It so happens that the unpreparedness of the educated classes, the lack of practical links between them and the mass of people, their laziness, and let it be said, their cowardice at the decisive moment of the struggle will give rise to tragic mishaps. Frantz Fanon (1963, p. 147), The Wretched of the EarthA crack is the perfectly ordinary creation of a space or moment in which we assert a different type of doing.
When Chumani Maxwele threw faeces on the statue of Cecil John Rhodes on 9 March 2015, one wonders if the student from the University of Cape Town (UCT) knew that his act of defiance would be the tipping point for an international movement calling for the decolonisation of higher education, captured by the phrase #RhodesMustFall (RMF). Following insurmountable student and public pressure, UCT Council voted for the bronze statue's removal and, on 9 April 2015, Rhodes took his final imperialist survey over his old colony. RMF, as a collective of staff and students at UCT, note that 'the fall of "Rhodes" is symbolic for the inevitable fall of white supremacy and privilege at our campus' (Rhodes Must Fall, 2015). A full list of its aims, objectives, and vision was contained in an online petition to the South African public and world at large (Change.org, 2015), igniting an explosion of analyses in the public sphere (e.g., Transform UCT, 2015). By October 2015, the spirit of mass action had fed into a wave of student protests across South Africa, this time for free higher education (Ludski, 2015). The #FeesMustFall (FMF) movement started in Johannesburg after the University of Witwatersrand (Wits) declaring an unaffordable rise in fees for 2016. Wits claimed that the subsidy of 5% from government would not be enough to accommodate the net increase in costs by the university, for library books, journal subscriptions, research equipment, and academics' salaries. Rhodes University in Grahamstown then announced a minimum initial payment of 50% of fees for 2016, meaning that the average student living in residence needed an upfront payment of R45000. The FMF movement became a rallying cry against financial exclusion and debt traps for economically disadvantaged students. Digital activism enabled both movements to flourish. Facebook, Twitter, and instant messaging services allowed supporters to swiftly communicate and organise meetings and protest marches. On 23 October 2015, thousands of supporters marched to the Union Buildings to demand free education from the State President, Jacob Zuma, and the Minister of Higher Education, Blade Nzimande.
In this article, we outline the practice guidelines for psychology professionals working with sexually and gender-diverse people, ratified by the Psychological Society of South Africa’s Council in 2017. The guidelines are an augmentation of the Psychological Society of South Africa’s position statement of 2013 providing a framework for understanding the challenges that sexually and gender-diverse people face in patriarchal and hetero- and cis-normative societies. An affirmative stance towards sexual and gender diversity enables psychology practitioners to work ethically, effectively, and sensitively in this field. The guidelines – a first for Africa – are aspirational in nature and call on psychology professionals to become aware of their own biases, conscientise themselves of the best practices in the field by continued professional development, and to utilise the guidelines as a resource in their related work. Brief mention is made of the development process, before the rationale and possible applications of the 12 guidelines are explored.
This article constructs a brief history of how lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) issues have intersected with South African psychology at key sociopolitical moments, filling a gap in current histories. Organized psychology-a primary focus of this analysis-since its first formations in 1948, mostly colluded with apartheid governments by othering queerness as psychopathology or social deviance. The National Party, both homophobic and racist, ruled the country from 1948 until the first democratic elections in 1994. The acceleration of antiapartheid struggles in the 1980s saw progressive psychologists develop more critical forms of theory and practice. However, LGBTIϩ issues remained overshadowed by the primary struggle for racial equality and democracy. Psychology's chameleon-like adaptation to evolving eras resulted in a unified organization when apartheid ended: the Psychological Society of South Africa (PsySSA). Democratic South Africa's Constitution took the bold step of protecting sexuality as a fundamental human right, galvanizing a fresh wave of LGBTIϩ scholarship post-1994. However, LGBTIϩ people still suffered prejudice, discrimination, and violence. Additionally, psychology training continued to ignore sexual orientation and gender-affirmative health care in curricula. PsySSA therefore joined the International Psychology Network for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Intersex Issues (IPsyNet) in 2007, catalyzing the PsySSA African LGBTIϩ Human Rights Project in 2012 and two pioneering publications: a position statement on affirmative practice in 2013, and practice guidelines for psychology professionals working with sexually and gender-diverse people in 2017. This article traces a neglected history of South African psychology, examining the political, social, and institutional factors that eventually enabled the development of LGBTIϩ affirmative psychologies. Public Significance StatementThis article traces the impact and history of apartheid on LGBTIϩ rights and research in South African psychology, and focuses on how postapartheid, organized psychology made it possible for the eventual development of Africa's first practice guidelines for psychology professionals working with sexually and gender-diverse people.
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