Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Rights in South Africa

This thesis researches whether either the interest group theory or the international human rights treaty theory has greater explanatory power when it comes to LGBT rights in South African policy outputs. The research question is: “Is either the ‘interest group theory’ or the ‘international human rights treaty theory’ the theory for better explaining LGBT rights in South African policy outputs?”. By deducting several expectations for both theories and applying the expectations to the empirical observations, I try to find out which theory better explains the situation of LGBT rights in South Africa. The observations have been done in three important episodes of South African LGBT outputs, these being: the 1996 Constitution, the 2006 Civil Union Act and the 2011 national taskforce. With the help of many existing sources, such as: UN treaties, South African laws, newspaper articles and prior scholar research, information was gathered. The analysis shows that the interest group theory has more explanatory power when it comes to LGBT rights in South Africa. South African LGBT interest groups have enough resources; build coalitions; have access to government; educate society and develop policy with the government, which makes them successful in their lobbying efforts for LGBT equality in South Africa. The international human rights treaty theory has some explanatory power, but less than the interest group theory. This is primarily due to the fact that in some cases there are no UN treaties in place that cover certain aspects of LGBT rights and the UN has no hard means by which it can force countries to comply to the treaties it has signed.