissed as an irrelevance by conservative factions within the liberation movement. Indeed, the end of apartheid did not automatically guarantee that sexual equality would be realised, and the book explains how in the end this was achieved. The volume draws upon the rich archive of the Gay and Lesbian association and incorporates fascinating first-hand documents from the time as well as essays by participants in the events and later commentators.