User:Imjoesir

C. Anzio Jacobs was born in Addington Hospital in Durban, South Africa 1990. Jacobs' family relocated to Cape Town in 1992.

Jacobs spent their ealy childhood in Cape Town and grew upin Woodstock. Their mother married in 2001 and they relocated to Pretoria.Jacobs finished their primary school career in Pretoria and went on to finish high school there too where they became the editor of the school newspaper. Towards the end of their schooling career they came out and began engaging other students on issues related to sexual orientation.

In 2009 Jacobs relocated to Johannesburg to pursue an LLB at The University of the Witwatersrand (Wits). The began volunteering at the Gay and Lesbian Memory in Action (GALA) and quickly became involved in student politics. By 2010 Jacobs had become the national convenor of the Kaleidoscope Youth Network (Kaleidoscope), a national body of LGBTI student organisations accross the country, Jacobs also sat on the founding committee of Wits Pride - the first institutionally supported set of Pride events. In 2011, Jacobs joined the Joint Working Group (JWG) on behalf of Kaleidoscope and advocated for a youth agenda.Jacobs recieved a financial exclusion in 2011 which barred them from completing their LLB. In 2012 Jacobs was invited to join the Transformation and Employment Equity Office (TEEO) at Wits despite the financial exclusion. While at TEEO and still volunteering for GALA Jacobs met Dr Mary Kelly from San Diego State University (SDSU) and together they worked to institutionalise the Safe Zones @ Wits project.By the end of that year Jacobs left the country to teach abroad and was offered and internship at SDSU. While there they joined a Master's class in psychology and feminism which reinvigorated their passion for the academy.

Upon return to South Africa in 2015 Jacobs started a new degree in Anthropology, towards the end of that year they joined nation wide student protests under the banner of #FeesMustFall. Having engaged in critical decolonial thinking with the Department of African Literature and compelled by their own financial exclusion, Jacobs soon became involved in the leadership structure of the student movement.

In 2016 Jacobs engaged with student leadership and management in negotiations to end the protests which had brought the academic program to a halt twice already. Jacobs went on to conduct research on the experiences of womxn and queer bodies around the country who were involved in protests but seldom recognised for their involvement. They were harassed by police and the university which sought to end student protests.

By 2017, in their final year of study Jacobs contributed to a book titled Rioting and Writing - Diaries of Wits Fallists. Their chapter - The Outcasts: No Retreat, No Surrender! - reflected on the intersectionality of the movement in relation to it's participants. At the end of that year Jacobs completed a Bachelor of Arts in Anthropology with minors in African Literature and Media Studies.

They founded Scope, and organisation interested in facilitation, training and education for socioeconomic development in rural and peri-urban areas for LGBTIQA+ and gender non-conforming persons. Scope became GALA's sister organisation in 2018 and Jacobs enrolled for Honours in Critical Diversity Studies at the Wits Centre for Critical Diversity Studies (WiCDS).