PARTIES FAIL TO SHOW AT ELECTION FORUM
Representatives from only two political parties turned out for a poorly attended LGBT election forum hosted by the Joint Working Group (JWG) on Friday night in Johannesburg.
The event was intended to provide a platform for members of the LGBT community to engage with political parties in the run-up to the April 22 election.
According to Emily Craven from the JWG, the ANC, DA, IFP, Cope and ID were each invited to send a representative to the forum. She revealed that only the ANC, DA and Cope agreed to do so – “the other two never got back to us”.
On the night, however, the confirmed Cope representative failed to show up for the event with no explanation.
Openly gay Joburg Councillor, and Parliamentary Candidate, Ian Ollis arrived to represent the DA, while Deputy Speaker of Parliament, Nozizwe Madlala- Routledge, represented the ANC at the forum.
The 14-or-so-strong audience, composed primarily of activists, focused largely on the ruling party’s failure to show its support for LGBT issues.
Past homophobic comments by Presidential candidate Jacob Zuma and ANC Youth League Leader Julius Malema were slammed and the party was attacked for its lack of support for human rights and LGBT rights internationally and in the United Nations.
A number of the audience members, who claimed that they were life-long supporters of the ANC, said that they could not in good conscience vote for the party in these elections and would instead abstain.
Ollis and the DA were accused of not doing enough to support LGBT causes, despite him having come out publicly and naming a number of other openly gay DA parliamentary candidates – the only party to have done so.
Craven said that the debate was an interesting exercise but expressed her disappointment that so few people took part.
While a frustrated Ollis suggested that the event had not been well publicised, Craven said: “We could have done more, but within our membership it was well publicised.”
She said the poor turnout was also related to the fact that the forum was held on a Friday evening and that “a lot of LGBT people are disengaged from the process and feel that no party really supports them.”
She added: “Despite the turnout, the forum was very valuable. We now need to find ways of taking Friday’s conversation out to the community.”
Advertised?. We only received note of this a few days before the event in typical JWG style. No wonder only a handful showed up.
The gay NGO’s of this country should start pulling their fingers out of their backsides and start doing some actual work.
It’s no use spending all that donor monies on salaries and they sit on their backsides and procrastinate all day.
APATHY. I think this confirms apathy not only in political parties, but in us as the community as a whole. I wonder how we would react if our human rights be infringed as it was pre Stonewall. Would we then be more proactive?
This sounds more as an exercise in criticism than an attempt at really engaging with out leaders. I applaud the ANC for sending such a high ranking representative to such a poorly organised slaughter, a mistake I’m sure they won’t soon make again.
The gay community is now apathetic, without even being given the chance to participate. This really should have been advertised at least on this website.
advertise. the organisers obviously did a nasty job of marketing. I scout forums all day & never heard of this.
Ag Please. Typical homo fashion, all we do is bitch bitch bitch. It is because nobody is really ever informed about these things. There is no active campaigns to get the LGBT society to actually join these groups. No, it is rather a bunch of angry queens that bitch about each other or other gay organisations.
I would have attended something like this, had I known about it in advance. Not all of us hang out in the clubs or on the gay websites all the time.
It really is hight time that we focus on actively advertising LGBT services and support groups. It is high time that gay people working in the media do their part. It is high time that we get something like a national weekly/daily LGBT newspaper out there that is REAL, and not full of smut and bitching queens like the Exit or Pink Tongue, but a proper newspaper that can actually educate people about us. Or how about for starters getting a page or two in the Star or Beeld newspapers. With proper journalists. That way we can not only reach the rest of our community, but also show the general public that we are really more than the wrist flapping, screaming queens that end up on the news.
Star!. You try asking Star or Beeld for a piece of their papers for a gay column!
Good luck to u!