As with most of our research Accountability International used Participatory Action Research as a method for this research. PAR is a best practice method of doing research that sees Accountability International as a research facilitator and the communities as researcher. It is a research facilitation method that comes from the field of anthropology and has the community designing and conducting the research from start to end, including determining the research objective, developing the methodology, creating the questionnaires, conducting interviews, data analysis and writing the report.

The community then does advocacy with the research, knowing more about it than any other person, and can better argue for its findings and recommendations due to the intimate knowledge of the research. By its very nature it creates knowledge generation through self-reflection on oneself and one’s experiences, rather than knowledge collection by outsiders. AI has used this for creating watchdogs, research and stimulating advocacy with Country Coordinating Mechanisms, for trans diverse communities and with men who have sex with men (MSM) health and human rights, and for key population scorecards.

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.

Download the Trans Diverse Africans Situational Analysis Report here

This work was kindly funded by the Ford Foundation.

In early July 2017 Sheriff Mothopeng and Ricky Nathanson vsited the Accountability International Brussels office as part of the work on the Southern African Trans Forum Situation Analysis project. 

SHERIFF MOTHOPENG is a gender non-confirming person, LGBTI activist and archaeologist by profession working towards the elimination of discrimination and the meaningful inclusion of LGBTQI identifying youth. Sheriff has been doing tremendous advocacy work in Lesotho since 2009 with The People’s Matrix until May 2015 when they moved to Sesotho Media and Development holding the position of Gender and Sexuality officer. Sheriff holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Environmental History and Cultural Heritage from the National University of Lesotho and other certificates of achievements in Public Policy, Governance and Leadership and Marginalization, Exclusion and Inequality through OSISA and LGBTI Sensitization Certificate.

Sheriff is also working towards Trans representation and visibility of trans stories in film. In 2014, they successfully lead in the locally produced documentary titled, ‘The man in Me’. They have written and been featured in a number of newspapers and magazine articles in Lesotho. Sheriff has recently led the second documentary which will be published soon on Transgender life in Lesotho. They have recently joined Gender DynamiX as the Regional Advocacy Coordinator where they will be doing advocacy regional work closely with other partner organizations in the region including the Southern Africa Trans Forum. Sheriff currently lives in Cape Town. where they will be doing advocacy regional work closely with other partner organizations in the region including the Southern Africa Trans Forum.

RICKY NATHANSON is the current Director of the Trans* Research, Education, Advocacy & Training [TREAT] with several years experience of and with working with capacity strengthening of socio-economically and politically vulnerable groups and criminalised groups in Africa. A professional auditor with several years experience of auditing and serving as company secretary for Dunlop Zimbabwe, Ricky has worked as regional auditor overseeing several countries across Africa including Nigeria, Zambia and Kenya.

Ricky is a businesswoman who owns her own modelling agency and provides consulting services in Finance and Auditing to firms in Zimbabwe. She is the present Secretary and Board Treasurer for the Sexual Rights Centre, a board member of AMSHeR (African Men for Sexual Health & Rights) as well as Pow Wow (a sex worker led organisation in Bulawayo, which is under the auspices of the Zim Sex Workers Alliance) and also serves with the Southern African Trans* Forum [SATF] as Secretary. A founding member of the Trans Women’s Feminism Institute for Southern and Central Africa and a member of the Africa Key Populations Experts Group under the auspices of the UNDP, Ricky sits on the All Africa Trans & Intersex Committee, whose mandate is to forge a continental movement of transgender and intersex activism. She is also a member of the International Reference Group of Trans Women [IRGT], made up of 14 transgender women from across the globe, looking at addressing HIV/AIDS. Ricky is certified by the Institute for Chartered Secretaries and Administrators and has previously taught French and Mathematics to High Schoolers in her native Zimbabwe.