Lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and transgender (LGBT) persons have organized themselves over the last ten years into publicly visible groups in Johannesburg, South Africa, and Windhoek, Namibia. This project uses archival research, ethnographic observation of a more publicly visible sexual minority movement organization and a less publicly visible sexual minority movement organization in each city, and in-depth interviews with staff, members, and leaders of sexual minority groups, to understand how sexual minority groups determine how, why, and when they become visible to the media, the state, and their target audiences. Three research questions guide this project: 1) How, when, and why do sexual minority movement organizations in South Africa and Namibia use visibility tactics to promote their messages? 2) How and why do organizations' strategies of visibility change over time? 3) What image and identities do sexual minority movement organizations publicize to their different audiences, how do they arrive at these images and identities, and how do they determine which audiences to target? This dissertation project contributes to existing social movement research by examining the micro-level practices of how sexual minority movement groups pursue public visibility or retreat from public view. By questioning the assumption that visibility is a first step for sexual minority movement groups, this project will introduce this concept as a complicated phenomenon worthy of its own study. Using sexual minority movements as a case study provides an excellent opportunity to demystify two presumptions: 1) that all social movement groups evolve as public entities in the same way and 2) that sexual minority movements always tailor their public visibility strategies in order to promote the visibility of LGBT persons as individuals. The broader impacts of this project are that it will help scholars, policy makers, and human rights workers understand how newly visible, marginalized groups in transitional democracies register their concerns publicly and the processes they use to ensure they are fairly represented. The project redresses the paucity of research on sexual minorities in southern Africa. Sexual minority movement groups struggling with their own public visibility may find this comparative research useful in determining what strategies may work in their favor. South African and Namibian sexual minority activists and historians will have access to the project's findings.
