May 2011 — Trans Women and Transfeminine Activists Demand Recognition Within the African Trans Advocacy Movement (Eastern and Southern African Trans and Intersex Regional Exchange Programme), Uganda
The first part of the second year of the Eastern and Southern African Trans and Intersex Regional Exchange Programme, hosted by Gender DynamiX (GDX) and a partner organisation from East Africa, took place in Uganda in May 2011.
This was a watershed workshop as the number of activists, who numbered 16 the year before, grew beyond the capacity of the Exchange Programme. It was during this workshop that Themba Nkosi shared that he had started a youth support group, aGender, in Soweto, Johannesburg.
This group was the result of the capacity-building work that was part of the Exchange Programme in 2010. During this exchange workshop, the transfeminine and trans women participants stepped out of the shadows and demanded recognition by claiming a space separate from that dominated by trans masculine and trans men activists, not just in previous workshops, but within the trans and intersex movement in Africa as a whole. This sparked debate between the two groups, and it was within this dialogue that LeighAnn van der Merwe announced the founding of S.H.Ela Social, Health and Empowerment Feminist Collective of Transgender and Intersex Women of Africa.
