Let’s Face it Campaign
This Human Rights Day
Cape Town’s first Pop-up Pride to proclaim
‘LGBTI RIGHTS ARE HUMAN RIGHTS’
Human Rights Day (21 march 2016) @ 11am
Central Methodist Mission, Green Market Square, Cape Town
This Human Rights Day, the Scalabrini Centre will be championing LGBTI equality and launching Cape Town’s first ever Pop-up Pride, getting 1,000 people in one day to ‘face up’ to equality by literally lending their face to the statement, ‘LGBTI RIGHTS ARE HUMAN RIGHTS’
We have designed a huge Rainbow Africa, with a face-sized hole in it, where anyone can become the face of our campaign. The idea is to launch pop-up prides all over Cape Town, and to get as many people as possible, initially 1,000 faces, to break the silence that surrounds and perpetuates widespread victimisation of both LGBTI South Africans and LGBTI refugees and asylum seekers, in a stand up and be counted visibility drive.
Says Scalabrini’s Human Rights Officer, Neil Goodwin, “Thirty four African countries currently have anti-homosexuality laws, and those LGBTI refugees, who come to South Africa in search of freedom, fall victim to both xenophobia and homophobia, often ostracised by the wider refugee community itself. This Human Rights Day we are asking the public to help us ‘face up’ to the challenge of creating a real safe haven, not just on paper, where the entire LGBTI community is protected by the law and shown respect.”
2016 marks the 20th anniversary of the South African Constitution, the first in the world to recognise LGBTI rights, and comes ten years after South Africa became the first (and still only) country in Africa to allow same sex marriage. Our campaign also comes at a time when crucial hate crime legislation is being drafted in Parliament to outlaw hate crimes, including those carried out against the LGBTI community.
On the back of the Rainbow Africa is a colourful exhibition asking ‘Is being Gay un-African?’, a response to one of the central misconceptions held by people from across Africa that homosexuality came from elsewhere and is alien to African traditions and culture. People are invited to ‘FACE THE FACTS’ they have just read, and in so doing, endorse the campaign.
The Campaign will be launched outside the Central Methodist Mission, a fully inclusive church in Green Market Square, with the first of a series of Pop-up Prides, involving church leaders, members of the LGBTI community and Cape Town’s own Charlie Chaplin mime, Charlie X, heading down to the Cape Town Festival in the Company Gardens, via the Berlin Wall segment in St. George’s Mall, the entrance to Parliament in Spin Street, and The Slave Lodge.
Prior to this we plan a teaser Pop-up at UCT on Thursday 17th March, getting students and staff to ‘face up’ from 11am on the Jameson Plaza.
Check out the Scalabrini Centre website here – www.scalabrini.org.za
CONTACT:
Neil Goodwin
E-mail: neil@scalabrini.org.za
Tel: 0214656433
Cell: 0737993924
cc neilgoodwinsa@gmail.com
Ruvimbo Tenga
E:mail: hrintern@scalabrini.org.za
Tel: 0214656433
Cell: 0748963714
cc ruvimbotenga@gmail.com
