In July 2023, a board went up outside a shop in Parkside, Gqeberha. It said LGBTQ people were not welcome at La Gardi. It told the public to save the children. It claimed the right of admission.
On 6 October 2026, the Equality Court answered. Judge B.M. Pakati found that Dawood Lagardien’s sign and a hate WhatsApp group he created and ran amounted to hate speech, unfair discrimination and harassment under the Equality Act.
He must apologise in public. He must pay R200,000 to an equality organisation chosen by the South African Human Rights Commission. The matter goes to the National Prosecuting Authority for criminal investigation. He also pays the legal costs of the Commission for Gender Equality.
This follows the June 2026 ruling against Ngizwe Mchunu in the Johannesburg Equality Court. An apology, human rights training and R250,000 towards equality and hate crimes work. Two rulings in four months. Qwelane in 2021 set the law. These cases applied it.
It took three years and three months.
In May 2025, I stood outside the East London High Court with other activists in solidarity with the SAHRC. Some of us were photographed by people we did not know. That hearing fell on the hundredth day after Imam Muhsin Hendricks was shot dead in Gqeberha. Same city. Same year of fear.
How it happened
Lagardien says that in June 2023 two men were intimate in his shop in front of Muslim customers and a child, and that he asked them to leave. The court noted that he called their action deliberate but gave no reason for believing it.
On 10 July 2023, the sign went up. MambaOnline broke the story under the headline “Queer apartheid”. Lagardien told the publication: “I will not allow LGBTQ individuals in my shop, and no one can stop me!”
The SAHRC phoned him and asked him to take the sign down. He refused.
On 16 July 2023, he created a WhatsApp group. The court record describes its header: “STOP THE FAGS”. Its name: “Our rights – anti-LGBTQIA+”. Its motto: “Evil will advance no further”. The group grew to nearly 700 participants. Members called queer people vermin. One wrote that the group existed to fight the vermin and find ways to stop them. Another wrote that LGBTQ was an attack on Islam, that force was the only option, and that Muslims should crush these evil vermin from within.
The SAHRC went to court, on its own initiative and on complaints from the public, including from OUT LGBT Well-being. The Commission for Gender Equality joined as a second applicant. Media Monitoring Africa came in as a friend of the court. Lagardien fought every step and filed a counter-application accusing the SAHRC of failing to protect his rights. The court dismissed it.
What the court decided, and why it matters to us
Taking it down does not make it go away
Lagardien argued the case was moot. The sign was gone. The group was deleted. Nothing left to decide. The court rejected this. He still insisted his conduct was lawful. He admitted no wrong. The harm to the community was live, and the question was in the public interest. The court leaned on Qwelane, where the Constitutional Court held that even the death of the speaker did not end the complaint. For us, this is practical. Deleting a post, removing a sign, closing a group. None of these erases accountability. The person who did it can still be brought to court.
Nobody had to put their name on the papers
Lagardien’s advocate pointed out that no queer person filed an affidavit. Only public bodies stood before the court. He used this to say his version was unchallenged. The court ruled anyway. It said the focus is on the harm to the group, not only to the individual. Speech aimed at one couple lands on everyone who shares their identity. This matters more than any other finding. Many of us cannot afford to be named. We live with families, inside congregations, in towns where visibility is dangerous. Gqeberha in 2023 was one of those places. After February 2025, it became more so. A Chapter 9 institution carried this case so that no frightened person had to. That is how the system is supposed to work. Here it did.
The right of admission does not override the Constitution
The court found the sign imposed a condition on same-sex couples because they were same-sex couples. That is unfair discrimination. It was not art, not research, not journalism. It served no public interest. It existed to keep certain people out. MambaOnline made a sharp point in 2024. A sign banning public intimacy for every couple would probably never have reached court. Lagardien’s problem was who he chose to exclude. No shop, salon, taxi, guesthouse, gym or church hall that serves the public can hang a no-queer sign and hide behind “right of admission reserved”. The SAHRC said this in July 2023. Now a court has said it.
Religion is not a licence
Lagardien’s case rested on Islam. He told the court that being made to tolerate us was itself discrimination against him. He described the obligation as a burden. The judge called it inconceivable to describe the LGBTQIA+ community as a burden, and wrote that we have a right to life too. The court applied the Christian Education case, where the Constitutional Court held that believers cannot claim an automatic exemption from the law of the land. It accepted Media Monitoring Africa’s argument that freedom of religion and the rights of queer people are not mutually exclusive.
The court did not put Islam on trial. It put conduct on trial. That distinction is everything for queer Muslims like myself. We are told every day that our faith and our existence cancel each other out. A man stood in court and said his religion required him to exclude us. The court said his religion is his to practice, and our dignity is ours to keep.
There is one line in the judgment I return to. At paragraph 93, the court records the amicus pointing to a homosexual Imam in Cape Town who advocates for the inclusion of LGBTQIA+ persons in the Muslim faith. That Imam was Muhsin Hendricks. The judgment speaks of him in the present tense. He was assassinated in Gqeberha in February 2025, a few kilometres from La Gardi. I asked Imam Hendricks if he was willing to testify in this case; he said yes. He didn’t make it, but his presence did.
I said this outside the court last year, and I will say it again. If this case was truly about religion, and Imam Hendricks had been able to testify, he would have dismantled, with grace and scholarship, the lie that Islam can be used as an excuse for hate. He would have shown that faith, compassion and queer love are not opposites. He was not there. His example was.
A hate group is not private because it is on WhatsApp
Lagardien argued that religious people may gather in their own groups to discuss what they believe is best for society, and that outsiders who infiltrate a group cannot later cry hate speech. He relied on Qwelane, which holds that hate speech prohibitions do not reach private conversations.
The court found he created and managed the group. It found members understood its purpose as fighting the “vermin”. It found his explanation, that the group was only for awareness of threats, untenable. It found the group’s motivation stemmed from the same hatred as the sign. Media Monitoring Africa asked the court to look at a group’s nature, purpose, size and how people join it. A space built to spread hateful expression to hundreds of people is not a private chat. The court’s order holds the administrator responsible.
Effect matters, not excuses
The test is objective. The question is how a reasonable person would read the words, not what the speaker says he meant. Lagardien’s lawyers called the sign a community safety alert and a measure to protect children. The court read the words on the board. They named a group of people and said that group was unwelcome, with no condition attached. A reasonable reader understood exactly what that meant.
What this means for queer people in South Africa
If a business posts a sign excluding us, report it to the SAHRC. The Commission can act on its own initiative. You do not have to be the named complainant. Screenshot everything. This case was built on photographs of a chalkboard and screenshots of a group chat. Evidence outlives deletion.
Administrators of hate groups are accountable. Building a space for hate to circulate is conduct, not just membership.
Religion is not a shield. Faith is not the enemy either. The court drew that line carefully. We should too.
The law is moving, but harm moves faster. In September 2026, Cape Town’s rainbow crossing was vandalised twice, and a wave of online hate followed. Queer organisations across the world are cutting services after donor funding cuts. The R200,000 in this order will go to an organisation doing equality work. That money will be needed.
And justice is slow. Three years and three months for a chalkboard. The SAHRC Eastern Cape office, OUT, Izibuko Zethu, the CGE, Media Monitoring Africa Trust and activists from the Gender and Sexuality Alliance, Access Chapter 2, SHE, Masimanyane Women’s Rights International, MambaOnline and others who kept showing up carried this the whole way. That is the real lesson. Courts decide. Communities make them.
The sign said we were not welcome. The Constitution said we were. On 6 October 2026, in the Eastern Cape, a court finally said so too.
Sikhander Coopoo is a black, queer, Muslim intersectional feminist with backgrounds in gender, pedagogy and local governance. He is a social justice and humxn rights activist at heart. Sikhander serves on the Gender and Sexuality Alliance of East London committee and writes in his own capacity.
