The Ugandan Parliament has this week reintroduced a bill that proposes a mandatory death penalty for gay “repeat offenders”. This cannot be condoned – tacitly or otherwise – by the South African government.

It is time for the Minister of International Relations, Maite Nkoana-Mashabane, to speak out against state-sanctioned human rights violations against homosexuals on our continent.

I will today write to the Minister to urge that South African representatives at the African Union actively campaign to amend the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights. As it stands, the Charter does not list sexual orientation as a basis on which an individual may not be discriminated against, thus rendering it an ineffective instrument for keeping signatory states accountable for the violation of gay rights.

I will also be submitting parliamentary questions to Minister Nkoana-Mashabane to ask for clarification on South Africa’s position on the violation of gay rights by African Union member states. Homosexuality remains illegal in 37 African countries.

Despite our progressive Constitution, which protects the rights of all South Africans regardless of sexual orientation, our government does nothing to push our own human rights agenda abroad. The President failed to use a state visit to Nigeria in December last year to raise concerns about anti-gay legislation in that country, and even deployed a diplomat known for his deeply prejudicial views on homosexuality as our ambassador to Uganda,

Taking a stand on these issues on the continent would go a long way toward dealing with discrimination against homosexuals at home. Lesbians in South Africa, for example, face the threat of brutal sexual attacks, known as “corrective” rape. A 2011 Human Rights Watch report found that lesbians and transgender men living in South Africa face “extensive discrimination and violence in their daily lives”.

If our government is not willing to speak out against violations of human rights based on sexual orientation in the rest of the African continent, it will make little headway in confronting such violence locally.