Obituary: Koyo Bala trailblazing fighter for the right to be gay and proud of it

Koyo Bala, who has died in Cape Town at the age of 39, was not necessarily among South Africa's most talented musicians. In a sense he was more than that. He was a trailblazer. With the energy and brightness of a comet he lit the way for those whose lifestyles, personal choices and eccentricities had confined them to the margins of society even in the supposedly liberated post-apartheid South Africa.