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“Stop hate crime. Stop violence and prejudice.”
Those were sharp words from Triangle Project’s Sharon Cox during a stakeholders’ engagement on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Intersex (LGBTI+) at the Assembly of God in Makhaza on Tuesday 6 December.
With pictures of hate crime victims visible for all to see, those attending applauded such a platform of information sharing and hoped to see more of such in their areas.
On the day Cox went through different sexualities, gender and what those meant for everyone to understand.
The Triangle Project is an LGBTI human rights organisation, based in the Western Cape. It provides direct services to LGBTI people in the form of psycho-social and health services as well as providing platforms to develop community activism and outreach.
It also conducts research and provides a coordinated advocacy and policy development presence for LGBTI people and LGBTI human rights.
Cox said it was “immensely helpful” to have such sessions and for people to talk freely and ask questions.
She said such initiatives give people a better understanding of things and an approach to life while helping communities.
“We need to have many more forums such as this, where we make people understand that we are more similar than different. Communities need to stop hate crimes, violence and prejudice.”
Cox said it was fundamentally important to engage faith organisations when such issues are put on the table. She added they play an important role in society at large.
“Stigma and prejudice stem from faith organisations,” she said. “So, it is important to have them here so that they can send out a different message to their respective communities. In no so distant future, we’ll have hate crime legislation, though it has taken a long time it is welcomed to deal with the hate crime we see being committed.”
Community and human rights activist Funeka Soldaat said the programme was one of many that the Khayelitsha cluster adopted.
The programme will deal with different issues such as gender-based violence (GBV), LGBTI+ and missing person files.
Soldaat said ignorance was “dangerous”, and LGBTI+ activists needed such a platform to educate leaders about many aspects of life.
“I was a bit shocked that even people in my circle had not much information about LGBTI+,” she said. “It means they don’t know me, and that means we still have a long way to go in educating our communities.” Soldaat said having pictures of hate crime victims on the day was for people to see that “people are being killed, and not just statistics.”
