On Friday 5 June 2026, South Africa did one thing uncommon at an African inter-parliamentary gathering: it abstained from adopting a constitution that defines marriage as solely between a person and a lady. Not as a result of we had been not sure however as a result of our Structure, Chapter 2, doesn’t permit us to agree.
Zandile Majozi, head of South Africa’s delegation to the 4th Inter-Parliamentary Convention on Household, Sovereignty and Values in Accra, put it plainly: “South Africa want to reserve our rights in not adopting the constitution as a result of it contradicts the Structure of South Africa, particularly Chapter 2 and likewise doesn’t align with the regional and worldwide legal guidelines that we imagine in.”
Mozambique additionally abstained however for logistical and scheduling causes. South Africa abstained as a result of our founding authorized doc says we can’t vote in any other case. That issues. It issues on this anniversary yr, as we mark 20 years of the Civil Union Act that legalised same-sex marriage and 30 years of our Structure, a doc that prohibits discrimination based mostly on sexual orientation.
However right here is the uncomfortable query: why is abstention the perfect we might do? And why, in a particular anniversary yr for queer rights, are we nonetheless speaking a couple of reservation of rights as an alternative of an outright rejection of a constitution that belongs to a different century?
The Structure, our representatives maintain forgetting
I’ve spent years watching South Africa on the United Nations. Whereas working at Outright Worldwide in New York, I noticed our nation up shut on the UN LGBTI Core Group – the casual cross-regional group of which South Africa is proud to be a member. I noticed the admiration: different UN member states have a look at our constitutional protections and see what is feasible in Africa.
However I additionally noticed the contradictions.
In 2016, when the UN Human Rights Council voted to nominate an unbiased knowledgeable on safety in opposition to violence and discrimination based mostly on sexual orientation, South Africa abstained. No African nation voted in favour. When requested why, the minister on the time mentioned South Africa couldn’t afford “to be seen strolling too far forward of its African friends”.
In 2008, when a UN declaration referred to as for the common decriminalisation of homosexuality, South Africa didn’t signal. The declaration was supported by 66 nations. South Africa was not considered one of them.
In 2009, South Africa voted to exclude “sexual orientation” from a UN doc on racism and xenophobia.
And but, just some years earlier, South Africa had sponsored the first-ever UN Human Rights Council decision on sexual orientation and gender id (2011) and led a second one in 2014. That is the whiplash of South Africa’s overseas coverage: international chief one yr, strategic abstainer the subsequent.
In 2023, when Uganda handed its brutal Anti-Homosexuality Act, a legislation that features the loss of life penalty for “aggravated homosexuality”, South Africa was silent. A parliamentary query revealed there had been “no diplomatic engagement with Uganda concerning the Anti-Homosexuality Act of 2023.” An open letter from South African dad and mom referred to as for motion. A parliamentary movement to sentence the legislation was blocked.
The sample is constant: our Structure provides us the strongest attainable authorized framework for LGBTI equality. However our overseas coverage is usually too timid to make use of it.
The missionaries who arrived on American {dollars}
The constitution South Africa abstained from in Accra didn’t emerge from a grassroots African motion. It was a part of a coordinated, well-funded marketing campaign by American evangelical organisations which were exporting their tradition wars to Africa for twenty years.
Between 2007 and 2020, greater than 20 right-wing Christian teams spent not less than US$54 million combating LGBTI rights and intercourse schooling on the continent. One organisation, the Fellowship Basis, despatched greater than US$20 million to Uganda alone between 2008 and 2018. Their affect is direct and documented: Ugandan MP David Bahati, who launched the unique “Kill the Gays” invoice, labored intently with US evangelical teams. Entire paragraphs of that invoice had been reportedly borrowed from shows given by American pastors at a 2009 convention in Kampala.
Household Watch Worldwide, designated a hate group by the Southern Poverty Regulation Centre, has been coaching African diplomats and politicians for years, together with via its annual World Household Coverage Discussion board in america. Sharon Slater, its president, travels repeatedly to Africa for high-level technique conferences.
It isn’t solely American evangelicals. European right-wing Christian networks, from Italy’s far-right political foundations to Jap European Orthodox foyer teams, have additionally poured cash into African anti-LGBTI campaigns. The equipment is international, coordinated, and fully overseas to the continent.
On the similar Accra convention the place South Africa abstained, Moses Foh-Amoaning, Govt Secretary of Ghana’s Nationwide Coalition for the Household Values Invoice, informed delegates: “Don’t be fooled by the human rights argument. It’s a lie from hell.” That isn’t an African sentiment. That’s the language of a world anti-rights motion, funded largely from exterior the continent, that has discovered fertile floor amongst a few of Africa’s strongest politicians.
The place had been these missionaries once we had been combating apartheid?
My father grew up beneath the Bantu Schooling Act. My grandparents lived via compelled removals and go legal guidelines. The place had been these “household values” crusaders when Black South Africans had been being killed for demanding the fitting to vote, to like, to reside?
They weren’t right here. Or in the event that they had been, they weren’t standing with us.
The identical evangelical equipment that now claims to guard “African household values” has deep historic ties to white supremacist ideology and the defence of colonial and apartheid buildings. The Christian Proper in america labored laborious to “erase their unhealthy repute as supporters of apartheid regimes and exchange it with the picture of protectors of a supposedly ‘genuine African’ patriarchal household custom.”
They don’t seem to be right here to avoid wasting African tradition. They’re right here to advance a political agenda – one funded by American {dollars}, formed by American tradition wars and dressed up in African clothes.
We as soon as had prophets who noticed via this. Archbishop Desmond Tutu, a theologian who stared down apartheid and by no means confused the gospel with colonial energy, wrote in his assortment God is Not Christian {that a} really inclusive household values system can’t exclude anybody. He referred to as homophobia “a perversion of the gospel” and mentioned he wouldn’t worship a homophobic God.
At this time, now we have fewer clergy like him. Fewer church leaders are prepared to danger their congregations for the reality. However I maintain onto Tutu’s phrases not as nostalgia however as a defend. As a result of when overseas preachers arrive with {dollars} and damnation, I do not forget that an African archbishop already gave us a special theology: one the place love doesn’t want a passport and household doesn’t want a legislation.
What Ghana taught us about ourselves
The South African delegation in Accra did one thing vital. They mentioned no – or not less than, not but. They cited the Structure. They made clear {that a} doc defining marriage as solely between a person and a lady is incompatible with our authorized order.
However abstention shouldn’t be management. It’s a reservation of rights – a holding sample. And that’s exactly the issue: South Africa is the one nation on the continent with constitutional protections for sexual orientation. South Africa is the one nation in Africa that pioneered same-sex marriage almost twenty years in the past. South Africa is a member of the UN LGBTI Core Group. And but, on the very second when a constitution that may roll again these protections was being tabled, we mentioned: we reserve our rights to not undertake.
That’s technically appropriate. However it’s not prophetic. It isn’t the voice of a rustic that when informed the world that human rights are common, indivisible, and non-negotiable.
What Mozambique did – citing “logistical and scheduling constraints” – was an excuse. South Africa had a way more principled cause however nonetheless selected to not vote in opposition to. Why? As a result of it’s simpler to abstain. As a result of talking out loudly and unequivocally would upset different African nations. As a result of the ghost of “African solidarity” continues to be used to silence the voices of those that are completely different.
The household values we have already got
Once I take into consideration “household values”, I don’t take into consideration the American evangelical definition. I take into consideration my circle of relatives: my mom, my siblings, my nieces and nephews. I take into consideration the queer folks I do know who’re dad and mom, who’re caregivers, who’re churchgoers, who’re group builders. We aren’t a menace to the household. We’re the household.
The Civil Union Act turned 20 this yr. In these twenty years, hundreds of same-sex {couples} have been married, have raised youngsters, have paid taxes, have buried their companions and have nursed their dad and mom via previous age. We aren’t an experiment. We aren’t a Western import. We’re South African.
The Structure gave us the authorized framework to exist. However the Structure doesn’t communicate for itself. It requires defenders. It requires representatives who’re prepared to do greater than abstain – who’re prepared to vote “no” when a constitution seeks to erase us.
A path ahead – modest however clear
What ought to South Africa do otherwise?
First, convert abstentions into principled votes in opposition to. If a constitution or decision conflicts with the Structure, we should always vote no, not reserve our rights. Abstention is for unsure nations. We aren’t unsure. Our Structure is obvious.
Second, identify the overseas affect. South Africa ought to publicly acknowledge that a lot of the anti-LGBTI laws sweeping throughout Africa is funded and suggested by US evangelical organisations with deep pockets and no funding in African self-determination. We should always assist African civil society that’s combating again, and name out the hypocrisy of a motion that claims to defend African values whereas being bankrolled by American tradition warriors.
Third, lead the coalition of the prepared. There are different African nations – Botswana, Namibia and Mozambique, in their very own manner – that aren’t on board with the “Household Values” agenda. South Africa ought to convene them. To not preach however to construct a counter-coalition that gives an alternate imaginative and prescient of African humanism: one that features everybody, not simply those that match a slender definition of “conventional”.
The 2026 abstention in Accra was not a defeat. But it surely was not a victory both. It was a holding motion. In a yr once we have a good time 20 years of civil unions and 30 years of the Structure, we should always ask ourselves: Is “reserving our rights” actually all now we have left to supply? Or can we discover the braveness to do what our founding doc requires, to face up, communicate clearly, and say that no constitution, no legislation, and no foreign-funded campaign will ever outline household with out us?
We’ve got the phrases. The Structure gave us these. Now we want the desire.
Matuba Mahlatjie is the media and communications officer on the Different Basis
