South Africa

Wednesday marks the two year anniversary of the brutal death of Noxolo Nogwaza, a South African lesbian and LGBT rights activist. In 2011, 24-year-old Noxolo, organizer of the Ekurhuleni Pride Committee, was murdered in South Africa, while on her way home from a night out with friends. Her attackers raped, repeatedly beat and stabbed her, apparently because of her sexual orientation, before dumping her body in a drainage ditch. Two years after her death, no progress has been made into the investigation of her murder... [ Read more → ]

DURBAN, South Africa -- Two men married on Saturday in a rare South African gay wedding in KwaDukuza on Saturday, in what has been described as the town’s first same-sex union. [ Read more → ]

The South African government has announced in the official Government Gazette that Gay Flag of South Africa has been approved and accepted as South Africa’s official gay flag (an adaptation of the international gay flag and the South African national flag). [ Read more → ]

A suspect has been arrested in the brutal murder of Thapelo Makuthle in Kuruman, near Kimberley, Northern Cape, South Africa. [ Read more → ]

A South African gay man, who also identified as transgender, has been brutally murdered in an apparent hate crime after getting into an argument about his sexuality. [ Read more → ]

Since the end of Apartheid and the inception of South Africa’s new constitution some twenty years ago, the country has been lauded for its lead on the entrenchment of anti-discrimination rights that renders it one of the few in the world to protect sexual orientation and gender identity in its Constitution. Gays and lesbians (LGBTI) enjoy full equality in South Africa. Notwithstanding this South Africa has never managed to escape the brutality of rampant homophobia which is underscored by the high incidence of so called “corrective” rape in its townships, the deployment of an anti-gay ambassador to homophobic Uganda, and its failure to lead the decriminalization of homosexuality in the rest of Africa. [ Read more → ]

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa -- Excitement hit the gay community in South Africa on Monday, when the first ever gay billboard went up in Johannesburg in advance of the upcoming Mr. Gay World competition. [ Read more → ]

A gay, albino Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) refugee has been refused asylum in South Africa in what advocates say is an increasing pattern of refusals for LGBT asylum seekers. [ Read more → ]

A South African man has won the 2010 Mr. Gay World pageant, beating rivals from Australia, Hong Kong, China and Spain, the organizers announced Sunday. Charl Van den Berg, 28, who runs a restaurant in Cape Town, won after four days of competition [...] [ Read more → ]