“I call myself a human rights activist slash a queer rights activist,” says aspiring filmmaker and photographer Deekay Ndoni Sibanda, who is the 39-year-old programme officer for the Accountability Lab’s Integrity Icon campaign. The initiative seeks to highlight the often-overlooked good work that public servants are doing. She told Maverick Citizen that she is very passionate about media advocacy work because of her passion for documenting and narrating activist stories. 

Activist Deekay Ndoni Sibanda at the accountability Lab, Johannesburg. (Photo: Denvor de Wee)

‘Visuals start conversations’

Growing up in the East Rand of Johannesburg in Katlehong township, she describes herself as having always been a fighter and having the spirit of activism within her.  

While still in school, Ndoni Sibanda joined a lesbian soccer team, through which, she says, she started her activism by attending team-organised human rights, sexual and gender identity workshops. After that, she moved to the Forum for the Empowerment of Women.

She shared her experience of being the target of a hate crime and still bears the scars of being beaten and having her teeth scraped across the pavement until they broke off. She says that it was a result of a huge fight that broke out between her and her friends and men from a neighbouring township. Ndoni Sibanda says she was the only one who was really hurt when they reviewed the incident and the men beating her made it clear that it was because she is lesbian.

However, it was when she worked at LGBTQIA rights organisation Iranti that Ndoni Sibanda says the traumatic toll of experiences faced by queer people really took a toll on her mental health — to a point where she had to completely step back from working so she could focus on her healing.

“Most of the time we documented really brutal stories of hate crimes on LGBTI people and most of the time we documented really hurtful stories — especially lesbian women at the time. To a point where I had a breakdown and I had to stop and concentrate on myself, but I couldn’t because I had to now work on the One in Nine Campaign where my project was mainly on survivors of gender-based violence,” she said. Ndoni Sibanda said that this led to her recognising that the traumatic impact the work was having on her drove her to accept that she just had to take time off to attend to herself for about a year.

Activist Deekay Ndoni Sibanda, Johannesburg. (Photo: Denvor de Wee)

When she was ready to come back into the activist space after her break and having undergone therapy, she started work with the Accountability Lab. “I used to work with public servants like the police and people at clinics when I was at the Forum for the Empowerment of Women, on sexual orientation and gender-based violence and I saw how they used to treat people and I didn’t enjoy working with them.” She told Maverick Citizen that Integrity Icon gave her a different perspective on public servants.

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The energetic Ndoni Sibanda admits that before she came to Accountability Lab she would have never thought she would take such a favourable view of people in public service after having experienced the dark side of the sector. 

“When I say I’m an activist, like, I’m on the ground, I’m a street activist. I’m not sitting at a desk — I want to go where things are happening,” she told Maverick Citizen that she saw working at Accountability Lab as an opportunity for her to pursue her desire to document the positive work that people were doing in their jobs and also highlighted how connected they were to their communities. 

She says she has had to re-examine her perception of public servants “because now I have time to have conversations with them and ask them questions about their work, why it is that sometimes they lose it with people looking for services and a lot of the time its because of a lack of resources and the pressure they face. So I had to forgive them because I’ve seen how they work as we were filming.

“We all want to see change, we want to work for and with the marginalised groups, whether its LGBTQI or people with disabilities. This time around what I’m enjoying is that we are telling positive stories. I know good news doesn’t sell but it should.”

When asked whether she thought integrity is something that can be taught, Ndoni Sibanda told Maverick Citizen that the question is part of an ongoing conversation but one that informed the Integrity Icon’s project in that it is meant to encourage people to have and display integrity in order to achieve positive results.

Activist Deekay Ndoni Sibanda at the accountability Lab, Media Mill, Braamfontein, Johannesburg. (Photo: Denvor de Wee)

Ndoni Sibanda is also spearheading the Integrity Icon Film Fellowship which gives young people an opportunity to cut their teeth in filmmaking by documenting not only the Integrity Icon finalists but also their own activists in the community. 

“I’m very interested in working with young people, which is something that I’ve been doing through art since I started my activism. The youth that I work with is very passionate and driven and I am invested in working with them because they have very fresh ideas.”

In 2012 Ndoni Sibanda was named the LGBTI young activist of the year and featured in the Mail & Guardian Book of South African Women in 2013. She is a member of the Association for Women’s Rights in Development — an international, feminist, membership organisation committed to achieving gender equality, sustainable development and women’s human rights. DM/MC