Pushing for LGBT Equality in Zimbabwe

by Michael Jones · 2009-08-10 04:59:00 UTC
Topics:

Zimbabwe

Zimbabwe has hardly been a beacon of hope for human rights activists over the past few decades, as their current President, Robert Mugabe, has allowed the country to spiral into a cycle of poverty and decay unlike many other places in the world.  But Zimbabwe is getting ready to rewrite its constitution, and social justice advocates are pushing hard to enshrine equal rights for Zimbabwe's LGBT population into it. And it's a step that couldn't come too soon, given the brutality and "hysterical homophobia" that has been unleashed under the Mugabe regime.

To be sure, Mugabe has called homosexuality a western import to his country, and has presided over state laws that have criminalized homosexuality in the country.  Mugabe's opponents, however - the Movement for Democratic Change - are much more supportive of LGBT rights.  It's unclear just how that support will translate into the new Constitution writing process, but one thing is clear: LGBT activists have hope.

That's the message that members of the organization Gays and Lesbians of Zimbabwe (GLAZ) are sticking to, telling the Guardian newspaper that they feel they have a 50:50 chance of getting LGBT rights enshrined into the Constitution. "We live in hope," one of their members said.

HIV/AIDS activists in the country are also calling for homosexuality to be criminalized, which they see as an effort to help combat a disease that has ravished the country.  More than 140,000 people died of HIV/AIDS in Zimbabwe in 2007, and there's a more than 15% rate of HIV/AIDS in adults. Criminalizing homosexuality only adds fuel to the fire of those kinds of statistics.

So now it's wait and see.  But during a weekend that saw marches for marriage equality in Dublin, between 25,000-75,000 Israelis come out to condemn anti-LGBT violence, hundreds of people in Poland turning up to protest an LGBT hate crime, and now activists working hard for LGBT equality in Zimbabwe, it's safe to say that this was quite the weekend in international LGBT rights.  Here's forecasting that the "hope" with which some members of Zimbabwe's LGBT community are living bears fruit, and the country takes a dramatic step forward (both for its own history, but also for Africa's) in the struggle for equal rights.

Michael Jones is a Change.org Editor. He has worked in the field of human rights communications for a decade, most recently for Harvard Law School.
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