Colin Wilson (@colinwlondon.bsky.social)

The South African post-apartheid constitution banned sexual orientation discrimination, a global first. This victory - in the Global South - was made possible by worker militancy and community struggles. I trace the history and interview two queer activists. www.scienceopen.com/hosted-docum...

loading . . .

‘Everything was possible’: winning the ban on sexual orientation discrimination in the 1996 South African Constitution <p xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" class="first" dir="auto" id="d7656373e88">Nobody in the 1980s would have expected South Africa to become a beacon of any kind of freedom. The best-known feature of this former British colony was apartheid, a government-enforced system of racial segregation which had for decades forced millions of black people from their homes and denied all black people the vote. Yet apartheid came to an end in 1991, democratic elections took place in 1994, and in 1996 a new Constitution became the first in any country to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation. This remarkable change took place in the context of broad and deep-rooted social struggles, with those of organised workers acting as a catalyst. </p> https://www.scienceopen.com/hosted-document?doi=10.62191/ROAPE-2026-0006