Nelson Mandela, the first Black president of South Africa, died today at the age of 95. His greatest legacy will be having led the country out of apartheid — but he also had a significant impact on LGBT equality.
Under Mandela, South Africa became the first country in the world to enact constitutional protections against discrimination based on sexual orientation. In its 1997 Constitution, it also prohibits discrimination on the basis of both “sex” and “gender” — a distinction rarely seen. (The full list includes “race, gender, sex, pregnancy, marital status, ethnic or social origin, colour, sexual orientation, age, disability, religion, conscience, belief, culture, language and birth.”)
Phumi Mtetwa, co-founder of the South African National Coalition for Gay and Lesbian Equality and former executive director of the Lesbian and Gay Equality Project, wrote a piece last July in the Mail & Guardian about working with Mandela and his African National Congress party to expand LGBT equality. Definitely worth a read.
My own first activist actions were taking part in protests in the 1980s to encourage my college’s trustees to divest from South Africa. His passing today makes me reflect on those days, and how far our world has come. We have far to go, still, but less so because of Nelson Mandela.
President Barack Obama put it well:
We will not likely see the likes of Nelson Mandela again. So it falls to us as best we can to forward the example that he set: to make decisions guided not by hate, but by love; to never discount the difference that one person can make; to strive for a future that is worthy of his sacrifice.
But I should end this with a quote from Mandela himself:
For to be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.