[1][2][3] GLOW's membership primarily consisted of Black Africans, which was uncharacteristic of other gay, lesbian, and bisexual (GLB) groups in South Africa at the time.
[6] In 1999, the tenth anniversary of the Pride Parade started by GLOW was held in honor of Simon Tseko Nkoli who died of AIDs the year before.
In their manifesto, GLOW aligned themselves with the work of the African National Congress (ANC), ushering in a new political process in a way that GLB groups in South Africa had previously refused to do.
[1][3] GLOW has hosted the annual Lesbian and Gay Pride March in Johannesburg since 1990, an opportunity to safely display GLB culture in public on a large scale.
[1] Participants had the option to cover their faces with brown paper bags for fear of persecution and the parade was planned to conclude with a kiss-in.
[11] Lisa Underwood in The Drag Queen Anthology explains that “the [pride] march is unique in South Africa, in that it is simultaneously angry and carnivalesque.” [12] At a time when many of the GLB organizations in South Africa were predominantly male and centered on the issues of men, the Lesbian Forum of GLOW was conceived of as a safe place for women and femme-identified members.
One of the major challenges of the forum was the division between participants who needed social support and those who were committed to the imperative political issues.
[1] Cross-dressing is still a mainstay in township culture and drag shows continue to be a popular event for homosexual and heterosexual members of these communities alike.
[12] As the problem of HIV/AIDS continued to worsen quality of life across South Africa, members of GLOW helped to launch to Soweto Township Aids Project in 1990.
Here, they were instrumental in bringing visibility to the problem as well as distributing education and resources in promotion of safe sex to stop the spread of the disease.
[5] The workshop was chaired by Kim Berman and featured a presentation from lawyer Edwin Cameron on the contours of the constitution making process.
[5] This workshop was a follow-up to a community questionnaire GLOW sent out to determine which rights people deemed most important to be included in the Charter.
[5] In 1995 Beverley Palesa Ditsie was invited to advocate for lesbian rights at the United Nations Beijing International Conference on Women.
Mompati's comments assumed that only white South Africans were or could be gay, thereby implying, like Mandela, that “homosexuality was a condition alien to the black community.”[1] Due to protesting by GLB groups of these remarks, the ANC inserted a clause banning discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation into a draft of the Bill of Rights in 1991.
[1] The letter addressed the harmful homophobic displays outside of the courtroom, the conflation of homosexuality with sexual abuse, and the use of homophobia as a strategy to deflect attention away from the real issues.
She had been targeted for corrective rape by heterosexual male members of her community and hoped to bring issues such as this to light when speaking at the UN Conference on Women in Beijing.
[2] The division between activism and support posed a challenge to setting an agenda that satisfied all members while advancing the aims of the organization.
[1] Most of GLOW's organizational budget went toward planning the annual pride march, which made it difficult to fund and sustain more small-scale projects aimed at improving gay life in the townships.
[8] Although the organizing efforts of GLOW contributed to historic legislative, political, and social victories, in South Africa today homophobia persists and continues to threaten the livelihood of the GLB community.
[7] A 2003 study found that homosexuals still rank as the third most hated group in South Africa and 40.9% of the population reported “disliking homosexuals very much.”[7] Although the pride marches bring necessary media attention to the presence and issues of the Black South African community, organizers worry that there is too much emphasis placed on the spectacle of the event for onlookers and thus the issues are not taken seriously.