SOUTH AFRICA:South Africa has become the first country on the African continent, and one of just a handful worldwide, to legalise gay marriage, writes Joe Humphreys in Pretoria
Rejecting last-minute pleas from conservative groups, South African deputy-president Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka signed the Civil Union Act, 2006, into law yesterday.
The legislation had been called for by the constitutional court after gay rights groups successfully pleaded for equal treatment with heterosexual couples in accordance with the state's highest legal statute.
Some critics have played the race card, blaming the move on what they call "un-African" and "colonial" influences.
Homosexuality is banned in more than 30 African states, including neighbouring Zimbabwe whose president Robert Mugabe has described gays and lesbians as "worse than dogs and pigs".
Even in South Africa homophobia is commonplace, according to gay rights campaigners who are calling for further initiatives to deliver equality.
Christiaan Bezuidenhout, a Pretoria-based researcher on anti-gay hate crimes, said: "In some ethnic groups, and particularly among men, views are very hardened. If you have learnt that homosexuals should be stoned to death - and if that belief is part of your culture for many years - you are not going to change overnight."
Earlier this year, a 19-year-old lesbian living in a black township near Cape Town was stoned and stabbed to death by a mob of men.
It is unclear just how prevalent such incidents are as local police do not compile figures on hate crimes.
Critics of the new law had called for the constitution's non-discrimination clause to be amended, claiming the 10-year-old statute - negotiated at the end of the apartheid era - did not properly represent public opinion.
A group calling itself Christian Action Network said: "To force the morality of the radical homosexual minority on the people of South Africa through law is, in effect, to lead the masses astray."
But Yasmin Sooka, director of the Foundation for Human Rights (FHR), said "democracy is about protecting the weak and marginalised. The constitution is there to protect even those we don't like." She noted that while gays and lesbians of a certain "class" in South Africa enjoyed relative equality, "things are very different for young black women in townships or rural areas. Such is the hatred of lesbians many men go around deliberately targeting them for rape."
The FHR, which is chaired by Louise Asmal, the anti-apartheid activist who was exiled in Ireland for 20 years, funded the constitutional challenge that brought about the new law.
Coincidentally, Ms Asmal learned this week that she would shortly be receiving an honorary degree from Trinity College Dublin in recognition of her campaigning for minorities and for other human rights work.
Anti-gay laws in Africa
Cameroon:Currently in the grips of state-sponsored "outing" campaigns. Nine men were found guilty of sodomy earlier this year and sentenced to 10 months' imprisonment.
Egypt:While legislation does not specifically mention homosexuality, gays have been entrapped, arrested and tortured, according to lobby group Human Rights Watch.
Nigeria:Penalties for homosexual acts range from 14 years by statute to stoning-by-death under Islamic Sharia law. New laws make it a criminal offence to be a member of a gay rights organisation, or to attend a gay wedding abroad.
Zimbabwe:Bans male homosexuality and other "unnatural acts". Earlier this year, the government threatened to jail clergy who blessed same-sex unions.