Transgender refugees train their eyes on the future

WITH employment opportunities especially scarce for transgender and gender-diverse refugees and migrants, a Johannesburg skills development programme equips them with versatility and hope.

Located in the back of a seemingly abandoned business premises on a busy street not too far outside Johannesburg’s inner city is the room Leona Sibanda calls home. No bigger than 20m², the room has a bed, positioned behind a curtain serving as a makeshift room divider, a kettle and two-plate stove and, in pride of place in the centre, her sewing machine.

A transgender woman, originally from Zimbabwe, Sibanda fled to South Africa after fearing for her life following the disappearance of another trans woman who had been a close friend.

Arriving in Johannesburg shortly before South Africa’s first national Covid lockdown was implemented, the 33-year-old initially lived with her sister who encouraged her to start her own business by giving Sibanda her first sewing machine.

She approached a Nigerian man. “I said, ‘Can I please put my machine just outside here, so that when people walk past, they will see that I’m doing this handiwork?’ He agreed. So I sat there, outside his shop. You know, the sun would hit me. The cold would hit me. But yeah, people got used to me. They came for alterations,” she says.

With her clients made up of “people from this community”, Sibanda manages to eke out a living and cover the monthly R2 000 rent, which, she laughs, is “a lot, but I have no choice”.

To increase her earnings and develop skills as a businesswoman, Sibanda participated in a skills development programme aimed at trans and genderdiverse migrants and refugees living in South Africa.

The Fruit Basket, a non-governmental organisation that focuses on improving the lives of South Africa’s trans and gender-diverse migrants, put together the programme, which ran from November 2021 to February.

Thomars Shamuyarira, the organisation’s founder and director, says the programme was initiated “to empower the community and give people skills and tools to become self-sustainable in a country that is not so inclusive. There are not many opportunities for refugees and their statuses make them more vulnerable”.

Sixteen participants from Uganda, Zimbabwe, Nigeria, Lesotho and two South Africans who migrated to Johannesburg from Limpopo trained in the programme, learning graphic design, marketing, catering and clothes production.

One of the four participants in the catering programme was Sapphire Jones. Jones fled to South Africa from Zimbabwe nine years ago. With employment options thin on the ground, Jones found herself struggling to survive. “As trans people, we are discriminated against in the workplace and the job sector and we don’t get the jobs that we’re supposed to get because of our gender,” she says.

Jones established a small catering business that, along with another transgender woman, she runs from her flat in Pretoria. Targeting working professionals who “usually just want something quick, something on the go”, the pair put together quick meals.

Her business averages about 15 orders a day.

Jones says she participated in the programme. “because I wanted to have more to do in the kitchen and also because it wasn’t just about catering. We learned about costing, for example. How you are supposed to cost your products, which I had little knowledge of. But now I feel I fully grasp it”.

“It also gave community members a chance to learn different lessons and skills in one go. To hold space for each other. To love and support each other. … Friendships and business partnerships were formed and a lot more will come out of this,” said Shamuyarira.