2017 — Publication of ‘Southern Africa Trans Diverse Situational Analysis’

2017 — Publication of ‘Southern Africa Trans Diverse Situational Analysis’

In 2016, The Southern African Trans Forum, with the aid of Accountability International, undertook a situational analysis of the barriers faced by trans diverse people in Africa in accessing healthcare. The specific focus of the analysis was the intersections between legal and policy frameworks that create these barriers for people in 5 Southern African countries: Botswana, Namibia, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe. The report, ‘Southern Africa Trans Diverse Situational Analysis: Accountability to Reduce Barriers to Accessing Health-Care | 2016’, took place during 2016 and was published in 2017.

Survey Results

Barriers faced by trans diverse Southern Africans (Source: page 5 of the Report)

  • Lacking identity documentation aligned to their preferred gender, trans-diverse persons experience extreme discrimination at school, at church, and in other social settings at the hands of their peers who are ignorant of and uncomfortable with their gender identity;
  • Facing active discrimination from family and church leaders – who are likely to sexually molest many trans diverse people – their experience finally drives trans diverse people out of school before completion of their studies, and also out of home (another key site of sexual abuse);
  • Trans diverse people are at a permanent disadvantage against former peers in seeking work in that we are underage, underqualified, can’t progress further in their studies, and cannot secure basic documents such as a driver’s license (a significant minority of those few that manage to secure work are likely to experience sexual harassment at work, or to lose their jobs as a result of their gender identity) so most of them wind up unemployed;
  • Lack of education, employment, plus official and societal discrimination against the trans diverse usually means we cannot access housing and wind up on the street, which drives them into underground subsistence activities including petty criminality and especially sex-work in order to survive;
  • That demi-monde existence in turn makes them even more vulnerable to abuse by members of the public and the police (including arbitrary assault, arrest, and detention), to substance abuse and self-harming behaviour including suicide attempts, and to disease including but not limited to STIs, HIV/Aids, TB and viral hepatitis;
  • so ill and in desperate need of medical attention and psychological assistance (not to mention hard-to get hormones and almost unreachable transitional surgery), the trans diverse turn to the healthcare system – but encounter yet more ignorance, prejudice and even abuse.

Lived experiences of trans diverse Southern Africans

The Survey documented the following results in a period of 12 months relating to the lived experiences of trans diverse Southern Africans:

  • 34% (1 in 3) experienced sexual violence, including attempted or completed rape.
  • Of these, only 19% (1 in 5) received the necessary medical attention.
  • 22% experienced attempted or completed rape by an intimate partner.
  • Of these, only 14% reported intimate partner sexual violence.
  • 18% reported physical abuse by a religious or faith healer.
  • Only 11% of these reported the sexual abuse by a religious or faith healer.
  • 53% experienced violence.
  • Of these only 30% received the medical attention they required.
  • Only 24% of these experiences of violence were reported.
  • 53% avoided healthcare because of stigmatisation by staff.
  • Only 45% taught their healthcare provider about trans diverse issues.

Key findings of the situational analysis

The summary of the Report is as follows:

“The trans diverse communities in the five countries studied (Botswana, Namibia, Zambia, Zimbabwe, and Swaziland) represent a remarkable constellation of communities characterised by extreme vulnerability because of their intersectional location as among their countries’ most excluded – unemployed or criminalised, susceptible to disease and despair, targeted for sexual assault and hate crimes, and cut off from education, housing, health-care, sports and social activities, and many the basic benefits of citizenship and amenities of society.
And yet trans diverse people are possessed of remarkable strengths in terms of their survival skills and tenacity in overtly hostile environments were because of having to either face social erasure or are actively persecuted as a group that “should not” exist.
The power of trans diverse agency should not be underestimated, as two remarkable examples will make clear: a) although many members of the trans* community who answered this survey have experienced prejudice in, including expulsion from, their childhood homes, 38% of those surveyed started their own families; and b) although many trans diverse persons experienced prejudice in, including expulsion from, school, fully 18% of those surveyed completed tertiary education – higher than the national average in at least three of the countries surveyed.
However, a total policy vacuum regarding the existence, nature and needs of the trans diverse community mars all the countries studied. This invisibility not only allows for blanket ignorance to reign among officialdom and the broader populace, on the one hand disabling trans persons’ ability to access ordinary (and specialised) health-care and legal remedies, while on the other hand enabling casually vicious discrimination up to and including violent hate crimes and police home invasions (the latter experience restricted to Zambia). Even the protections that the trans diverse supposedly possess under constitutional equality/human rights legislation appears to fall away in most real-life circumstances.” Source: https://accountability.international/projects/trans-diverse-africans-situational-analysis-2016-2019/

Read the full Report.