Support for equal rights and same-sex marriage has increased over the past decade, while outright disapproval of same-sex relationships has declined. But ask whether a same-sex couple should kiss in public, raise children or change the gender marker on an identity document, and that acceptance suddenly becomes far less certain.
As Pride Month drew to a close, /explain/ attended the launch of the Other Foundation’s new report on South African attitudes towards LGBTI people. We also spoke with community members about whether the progress reflected in surveys is evident in their everyday lives. Their answer? Sort of.
The report found that public attitudes towards LGBTI people have become more inclusive, even though considerable prejudice persists. It comes at a particularly pertinent time for the community, which, after years of gains, has recently faced a growing global backlash.
In Africa alone, many countries have recently strengthened or introduced laws criminalising same-sex relationships while, in the United States, public support for gay marriage is declining.
What did the report examine?
The Other Foundation commissioned the report, titled Admission Reserved, from the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC).
It used data from the HSRC’s South African Social Attitudes Survey, an annual, nationally representative study that has tracked changes in the country’s beliefs and values, and compared attitudes towards LGBTI people over roughly a decade, drawing on a nationally representative sample of 3 285 respondents for its latest findings.
Its central finding is both encouraging and frustrating: South Africa has made progress, but that progress remains uneven.
The good
Broad disapproval of same-sex relationships has declined sharply over the past decade. Sixty per cent of respondents now believe gay men and lesbian women deserve the same rights as other citizens, up from 51% in 2015, while support for equal rights stood at 57% for bisexual and transgender people and was highest for intersex people, at 68%. Moreover, 46% say their views towards LGBTI people have become more accepting in the last five years, a clear sign of progress, as only 11% said they had become less accepting.
Support for same-sex marriage increased from 37% in 2015 to 45%, while the proportion of South Africans who said sexual relationships between two adults of the same sex were “always wrong” fell from 66% to 52%. These gains are difficult to ignore and deserve to be celebrated. They are also not the whole story.
The bad
Both the report and the LGBTI people we interviewed suggest South Africans are often more comfortable supporting equality as an abstract principle than watching it play out in ordinary life. Only 42% said it was acceptable for two people of the same sex to have a romantic relationship. Just 38% agreed that same-sex couples should be able to raise children, while only 28% considered it acceptable for a same-sex couple to kiss in public.
Equal rights, sure. Holding hands at the mall? Let us not get carried away. The report also noted that progress had not followed a neat, uninterrupted line. “Between 2022 and 2024, for instance, the proportion of South Africans who said that sexual relations between two adults of the same sex were ‘always wrong’ increased from 43% to 53%, a rise of 10 percentage points,” it stated.
The report linked part of this reversal to the Covid-19 pandemic, which disrupted inclusion and advocacy work and contributed to the rise of reactionary attitudes in many parts of the world. “This reminds us that gains are never guaranteed, but must be continuously defended by a strong, active and publicly engaged civil society,” it said.
Attitudes towards transgender rights were even more divided. Only 37% supported a person’s right to change the gender marker on their identity documents, while 42% opposed it.
More tolerated, but not necessarily accepted
The survey tells us what people say they believe. We wanted to know how those beliefs feel to the people living them. Emmanuel Tjiya, a 36-year-old gay man, welcomed the finding that attitudes were improving, while warning that microaggressions and prejudice remained rife.
“It is a fight every day, but that is just the world; you have to fight for your existence and what you stand for. Whether in the 1990s or 2020s, it is just One Battle After Another, in the wise words of Paul Thomas Anderson,” he said. Tjiya said he would prefer to live in a world where he did not need to feel “tolerated” or “accepted”, but could simply exist without his identity or sexuality becoming an issue.
Despite the challenges, he said he remained happy to live in South Africa, which he described as “a beautiful country where queerness is celebrated and our rights are protected by the Constitution”.
When asked whether she felt more included in society, 26-year-old transgender lesbian Brianna Purdon said she felt more tolerated, but not necessarily more accepted. “Do I feel like I get less overt discrimination than I used to around a decade ago? Yes. But at the same time, a lot of the acceptance feels very surface-level,” Purdon said.
She said overt hostility had sometimes been replaced by quieter forms of exclusion and microaggressions. “I do not necessarily feel that more people see me as a woman. Rather, I feel they are less likely to openly say they do not see me as a woman,” she said. Purdon added that these attitudes could also come from within queer communities themselves.
Sqiniseko Ndlovu, a 31-year-old masculine-presenting lesbian, said she had experienced both homophobia and transphobia. She felt society had become more inclusive, but believed her experience was partly shaped by living in a township in Pietermaritzburg rather than in a more rural, traditionally conservative part of KwaZulu-Natal.
“I believe being in a more urban and more non-traditional part of KwaZulu-Natal does shield me from experiencing more homophobia or transphobia,” she said. Ndlovu has family in rural parts of the province and said visits there reminded her how hostile patriarchal environments could be towards people who did not conform to traditional gender roles or heterosexuality.
Purdon and Ndlovu both said education was critical because misinformation and ignorance remained major drivers of discrimination. Ndlovu also challenged the idea that LGBTI people were outsiders waiting to be “accepted” into communities. They were already family members, neighbours, colleagues and friends.
Why knowing someone in the community matters
The report found that LGBTI visibility had increased over the past decade and that people with LGBTI friends or family members were more likely to support equal rights, recognise the discrimination LGBTI people face and defend someone experiencing prejudice.
Sixty-nine per cent of respondents said they knew a gay man, while 63% said they knew a lesbian woman. In 2015, 58% reported knowing someone who was gay or lesbian. About 39% of South Africans had some degree of close personal contact with LGBTI people through friendships or family relationships. This included 22% who had one or two LGBTI friends or relatives and 17% who had three or more.
“The central lesson of this study is therefore not simply that attitudes towards LGBTI people are changing, but that change is shaped through everyday relationships and the social environments people inhabit,” the report said.
Progress and prejudice, side by side
Kutlwano Magashule, executive officer for programmes at the Other Foundation, captured the findings neatly at the launch. “The report does not show that things are getting much worse or that things are getting much better,” Magashule said. “Instead, it shows that progress and prejudice exist side by side.”
That may be the best description of LGBTI inclusion in South Africa. While the door to equality has opened wider over the past decade, as the report’s title suggests, too many people are still being kept at the threshold.
Read the full Admission Reserved report on the Other Foundation’s website.
Prashalan Govender is a journalist who was shortlisted for the Vodacom Young Journalist of the Year Award twice. He is focused on reporting the stories that shape everyday life in South Africa, with a particular interest in politics, economics, and social issues.
