Cape Town 2027 Conference Signals Shift in African Conservative Movement, Scholars Warn

A planned conference in Cape Town in May 2027 is drawing sharp scrutiny from constitutional scholars and human rights advocates, with Jamil F. Khan, an award-winning author and research fellow at the Johannesburg Institute for Advanced Study, arguing it represents far more than a gathering of conservative religious leaders.

The Africa Christian Professionals Forum has announced it will host its 3rd Pan-African Conference on Family Values in Cape Town that month. Framed around protecting family values, religious freedom and African values, the event, Khan argues, forms part of a coordinated transnational campaign designed to reverse decades of progress on the rights of LGBTQ+ people, women and gender-diverse communities across the continent.

The choice of Cape Town is neither accidental nor merely symbolic. It is a calculated political intervention aimed at the continent’s most progressive constitutional order, the only African constitution that explicitly prohibits discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. The conference seeks to unite religious leaders, politicians, parliamentarians and activists from across Africa around an agenda opposing LGBTQ+ equality, reproductive rights and comprehensive sexuality education, while promoting a restrictive understanding of family rooted in conservative Christian doctrine.

Local organisation will be led by the Family Policy Institute, headed by Errol Naidoo, an outspoken anti-LGBTQ+ preacher, lobbyist and former member of the African Christian Democratic Party.

South Africa’s place in this story is not incidental. The Constitution, born from the struggle against apartheid, established equality, dignity and freedom as foundational principles on the understanding that discrimination is indivisible. South Africa became the first and remains the only country in Africa to constitutionally guarantee protection against discrimination based on sexual orientation. That protection was never intended as a privilege for a minority but as an affirmation that democracy must extend to every person, regardless of who they are or whom they love. Staging a continental mobilisation against these values in South Africa mounts a direct ideological challenge to the Constitution itself.

This conference is part of a much broader political project that has expanded steadily across Africa over the past decade. Under banners proclaiming family values, family sovereignty and resistance to so-called gender ideology, conservative evangelical networks have built sophisticated alliances linking religious organisations, politicians, legal activists and international donors. Previous Pan-African conferences have focused not only on opposing LGBTQ+ equality but also on restricting abortion rights, undermining comprehensive sexuality education and advancing a proposed African Charter on Family Sovereignty and Values that would narrow the definition of family while rolling back protections relating to gender, sexuality, reproductive health and freedom of expression.

One of the greatest ironies of this movement lies in its repeated invocation of African authenticity. Proponents routinely present themselves as defenders of indigenous African values against supposedly foreign liberal ideas. Yet extensive reporting has documented the significant involvement of well-funded conservative evangelical organisations and activists from the United States and Europe in promoting these campaigns, providing ideological support, strategic coordination and resources. The language may be wrapped in Pan-African symbolism, but many of the political strategies, narratives and institutional networks originate outside the continent.

This contradiction raises uncomfortable but necessary questions about contemporary Pan-Africanism itself. Historically, Pan-Africanism emerged as a liberatory vision committed to collective emancipation from colonial domination, racial oppression and economic exploitation. It imagined an Africa grounded in dignity, solidarity and freedom. Yet alongside these emancipatory traditions has always existed another tendency that equates African identity with rigid patriarchal norms, compulsory heterosexuality and narrowly defined gender roles. Too often, contemporary Pan-African discourse remains susceptible to alliances that define African unity not through expanding freedom but through identifying common enemies: women asserting bodily autonomy, queer people demanding equality, or activists challenging patriarchal authority.

A Pan-Africanism that excludes queer Africans, marginalises women and denies gender diversity betrays its own liberatory promise. It cannot credibly invoke freedom from colonial domination while reproducing systems of exclusion and hierarchy within African societies themselves.

Equally troubling is the attempt to monopolise the concept of family. Families across Africa have never existed in one singular form. They include extended households, single parents, grandparents raising children, blended families, adoptive families and families that include LGBTQ+ members. Reducing this rich diversity to one exclusive model is not a defence of African culture. It is an exercise in political exclusion.

By contrast, South Africa’s Constitution robustly protects freedom of religion, belief and conscience alongside equality and dignity. Religious communities are entirely entitled to hold and express their theological convictions. What they are not entitled to do is seek to strip constitutional protections from others or mobilise political campaigns that legitimise discrimination under the guise of religious liberty. Constitutional democracy depends on balancing freedoms rather than allowing one right to extinguish another.

History repeatedly teaches that attacks on minorities are rarely isolated events. They often serve as testing grounds for broader assaults on democratic institutions and human rights. Once constitutional rights become negotiable for one group, the rights of all grow increasingly vulnerable.

Across the continent there are theologians, faith leaders, feminists, constitutional scholars, human rights defenders and countless ordinary citizens who reject the false choice between being African and respecting the dignity of LGBTQ+ people. Their voices have not been invited to the Cape Town stage. Whether they make themselves heard before May 2027 is the question South Africa’s civil society, legal institutions, universities and labour movements now face.