In this week’s post, Bradley Fortuin examines Botswana’s journey from the decriminalisation of consensual same-sex sexual relations to the broader pursuit of equality for LGBTIQ+ persons. Fortuin traces the role of strategic litigation, community-led advocacy and progressive constitutional jurisprudence in securing the landmark Letsweletse Motshidiemang v Attorney General judgment, while highlighting the challenges of implementing and giving effect to judicial decisions. He argues that decriminalisation is only one step towards substantive equality, and that sustained legal, administrative and societal change is necessary to protect and consolidate these gains.

In this post, William Aseka examines the High Court of Kenya’s decision in Ras Tafari Society of Kenya (RSK) and Mwendwa Wambua alias Ras Prophet v Office of the Attorney General and Kenya Law Reform Commission. The High Court dismissed a petition seeking constitutional protection for the private, sacramental use of cannabis. Aseka argues that the court’s reasoning risks confining religious freedom to practices that judges deem compulsory, uniform and administratively convenient.

This week, Dr. Meghan Finn notes that South Africa’s equality legislation was drafted, deliberately and against sustained resistance, to reach discrimination in the private sphere as well as by the state. She further notes that twenty-six years on, some of its most important provisions for targeting privatised inequality remain dormant. The result is a striking gap between an ambitious statutory scheme as the drafting archive reveals, and its operation.

In this week's post, Prof Franaaz Khan argues that African human rights law should recognise neurodivergence as an equality issue, not merely a disability issue. Drawing on the African Charter, the Mali decision, and South Africa's Western Cape Forum case, the piece contends that the legal tools to protect neurodivergent people already exist. What is needed is a willingness to interpret equality more inclusively and ensure that those whose exclusion has long gone unseen receive meaningful legal protection.