Becoming Him

Landa Mabenge was born in 1981. He comes into this world trapped in a girl’s body, and is christened Yolanda, after the American gospel singer. At just two days old, Yolanda’s biological mother rejects her ‘daughter’ and hands the infant to her sister, who immediately becomes ‘Ma’. From an early age Yolanda is aware that she does not fit into her body. Why does she not have a penis like her boy cousins? Why does she have to wear dresses when all she wants is to wear trousers and shorts like all the other boys? Why does she feel excited when she is close to her girl cousin? Despite her feelings of disjuncture, she spends the next decade happily growing up. At age 11 Yolanda’s world is shattered when she discovers that her beloved ‘Ma’ is not her biological mother. The following year she is taken by Ma to permanently live with her parents. Life with them soon morphs into a Dickensian nightmare. Uprooted from a stable and loving home, where she was accepted for who she was, she is now subjected to horrific physical, emotional and psychological abuse. When she gets her period a few months later, terrified that she might be dying or that her body is preparing itself to grow a penis, she hides the evidence from her new mother for days. On discovering her daughter’s secret, the mother’s disgust drives Yolanda further into a world of isolation and shame. In her final year of school, with sterling grades, she is accepted to university to study law. Now in Cape Town, Yolanda ditches her girl clothes and name and begins a new life as Landa, a butch lesbian. But the harassment from her mother continues by way of phone calls accusing her of being a whore, of sleeping around and of having AIDS. Landa begins isolating herself and drinking heavily. She starts attending sessions through the university counselling services. By the end of the year she suffers a total breakdown. Plagued by her years of abuse and the curse of being in the wrong body, she attempts to take her life by slitting her wrists. She is sent to rehab for intensive therapy and then back to Ma, to recover. She is finally disowned by her biological mother, which paves the way for Yolanda to shift out of the identity that has held her hostage and now embrace becoming Landa. She has become he. The next few years see Landa undertake a mammoth mission to transition. In 2009 he enrolls as a patient at the Groote Schuur Transgender Clinic and is approved for hormone replacement therapy in the form of testosterone injections. A year later, Landa applies to Home Affairs to legally change his name from Yolanda to Landa and, a few months later, successfully changes his gender in the Births and Deaths Register, from female to male. The next stage of Landa’s journey involves applying to his medical aid to fund his prohibitively exorbitant ‘gender affirming’ surgeries. In 2014 Landa finally finds a medical scheme that agrees to pay for his surgeries: a double mastectomy and a laparoscopic hysterectomy. Landa makes history by becoming the first transgender man in South Africa to successfully force a medical aid to pay for his surgeries. In 2016, Landa registered a social enterprise; Landa Mabenge Consulting, and now works to create access to education and awareness as well as linkages to care for transgender students. He was asked to be part of a symposium in 2017 to look at amending the basic education curriculum to include gender identity and sexual orientation in schools. Landa also regularly engages with the Transgender Clinic in trying to develop tools and strategies to extend awareness. It is this work that saw him selected as part of 1000 young African leaders for the 2017 Mandela Washington Fellowship for Young African leaders.