Constitution Hill

Constitution Hill is where South Africa keeps its conscience. The Old Fort prison complex — which held Gandhi, Mandela, and generations of the apartheid state's victims — was transformed in 2004 into the seat of the Constitutional Court, built literally from the prison's bricks. Its place in queer history is singular: Section 9(3) of the 1996 Constitution made South Africa the first country in the world to constitutionally prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. From that clause flowed the court rulings that decriminalised, equalised, and in 2006 delivered marriage equality — the first in Africa, years before most of Europe. The court that did it sits here, its hearings open to anyone. Visiting: the precinct runs daily exhibitions and guided tours (roughly 9am-5pm; one-hour highlights and two-hour full tours at 10am and 1pm) through the Old Fort, Number Four and the Women's Jail, ending at the court itself. Pair it with the GALA Queer Archive at nearby Wits to complete Johannesburg's queer-history core.