Beverly palesa ditsie first gay march africa

Beverley Palesa Ditsie (born 1971) is a South African

lesbian A lesbian is a Homosexuality, homosexual woman.Zimmerman, p. 453. The word is also used for women in relation to their sexual identity or sexual behavior, regardless of sexual orientation, or as an adjective to characterize or associate n ...

activist, artist, and

filmmaker Filmmaking (film production) is the process by which a motion picture is produced. Filmmaking involves a number of complex and discrete stages, starting with an initial story, idea, or commission. It then continues through screenwriting, castin ...

. Ditsie is one of the founders of the gay rights organization

Gay and Lesbian Organization of Witwatersrand The Gay and Lesbian Organization of Witwatersrand (GLOW) was a non-governmental organization in South Africa that focused on gay and lesbian community issues. Origins On 9 April 1988, black lesbian and gay activists united to form the township-ba ...

. In speaking about the importance of considering

LGBT ' is an initialism that stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender. In use since the 1990s, the initialism, as well as some of its common variants, functions as an umbrella term for sexuality and gender identity. The LGBT term is a ...

rights in the context of

human rights Human rights are Morality, moral principles or Social norm, normsJames Nickel, with assistance from Thomas Pogge, M.B.E. Smith, and Leif Wenar, 13 December 2013, Stanford Encyclopedia of PhilosophyHuman Rights Retrieved 14 August 2014 for ce ...

at the 4th UN World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995, she became the first openly

woman to do. It was also the first time that the

United Nations The United Nations (UN) is an intergovernmental organization whose stated purposes are to maintain international peace and international security, security, develop friendly relations among nations, achieve international cooperation, and be ...

was addressed about LGBT issues, with Ditsie saying, “if the world conference on women is to address the concerns of all women, it must similarly recognise that discrimination based on sexual orientation is a violation of basic human rights”.

Biography

Ditsie was born in Orlando West,

Soweto Soweto () is a township of the City of Johannesburg Metropolitan Municipality in Gauteng, South Africa, bordering the city's mining belt in the south. Its name is an English syllabic abbreviation for ''South Western Townships''. Formerly a s ...

, South,, Africa in 1971.

Activism

Ditsie is one of the organizers of the first

Pride March The NYC Pride March is an annual event celebrating the LGBTQ community in New York City. Among the largest Pride events in the world, the NYC Pride March attracts tens of thousands of participants and millions of sidewalk spectators each J ...

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the north by the neighbouring countri ...

. The parade took place in Johannesburg in 1990. Ditsie and her friend,

Simon Nkoli Simon Tseko Nkoli (26 November 1957 – 30 November 1998) was an anti-apartheid, gay rights and AIDS activist in South Africa. Nkoli was born in Soweto in a seSotho-speaking family. Nkoli became a youth activist against apartheid, joining th ...

, another activist, worked together on creating the pride event after Simon had the idea from his visit to

America The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

. During the event, she spoke on live TV, becoming a "cultural icon" and also a target for people's hatred and bigotry. She states that she had to be "escorted for about two weeks after the pride march" for her safety. Ditsie is critical of current pride activities because she sees a cultural and racial divide between LGBT people in South Africa. Ditsie spoke at the

Conference on Women in 1995, and was the person to address gay and lesbian rights before a U.N. 4th World Conference on Women." She attempted to convince U.N. delegates to "adopt resolutions recognizing

sexual diversity Gender and sexual diversity (GSD), or simply sexual diversity, refers to all the diversities of sex characteristics, sexual orientations and gender identities, without the need to specify each of the identities, behaviors, or characteristics that ...

Film and television career

Ditsie has worked as an actress and director in television since 1980, making her the first black female child star in television. In the late 1990s, she was in the reality show, ''Livewire - Communities'', and was the only black lesbian on the show. She has also written, directed and consulted in over 20 Documentaries, screened nationally and Internationally. Her first documentary film, ''Simon and I'' (2001), won a number of Audience Awards, including the 2004 Oxfam/Vues d’ Afrique best documentary, Montreal, Canada. The story of ''Simon and I'' is

autobiographical An autobiography, sometimes informally called an autobio, is a self-written account of one's own life. It is a form of biography. Definition The word "autobiography" was first used deprecatingly by William Taylor in 1797 in the English peri ...

, following her "personal and political journey" with Nkoli. Her film uses both

interview An interview is a structured conversation where one participant asks questions, and the other provides answers.Merriam Webster DictionaryInterview Dictionary definition, Retrieved February 16, 2016 In common parlance, the word "interview" ...

s and

archival An archive is an accumulation of historical records or materials – in any medium – or the physical facility in which they are located. Archives contain primary source documents that have accumulated over the course of an individual or ...

material.

Filmography

* ''Simon & I'' (2002, co-directed with Nicky Newman) * ''A Family Affair'' (2005, directed and written) * ''The Commission - From Silence to Resistance'' (2017, directed, produced and written) * ''Lesbians Free Everyone - The Beijing Retrospective'' (2020, directed, produced and written)

References

External links

Simon and I
(video) {{DEFAULTSORT:Ditsie, Beverley Palesa 1971 births LGBT rights activists from South Africa People from Soweto Living people Lesbians South African women activists