On a sunny afternoon in early June, Daniel Digashu, Johann Potgieter and their son, Lucas, are preparing to welcome friends to their farm in the north of Namibia. Cold drinks and homemade biltong fill the fridge. The couple have spent days gearing up to celebrate not just Potgieter’s birthday but also a lifechanging victory in a six-year fight to keep their family together.
Two weeks before, on 16 May, Namibia’s supreme court issued a ruling recognising same-sex marriages contracted abroad between Namibian citizens and foreign spouses. South African Digashu and Namibian Potgieter, who wed in South Africa in 2015, were the litigants, along with a German-Namibian couple, Anita and Anette Seiler-Lilles. The verdict finally afforded Digashu and Seiler-Lilles the same rights to a spousal visa as heterosexual couples.
