Cyril Ramaphosa has spent his first week as president launching a charm offensive that many have found hard to resist. He’s impressed everyone from joggers to ooms, and now he looks set to be a huge hit with the LGBT community.

As shared by Pink News, South Africa actually became the first African country to legalise gay marriage in 2006. However, attitudes towards homosexuality in Mzansi aren’t universally welcoming. That section of society also includes our former president, Jacob Zuma.

What has Cyril Ramaphosa said about LGBT rights?

Well, he only went and wrote them into our actual constitution, didn’t he? As chairperson of the country’s Constitutional Assembly in the 1990s, he had a huge say on what would be enshrined into law. Our constitution was the first to openly protect the rights of the LGBT community. It reads:

“The state may not unfairly discriminate directly or indirectly against anyone on one or more grounds, including race, gender, sex, pregnancy, marital status, ethnic or social origin, colour, sexual orientation, age, disability, religion, conscience, belief, culture, language and birth.”

Ramaphosa also served as the chair of the South African National AIDS Council and oversaw their revolutionary outreach programme that worked with homosexual AIDS patients. The president’s track record doesn’t stop there, either. Read more via the South African