Deputy Minister in the Presidency for Women, Youth and Persons with Disabilities, Mmapaseka Steve Letsike, has been honoured with the Emerging Leader Award at the International Pride Awards during WorldPride Amsterdam 2026.
The department said the award 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.
For decades, 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 department noted that the award comes at a time when 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,” the department said.
Accepting the award, Letsike said she received the recognition with profound humility, stressing that the struggle for human dignity has always been a collective effort.
“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,” Letsike said.
The department said the international recognition also holds particular significance for South Africa, whose Constitution was founded on the principle that no person should face discrimination based on race, sex, gender, sexual orientation or any other characteristic of identity.
It noted that South Africa’s constitutional protection against discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation became an important global milestone.
It noted that while South Africa’s constitutional protections for sexual orientation marked a global milestone, 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 said.
The department said it views the Emerging Leader Award not merely as an individual accolade, but as international recognition of South Africa’s and Africa’s ongoing struggle for human dignity.
“It also challenges the false narrative that LGBTIQ+ equality is foreign to Africa. Africa possesses its own histories of diversity, resistance, solidarity and human dignity. Our task is to ensure that the next generation of African activists can claim this history, shape its future and advance an African vision of liberation that leaves no one behind.”
“This recognition should renew our collective determination to build a world in which no young person must hide who they are in order to survive, and in which equality is not merely protected when it is convenient, but defended precisely when it is under attack,” the department said.
