Top 10 Local Celebrity LGBT Activists

Over the years, sexuality has always been known as black or white. You’re either with a man if you’re a woman or you’re with a woman if you’re a man. The homosexual community can be traced a few generations back into history. However its not always been an open topic of discussion. In this list, we take a look at the role players of change in the LGBT community. People who stood up for the gay community.

1. Zackie Achmat

Zackie is a South African Director and he is known worldwide for his Gay Rights Activism. Zackie also co-founded the National Coalition for Gay and Lesbian Equality in 1994.

2. Lesego Motsepe

Actress poet and story teller,Lesego Motsepe was a prominantly known for her role as Letti Matabane in the soapie, Isidingo. She was a LGBT and HIV activist.  She courageously made a public announcement of her HIV status in 2011 on World Aids Day but sadly dies earlier on this year of cardiac arrest.

3. Edwin Cameron

Edwin is a Justice of the Constitutional Courts of South Africa. He is the 2009-2010 winner of the Brudner Prize from Yale University. The Brudner prize is awarded annually to an accomplished scholar or activist whose work has made significant contributions to the understanding of LGBT issues or furthered the tolerance of LGBT people.

4. Colin Cowie

Colin is an internationally known Party and Wedding planner. He has become prominent for his LGBT rights activism for South Africa as well as USA.

5. Brenda Fassie

Our very own international singer Brenda Fassi was not just known for her burnig  stages all around the world with her excellent performances. She was the face of LGBT activism for several years but died from cardiac arrest in 2004.

6. Koyo Bala

Koyo is an openly gay socialite who has become prominent in his LGBT and HIV activism.

7. Simon Nkoli

Simon was a AIDS and LGBT activist during the Apartheid Era. In 1983, he joined the mainly white Gay Association of South Africa, then he formed the Saturday Group, the first black gay group in Africa.

8. Glen Retief

Glen is an award-winning author and activist. As an anti-apartheid and LGBT rights activist in the late 1980s and early 1990s, he was part of the group that successfully lobbied for sexual orientation to be included in the Constitution of South Africa as part of discrimination.

9. Kathleen Satchwell

Kathleen who’s openly lesbian, won the right for her partner to enjoy the same benefits as those previously reserved for spouses of married heterosexual judges. This right was confirmed by the Constitutional Court in 2002. This decision is seen as one of five key decisions that set the legal status of same-sex couples in South Africa before the legalisation of same-sex marriage.

10. Robert V. Taylor

Robert is an openly gay priest. He has become internationally renowned as one of the first openly gay priests to be considered as archbishop of San Francisco.