Special Guest: South African LGBTQ Activist Dr. Beverly Ditsie

1995, the LGBTI activist became the first African lesbian to address gay and lesbian rights before the UN.

Beverley Palesa Ditsie is well-known for becoming the first African lesbian to address gay and lesbian rights before a conference of the United Nations (UN).

In 1995, the year after South Africa's first democratic election, she told the UN Conference on Women that if it was to address the concerns of all women “it must similarly recognise that discrimination based on sexual orientation is a violation of basic human rights.”

 

 

Now, decades later, the LGBTI activist and filmmaker has been awarded an honorary doctorate from the Claremont Graduate University in California.