South African court gives go-ahead for gay marriage

SAME-sex couples in South Africa are to be allowed to marry after a ruling by the country's constitutional court yesterday.

It ordered the government to amend the country's marriage laws within 12 months so that marriage will be defined as "a union between two persons" instead of the current "union between a man and a woman".

The judges said that, if the government failed to act, the court's ruling would automatically become law on 2 December, 2006.

The move will allow Marie Fourie and Cecelia Bonthuys, two white Afrikaner lesbians, to marry. They petitioned the court last year for implementation of constitutional clauses that give them the right to marry.

The government unsuccessfully argued that earlier decisions by lower courts in favour of Ms Fourie and Ms Bonthuys usurped parliament's "supreme" power to make law". But the court, which interprets the post-apartheid 1994 constitution, said the constitution, not parliament, was supreme.

South Africa will be the first country on that continent to allow gay marriage. However, it is an example that is unlikely to be followed elsewhere in Africa for a long time to come, given the deep anti-gay prejudices at the highest levels of government and in religious organisations.

In neighbouring Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe, the president, has attacked gay men and lesbians as "worse than dogs and pigs", while Uganda's president, Yoweri Museveni, has outlawed homosexual sex and instructed detectives to root out gays and "lock them up and charge them".

On this issue, the views of most MPs in South Africa's ruling ANC reflect those in the rest of the continent.