Pride: Protest and Celebration is a history of South Africa’s gay pride marches and parades over the last 16 years. It brings together a host of valuable and rare material: pictures, documents and personal testimony of activists, organizers and participants of Pride since 1990.
 
Press clippings are also used in this beautiful collection, to trace how Pride has been reported over the years, helping to form both an historical record and a colourful, enjoyable scrapbook of memories of the most visible face of South Africa’s gay and lesbian community.

South Africa's first-ever gay Pride march took place in October 1990, just as the liberation movements including the ANC and the PAC were returning home after decades in exile. That year, Pride pushed for the inclusion of gay rights in the human rights for which South Africans were then fighting. That dream was realised in the Constitution, ratified in 1996, which enshrines protection against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation – a Constitution unique in the world.

Since then, Pride has continually evolved. In 1994 it became a "parade", and in later years it came to include a mardi gras and other activities. Its focus moved from its campaigning of the early years to, increasingly, a celebration of freedom and gay/lesbian culture, as much a huge party as anything else. Yet it has been controversial within gay/lesbian circles as well as in the view of the larger society -- and there are still rights (such as gay marriage) for which to fight.

Shaun de Waal was born in 1965 in Johannesburg. He has worked for the Mail & Guardian newspaper (formerly the Weekly Mail) since 1989, having been literary editor from 1991 to 2005 and chief film critic since 1998. His books and arts journalism has been published there and elsewhere; his fiction has been published in journals and anthologies, as well as in book form (These Things Happen, 1996). His graphic novelette Jackmarks was published in 1998. He edited several volumes of the M&G Bedside Book, and co-wrote a monograph on South African artist Steven Cohen (2003); a new collection of his short fiction is due out in 2006. He has won the Sanlam Award for his fiction and the Thomas Pringle Award (twice) for his criticism.

Anthony Manion is the archives coordinator for the Gay and Lesbian Archives of South Africa in Johannesburg. He was educated at the University of Cape Town, and has a particular interest in making history accessible to the public.

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