Film

Doccie resurrects monumental LGBTQ+ event from the footnotes of history

'Lesbians Free Everyone' looks back on the biggest lesbian-visibility campaign to ever take place, and ponders the sinister forces that have seen it all but forgotten

18 October 2020 - 00:00 By Paula Stephanie Andropoulos
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Filmmaker Beverley Palesa Ditsie at Joburg Pride in 1994.
Filmmaker Beverley Palesa Ditsie at Joburg Pride in 1994.
Image: Supplied

Beverley Palesa Ditsie is one of SA's foremost human-rights activists. A filmmaker, producer, musician, and spiritual healer, Ditsie was instrumental in bringing LGBT rights into focus in the late '80s and early '90s, locally and on an international scale.

Born in Soweto in 1971, Ditsie was a crucial element of the young, queer vanguard that forced gay and lesbian rights to be conceived of as human rights, facilitating a critical paradigm shift in the years leading up to the creation of our new constitution.

Alongside her friend and mentor Simon Nkoli, Ditsie co-founded the Gay and Lesbian Organisation of the Witwatersrand (Glow), under the aegis of which the inaugural South African Pride parade took place in 1990.

Beverley Palesa Ditsie today.
Beverley Palesa Ditsie today.
Image: Supplied

Now, Ditsie is applying her documentarian expertise to the task of excavating a critical juncture in Herstory, namely the 4th UN World Conference on Women, which took place in Beijing in 1995.

That year, lesbians from all over the world descended on Beijing in what was to become the biggest lesbian visibility campaign in history, and Ditsie delivered a seismic address on the inextricable connections between lesbian rights and women's rights as a whole.

But today, it's almost impossible to find archival evidence online of that event. Ditsie's new retrospective, Lesbians Free Everyone, is her bid to make sure it does not go unremembered.

What compelled you to organise this now?

About 10 years ago, I wrote down a list of all the projects I wanted to complete - and the Beijing story is among them. It's been part of the dream to put together something that commemorates everything we did. We did a lot in Beijing; a lot that very few people know about.

The fact that it came together when it did was serendipitous. I'm a spiritual person, I believe in timing. I believe that when things are ready, when God's ready, things happen, and this project was timeous in every way.

What was it like reconnecting with the women who were at the Beijing Conference?

Amazing. Many of these women are world leaders. They're the founders of huge movements that have spearheaded progress in their parts of the world. For instance, Julie Dorf founded the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission. Anjana Suvarnananda founded the Asian Lesbian Network. Charlotte Bunch founded the Centre for Women's Global Leadership at Rutgers University. I reconnected with activists and community organisers from Peru, Norway, Serbia and Uganda.

Being able to reconnect with these giants 25 years later was phenomenal. When we viewed the film together for the first time, there were tears of laughter and joy, because we were all seeing one another for the first time in 10 years or longer. Most of us were seeing each other for the first time in 25 years.

Were you motivated to compile this footage now because your human rights work is being jeopardised?

The work of women's rights activists and LGBT activists is not just being jeopardised, it's being erased. My colleagues and I had to dig up our personal records of the Beijing event because there's nothing online.

The work of women's rights activists and LGBT activists is not just being jeopardised, it's being erased
Beverley Palesa Ditsie, human-rights activist

One of the reasons the film has been held back is because that footage is impossible to find, and yet this was a world conference and we made history. My speech made history, and we can't even find a video of that online.

Are you ever discouraged by the one-step-forward, two-steps-back nature of your work?

I've always known that the work is lifelong. As a South African, in the '90s we were swept up in the euphoria of freedom. We could see it. We could taste it. We knew it was happening. We had this hope, and it was palpable. You couldn't repress it. Then a few years later you start realising that maybe this was just a fleeting moment because, even with the constitution, we still find ourselves unable to access the laws that were meant to protect us.

And now, 25 years later, it looks like we need to go even further back in our processes of re-educating and unlearning. It's exhausting, but I don't think we'd be activists if we didn't continue the work. I don't think any of us do it with the idea that it will ever end.

Do you attribute the vacillation between liberal and conservative world views to human nature, or to specific political or social phenomena?

As spiritually Christian as I am, I understand the Buddhist approach - life is misery and you enjoy the little moments of joy that you find; life is not meant to be Utopia. That said, at the moment the world is going pear-shaped. Of course, historically this has happened before. There've always been waves of progress and repression, from the dark ages back to the light. This wave truly has the potential to destroy the world.

How has your understanding of gender and sexuality evolved since Beijing?

The more you read and listen, the more you work in the space of human rights, the more you evolve. As feminists, we need to grasp who the enemy is and to understand why we are where we are right now: why the fear, the hatred, and the repression of the feminine is so intense at the moment.

By "the feminine" I mean the feminine inherent in all of us, regardless of gender. The feminine is under attack because it refuses to hide in the shadows and pretend to be inferior and weak.

As for those feminists who insist on protecting the gender binary, I don't think they should be calling themselves feminists
Beverley Palesa Ditsie, human-rights activist

There's a clear understanding that patriarchy cannot sustain itself - it's hurting the people it's supposed to benefit, with the exception of a small elite. The more I grow and change, the better I understand that gender has always been a construct. This needs to be a universal understanding.

Patriarchy thrives on ensuring that feminists are as divided as possible. I believe that those who are hellbent on wanting to maintain a particular status quo are enforcing the thing they're supposed to be fighting against.

As for those feminists who insist on protecting the gender binary, I don't think they should be calling themselves feminists, particularly because my understanding of feminism has never been about equality or even about equity. It's been about ending patriarchy, and if you understand that patriarchy is about enforcing masculinity over femininity, regardless of gender, then you understand that feminism is about ending all forms of patriarchy.

Do you address these issues in your film?

It's mostly a journey down memory lane, but we do touch on what's happening currently, because the film was made during lockdown. The first questions in our conversation(s) is, how are you? What's going on in your country? There's a sobering sense of what's happening around the world, especially within trans communities.

You should Google Kakuma camp on the border of Kenya. The refugees who have left Uganda are trapped there. Groups of men come in and beat up queer people in this space; some are transwomen. It's the hotspot we should be focusing on, and we're not. It shows the world they can do anything they want to queer people.

Why are there gaps in media coverage?

For the same reason there's so little about the lesbians in Beijing, for the same reason that there's so little about queer people in mainstream media ... because we are (apparently) such a small contingent of the population, we're insignificant; and not only are we insignificant, but what happens to us doesn't matter.

I'm concerned with how we're erased, how women's stories and Herstory are erased; and it seems to be so much of a norm that nobody seems to be aware of how much women and the participation of women as equals is being erased. When you're watching something historical, women end up being just a footnote.

At the conference in Beijing, 1995.
At the conference in Beijing, 1995.
Image: Supplied

I'm concerned about how, even today, the power of the feminine is being erased, which also makes it simple for misogynists to say things like, "But what have women done in history?" Well, in History, they haven't done shit, but if we had Herstory we'd know so much more. Our stories need to be told, and there's little support for that. There are women of power and substance from all over the continent, and we don't know they exist because history makes sure they're not known.

How and when will the film be released?

On October 18, we're celebrating Pride Day with the launch of the film at Soweto Theatre. We're pushing to get it online, and all the participants of the film are trying to get it noticed wherever they are - San Francisco, Norway, the UK. We'll announce it once we know which public broadcaster accepts the film, but I'm not holding my breath. I would be pleasantly surprised if South African media wanted to show this film.


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