Only 20 per cent of teachers who taught under Section 28 said they are out to their colleagues, while 88 per cent of those who trained after the law was repealed openly disclosed their sexuality or gender identity at work. Dr Catherine Lee of Anglia Ruskin University, a former teacher and author of the study, first noticed that teachers who trained and worked under Section 28 seemed to struggle more with their identity during the Courageous Leaders programme.
However, it is clear that a lot of teachers remain scarred by their experiences during this period. Teachers lived in a climate of fear. It meant that I was cautious, I only ever took part of myself to work. The applicant was told that she could not inherit from the estate because she did not qualify as a "surviving spouse". She approached the High Court, which held that "spouse" could only be applied to people married according to South African law and did not include people married according to Muslim rites.
The High Court found that this interpretation violated the applicant's rights to practise her religious and cultural beliefs, and ordered that words be read in to the Intestate Succession Act and the Maintenance of Surviving Spouses Act to give her the relief she sought.
But on appeal, Justice Sachs of the Constitutional Court held that the word "spouse" included parties to a Muslim marriage: it was not necessary to read in words into the Acts. Also, the objective of the Acts was to protect widows - and there was no reason why the equitable principles underlying the statutes should not apply to Muslim widows as well.
In a concurring judgment, Justice Ngcobo considered whether previous Constitutional Court decisions that dealt with the interpretation of the word "spouse" prevented it from upholding the appeal. He held that previous decisions did not prevent the adoption of a construction of the word "spouse" to include parties to a Muslim marriage. Moseneke held, with Madala concurring, that the word "spouse" had a specific and settled meaning in our law: it precluded parties who had not complied with the formalities of the Marriage Act from being regarded as spouses in the context of other legislation.
But he held that the exclusion of people married under Muslim rites was clearly a remnant of the apartheid era, and unjustifiably discriminatory.
He found this to be unconstitutional and suggested a remedy of reading appropriate words into the Acts. The notion of a bill of rights for South Africa can be traced back to an ANC document in the early s. The Freedom Charter of carried the idea forward. Children's rights. Section 28 - Children. A child's best interests are of paramount importance in every matter concerning the child. In this section 'child' means a person under the age of 18 years.
This section gives children the right to a name, citizenship and some form of care. He has since apologised for his heavy-handed behaviour. I was rugby-tackled to the ground and dragged away. I believe the BBC and others had a meeting and decided not to press charges, so we were released without charge and made our way to the Houses of Parliament to join the protesters there, as section 28 passed in to law at midnight.
Now a Labour politician, in Michael Cashman was in his second year on EastEnders, where he played Colin, one of the first gay characters in a national soap. I clearly remember reading about section 28 in January in the weekly paper Capital Gay.
I was dumbfounded. It had the date of the London march against it and I knew that, as a gay man playing another on television, I had to be there or I could never look at myself in the mirror again.
I attended on my own. I just knew I had to keep it to myself and get there. June Brown, who played Dot Cotton, helped me get the time off rehearsals. Suddenly, there I was at the front of the march, clutching a banner. As soon as I grabbed the banner, a bevy of television cameras focused in on me and someone was interviewing me. That was the start of helping to lead the campaign against section I linked up with Ian McKellen there, and, along with many others, became a spokesman for the campaign.
We went on that amazing march in Manchester, where Ian and I addressed the crowds. I also lobbied within the Labour party to make sure it opposed section 28 because initially, when the bill was introduced, there was some confusion as to what it meant. What was so incredible was the political opportunism. Section 28 had been brought in on the back of the stigmatisation and discrimination suffered by gay men; in particular those dealing with Aids and HIV.
Some people were facing the most appalling deaths, and this was designed to kick us firmly underground. Looking back, if we had won the battle of section 28, Stonewall would probably never have been founded. Maybe if we had won, we would have all sat back, glowed, then lived in inequality for decades after. In one of the most memorable protests against section 28, a group of lesbian activists abseiled into the House of Lords after peers voted in favour of the bill.
Sally Francis helped orchestrate the action. We had done lots of actions, lots of blockades and breaking into places. But this was different. Effectively, the Conservative Government at the time had introduced legislation which encouraged overt discrimination against the lesbian and gay community, as well as bisexual and transgender people as well. This affected many areas within society mainly education and family life, however it is important to note that it also had a wider impact too, particularly on the public perceptions of LGBT people.
The Labour and Liberal parties attempted to make amendments to the bill but were defeated within the House of Commons. This however, did not occur and the clause came into effect in April and was in force by June This meant that those in the education sector such as schools and colleges were prohibited to provide their pupils with important information on sexual education.
In consequence, educational institutions were legally obliged to view homosexuality negatively and with bias under Clause Pupils who experienced prejudice were unable to voice the discrimination that they faced, and little counselling or support was available to families or children.
Moreover certain books were also prohibited from classrooms, teachers were also unable to disclose their sexuality in fear of losing their jobs and teachers and parents were no longer in control of what sexual education their pupils or children received. Clause 28 called for greater government control over the educational curriculum and also parental rights. The government openly proposed to take control of education from the local authorities, from schools and teachers and from parents.
Politicians, the media and even parts of the church were used as powerful tools to define social attitudes towards homosexuality and gay and lesbian people.
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