Nthabiseng Mokoena

“Ifared no better at Church, where as a youth pastor I desperately tried to find a sense of belonging. When I told the pastor I was intersexed and probably wouldn’t have children I learnt that in Christian belief they deny intersexed people are not created in the likeness of God. We are a variant of sexual development, as are homosexuals.”

“It is hard to talk about intersex activism in South Africa and not mention the ground breaking work of Sally Gross, a South African intersex activist and founder of the Intersex Society of South Africa.”

“My work as an activist also involves a lot of media visibility, and it is not easy being visible. The first time I appeared in a national magazine, I had to spend an entire month avoiding calls or being alone in public.”

“Access to healthcare is still difficult for the average South African, access to healthcare for an intersex person is even worse, there are only a few hospitals in the country that can cater for the needs of intersex persons with care and understanding.”

“This led me to joining NGOs that claimed to support intersex people, I don’t remember many intersex people being supported but in the end I was caught up with policy meetings, legislation consultations, movement politics and eventually we all forgot about the people we were trying to serve. I had to leave and here I am constantly dealing with the guilt of “leaving the movement”.”

“I never wanted to become an activist, all I ever wanted was to reach out and support people that had similar experiences as mine, people that felt isolated and needed someone who understood what they were going through.”

“Because people who did, they’re going through a very hard time at the moment because the surgeries have got very negative effects on them. So, I’m not ashamed of who I am anymore. I love myself. And I want to tell intersex people that you can’t expect people to love you if you don’t love yourself first, and to live your life because No Body Is Shameful”

“But the more I met other people like me the more I realized how privileged I am that I didn’t get an operation -- that, I’m thankful that I did not get an operation when I was born.”

“I became so abused by the doctors to a point whereby even when I got sick, and I was seriously sick, I could not go to the doctor. The only doctors I could go to were private medical doctors but those were expensive and I could not afford them. And I was so angry at myself that I could not go to a private doctor because I needed to get an operation. That’s what I thought in my head.”

“I really struggled to get clarity from my parents about who I am and, you know, ‘where I come from.”

“I was born intersex. I was born with ambiguous genitalia, and for a very long time in my life I was extremely ashamed about it, and because the idea of sex and genitals is not an open conversation in African culture, it is not something that we talk about as Africans,”