Kholekile Mnisi is a marketing communications specialist, blogger, writer and gender activist.
Modern African states are neglecting the economic costs of homophobia at their own peril.
Brazil as World LGBT Murder Capital and Rio’s Place in the Data
Lesbians in Kenya: The forgotten victims of AIDS
Brenda was gang-raped to ‘cure’ her of being lesbian, leaving her with HIV which she passed on to her female partner. In Kenya, health workers are often particularly insensitive and ill-equipped to serve lesbians, lacking the knowledge on how to prevent HIV transmission between two women.
‘We are told that women cannot infect each other and sometimes they even ask us about our male sexual partners,’ Brenda adds. ‘Unfortunately our society defines us and our roles from the day we are born and we are raised to actively live up to those roles or face being ostracized.’
It is impossible to know how many ‘corrective rape’ cases there are each year, but the phenomenon is reported by lesbians all over Africa. Read More
South African Court Sentences Man To 30 Years In Prison For Rape And Murder Of Black Lesbian
A South African court has sentenced Lekgoa Lesley Motleleng to 30 years for the rape and murder of Duduzile Zozo, a 26-year-old black lesbian from a township east of Johannesburg.
The gruesome details of her death brought national attention to an epidemic of sexual assault targeting black lesbians in South Africa and the failure of the criminal justice system to respond to them. While there are no reliable statistics on how frequently black lesbians are targeted for so-called “corrective rape,” a 2013 study found that almost one in three lesbian or bisexual women in South Africa reported being the victims of “forced sex.” Read More
Hate = Death, A round up of global hate crimes
Hate crimes are a global issue, spreading across cultural and national boundaries. This week's victims included an 18 year old Azerbaijan whose parents doused him with gasoline and threatened to murder him when they found out he is gay. The boy survived his burns. After Alejandro Gala, president of Ola LGBT+ Almeria, was attacked with a Molotov cocktail the Spanish youth leader swore, "it’s my obligation to denounce these homophobic acts, and urge others to do the same to show that there’s still a lot left to fight for and that activism is the solution.’
Meanwhile Brian Higgins, aka Feather Lynn, was taken off life support after a brutal attack left him on life support with a fatal brain aneurysm in San Francisco. In South Africa, Gift Makau, an 18 year old lesbian was the victim of “corrective rape”, before she was strangled to death.