Principled and brave Ivan Toms dies

Sometimes brave and principled individuals can make a difference. This week Dr. Ivan Toms died. He is one of those people we seem to have to such a dearth of in today's South Africa.

Ivan Toms shot to prominence when he agreed to be the public face of resistance to conscription at a time when it was very critical for the SADF. He very publicly refused to go to the SADF and went on a hunger strike. Ivan Toms, against the advice of ECC organisers, was also openly gay. And for this he was pilloried as much as for his objection to military service.

Toms had done time on the Namibian Angolan border as a medic. But it was upon his return to South Africa, when violence erupted in the townships and he witnessed troops involved in this violence that Toms decided not to serve in the army again.

On 3 March 1988, Toms was sentenced to 21 months’ imprisonment of which he served nine months in Pollsmoor Prison as a 'criminal' prisoner, after which he was released on bail.

At the time of his sentence the Judge said although he had no option but to follow the law and sentence Toms:

“You are not a criminal. Our jails are there for people who are a menace to society – you are not a menace to society. In fact you are just the opposite, you have always been an asset to society in the services you have rendered.”

According to Richard Steele another ex conscientious objector:

Further to the finding that Ivan died due to infection with meningococcal meningitis:- Some pieces of the puzzle may be that Ivan had his spleen removed some years after his ECC fast, due to the damage incurred during the fast. According to the medical literature on meningitis, lack of a spleen can be a risk factor for the rapid progress of meningitis. Another risk factor may have been the fact that he had recently completed the Argus cycle race. Such a strenuous event can deplete the immune system and make one vulnerable to infection.

I once spoke to Toms to get an interview with him for a documentary on the Border War. He was humble and although helpful, felt that other ex members of the ECC also deserved credit and gave me their details.

Read a good summary of some of Ivan Toms achievements here.

Or try to get hold of the Eat my Call Up documentary by Naashon Zalk to see an intimate portrait of Ivan Toms.

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Behind the Boerewors curtain

"It's like rice in Japan, we will always be here...": Said a peroxide blond boy in a heavy Afrikaans but definitely camp accent.

Mhambi accompanied a long time gay friend to a screening of two documentaries at the UK National Film Theater about gay life in South Africa. Black Beulah's and Behind the Boerewors curtain.

Black Beulahs is a well crafted film and was interesting for what it was not showing. In its world black South African gay men don't really interact much with white ones, except events like the gay pride marches, which tend to be disproportionally white.

Considering the conservatism and prevailing discourse that being gay is a Western import this is not surprising. But the film never explores the antagonism towards being gay in the black community or the apartheid within the community. Still its an interesting insight into a world not often seen.

All the men in this movie are relatively wealthy and deals with the same issues as gay men the world over.

Behind the Boerewors curtain is a film about a minority in a minority in a minority in a minority. Not only are they gay, but they are white, and Afrikaans AND they like to to listen to Boeremusiek and lang-arm (a kind of close and paired dancing which we used to derisory call wind-surfing. See the dancing see the clip below).

Now my friend comes from a small Afrikaner town in the Northern province and is a rather accomplished lang-arm dancer. But he claims he and his fellow Afrikaans moffies would not be seen dead dancing lang-arm. He cringed embarrassed in his seat next to me, while people were spinning around each other on the screen.

Still the film provides evidence that there is allot of gay lang-arm dancing going on. It's a short flick, but it all revolves on the meaning of dancing in this particular way. And according to the dancers - both gay males and lesbians - the reason is that they are Afrikaans. It's an expression of who they are. Yes they say, others think that if we dance like this that we are racist.

In the end, they don't try to defend their gayness. They defend their Afrikaansness. They claim that being Afrikaans is so part of South Africa, it's like rice in Japan, it will never die out.

Here's a Youtube clip of lang-arm dancing. It seems the dancing has made it's way to London.

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Polygamous Lesbians - the African way?

Can you be Gay and African? Is cultural identity or sexuality something you are born with or something you learn?


The wedding invitation.

The BBC reports a facinating case of Aunty Maiduguri. A Nigerian lesbian who married four women last weekend in Kano State. Like in much of Africa Lesbianism is illegal under Nigeria's national penal code. Although not illegal in South Africa, South African lesbians have been known to be subjected to so-called corrective rape. Rape that is supposed to cure to errant women of lesbianism.

Even mainstream commentators like Sehlare Makgetlaneng, head of the southern Africa desk at the Africa Institute of South Africa, a Pretoria-based think-tank claimed that being gay is not African.

But Aunty Maiduguri did something which is claimed to be un-African in a way which is also at times claimed to be very African, namely polygamy. In the process she has not only provided further evidence that Africans are often gay, but also posed some interesting questions.

Must her polygamy trouble the feminists or those that strive for equal rights for women? If her lesbianism is natural and not culturally specific, what is her polygamy? Is their anything specific to lesbian sexuality that makes polygamy attractive or has she learnt polygamy from African custom?

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Gay marriage allowed in South Africa

Mhambi has been very critical of the ANC government of late, but this week they did something that made him proud to be South African. They instituded a law that enables a form of gay marriage in South Africa. The first country in Africa and only the fith one in the world to have these provisions, and most certainly against the wishes of the majority of South African and the ANC's own supporters' whishes.

Now, there are problems with the new legislation. It created a new civil marriage law which includes all South Africans, but had retained the old marriage law that discriminates against gays and lesbians. But others thought the gay marriage legislation was out of touch with Africa, not reflecting the views of Africans anywhere on the continent.

"The bill did not have the approval of the majority - the minority in the society had actually set the wheels in motion for the bill in the 1990s, when the constitution was being written." said Sehlare Makgetlaneng, head of the southern Africa desk at the Africa Institute of South Africa, a Pretoria-based think-tank.

The ANC has defended its decision to push the same-sex marriage bill, saying that since it had brought the constitution to life, it had a duty to ensure that all its laws were in line with it. "We cannot provide for equal rights in the constitution and then take it away [by not enacting legislation]," said Smuts Ngonyama, the ANC's spokesman.

Mhambi salutes the ANC's courage. If South Africa is to address its many social probelms more of this kind of strong moral leadership is needed from its politicians.

Of course gay South Africans have a distiguished record in fighting and speaking out against Apartheid. Ivan Toms, Zackie Achmat, Edward Cameron, Johannes Kerkorrel, Joan Hambridge and many others all played their part.

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Kinderen voor Kinderen song / video - Two Fathers

Ah! But you have got to love the Dutch! This boy Terrace sings about his two fathers and everybody sings along. A far cry form the homophobic debate around gay marriage we have seen in South Africa.

When the Afrikaans South African Dutch Reformed Church recently surprised everybody and came out as the only South African church in favour of one marriage provision for everybody, instead of a separate provision for Gay South Africans, as is now being suggested, Mhambi thought - at last the old conservative church is doing proud the Dutch part of it's name.

I doubt this will be sung on Afrikaans channel Kyknet however.

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Why do lesbians dress so badly?

...and gay boys look so great? Mmmmm....?

I'm talking on average of course. And ok, the average gay man is not a paragon of good taste and creative couture either. Anybody that has been to a gay club recently can attest to a near uniform and monotonous sea of muscle Maries, decked out with the same close hair crops, jeans, white t-shirts or pectorals.

But boy, the high level of self imposed body fascism to get those washboard stomachs *aer* evident.

But my contention still is that gay men do tend to spend more time on their appearance than the average bloke. AND the average lesbian does tend to spend less time and effort on theirs, than her straight gender-sake.

What could explain this phenomena? Are gay men more female like and lesbians more manly? That's just too crude an explanation.

This is my theory. (It does not take into account things like hormones etc but rather the social manifestations of human behavior.)

My theory is that the answer is tied up in male and female sexuality, what we desire and importantly what we need to do to be desired.

Straight male sexuality is all about desiring the other, the so-called sex object. It is often stated that male sexuality is visual and rather shallow. And that straight female sexuality is about being desired. For females it is said it is more about personalities and the emotional feelings their partner conjures.

Now when we have two males, they still desire like males do, their mate is the sex object, but they too are in turn also being desired and the sex object. The result is that both tend to spend allot of time on their appearance.

With lesbians it works the other way around. Being female, they do not desire a sex object. As a result neither needs to look at their best to get some attention.

This simple theory explains allot of things. For instance why you often see well kept females as partners with burly badly dressed men. This is why straight females openly say they find other females attractive, but their partners will be reluctant to admit the same of a male.

It also could explain why in swinger circles sexual activity revolves around the females. The gals can have other gals, and guys. But the guys can't be seen to be involved with other guys.

This is not because men are not bi-curious like allot of females seem to be. (Many young straight boys had some sexual encounters with their pals when they were out camping).

It is because for females male on male action severely threatens the way they as females see themselves sexually. Most straight women just don't find two men having sex sexy. Men don't go in homo territory in conversations with their female partners or when swinging for fear of not being sexy.

On the other hand they will freely admit that they find the idea of two girls together very titillating, and their girlfriends might nod approvingly.

This desiring of shallow physical beauty and the response to it could also partially explain why gay men have such promiscuous sex lives and multiple short relationships.

And this theory could explain on the other hand why lesbians tend to have more stable long term relationships.

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