Ivan Toms: Bold campaigner against bigotry

Ivan Toms, who has died in Cape Town at the age of 54, was just about everything the old apartheid government abhorred: loudly gay, loudly anti- conscription, loudly pro the poor and downtrodden and loudly anti- apartheid.

He was born in Durban on July 11 1953 and went to Durban High School.

Two life-changing things happened to him while putting himself through medical school at the University of Cape Town: he became a committed Christian and he realised that he was gay.

For a long time he tried desperately to make this go away, hoping that prayers and the laying-on of hands would change his sexual orientation.

After being assured by a priest friend that God accepted him as he was, he rushed around telling everybody who cared to know, and many who didn’t, that he was gay, and he became an outspoken champion of gay and lesbian rights. By this time he had a theology degree as well as a medical one and he had hopes of being a lay preacher at his Anglican church. Instead he was pretty much shown the door, told that he could welcome people and hand out hymn books if he must, but nothing more.

He left the church, although his belief in God remained unshakeable.

In 1979 he felt that God was telling him to build a clinic in the sprawling Cape Flats squatter camp known as Crossroads. It was the first and for many years the only clinic serving about 60000 people. He was the only doctor although he quickly built up a team around him, training women as receptionists and nurses.

See  Ivan Toms: Bold campaigner against bigotry
The Times, South Africa -