“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
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. “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 thewhere my project was mainly on survivors of gender-based violence,” she said.
“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.”Maverick Citizen