The Standard Harare, Zimbabwe Sunday 14 September 2003

Zimbabwe gays soldier on

By Lee Berthiaume

AS 24-year-old Douglas reclines in  his chair, he looks and acts like any young Zimbabwean student.

Yet as he talks about being gay, one can sense his relief at being able to be himself instead of the person his family and community expects.

"You are not yourself," he said about  having to hide his sexuality. He's even afraid of using his full name for fear someone will discover his secret.

While it is not illegal to be homosexual  under Zimbabwean law, homosexual acts are  forbidden. This has created a sort of underground culture that isn't spoken about in public.

But that culture is starting to poke its head out of the closet.

According to Douglas and others, the real threat isn't the law or the government but the traditional culture many Zimbabweans - especially those in the townships and rural areas - still adhere to.

"It's quite dangerous," Douglas said. "You have to be very careful."

Douglas says landlords have evicted him and he has sustained verbal abuse because of his sexuality.

The hardest thing for him though came last year when Douglas's partner was forced by his family to get married. Douglas said his partner's wife thinks the two men are just good friends.

"When he has to choose between spending time with his wife or me, he usually neglects his wife," Douglas said. "Sometimes I feel guilty about it."

In his family, only his youngest sister knows about his sexual orientation and even she won't talk about it. But he knows his family will start asking questions soon.

"A time will come when I am forced into a marriage," said Douglas.

"It's not safe at all," agrees 22-year-old Tendai. "My partner, she went through hell. People sometimes yelled at her and people threw stones at her."

Last October Tendai had to introduce her aunt to a male friend who posed as her boyfriend.

"It was awful. I didn't like it at all. They say dogs and pigs are better than gay people," Tendai said. "That makes me angry. We are all human beings."

In the 1970s and 1980s the homosexual movement in Harare consisted of a party scene that was a very close-knit community of gay white men.

The party scene slowly changed to one of  political awareness and in the late 1980s, the Gays and Lesbians Association of Zimbabwe (GALZ) - the Harare-based organisation that promotes homosexual rights - was formed with the purpose of fighting for gay and lesbian rights.

However, the issue only jumped into the limelight in 1995 when President Robert Mugabe described homosexuals as being worse than "pigs and dogs".

This speech kick-started a campaign aimed at associating homosexuals with British colonialism and white Western influences.

"It was frightening," said one former activist who didn't want to be named for fear of repercussions to his business.

Over the next few years, many gays and lesbians were dragged in front of the courts on charges of sodomy and "unnatural sexual acts." Extortion and blackmail of homosexuals were rampant. But gays and lesbians fought back with help from human rights groups.

"That was the definitive beginning to the human rights movement (in Zimbabwe)," said the activist. "People were thinking: 'If these people everybody hates can stand up, maybe there is hope for us.'"

There have also been a number of high profile cases of homosexuality that have come before the public in recent years.

In 1996, at the height of the government's anti-gay campaign, Canaan Banana - Zimbabwe's first president - was found guilty of 11 charges of sodomy, attempted sodomy and indecent assault and sentenced in 1998.

He fled to South Africa but returned later that year and was sentenced to 10 years in jail. He served two years in prison and was released in January 2001.

Then in April last year, gay issues made news again after ZBC chief executive officer Alum Mpofu was investigated for allegedly displaying homosexual behaviour at a Harare night club. He resigned rather than face a hearing.

According to Keith Goddard, director of GALZ, the gay and lesbian issue appears to have been put on the government's backburner as the struggles to address the country's other problems and awareness has been steadily increasing throughout the country.

Yet many Zimbabweans are still afraid of being caught by either the police or their families.

Yet still, even with these ongoing challenges, GALZ's membership has ballooned to about 600 registered members and the group is in contact with close to 5 000 other homosexuals in the country.

The organization owns its Milton Park centre where it offers counseling, health services and social functions for people to feel at home.

In addition, a website titled GayZim has been in place since 1999, offering legal advice, health tips and providing a classified service for members to meet. According to its organiser, there are several hundred people on its mailing list.

According to Goddard, the biggest sign of progress for gay and lesbian rights has been the  ever-increasing number of black people contacting GALZ, many of them from the townships and rural areas where traditional culture is a threat to gays and lesbians.

While the majority of GayZim's and GALZ's members are between 20 and 35 years old, neither organisation boasts a prominent businessman or politician in their ranks.

Goddard said people in prominent positions often have more to lose from coming out of the closet. Despite this, the GALZ director said he is aware of more than one gay person who is prominent.

Goddard feels the government's stance on gays and lesbians is simply for the purposes of having a scapegoat.

"It's just been political rhetoric," he said. "We feel Zanu-PF as a bloc is pretty anti-gay."

But he feels many individuals in both the ruling party and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change are sympathetic to their cause.

Douglas agrees, saying that if the government felt strongly about gay and lesbian issues, they would have taken a more pro-active stance.

"They talk, talk, talk but they don't act," said Douglas, adding that life was now better for gays and lesbians from a few years ago but more work needs to be done.

"You might have a law that says you can sleep with whoever you want, but people need to talk about it and talk about it."

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