A debate erupted in the Western Cape’s provincial parliament recently after MPL Ferlon Christians from the ACDP said a proposal to add homosexual education to the high school curriculum “made him sick”. The proposal came from Dr Gordon Isaacs, a psycho-social manager at the Sex Workers Education and Advocacy Taskforce (SWEAT). Some of the syllabus, as recommended by Isaacs, would include discussions on penetration, anal sex and oral sex.

Mandisi Phika, who was attacked and bullied in high school for being gay, supports Dr Isaacs’s proposal. He believes it would have helped him accept his identity earlier and made his classmates more accepting of him.

To be young, gay and in high school

The 23-year-old filmmaker from Paarl, Cape Town, remembers grappling with his sexuality from a young age. “My grandmother [who raised him] always suspected I was different,” he says. “I wasn’t like the other boys. I enjoyed dressing up and putting on makeup.”  But Mandisi thought that being gay was a sin, so he pretended to be someone else most of his high school life. “I dated girls to get validation from other guys and to prove that I was not what they thought I was. It killed me on the inside.” But he lived this lie because it was tough not to. “I was made fun of. I was feminine and they would pick on me.” In Grade 10, however, he decided to come out.

Learning about intimacy

With his sexuality now in the open, Mandisi was routinely picked on by older high school students for being gay. But also, given the lack of discussion and representation of homosexual intimacy at school, he found that he had to teach himself a lot about sex and intimacy.

“It was hard, I won’t lie,” Mandisi says. “Most of the sexual intimacy I got was from the older men I was dating. To some extent, I feel that helped because there was no judgement and both of us were accepting of each other,” he says, but adds that it was intimidating sharing an intimate moment with someone who knows more than you. “I wish I had learnt sexuality at school.”

Adolescence is the stage where kids begin shaping their identity, says Dr. Isaacs.“We should also be teaching adolescents what gender identity is and the different types of sexualities.”

Older, wiser and prouder

Mandisi has since gone on to live a well-adjusted life after high school. He has a support base of friends who accept him for who he is and have helped build up his self-confidence. He also joined a LGBTI organisation in his neighborhood called Zonwabele. “It was a great experience,” he says. “I learnt so much and my time there helped me define myself as a young, gay man. There’s lot of stigma about homosexuality; that needs to stop. I hope one day people can be educated about it.”

Photography by Eugene Muzinga

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