Despite a lack of legal protections, and in the face of an increasingly queerphobic national context, these transgender parents in Namibia are making their long-held dreams of having their own children a reality and, in turn, offering these young ones – and others – a loving home.
By Carl Collison
A little more than three years ago, a friend of Ernestine Draghoender confided in her that she would be giving the child she was expecting up for adoption. The disclosure presented Draghoender with an opportunity to fulfil a long-held dream: to have a child of her own.
Draghoender and I are sitting on the terrace of a hotel in Swakopmund, where she is attending a workshop for queer rights activists. A 40-year-old transgender woman, Draghoender is the executive director of Voice of Hope Foundation, which advocates for the rights of sex workers – a profession she has been in for more than two decades.
Although she says she had, for years, taken care of children in her family, it was largely as a result of her work as a sex worker that her desire to have her own child was fueled. Draghoender explains that, while living in various homes with other sex workers, she often found herself caring for their children.
Her role as step-in mother was always bittersweet, she says. “Ek het net altyd gedink, ‘As dit net myne was…’ Maar nou ja, ek kan mos nie biology verander nie. [I always thought, ‘If only it was mine…’ But yeah, I can’t change biology.]”
It was after years of fostering the child of a fellow sex worker that Draghoender was dealt a severe blow.
“I don’t know what happened there,” she says, “maar toe kom haal sy haar kind net daarso. Dit was so seer gewees, nê. Nadat die kind in daardie huis groot geraak het. So toe het ek tot by daai mindset gekom dat ek wil graag maar een dag my eie een aanneem. [But she just came and fetched her child. It hurt so much. That child was raised in that house. When that happened, I came to the decision that I actually want to adopt my own child one day.]”
That day came when her friend confided in her and they agreed Draghoender would adopt the child.
“Die dag toe die kind gebore is, toe is die kind in my besit [The day he was born, he was put in my care],” she says, before smilingly adding: “Hy’s nou drie jaar oud. So nou is ek met die twee seuns. Die grote, my pleegkind, hy’s 20. [He’s three years old now. So now I have two sons. The older one, my foster child, is 20 years old.]”
Although she says that having a child of her own “was altyd my begeerte [was always my desire]”, there are challenges – the most significant of which is not being acknowledged, legally, as his mother.
“Die feit bly staan: ek wil wettig hê my naam moet daar wees. Maar dis actually ’n seer part dat ek by die male gedeelte moet sit. Op die vaderskap. Nie op die moederskap nie. Want dis mos illegal. Dit is seer hier binnekant. Maar ek het seker nie ’n keuse nie. [The fact remains: I want my name there, legally. But it’s actually really painful that I have to be seen as a man. As the father. Not as the mother. Because it’s illegal. It really hurts. But I suppose I don’t have a choice.]”
A 2020 report by the trans rights organisations, Transgender, Intersex and Androgynous Movement of Namibia (TIAMON), Wings To Transcend Namibia and Gender Dynamix, noted that transgender persons in Namibia can apply to change their sex description if they have “undergone a change of sex”. The application process could also “call for such medical reports and institute such investigations as … deem[ed] necessary”.
The report noted that this was problematic for the country’s “trans-identifying persons [who] barely access the affirming health services due to their unfavourable socio-economic positioning and the lack of qualified health practitioners who can provide affirming services”.
Deyoncé Naris is a Namibian trans rights activist and national coordinator for TIAMON. Like Draghoender, Naris has also cared for children most of her life – and also experienced the pain of forced separation when biological parents return for their offspring.
Says Naris: “It got hard when people would take their kids back. It would be, like, a few years, a few months, before somebody now all of a sudden wants to now be a parent and then just taking [their kids back.]”
Naris now has four children of her own, one of which is her biological child. The remaining three were adopted.
“Two are biological sisters. Their mother was a lesbian woman who couldn’t take care of the kids. The other one came from a relationship [I was in]. He left and just never took the child along,” says Naris.
In addition to having a brood of her own, 34-year-old Naris has taken on the task of caring for other children in her community.
As to what prompted this decision, Naris explains: “My kids used to play with other kids and the other kids used to bully them because of who their mom is. So you’d hear slurs like ‘little moffie [faggot]’ and ‘jou moffie se kind [you son of a faggot]’. And I was like there is a need to do some work with kids in the area. But then … we would go over to the kids’ houses and see households of six, seven people living together. And there are three, four, five kids in the house. And, you know there is only one person working, so … a lot of the kids were either just at home or were being kept out of school because there is no food or there’s no [school] shoes. That was how we started helping.”
The “we” Naris refers to are other transgender women, some of whom volunteer for TIAMON.
It is in her three-bedroomed house, located in Windhoek’s Otjomuise township, that Naris and her volunteers provide care to the community’s children.
“We started off with 10 to15 kids – you know, the immediate ones who played with my kids – but now we sit with a list of about 50 kids. So, it’s almost like a full-time project.”
Aside from “a few private donations”, the project is largely self-funded. “A lot of it we do [ourselves]. The [weekly] soup cooking, for example. Those things we do out of our own pockets; out of our homes,” she says.
There are also other challenges. In May 2023, Namibia’s Supreme Court ruled that same-sex marriages officiated outside the country should be recognised. The ruling resulted in a wave of religious-based queerphobia.
Naris says functioning in such a landscape was made hard because “the [LGBTIQ+] community is already looked at as paedophiles and rapists… and that’s sort of the narrative right now: ‘Protect our children against these people’. But part of this work is to push back against that narrative and say, ‘We are a part of our communities. We are mothers. We are aunties. We are sisters. And we care. Like anybody else does. And we show love. And we can nurture healthy relationships with children within our communities.”
The work, she says, is yielding some results.
“The biggest reward [with] the work that we do with kids is just being able to see the change. Like, seeing a five-year-old checking a six-year-old for calling somebody ‘moffie’, and saying, ‘That’s not nice.’ You know? … I’ve seen these little human beings literally … looking after each other in the community. That’s what I love.”
As to the most rewarding aspect of being a parent, Naris says, simply: “The unconditional love.”
“Like, I’ll sit there in my house, and I’ll have the most difficult day and this little human being will just run over and give me the warmest hug. At one stage, one of my daughters became my go-to person. Like, if I needed a hug, I would just walk over to [her] and I would just hug her and she’ll just hold on for dear life. And then she would see [my] little tears, she would just wipe it and she would give me a little ‘mwah’ kiss. And then it just feels like everything is ok, you know? Like I can go back out there and fight again.”
For Draghoender, after years of feeling the sting of forced separations, parenting’s greatest reward is finally having a child of her own.
“Daar’s nou lewe, verstaan jy? So ek voel net, die reward is hy … Ek kan nou sê, ‘Daai is myne.’ [There is life now, you understand? So I just feel like the reward is him… I can now say, ‘That is mine.’]”
Then, flashing a smile, Draghoender reaches into her handbag for her cellphone.
“Hoor nou net [Just listen now],” she says, beaming: “Ek gaan vir hom gou bel. Hy gaan sê, ‘Mammie, kom huis toe.’ [I’m going to call him. He’s going to say, ‘Mommy, come home.’]”
After a brief chat with her older son, Draghoender asks him to pass the phone to her three-year-old.
“Mammie, waar is jy? [Mommy, where are you?],” comes the little voice.
“Mammie se kind, Mammie is hier by die werk [Mommy’s child, Mommy is here at work],” Draghoender responds.
“Kom huis toe, Mammie. Ek soek chocolate [Come home, Mommy. I want chocolate].”
“Mammie kom later [Mommy will be there later],” she says, winking at me. “Mammie sal vir jou chocolates bring. Mammie is net gou by die werk. Mammie is lief vi’ jou. [Mommy will bring you chocolates. Mommy is just at work quickly. Mommy loves you.]”
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This interview was made possible with support from the Cape Town office of the Heinrich Böll Foundation.
