In 1967, the novelist Allen Drury wrote a book about South Africa, aptly titled, A Very Strange Society. He described a land inharmoniously shared between polygamous Zulu tribesmen and Dutch-descended farmers, with a smattering of English industrialists thrown in. Last week, South Africa confirmed Drury's appellation by legalizing gay marriage. Having recently returned from South Africa, this is perhaps the strangest phenomenon I witnessed in a country with 11 national languages. With this move, South Africa becomes the fifth country in the world to legalize gay marriage, yet the first where the majority of people have serious problems with the very notion of homosexuality, never mind gay civil rights.
With conservative, Afrikaner society on one end and traditional, black African culture on the other, it is at first glance a mystery how gay marriage came to pass in South Africa so smoothly. As adversarial and downright violent as their history together has been, one of the few things that Afrikaner and black South African cultures share is homophobia. The gay taboo of Afrikanerdom, with its hearty militarism and male ruggedness, coalesces well with black claims that gayness is somehow "un-African," one of myriad poisonous influences imported by Western colonizers. In spite of this widespread opposition to homosexuality, when South Africa's democratic constitution was drafted in 1996, it contained a clause prohibiting discrimination based upon sexual orientation. South Africa thus became the first country in the world to protect gays constitutionally. It was remarkable, not least considering that next door, Robert Mugabe was calling gays "lower than dogs and pigs" and that across Africa gays face imprisonment or death. When I asked a gay South African how equality of sexual orientation made it into the country's constitution, he said, "Someone slipped it in while no one was looking."
In reality, much of the credit for the inclusion of gays in the constitution – and their continuing advancement – can be laid at the feet of African National Congress leaders exiled during apartheid, many of whom spent their formative years in Europe where gays were already visible and gaining acceptance. Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu, men of unrivaled equanimity, have publicly pushed their country to accept gays. Yet the process of gay marriage becoming written law in South Africa is nearly identical to the controversial way in which Massachusetts legalized it; in both cases, a constitutional court ruled that denying marriage to gays violated the respective federal and state constitutions. It was these elite decisions, enacted by compliant legislatures that brought about radical change. In South Africa, the legislative establishment of gay marriage came about rather easily due to the country's single-party dominant system. The ANC, which controls 70 percent of parliament and which has worried both domestic and international observers for its increasingly authoritarian tendencies, rammed the gay marriage bill through parliament with a mere two hours of debate. Even though many ANC members personally opposed the bill, the ruling party mandated that all of its representatives in parliament support it. As with any challenge to its authority or tactics, the ANC had a set response to criticism: " We are the elected party – 70 percent of South Africans voted for us."
While the law looks favorably upon gays in South Africa, the country, as a whole, is hardly a hospitable place. Driving from Durban to Cape Town along the Indian Ocean with a gay South African friend who balked at even the most innocent attempt at public affection, demonstrated this reality. Innocent attempts at hand holding were met with the riposte, half-joking: "This is South Africa. We'll get killed." Cape Town, long a liberal bastion, is the only city where gays seem to have any meaningful visibility and houses the African continent's only "gayborhood," all of four or five blocks. It was there that I enjoyed a gay night during the Cape Town Comedy Festival, and witnessed some of the most ribald humor I'd ever heard in my life.
The country's schizophrenia on homosexuality can be seen in the behavior of one of its most controversial politicians, former Deputy President Jacob Zuma. Last October, Zuma had some rather harsh words for his country's gays. He said that gay marriage, "is a disgrace to the nation and to God" and elaborated by stating that, "When I was growing up an ungqingili [a derogatory epithet for a homosexual] would not have stood in front of me. I would knock him out." Zuma's remarks earned him the ire of the country's gay activists. Weeks later, he apologized and went so far as to voice his support for gay marriage. The sincerity of his move may be in doubt, but gays need all the support they can get.
If only Drury were alive today. No doubt would he be pleased at the fall of apartheid. But I imagine he would nonetheless be mystified to see that a country – indelibly marked by the imprint of Zulu and Afrikaner chauvinism – let the prospect of gay marriage pass with such little fuss. A very strange place indeed.
James Kirchick is a contributor to www.indegayforum.org.