Remembering Simon Nkoli

Simon Tseko Nkoli (1957-1998) was born in Soweto in a SeSotho-speaking family. He grew up on a farm in the Free State and his family later moved to Sebokeng. Nkoli became a youth activist against apartheid, with the Congress of South African Students (COSAS) and with the United Democratic Front (UDF). In 1983 he joined the mainly white Gay Association of South Africa (GASA), and after coming out in an interview with City Press, he formed the Saturday Group, the first black gay group in Africa. After speaking at rallies in support of rent boycotters in the Vaal townships, he was arrested in 1984 and faced the death penalty for treason with twenty-one other political leaders in the Delmas Trial. By courageously coming out while a prisoner, he helped change the attitude of the African National Congress to gay rights. While many gay groups around the world wrote to him and supported his defense, the GASA and white-dominated gay organisations in South Africa refused to support someone charged with political crimes. He was acquitted and released from prison in 1988.

He founded the Gay and Lesbian Organisation of the Witwatersrand (GLOW) in 1988, and was later involved in black gay choirs and sports groups. He traveled widely and was given several human rights awards in Europe and North America. He was a member of the ILGA board, representing the African region. He was one of the first gay activists to meet with Nelson Mandela in 1994. As one of the leading personalities in the National Coalition for Gay and Lesbian Equality (NCGLE), he helped in the campaigns to retain the inclusion of the protection from discrimination in the Bill of Rights in the 1994 South African constitution, and for the May 1998 repeal of the sodomy laws. He helped establish Soweto’s Township AIDS Project (TAP) in 1990, where he worked on community education campaigns until 1996. After becoming one of the first publicly HIV-positive African gay men, he initiated the Positive African Men group based in central Johannesburg. In the months before his death, supported by his British lover Roderick Sharp, he was writing his memoirs, and was concerned with the anti-homosexual campaigns in neighbouring Zimbabwe, Namibia, Swaziland, Botswana and Zambia. Nkoli died in hospital in Johannesburg on the eve of World AIDS Day, on 30 November 1998. Memorial services were held for him in Sebokeng, and in the Anglican cathedrals in Johannesburg and Cape Town. The September 1999 Pride March in Johannesburg was dedicated to his memory, and a downtown street was renamed in his honour.

You live eternally in our memories.