“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.

‘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.