The country we want to live in: Hate crimes and homophobia in the lives of black lesbian South Africans offers a refreshing perspective on violence perpetrated against black lesbians.

Nonhlanhla Mkhize is Director of the Durban Lesbian and Gay Community and Health Centre in KwaZulu-Natal. Situated in the Durban CBD, it aims to empower lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities by providing services, support and training to enable them to claim their rights to equality, dignity and freedom within the context of transformation. Nonhlanhla is a counsellor, researcher and human rights defender. She specialises in LGBTI, youth, women and children's rights. She is passionate about research aimed at advancing women's health and rights, and is involved in research on women-controlled barrier methods as well as safety methods significant in women who have sex with women contexts. She is a co-chair of Amnesty International South Africa's Durban group, a member of its 'interim Board', a trustee of Behind the Mask, on the Board of the Lesbian and Gay Equality Project, and an advisor to various youth groups. Jane Bennett is Professor and Head at the African Gender Institute at the University of Cape Town. As a writer, researcher and teacher, she works beyond the university with a number of national and continental NGOs that focus on gender-based violence, LGBTI justice issues, and trafficking. She publishes mainly in journals that are easy for co-activists and writers on the continent to access (Feminist Africa, East African Journal of Peace and Human Rights, Agenda and International Journal of Sexual Health). She writes fiction (Porcupine was published in 2008), and her main interests are transformational survival (and beyond) in worlds of war (she finds Pema Chodron very helpful), languages, political pedagogies, and the meaning of overcoming violence, from both inward- and outward-looking perspectives. Vasu Reddy is a Chief Research Specialist in the Gender and Development Unit and Acting Director (Culture, Identity & Social Cohesion thematic area) in the Policy Analysis and Capacity Enhancement Research Programme at the Human Sciences Research Council (South Africa), and an Honorary Associate Professor in Gender Studies at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. He also worked as an activist and executive committee member in the early days of the National Coalition for Gay and Lesbian Equality, and served two terms as a Board member of the Lesbian and Gay Equality Project. Together with the late Ronald Louw and Nonhlanhla Mkhize, he co-founded the Durban Lesbian and Gay Community and Health Centre, where he serves on the Board. He is also Board chairperson of OUT LGBT Well-being. He is interested in the intersection between research, policy and programming, and advocacy. He recently co-edited (with Theo Sandfort and Laetitia Rispel) From Social Silence to Social Science: Same-sex Sexuality, HIV & AIDS and Gender in South Africa (HSRC Press, Cape Town, 2009). Relebohile Moletsane is a former Research Director of the Gender and Development Unit in the Policy Analysis and Capacity Enhancement Research Programme at the Human Sciences Research Council (South Africa) and Honorary Professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. She has extensive teaching and research experience in the areas of curriculum studies and gender and education, including gender-based violence and its links to HIV and AIDS and AIDS-related stigma, body politics, as well as girlhood studies. She is the co-author (with Claudia Mitchell, Ann Smith and Linda Chisholm) of the book Methodologies for Mapping a Southern African Girlhood in the Age of AIDS (Sense Publishers, Amsterdam, 2008) and (with Kathleen Pithouse and Claudia Mitchell) of Making Connections: Self-study & Social Action (Peter Lang, New York, 2009).