Simon Tseko Nkoli biography

by Erin Kilker

Simon Tseko Nkoli (1957 – 1998) was an anti-apartheid leader and gay rights campaigner in South Africa. He has a legacy of intersectional activism, winning victories against both racial and homophobic discrimination.

Nkoli first became politically active as a regional secretary in the anti-apartheid Congress of South African Students. As an ‘out’ gay man, Nkoli faced significant challenges operating within the organisation, with other members casting votes on whether he should continue to be allowed to serve. He faced repercussions based on the openness of his sexuality. He was also an active member of the mainly-white organisation Gay Association of South Africa (GASA). Nkoli was hugely frustrated by the failure of GASA to advocate for all LGBT South Africans. In maintaining an ‘apolitical stance’ on race issues, GASA repeatedly failed to stand against the racial oppression experienced by so many of its LGBT members and supporters, implicitly taking the side of white oppressors. In response to these failures, Nikoli left GASA to found the Saturday Group, the first black gay organisation in Africa. In 1984, Nkoli was arrested for his anti-apartheid campaigning and was one of twenty-two political leaders to be charged with treason and face the death penalty in the Delmas Treason Trial. By publicly coming out whilst in prison, Nkoli was instrumental in changing attitudes to gay rights within the anti-apartheid movement.

After being acquitted and released four years later, Nkoli founded the Gay and Lesbian Organisation of the Witwatersrand (GLOW) alongside Beverley Palesa Ditsie and Linda Ngcobo. As a community organisation and politically active group, GLOW was enormously successful. Aligning themselves with the anti-apartheid African National Congress (ANC), GLOW campaigned on the basis that ‘gay rights are human rights’, positively impacting social attitudes across South Africa. Simon Nkoli represented many ‘firsts’. He was the first gay activist to meet with the new South African president, Nelson Mandela. The Saturday Group was the first organisation to specifically represent LGBT Black Africans. In addition, Nkoli was amongst the first gay men in the public eye to share that he was HIV positive. With Beverley Palesa Ditsie, Nkoli organised South Africa’s first-ever pride parade in Johannesburg in 1990. This march was also the first ever on the African continent and it continues annually today. Nkoli’s trailblazing approach to activism has achieved enormous social change.

Nkoli worked tirelessly to enshrine protection from homophobic discrimination against LGBT South Africans in legislation and was thus instrumental in the inclusion of this clause in South Africa’s 1994 constitution. The repealing of its sodomy law followed, with an equal age of consent set. Terror Lekota, imprisoned with Nkoli for several years and later chair of the ANC, asked when it came to conceiving the new constitution, “How could we say that men and women like Simon, who had put their shoulders to the wheel to end apartheid, how could we say that they should now be discriminated against?”. This epitomises the impact of Simon’s relentless campaigning and sacrifice.

Simon Nkoli embodied the idea of ‘the personal is political’. At huge risk to his own safety in a nation hostile to both Black and homosexual men, Nkoli continued to campaign to improve the lives of countless South Africans.

The term ‘intersectionality’ was coined by Professor Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1989, to explore how social identities and related systems of discrimination and oppression overlap. Although Nkoli’s activism began decades earlier, this is a term which epitomises his efforts. Mark Gevisser credits Nkoli with approaching anti-apartheid and anti-homophobia activism extremely creatively. He made the connections between his oppression as a Black South African and a gay man, and later as a person infected with HIV. GLOW became a powerful force for intersectional campaigning after organisations like GASA repeatedly failed to provide truly inclusive spaces.

His activism continued even after being diagnosed with HIV. Nkoli founded the peer support group ‘Positive African Men’ and continued to campaign for social change in attitudes towards HIV/AIDS. He would die aged 41, on the eve of World AIDS Day 1998, from AIDS. The South African government and society’s inadequate response to the exponential growth of the disease meant Nkoli fell victim to the virus he had spent years fighting. At his funeral, the pride flag was draped over Nkoli’s coffin, a symbol of his struggle and resilience in the face of seemingly insurmountable challenges.

Simon Nkoli left behind a powerful legacy. He affected enormous change in too-short a life, and as a human rights campaigner, he has been memorialised in films, plays, and exhibitions and received a Stonewall Award. South Africans who have the right to freedom from discrimination on the basis of race and sexual orientation owe their constitutional protections at large, to Nkoli. His work also continues to live on in modern activism. Nkoli was a key inspiration for the Treatment Action Campaign that made antiretroviral drugs available to South Africans living with HIV. His proud and enduring campaigning has obvious continued relevance in the work for destigmatising HIV/AIDS globally. Today, the fear and ignorance that Nkoli fought against are yet to be fully eliminated.