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New Blow for
Gay Rights in Zimbabwe
15 August 2006-
Zimbabwe- When Tracy Mhara, a 32-year-old lesbian from Harare, travels
the 150 kilometres to visit her family's rural home she goes accompanied
by a married male friend whom she introduces as her husband-to-be.
When they ask why he has not paid the customary lobola, a set amount
paid by a prospective husband to the bride's family, of a dozen or more
cows, he smiles and pleads poverty.
Constantly urged by her grandparents to start a family, Mhara is now
seeking a friend who is willing to father a baby so that she can fulfil
a revered custom of the Shona people that the first-born in any family
produces a child.
"My grandparents have been pestering me for a grandchild," said Mhara,
whose round face and broad smile give her a deceptively cheerful
appearance. "I will do it just to hush them up and cover my tracks."
Paul, a 34-year-old Bulawayo teacher, has married twice and has a
six-year-old daughter. Paul said he was forced to marry by his parents,
and that both his wives left after discovering that their marriages were
just fronts. He attends church regularly "to pray for his sin" but is
unable to abandon his lifestyle. He said he was "born gay" and feels
"insulted by people who think this is a prank".
Being openly homosexual in this southern African country is considered
such a disgrace that coming out entails maintaining a delicate balancing
act between modern freedoms and the age-old traditions of the majority
Shona-speaking people.
Gays in Harare's closely-knit community who spoke to IWPR said they
preferred to stay underground because of growing official hostility and
ordinary people's intolerance towards them.
Chesterfield Samba, 33, told IWPR he has been in love with another man
for ten years. "What I want to say is that it is possible to be black,
gay and Zimbabwean," he said. "People should stop equating us with
Satanists. We are discriminated against and live in fear of being
victimised."
President Robert Mugabe has described homosexuals as "worse than dogs
and pigs". That statement, reported around the world, was made a decade
ago but it still reverberates in the country.
Mugabe charges that homosexuality is unnatural and "un-African", saying
it is an alien culture practised only by "a few whites" in his country.
When he wants to attack his favourite foreign political target, British
prime minister Tony Blair, he refers to "Blair's gay cabinet".
Until recently, homosexuality was not illegal in Zimbabwe, although the
statutes outlawed sodomy. However, a new law that came into force in
August makes "physical contact between males that would be regarded by a
reasonable person as an indecent act" a criminal offence.
In a terse response to the new law, Keith Goddard, programme manager for
the group Gays and Lesbians in Zimbabwe, GALZ, said, "Lesbians and gays
are there and have a right to their sexual preference. Sexual preference
is a human right."
Geoff Feltoe, a professor of law at the University of Zimbabwe, said the
amendments represented a hardening of attitudes towards same
sex-relationships. "A seemingly intimate embrace or hug between two men
would presumably be construed as a crime now," said Feltoe. "It would
seem the impetus for such legal transformation was the sensational
sodomy trial of the late Banana."
Zimbabwe's first post-independence president, the Reverend Canaan
Sodindo Banana, died a publicly disgraced figure after a high-profile
sodomy conviction. Testimonies during his 17-day trial revealed him as a
closet homosexual who abused male subordinates while in State House.
Banana, a Methodist minister and a father of four, denied the charges.
But a string of state witnesses testified that he used everything from
drugged soft drinks to the chance of career advancement to secure sexual
favours.
He was jailed and died in November 2003.
So angry was Mugabe with Banana's homosexual trysts that he did not
forgive him even in death, refusing permission for his body to be
interred at the national shrine where Zimbabwe's "national heroes" are
laid to rest.
Even with the satisfaction that comes with standing up to Mugabe, being
openly ngochani (gay) in conservative Zimbabwe means being increasingly
lonely, ashamed and riddled with self-doubt.
"Mugabe has successfully created the impression that gays are enemies of
society," said Reverend Levee Kadenge, a school chaplain who preaches
tolerance toward homosexuals. "I am not saying that homosexuality is
acceptable in Shona culture, but there have been ways of accommodating
it. In our culture, when people do something that isn't the norm, we say
the spirits are making them do that, and we accept there must be a
purpose."
In some communities, said Kadenge, there is even a belief that having
sex with another man, particularly a young one, can bring good fortune
to the older of the two.
"By doing such an extraordinary thing, you get power from it," said
Kadenge. "But the power remains only if you keep it under seal. If you
talk about it or show other people, the strength goes. That is our
tradition."
Mugabe agrees that homosexuality is best dealt with quietly, but he
rejects any suggestion that it is homegrown, insisting that gays and
lesbians are remnants of colonialism.
His crusade, capped by the latest legislation, has generated a climate
of fear in which gays feel more threatened than ever.
The country's small number of outspoken gays and lesbians - there are
fewer than 200 fee-paying members of GALZ in a country of 11.5 million
people - say the new law will harden public attitudes and make
homosexuals' lives "hellish". A recent fundraising event for GALZ was
cancelled after an organiser was beaten up at a nightclub where it was
to be held. Tim Francis, not his real name, who was there when his
colleague was attacked, said police refused even to take a statement
once they realised the victim was gay.
"Something that would have happened 30 or 35 years ago in America is
happening now in Zimbabwe," said Frankis, 32, who aspires to eventually
be Zimbabwe's first openly gay member of parliament. "We are very much
in the Dark Ages here."
Except in neighbouring South Africa, where homosexuals of every creed
and colour are visible, well-organised and entitled to equal rights
under the liberal state constitution, there is little precedent in
Africa for those trying to promote gay activism in Zimbabwe. In 1999
when the government attempted to write a new constitution, GALZ pushed
for the inclusion of a sexual orientation clause, which was refused. The
draft constitution was itself rejected in a referendum, albeit for a
host of different reasons than that of homosexual rights.
Goddard told IWPR that since the Nineties, GALZ’s priority has been
preventing the spread of HIV/AIDS amongst gays - this despite fears that
a close association with AIDS awareness efforts would cause the disease
to be perceived as a "gay plague". The group stepped into the fray
because it was concerned that information about preventing HIV
transmission appeared to be aimed at heterosexuals in a country where a
quarter of the population is infected with HIV.
"The gay and lesbian issue is completely ignored," said Goddard.
However, he said the association was pleasantly surprised when it
received a small sum of taxpayers' money from the government-run
National Aids Council recently. "An audit found that we were one of the
organisations which put the money to good use," said Goddard.
At present, GALZ is one of the few lobby groups in Zimbabwe that has a
treatment plan up and running for people with full-blown AIDS. "Our
members can die in traffic accidents or from any other cause, but we
don't want them to die of AIDS," said GALZ health manager Martha
Thodlanah.
Before the end of the year, the association intends to have all its
registered members taking an HIV test. It will also distribute posters
warning people about the ways in which gays are vulnerable to AIDS.
Taking its agenda a step further, GALZ has also applied to present a
paper at the national AIDS conference later this year.
Police harassment has driven one of GALZ's founders, Kudah Samuriwo, out
of the country. He has become a drag performer on the London theatre
circuit with his show "The Queen of Africa". One of his favourite jokes
goes, "I don't know what Mugabe has against pigs and dogs. He must have
had the worst sex ever with them."
In a recent BBC interview, Kudah said his uncle, a soldier, raped him in
the early Seventies at the age of 14 the night after his relative had
returned from Mugabe's military crackdown on the minority Ndebele people
of western and southern Zimbabwe. His show charts his personal story,
including Mugabe's oppression of the gay community, with homosexuals
repeatedly bribed, detained, beaten and sometimes raped by the
authorities.
Kudah intends to take his show back home to Zimbabwe one day as part of
a new liberation struggle. "After all, a Queen must protect her
subjects, even if the president refuses to do so,” he said.
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