PRESS RELEASE FEBRUARY 6TH, 2023.
We want President Cyril Ramaphosa to acknowledge and address the LGBTQIA+ community in his State of the Nation Address.
This year, President Cyril Ramaphosa will deliver his State of the Nation Address (SONA) on 9 February 2023.
The SONA sets out Government’s key policy objectives and deliverables for the year ahead, highlights achievements, flags challenges, and outlines interventions for the coming financial year.
During his address, the President traditionally highlights what has been achieved by his administration since his previous address in 2022.
Last year, Iranti made an urgent appeal to President Ramaphosa to address issues facing the LGBTQIA+ at the SONA but he failed to do so.
In the past, the President Ramaphosa has addressed issues around gender-based violence, femicide, hate crimes and human rights violations taking place South Africa, particularly brutal attacks on LGBTQIA+ persons. While these efforts are noted, we are calling on the President to go further and directly address the myriad of issues facing the LGBTQIA+ community. We want the President to commit state officials and state resources to ensuring an end to discrimination and of violence against LGBTQIA+ people, as envisaged by our Constitution.
As we continue fight for our own space, our work in this movement requires support from the highest office in the land. Now, more than ever, our community faces serious challenges around Legal Gender Recognition (LGR) and Intersex Genital Mutilation (IGM).
In South Africa, no express law exists for transgender and non-binary to amend their gender markers on their identification documents, except for Act 49. Act 49 allows transgender persons, who have begun their medical transition, (hormonal or surgically) and intersex persons to change the sex descriptor on their identity documents, to reflect their gender identity. This law is currently being challenged by trans and intersex movements, who have applied for amendments with the Department of Home Affairs (DHA).
At the same time, intersex infants and children are being subjected to IGM – which refers non-consensual, medically unnecessary, irreversible genital surgeries and other harmful medical treatments in order to make their sex characteristics fit the binary of male or female.
Intersex people are born with sex characteristics – such as chromosomes, genitalia, reproductive anatomy, and hormones –that do not fit into typical binary categories of either male or female. Intersex traits are a naturally occurring variation in humans; some are visible, others are not. Some are apparent at birth, while others become apparent during puberty, or later in life – or are never discovered at all. Roughly 1.7 percent of people are born intersex.
Despite this, IGM still takes place in a number of hospitals in South Africa, (under other names like “corrective surgery”, for example) causing severe mental and physical pain and suffering. There is no current law that makes IGM unlawful in South Africa.
We demand legal protection for intersex people and we demand sit down discussion between ourselves and healthcare policy makers to put an end to this practice. There is no health risk to being intersex. Children should be allowed to decide for themselves what should happen to their bodies.
When President Ramaphosa addresses all three arms of the state and the rest of South Africa on 9 February 2023, we want to be included. We want our voices heard. We want to be addressed as part of South Africa.
South Africa’s Constitution provide freedom, dignity, safety and equality for all, which includes the LGBTQIA+ community.
For media enquiries contact:
Nolwazi Tusini, Communications and Media Manager
nolwazi@iranti.org.za
Watch last year’s #QueerSONA campaign below: