South African Young Queer Activism at School Towards Sexual and Gender Justice

South Africa has a strong constitutional and legal commitment to gender and sexual justice, yet there remains a large gap between such promises and the lived experience of those practising non-binary and non-conforming genders and sexualities. Notably there has been a growing amount of young people challenging such ongoing homophobia, queerphobia and heteronormativity in schools in the last few years. In June 2021 for example, social and popular media was abuzz with an incident of queerphobia at an upmarket high school in Cape Town’s Bellville suburb. When a group of student gathered to informally mark the first week of International Pride month, the activists were threatened, intimidated and verbally abused by their peers. When the matter was brought to the school authorities, the authorities seemed to blame the students for going ahead with pride celebrations against the school’s caution .The students’ experience here is one of many incidents where young people have been silenced, discriminated against and excluded for expressing their sexuality, particularly in school. The incident serves as a stark indication of schools’ failure to promote sexual diversity and inclusion, and how they continue to uphold and encourage heteronormativity. It also provides insight into how young people experience their sexualities within educational institutions and how they actively resist the exclusion of non-cisgender, non-binary and queer identities. Their actions are also critical for showing the larger public that homophobic slurs and intimidation experienced by this small community is a microcosm of the intolerance of sexual and gender diversity among many South Africans. In this paper, we share and reflect on some of the activisms that young people have and are engaging in to challenge ongoing sexual and gender injustices in schools and in larger society.