In 2025, Sandra Dee Lentoor was one of the activists awarded with the 2025 Pride Heroes Award. Sandra founded the Fairy Godmother Project in 2014. The Fairy Godmother Community Project is involved with community upliftment in Hanover Park, one of the most gang-frequented areas in Cape Town.  One way the project makes a difference is as a vital outreach to elderly citizens of her community living in one of Cape Town’s most gang-riddled suburbs.  At weekly events, these vulnerable community members get treated to special luncheons hosted by Sandra.  

Evan Tsouroulis, the Cape Town Pride Marketing, Sponsorship & Parade Coordinator, said this about the Awards:

“The Pride Heroes Awards are a way for Cape Town Pride as an organisation to shine the spotlight on the unsung heroes of our community as well as to honour and recognise their contributions.”

(Source: Mambaonline)

“Legendary Hanover Park activist and drag icon Sandra Dee (Sandra Lentoor) was honoured for her decades-long commitment to empowering youth and celebrating queer visibility through The Fairy Godmother Project. Founded a decade ago, the initiative provides underprivileged matric learners with dresses, hairstyling, and makeup for their Matric Ball, while also engaging local seniors as ‘Fairy Godmothers’ and mentors. A former resident of District Six, Sandra has survived violence, prejudice, and apartheid-era persecution to become a beacon of hope and glamour. Through fashion, mentorship, and joy, she continues to transform lives and uplift her community.”

(Same source)

We interviewed Sandra in December in December 2023.

On 27 July 2017, “The House of Kings and Queens” exhibition opened at the Humber Street Gallery in Hull, United Kingdom. The exhibition was made up of photographs by Lee Price, focusing on members of the LGBTQIA+ community living in the home of a young trans woman in Freetown, Sierra Leone. The exhibition marked 50 years since homosexuality was decriminalised in England and Wales. The exhibition documents the lives of the queer community living in the house in a country where homosexuality is criminalised, and where gay and trans people bear the brunt of societal, police and legal inequality, discrimination and violence.

• Note that in many countries where English is not a first language, or where Western terminology is not embraced, people use the word ‘gay’ to include trans people.

From a BBC article about the exhibition:

A visitor to the house, who wishes to remain anonymous for fear of persecution, said: “Life is tough for gay people in Sierra Leone and especially those who are transgender. We face a lot of problems here. Transgender people can be flogged in the streets and we don’t feel safe going out after dark in case we are attacked. When Ebola came to Sierra Leone, it was blamed on gay people. We suffer so much humiliation every day, but I am proud to be gay. The LGBT community faces harassment, ridicule, eviction and violence from people who believe homosexuality goes against their religious or cultural beliefs”.

Photographer, Lee Price said:

“The work, whilst a reminder of the progress still to be made with regards to international gay rights, is also a celebration of the inspiring defiance of oppression and segregation amongst the gay community of Sierra Leone.”

From an article by Attitude magazine:

It is still illegal to engage in homosexual acts in 77 countries, including in Hull’s sister city Freetown, Sierra Leone where a maximum sentence of life imprisonment can be imposed.

While the law is rarely enforced, people of the LGBT+ community face persecution of a different kind. Harassment, ridicule, eviction and violence at the hands of people who say homosexuality goes against their religious or cultural beliefs. Therefore, the vast majority of LGBT+ people choose to keep their sexuality a guarded secret from the people around them.

However, within the heart of Freetown, lives a young transgender woman who offers a warm welcome to members of the LGBT+ community in need. Her home is a sanctuary where they do not have to hide who they are and can live without oppression whilst surrounded by those who understand and accept them. They call it ‘The House of Kings and Queens’.

Lee Price was commissioned by Hull 2017 to create this unique collection of photographs, which acts as a window into the lives of the house ‘s inhabitants and explores what it means to be gay in Freetown.

The photographs convey both the cloud of secrecy that the subjects of the images live under and the sense of liberation that they feel at being able to express themselves freely, even in such a restricted environment.

Lee said: “I was delighted to be asked to document such a poignant subject matter and to mark this important anniversary year of decriminalisation.

The Fairy Godmother Community Project was founded in Cape Town, South Africa by Sandra Lentoor, also known as Cape Town drag queen, Sandra Dee, and was officially registered on the 29th of October 2014.

Interview with Sandra Dee: From District 6 to District Royalty

We spoke to Sandra Dee Lentoor in December 2023 about the founding of the Fairy Godmother Community Project and her reasons for founding the Project.

The Fairy Godmother Community Project is involved with community upliftment in Hanover Park, one of the most gang-frequented areas in Cape Town.  One way the project makes a difference is as a vital outreach to elderly citizens of her community living in one of Cape Town’s most gang-riddled suburbs.  At weekly events, these vulnerable community members get treated to special luncheons hosted by Sandra.  But it is a huge challenge because according to Sandra, 

“The ladies have to cross busy streets and face the skollies on the way to the civic centre to attend.” (‘Skollies‘ is South African slang for gangsters, dangerous people or criminals). She says that fewer and fewer of the elderly attend due to the regular shootings in their area. “I believe that seniors must be treated with dignity and respect, not live in fear or fall victim to the next crossfire by the gangs”.  

Princess Project

Another project hosted by the Fairy Godmothers is the Princess Project.  In this programme, the project supplies matric farewell outfits to members of her community who cannot afford to buy or rent a gown for their special night.  According to Sandy, people from all over Cape Town ask her to help their children and she is too happy to help:

“I even help them with their hair and makeup and I love the feeling of making them feel beautiful”. 

Sandy runs the Princess Project from the Youth Impact and Sustainable Solutions (YISS) hub at the Crystal High School in Hanover Park. 

The clothes are donated by various organisations and by people with suits and dresses hanging unused in their cupboards at home.  Regular contributions are made by Sandy’s ‘girls’, her endearing term for some of Cape Town’s other drag queens.  The outfits are loaned free of charge to people who are unable to afford a fee for the use of the service, but if they can afford a small donation, it is used towards the luncheons and annual Christmas party held for the senior community members of Hanover Park.

When asked what the inspiration was for the Princess Project, Sandra said it was her own life experiences that prompted it:

“Because I’ve been a queen all my life I want to give back to the community. The boys and girls must be able to experience something like this at least once.”

Sandra’s story

“You see, I was born like like this. I remember when I was about 5 years old, it was in the 1950s when we were still living in District 6 before my family was displaced by the Apartheid government.  My mom was doing the washing, and when hanging up the laundry. I would steal one of my older sisters’ dresses when my mom was not looking and disappeared for hours until my mom realised the dress was gone.  She would then send my cousin to look for me and find me in the dress in the street outside.  My drag queen life started at the age of 11 years when I ran away from home after I had enough of years of sexual abuse by some people I knew. I was living on the street in Seapoint.  And I was in drag, then and ever since.”

Since the 1960s, Sandra partook in various beauty pageants and was the first to be crowned unofficial Miss Gay Cape Town, now known as Miss Gay Western Cape. Her crown was not official, because being gay remained illegal in South Africa until 1989.  Therefore, although the event started in the apartheid years, it has only gained visibility since the early 2000s and is now recognised as the largest and most popular gay pageant in South Africa.

When asked what it must have been to live a life in drag in the 1970s in South Africa, Sandy reminisced that she was accepted by her own community but that white people were not as accepting. 

“Everything was fine as long as we did not go down to the main road.  There we would be picked up for ‘masquerading as women’ and we would be thrown in jail. Sandra was arrested many times, sometimes the case would be thrown out of court but other times she was less lucky and she has spent a few stints in jail.” 

According to Sandra, she once spent time in a holding cell with Nelson Mandela:

“I think Mandela always had an understanding of the suffering of us moffies.  That’s probably why he has given us this constitution where we are all free.” (‘Moffies‘ is South African slang meaning ‘gay men’).

Sandra says,

“I went through hell in the 70s and 80s because of the Apartheid regime but it made me a strong woman today.”

Sandra is not only the founder of her own NGO, she also serves on the Community Advisory Board (CAB) of the University of Cape Town, and is a member of YES NGO.

Read more about the Project.

Sandra awarded 2025 Pride Heroes Award

In 2025, Sandra was one of the activists awarded with the 2025 Pride Heroes Award. Evan Tsouroulis, the Cape Town Pride Marketing, Sponsorship & Parade Coordinator, said this about the Awards:

“The Pride Heroes Awards are a way for Cape Town Pride as an organisation to shine the spotlight on the unsung heroes of our community as well as to honour and recognise their contributions.”

(Source: Mambaonline)

“Legendary Hanover Park activist and drag icon Sandra Dee (Sandra Lentoor) was honoured for her decades-long commitment to empowering youth and celebrating queer visibility through The Fairy Godmother Project. Founded a decade ago, the initiative provides underprivileged matric learners with dresses, hairstyling, and makeup for their Matric Ball, while also engaging local seniors as ‘Fairy Godmothers’ and mentors. A former resident of District Six, Sandra has survived violence, prejudice, and apartheid-era persecution to become a beacon of hope and glamour. Through fashion, mentorship, and joy, she continues to transform lives and uplift her community.”

(Same source)

Watch our interview with Sandra Dee, 30 January 2026

In Ivory Coast, same-sex relations are not illegal, unlike in most African countries, making it the “most permissive place for sexual minorities in the [west African] region” (quoted from The Guardian article linked in the first paragraph).

“But while same-sex sexual acts have never been criminalised here, there are also no specific legal protections for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Ivorians, making them vulnerable to hostile security forces and, occasionally, angry mobs. As a result, more extravagant assertions of woubi identity are often discouraged by discreet, gender-conforming gay men, who pride themselves on projecting masculinity and moving through the straight world undetected. The Miss Woubi pageant is an attempt to break down this barrier and bring factions of Abidjan’s gay world together, if only for an evening, say the organisers.” (The Guardian)

The pageant has been criticised by some of Ivory Coast’s gender-variant population:

“The pageant is also not without controversy. Some Ivorian sexual minorities have criticised Miss Woubi for being insufficiently inclusive, especially when it comes to travestis, meaning people who were born anatomically male but identify and live as women on a full- or part-time basis. (Very few Ivorians identify as ‘transgender’, though there is a sizeable travesti population.) Latiyah, a travesti who sat in the audience Saturday night, said the event seemed designed to honour woubis who dress up as women very rarely, rather than travestis who make female gender presentation part of their daily lives. She attributed this to the fact that gay men in Abidjan are better organised than travestis, with greater support from outside donors. ‘There are a lot of travestis, but we don’t know each other,” Latiyah said. “We need our own association to bring us together.’

The Miss Woubi pageant was closed in 2012 due to the unwanted publicity to the Ivorian government.

Read more about the travesti and other gender-variant identities in Ivory Coast here.

* ‘Izitabane’ is a Zulu word which roughly translates as “hermaphrodite”**. Izitabane is a derogatory slang term. More recently, the Zulu word ‘stabane’ became a more widely used derogatory term referring to any LGBTIQ+ person, regardless of their sexual orientation or gender identity. 

** The term “hermaphrodite” was a scientific description of organisms (plants and animals) that have male and female reproductive organs. The term was also used to describe human beings, and outside of the medical context became derogatory, and an insult. In recent years the term “hermaphrodite” has been replaced by the term “intersex” in medical circles, and even more recently in many social circles, both thanks to the work of intersex activists. ​​ 

Shortly after Woubi Chéri’s release, Barbara (full name withheld for safety reasons) from L’Association des Travestis de Côte d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast Transvestites Association), who was one of the people interviewed in the film, emigrated to France. Slowly the energetic drive for the Association decreased and no more signs of their militant activism were seen. It is speculated that the reason for this is the nonprofit industrial complex, which saw funding for activism increasingly moving towards HIV/AIDS in the context of MSM (men who have sex with men), which erased all the efforts made by the Woubis. 

Woubis (and cross-dressers or transvestites/travestis) cannot automatically be assumed to be transgender or to specifically claim Western terminology. Woubis existed long before any information about gender diversity or gender nonconformity was available on the internet and social media. Through research and the documentary Woubi Chéri, it became quite evident and very clear that the Branché community and the Woubi community have a much wider and larger range of genders and sexualities than the Western binary system. They are gender outlaws, so to speak. 

According to an academic article entitled “Violence, Exclusion and Resilience among Ivoirian Travestis” by Matthew Thomann and Robbie Corey-Boulet,

“Among sexual and gender minorities in Côte d’Ivoire, travestis are defined as individuals born anatomically male who live as women on a full- or part-time basis. Travestis encounter harsher stigmatization and violence than sexual minorities whose gender normativity allows them to avoid unwanted attention. Moreover, they have traditionally been underserved by Ivoirian sexual minority rights groups, who have worked to distance themselves from travestis, framing them as recklessly indiscreet. In this paper, we examine the extent to which travestis’ isolation has lessened in the wake of the post-election violence that followed Côte d’Ivoire’s 2010 presidential election. We trace how Ivoirian travestis became increasingly vulnerable following the installation of a new national army that proved more hostile to them. And we show how, as a result of anti-travesti abuses committed by the army, non-travesti sexual minority activists became increasingly aware of the plight of travestis, and took steps to include them in their programming. These activists may have also been motivated by an increasing interest in transgender issues on the part of international donors. Finally, we explore the extent to which emerging human rights and HIV/AIDS programming has resulted in newly embodied positions for travestis as they confront identifications reflecting Western trans-spectrum identities.”

Read here about the Miss Woubi beauty pageant and for more about the travestis and woubis.

* Woubis are effeminate boys who play the role of women or wife in the relationship.
** Yossis are the men or the husbands in the relationship. They can be bisexual and/or married with a family while in a relationship with a Woubi.
** Branché is a local term whose meaning is not widely understood by heterosexual and cisgender people in Ivory Coast and is used by sexual and gender minorities to describe themselves and one another.

In the Ivory Coast, the Travesti* was a prominent group, recognised and documented from the early 1990s, but they were most likely active before the 90s**. They formed L’association des Travestis de Côte d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast Transvestites Association), under the leadership of Barbara (full name withheld for safety reasons). 

The first record of the group is from printed media in 1994, where journalists were quite sarcastic in their attitude towards the travestis and the group, using disrespectful, critical language and tone, which was harmful to the travestis population. A militant group of travesti activists stormed the building where the newspaper’s offices were located, broke some windows, and assaulted some of the journalists. According to the research document Violence, Exclusion and Resilience among Ivoirian Travestis by Matthew Thomann and Robbie Corey-Boulet, this 1994 incident and similar occurrences during the same time led to the formation of the Ivory Coast Transvestites Association. 

Read more here and here about travesti and other gender variant identities from the Ivory Coast.

* “Travestis” is the French word for “transvestites”.

 ** The exact founding date is not clear, but according to different sources, the Association has existed since the early 1990s.

Because of this secrecy, the Society was compelled to use creative means to reach members. Strategies included sending postage, such as newsletters (which the state considered “elicit communication” owing to the contents) with a self-addressed envelope for ongoing communication of the placement of small advertisements in the classified sections of South African print media. This strategy was undertaken to find and connect transvestites, transsexuals, crossdressers and trans women across South Africa, and even, internationally. 

As Joy Wellbeloved, the oldest known surviving member of the Phoenix Society, recalls:

“In 1985, I was sitting in the reception of my divorce lawyer’s office reading letters to the editor of ‘Fair Lady’ magazine. A wife was looking for help for her husband who liked to dress up as a woman. The editor suggested that she contacted the Phoenix Society and provided a post-office box address in Parow. This was just what I needed! Through this, I met another person like me for the first time. Her name was Marlene.”

This quotation is an excerpt from the chapter “Phoenix Rising Above Isolation”, from the book ‘Beyond the Mountain – Queer Life in “Africa’s Gay Capital”’ (Edited by Dr B Camminga, Zethu Matebani; Unisa Press | DALRO; 2023).

Interview with Joy Wellbeloved, oldest known remaining member of the Phoenix Society

In an audio interview with TIHA’s Liesl Theron in 2016, Joy Wellbeloved, speaks about the creation of the Phoenix Society, the ‘FanFare’ magazine, and the context for transvestites, transsexuals, crossdressers and trans women during Apartheid South Africa. Years later, Joy co-edited ‘TRANS — Transgender Life Stories from South Africa’ (Edited by Ruth Morgan, Charl Marais and Joy Wellbeloved; Fanele, an imprint of Jacana; 2009). Marlene, who was one of the two co-founders of the Phoenix Society, has a chapter contribution in the same book. 

The interview was conducted in preparation for the chapter “Phoenix Rising Above Isolation”. This chapter elaborates on how an underground network was formed during the era of apartheid in South Africa, when not only race and cross-racial relationships were policed, but sex, gender, and what was those years only defined as “homosexual” relationships, were severely policed too. The Phoenix Society formed this clandestine network, not only to avoid apartheid policing, but to provide people with a community, as there was no accessibility to online spaces before widespread internet use. The Phoenix Society organised by using mail boxes and “tickey boxes” (pay phones using coins on street corners; “tickey” refers to the nickname for the coin used). Download the chapter and read more about this fascinating era.

Excerpts from the 20 January 1986, Issue No. 20 edition of ‘FanFare’ magazine

Other issues of ‘FanFare’ magazine

A few months later, on 10 February 1975, the Liberation Front of Mozambique (FRELIMO), still in charge today, made an official announcement through its Ministries of Information, Internal Administration, and Labour. They declared that carnival Tuesdays would no longer be a holiday, and any “carnivalesque” displays in public were banned. This rule brought an end to an era where people could freely explore their sexuality and gender identity. It had been a time when sexual and gender experimentation was common, providing a platform for a diverse queer community and offering a safe space for those identifying as gender-diverse and trans.

Read more about the Carnival in Mozambique.

There was no explicit link to what we now recognise as trans or transgender-identifying individuals during this period. The carnivals,  or “Carnivalesque”, held particularly on Carnival Tuesdays (just before Ash Wednesday), served as a platform for individuals identifying as gay and others who wished to explore gender identity and cross-gender experiences.

Although the Carnival did not appeal to all gay-identifying or queer men interested in experimenting with gender, it undeniably opened the door for those who would identify, as we describe today, as trans. Additionally, it was a joyful and festive time when freedom abounded, and movement was less restricted without societal disapproval. Carnival parties were predominantly hosted in hotels and exclusive venues catering to the middle-income and upper-class, including tourist spaces.

A research study by Caio Simões de Araújo about the carnivals titled Carnival, Power, and Queer Joy: Chrono-normativity, Carnivalesque Transgressions, and the Spectacle of Gender in Lourenço Marques, Mozambique (ca. 1950–1975) was published in 2023 in the Nordic Journal of African Studies (Vol. 32, no. 3) by Caio Simões de Araújo and the Centre for Humanities Research, University of the Western Cape, South Africa. In an article published in The Conversation, de Araújo writes:

“The city of Lourenço Marques (today’s Maputo), a carnival festival was held almost every year. From the 1950s to the 1970s, the event was more than just a street parade. It also became a space of queer expression and joy. The Mozambique festival opened up a space of freedom to the marginalised. Especially women of colour and queer people, black and white. It also built on and activated transnational networks in the wider Lusophone (Portuguese-speaking) world. Brazilian musicians and cross-dressing performers, for example, travelled across borders to become important presences in late colonial African society. Besides Brazilian musicians, Lourenço Marques also received travestis, cross-dressing queer performers. Travestis were becoming increasingly successful in entertainment culture in Brazil and elsewhere, in theatre and film and nightlife. Brazilian travestis, such as the iconic Rogéria, held artistic residencies in Mozambique in the late 1960s and early 1970s. In Lourenço Marques and Beira, they performed regularly in clubs and cabarets, helping spur an emerging queer subculture.”

In the same article de Araújo writes:

“In 2015, after 40 years of independence, Mozambique joined the growing list of countries to put an end to colonial era “anti-sodomy” laws. Despite this legal landmark and the country’s relative tolerance towards LGBTIQ+ people, a recent report suggests that Mozambique still needs to more effectively fight discrimination and violence against sexual and gender minorities. Spaces of queer self-expression and joy exist more visibly now, but they have also flourished in the not so distant past. In remembering the carnival, we are invited to bring joy back to the centre of our collective memory. Not for the sake of history writing alone, but also to undertake the transformative labour of queer liberation – as the queer icons and dancing queens in Mozambique remind us.”

These carnivals continued until 1975 when colonialism ended in Mozambique and the new ruling party, the Liberation Front of Mozambique (FRELIMO), banned the carnivals.

Image from theconversation.com/queer-life-in-africa-is-also-full-of-joy-remembering-the-carnival-in-mozambique-219165