Dwarfed by the towering blocks of Wits University, the Holy Trinity Catholic Church goes unnoticed by most passers-by. Yet, for large numbers of Johannesburg’s inner-city residents, particularly the homeless and destitute, the church is a lifeline: its daily soup kitchen feeds an average of 150 people, its weekly clinic supplies vital health services and its outreach projects provide much-needed livelihood opportunities. For those familiar with the church, its social apostolate is personified in an unassuming artwork by its main gate. Titled Homeless Jesus, the bronze sculpture depicts a figure sleeping on a bench, his body shrouded in a thick blanket, the only hint of his identity being two pierced feet exposed to the elements. Those hurrying past could easily mistake it for a real person, one of the many faceless figures haunting Braamfontein’s streets, but those who stop and look are invited to contemplate Jesus’ directive to care for the meek and needy. What does charity and compassion mean, the artwork asks, in a society riven by multiple inequalities?

It was the church’s commitment to rethinking social justice that led to the formation of the LGBT Ministry in 2009. The years preceding its establishment had been tumultuous: Thabo Mbeki’s AIDS denialism had widely exacerbated the country’s HIV epidemic; simmering xenophobic tensions had led to periodic eruptions of violence, culminating in the death of 67 people in 2008; and brutal physical and sexual attacks against LGBT people, particularly black lesbian women, had become rampant.

While a few prominent South Africans chose to condemn this surge in homo/transphobic violence, the majority remained silent. Some even used the opportunity to lament recently won legislative rights for LGBT people, often embedding their objections within doomsday prophecies and moral panics. In 2008, Jon Qwelane – later appointed South African ambassador to Uganda – published an opinion piece entitled ‘Call me names, but gay is NOT okay’, in which he equated same-sex marriage with bestiality, condemned progressive voices within the Anglican Church for ‘the rapid degradation of traditions and values’ and referenced a covert campaign by LGBT people to destroy ‘the natural order of things’.A short while later, arts and culture minister Lulu Xingwana walked out of an exhibition by renowned photographer Zanele Muholi, whose images of lesbian women Xingwana described as ‘immoral’, ‘offensive’ and ‘against nation-building’.