Transgender activists of Africa speak about the Malawi case.

Published in The Natal Mercury on Friday 28 May 2010

Why are we calling AuntieTiwo a man? Said one of the transgender men next to me. I am a transgender activist at an exchange program in Namibia this week. The week is a significant moment in the rise of the Transgender movement in Africa. We are all deeply conscious of the fragility of moments like these and are working through every meal and break to get the network between us to look more like steel than a string of emails flying across the continent. This has been the shape of the movement in the last year.

We are gathered around a computer at breakfast looking at the Reuters photo of Tiwonge and Steven in the wooden box where they stand accused. Tiwonge is wearing a flowery pink top and Steven’s sad masculine head is hanging.  “But she is like me!” One transgender woman says behind me. “She says she is a wife. She is clearly presenting as a woman. Does she know the word Transgender?” More questions pertaining to Gender identity and being Transgender flies around the room.

Liesl Theron director of South African Transgender organisation Gender DynamiX walks into the dining room and sees what we are doing. “I just spoke to our Trans brother Victor from IGLHRC* who visited them in prison. He says he asked Auntie Tiwo what he could bring her, thinking she might be hungry or have some basic need. Apparently the first thing she asked for was sandals cream and that very pink top from the women’s section at a local store. It seems like she needed to look like a presentable woman for the court case”
* IGLHRC International gay and lesbian human rights commission.

From all the clips of information coming in I can see that all of us talking here have a story from their own gay, lesbian and transgender networks where people are calling Tiwonge she and using female frames like Auntie. I remind them that in Gender DynamiX’s newsletter last month I had quoted Ian Swartz from OSISA (Open Society Institute of Southern Africa) stating that Tiwonge was presenting as female and that he was of the opinion that if Tiwonge knew the word Transgender she would come into a whole new world of herself.
“But why are the lawyers not pushing the Transgender issue? It seems to be Tiwonge’s reality and I can imagine that affirming the gender binary in a conservative culture could gain more sympathy than alienate in a case like this” says Justus Eisfeld from GATE (Global Action for Trans* Equality) who has joined us in our historic gathering.
I tell him that apparently the lawyers are experiencing a trans panic of their own. They defence has taken position that sexual preference is a human right. This is being met with suspicion because it is perceived as a perverse western concept. The lawyers apparently feel that introducing gender identity to the fray would somehow jeopardise the appeal.

“Well their strategy is not working. Why be fearful that the truth about Tiwonge’s identity would make things worse? Is the truth not supposed to set us free?” says Nikki from the Ugandan Trans organisation. We cheer him loudly.

We decide to have a formal facilitated workshop later in the day to discuss how to go about our activism with regards to the Malawian case. We feel it is paramount that the truth be told about what we see in these two people and to beg of the world to consider gender identity and how it plays out when gender identity and sexuality is criminalised.

"Society judges you by your body rather than what you see yourself as. This is why the world calls Steven and Tiwonge two men rather than acknowledge that Tiwonge expresses herself as a woman. In Africa we still lack information about gender identity and we cling to the two categories of male and female based on the biological." Says Skipper Mogapi from the Rainbow Identity Project in Botswana. He talks about his battle to get funding for his lone voice in a country where transgender people are treated with disbelief.

We talk about how problematic it is to do activism for transgender people when the information about it is met with suspicion even by Gay and Lesbian activists and how that stands in the way of people lives who do not feel part of the gender boxes. Transgender people are assigned sexual preferences when they are probably not even looking at who they want to have sex with or love. They are just struggling with their bodies and what the body means in society.

I go back to my room and read a media statement Gender DynamiX sent out earlier in the week and read what our outreach officer was quoted to say: “Even though the identities of Tiwonge and Steven are misunderstood by the world we stand together with gay and lesbian activists in their work to try and get justice for our trans sister and her partner.”

I am inspired by his young wisdom and that he reminds me that we should unite in our fight against any human rights infringements. I set aside my anger for the world that seems to be silencing Transgender people again and go to the workshop room to do something about it.

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