Africa: How Common Are Same-Sex Unions in South Africa? We Found Out

Our data repudiate the idea that same-sex relationships are a reflection of modernity or a Western cultural import

We have recently published a study that estimated the prevalence of same-sex unions in South Africa.
We analysed household surveys since 2002.
We found that 1.4% of men and 1.0% of women in cohabiting relationships were in same-sex unions.
The proportion of such relationships has risen since same-sex marriage was legalised.
This is comparable to the US, Australia and Canada.

Being gay or lesbian in Africa isn’t easy. In five African countries, homosexuality is punishable by death, and in most other countries, homosexuality is punishable by imprisonment. Homosexuality is often represented as “un-African”, despite evidence that same-sex relationships occurred before colonisation and the imposition of European judicial and religious systems on African societies.

In South Africa the situation is quite different. The 1996 Constitution prohibits discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. In 2006, South Africa became the fifth country in the world (and the first in Africa) to legally recognise same-sex unions.

Yet despite same-sex unions having been legally recognised in South Africa for almost 20 years, we still know relatively little about them. What proportion of people are in same-sex unions, and how has this changed since 2006? How do South African data compare with data from high-income countries that have legally recognised same-sex unions?

To answer these questions, we analysed data from South Africa’s General Household Surveys, conducted every year since 2002 (though disrupted during 2020 and 2021 due to COVID). We looked at the proportion of adults who were reported to be in a marital or cohabiting relationship, and then assessed whether the household member identified as their partner was of the same or opposite sex.

The results of our analysis were published last week in Population Research and Policy Review. Overall we found that 1.4% of men and 1.0% of women in cohabiting relationships were in same-sex unions.

Up to 2006, the proportion was stable at around 0.5%, but after 2006 the proportion rose steadily to around 1.5%, before dropping in 2019, probably due to a change in the way interviews were conducted (see Figure).

This trend is quite similar to that observed in high-income countries. For example, in the US, the proportion of couples that are same-sex increased from 0.6% in 2000 to 1.5% in 2019. In Australia the proportion increased from 0.3% in 2001 to 1.4% in 2021. And in Canada the proportion rose from 0.5% in 2001 to 1.1% in 2021. These studies used similar methods based on household questionnaires.

We also assessed how the proportions varied in relation to age, race, province and education. Men in same-sex unions tended to be younger than men in heterosexual unions, but among women there was little age difference. The odds of being in a same-sex union were 1.4 to 1.5 times higher among white South Africans than in other race groups, but black South Africans nevertheless accounted for roughly 60% of same-sex unions.

There was surprisingly little variation across provinces and education categories. We found that the proportion of all men who were in same-sex unions was highest in the most urbanised provinces (Gauteng and Western Cape), but we also found that heterosexual marriage was most frequent in the same provinces. When same-sex unions were instead counted as a proportion of all male unions, there were no significant inter-provincial differences in this proportion. In women there was also little inter-provincial variation in the same-sex proportion.

There are clearly limitations to using household survey data. People might not report being in a same-sex cohabiting relationship due to fear of interviewers reacting negatively. The change in survey questionnaire methods in 2019 complicates the interpretation of trends. We focused on whether people were in cohabiting relationships, as it is more difficult to determine from the data if people were legally married. Although it would have been preferable to assess marriage registration data, the civil union data published by Statistics South Africa do not include data on the sexes of the couples, making it impossible to say how many are same-sex.

Despite these limitations, the similarity of our results to those from high-income countries that used similar household questionnaires is striking. If homosexuality were truly “un-African”, we would have seen much lower proportions in South Africa than in high-income countries, and perhaps less of a change following the legal recognition of same-sex unions. We observed only modest differences in the same-sex proportion by race and education, suggesting that ethnicity and social class are not major factors. Our data repudiate the idea that being gay is somehow a reflection of modernity or a Western cultural import.

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