Deputy Minister Mmapaseka Steve Letsike receives the Emerging Leader Award at WorldPride Amsterdam 2026

The Department of Women, Youth and Persons with Disabilities congratulates Deputy Minister in the Presidency for Women, Youth and Persons with Disabilities, Ms Mmapaseka Steve Letsike, MP, on receiving the Emerging Leader Award at the International Pride Awards during WorldPride Amsterdam 2026, today, 5 August 2026.

The Emerging Leader Award recognises a person who is “reimagining LGBTIQ+ liberation for a new generation.” The award also speaks directly to a defining challenge of our time: how a new generation takes forward the struggle for LGBTIQ+ liberation in a vastly changing political environment.

The International Pride Awards, a joint initiative of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and ILGA World, celebrate courageous individuals working across the world to advance equality, freedom and safe spaces for LGBTIQ+ people, including in environments where undertaking this work comes at significant personal and political risk. Deputy Minister Letsike’s recognition is particularly significant because it acknowledges a leadership journey rooted in activism and now carried into the institutions of democratic governance.

For decades, Deputy Minister Letsike has been part of South Africa’s struggle for equality and social justice, advancing the rights of LGBTIQ+ persons while insisting that struggles against homophobia, transphobia and gender inequality cannot be separated from the broader struggles against racism, patriarchy, poverty and economic exclusion.

The world is witnessing the growth of increasingly organised and transnational anti-gender and anti-rights movements. Through disinformation, moral panic and political mobilisation, these forces seek not only to reverse advances in LGBTIQ+ rights, sexual and reproductive health and rights, and gender equality, but also to weaken the democratic institutions upon which these freedoms depend. It is in this context that reimagining liberation for a new generation becomes urgent.

Deputy Minister Letsike said:

“I receive this recognition with profound humility because no struggle for human dignity is ever the work of one person. I stand on the shoulders of generations of activists who fought when it was dangerous to be visible, dangerous to speak and, for many, dangerous simply to exist as themselves. But every generation must define what liberation demands of it. The struggle before young people today is not identical to the struggle that came before us. They confront new technologies, new forms of disinformation and surveillance, new expressions of exclusion and a highly organised global movement seeking to reverse rights we once believed were secure. Yet I remain hopeful, because I see in this generation the courage, imagination and determination not only to defend the freedoms we have won, but to take the struggle for liberation further than we ever imagined possible.”

For South Africa, this international recognition also carries particular meaning. Our constitutional democracy was founded upon a rejection of the idea that any institution may rank human beings according to race, sex, gender, sexual orientation or any other characteristic of identity.

South Africa’s constitutional protection against discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation became an important global milestone. Yet constitutional recognition is not the end of liberation. The continuing experiences of violence, hate crime, discrimination, economic exclusion and social prejudice experienced by LGBTIQ+ persons remind us that formal equality must constantly be converted into substantive, lived equality.

The Department therefore views the Emerging Leader Award not simply as an individual accolade, but as international recognition of a continuing South African and African struggle for human dignity.