A heart-wrenching story of abuse, rejection and depression is honestly told by Port Elizabeth-born Landa Mabenge as he details his life journey of being a man trapped in a woman’s body.
Mabenge, who was speaking at the launch of his book, Becoming Him, A Trans memoir of Triumph, at Nelson Mandela University on Thursday, said the book is not just about him being transgender but is an attempt to remind human beings to stop living behind facades and start living the truth.
Mabenge is the first known transgender man to successfully motivate a medical aid to fund one of his gender alignment operations through the Transgender Clinic at Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town.
Mabenge encouraged his captivated audience members to accept people from the transgender community.
“These genders are assigned at birth, you are born and you are told who and what you are going to be,” he said.
“This story is to show more than anything else that these conversations need to start at a home level.
“Parents need to start opening safe spaces on the home front and stop hiding behind the church.
“Let’s stop hiding behind the Joneses and the white picket fences of suburbia.”
In his book, Mabenge details how he grew up to the age of 11 being afforded many liberties by his grandparents and a woman he calls “Ma”, until he was fetched by a couple, who turned out to be his biological parents, and taken to Port Elizabeth.
His stay in Port Elizabeth was marred by emotional, psychological and physical abuse allegedly at the hands of his parents which led to his depression and a suicide attempt at university.
Mabenge, who now works for his own consulting agency as an educationalist and a transgender activist, says SA’s laws do not work well with each other for the transgender community.
“What I have learnt through this journey is that in this country we have beautiful liberties that are penned in the constitution,” he said.
“These liberties give us the right to freedom of existence – but when they need to work for the ordinary people on the street, they don’t.
“Even within the institutions that need to implement these laws they don’t, because even our lawmakers are not upskilled in terms of the variances of gender and sexuality and how to tailor the law to work for people.”
With his book, Mabenge hopes to show there is no manual to becoming a transgender person, and to help people going through a similar journey to emotionally equip themselves ahead of transition.
In thanking the audience for receiving and respecting him, he quoted Angelina Jolie, saying: “I will do the best I can with this life, to be of use.”