Many of you would have seen the headline story and editorial comment about the Other Foundation in the Times of Zambia on Friday 29 January which continued with more front page coverage on Tuesday 2 February. The Other Foundation believes that every citizen in southern Africa should be free to live a safe and dignified life, have a family, and make their contribution to society – no matter who they are or who they love. As an LGBTI community foundation for southern Africa, an organization of the southern African region, the Other Foundation believes that addressing the COVID-19 pandemic is every citizen’s responsibility…

The latest edition of UMUNTU, our bulletin in black and white for friends and funders of the Other Foundation is out and proud.

 African Traditional Culture, Religion and Homophobia: A webinar in collaboration with Mark Gevisser, is now available to watch.

Our new publication, Roots, highlights the role that the involvement of parents and families can play in the advocacy for LGBTI equality and freedom in our region.

As we neared the end of the first five years of the Other Foundation’s operation, we commissioned an external evaluation of the Foundation’s programmes. We are happy to share with you the summary report from the review process. 

After consultation with many of our partners, we have adopted a COVID-19 response plan that reflects nuance, mitigates risk and tries to optimize available funding to build resilience against rollback on movement gains.

The first ever Global Equality Fund (GEF) Stakeholders Workshop was held in Johannesburg, South Africa, convened by the DRL and co-hosted by the Other Foundation and Hilton Hotels. Under the theme of “Local Reach, Global Impact” leaders in LGBTI activism gathered for a week of deep engagement and purposeful deliberation, learning and collaboration at a global scale.

Under Wraps: A survey of public attitudes to homosexuality and gender non-conformity in Malawi, for the first time provides statistically sound, nationally representative data about what Malawians think and feel about homosexual and bisexual women and men, and transgender and intersex people. There are some surprising findings.

Given South Africa’s human rights based Constitution that is referenced in the country’s company law and the successes of compliance and incentive based Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment (B-BBEE) programmes, Get Real  explores whether a similar approach for LGBTIeconomic empowerment would be realistic in South Africa. 

Over four days, about 200 participants from across southern Africa and abroad convened at the Cradle of Humankind for kopano – Expanding space for LGBTI activsim in southern Africa. This kopano was geared towards evolving the strategies used by LGBTI activist groups for greater depth and scale of impact, and renew collective energy amongst LGBTI activist organizations and allies.

Stabanisation is a body of narratives about the lived experiences within the African faith landscape of its queer authors, interwoven into a call for theology that is life-affirming, and a remembrance of our communal identity. 

Taking a Stand the powerful address on homophobia and the churches in Africa by renowned anti-apartheid leader, theologian, and author, Prof. Allan Boesak at our convening, Breaking through the Backlash: Transformative Encounters Between LGBTI People and Churches in Africa,  is now available to download.

We are thrilled to announce that ‘As You Like It’, the second edition of our Gerald Kraak Anthology of African perspectives on gender, social justice, and sexuality, has won the 2019 Lambda Literary Award for an anthology.

A public debate is raging about how churches can spread homophobic hatred, or promote respect and inclusion based on the equal dignity of every person. Our new report, Silent no longer!, examines the types of engagement churches have with homosexual men and women, and transgender and intersex people in southern Africa. 

There is a general belief that African people are deeply homophobic and unaccepting of gender diversities. But what does the African public really think? The truth is that we don’t really know because hardly any work has been done to gather and analyze the views of the public in a structured way in Africa. Until now.

Homophobia has become a site of painful struggle in the churches, in much the same way as slavery, racism and sexism was in the past. When faith does violence, a new reflection paper by African Christian scholars, reflects on how churches can become liberating rather than oppressive, redemptive rather than violent towards homosexual women and men, and transgender and intersex people in Africa.

All ten country reports in our Canaries In The Coal Mines studies are now available. What is the state of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex organizing and social inclusion, in Angola, Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Swaziland, Zambia, and Zimbabwe?