2023 — Yaya M Voices Founded, South Africa – Trans & Intersex History Africa

2023 — Yaya M Voices Founded, South Africa

Founded in South Africa in 2023 by Ayanda (Yaya) Mqakayi, Yaya M Voices works primarily with intersex people, LGBTQIA+ communities, young people, artists, activists, and communities impacted by silence, stigma, and bodily discrimination. The organisation’s work also speaks to families, especially mothers of intersex children, through education, storytelling, and visibility. Yaya M Voices focuses on documenting and archiving intersex lives, histories, and lived experiences through photography, film, storytelling, interviews, creative activism, and community engagement. Their work challenges medical erasure, social stigma, and invisibility while preserving intersex existence through visual and historical documentation.

Maono

A world where intersex people are fully recognised, respected, protected, and visible as part of natural human diversity, and where future generations grow up with access to truthful representation, history, dignity, and bodily autonomy.

Dhamira

To create and preserve intersex-led archives, stories, and visual histories through creative documentation and advocacy. The organisation aims to reclaim narrative ownership by ensuring that intersex people speak for themselves and are represented through their own lived realities.

Malengo/Madhumuni

To document and preserve intersex histories and lived experiences.
To create visual and educational resources about intersex existence.
To challenge stigma, discrimination, and non-consensual medical interventions on intersex bodies.
To support visibility, healing, and self-representation within intersex communities.
To build archives that future generations, researchers, families, and intersex people can access.
To contribute toward social and legal change regarding bodily autonomy and intersex rights.

Projects

Current projects include:

Being Intersex — a photographic body of work documenting intersex identity, embodiment, memory, scars, healing, and lived realities.
Ride for Intersex Justice — an awareness and advocacy cycling campaign focused on ending non-consensual surgeries on intersex infants and children.
Unseen Lives — a visual storytelling and documentary project focusing on hidden intersex experiences and social invisibility.
Archival Documentation — collecting oral histories, photographs, interviews, and visual records related to intersex existence and African intersex narratives.
Community Education and Visibility Work — creating conversations around bodily autonomy, identity, and intersex human rights through social media, exhibitions, public speaking, and collaborations.