III. THE HAND OF THE STATE: ABUSE AND DISCRIMINATION BY STATE ACTORS

A. "Fatima's" Story

"Fatima" was sixteen when our researcher spoke to him in late 2000. His real name is Tendai N.; he took a woman's name while wearing women's clothes almost constantly between the ages of thirteen and fifteen. Though he now has reverted to men's dress, most of his friends still call him by his nickname. Born in Zambia, he grew up in Harare, Zimbabwe, after his parents moved there when he was a small child. Fatima says:

I first discovered I was gay when I was nine years old. I was always too feminine for my family, I walked and I danced like a girl when I was a little boy. But my mother realized that I was attracted to men, and she said, I cannot live with a gay in my house. So when I was nine, she threw me out of the house.

We were living in Glen Nora [a high-density suburb of Harare]. So I went out from the house and I caught a lift from Glen Nora to the highway south, and there I just stood on the highway and hitchhiked some trucks. And one truck stopped and asked my problem. I said, my mother threw me out of the house and I said, I need a lift to Beitbridge [the border crossing with South Africa]. So he told me to get in.

We got to Beitbridge and he said, where do you want to go now? And I told him I want to go to Joburg [Johannesburg]. I thought in Joburg I would find a place for myself, you know. So he hid me in the truck and got me across the border without a passport and to Joburg.

In Joburg, for a year and a half, I lived on the street. I had no place to stay. Then when I was ten and a half, I found a job, and I worked in a restaurant for two years, cleaning up the tables because they would hire a child for that. One time I tried to phone my mother; she said, I don't want to see you ever again in my life.

I stayed in Joburg for four years. After a while I lost my job, and then I went back on the street. They caught me because I had no papers, and I was finally deported back to Harare when I was thirteen. I phoned my mother as soon as I arrived, and she said, again, I don't ever want to see you.

Well, then for the first time I became really sad. Because, you know, it felt different to have no home when you were so close to home. So I took fifty anti-malaria tablets. Some friends found me and I was rushed to the hospital and they treated me.

When my mother heard I was in the hospital, she did come to get me, and she took me home. I said to her: "Who will accept my situation if you of all people don't?" And so in a way we came back together.

There is some understanding between us now. But I don't live with her. Now I stay with Tina [Machida, a lesbian activist]; she is helping me. But, you know, I want my mother sometimes, and then I am so sad.¹⁵⁶

The end of October 1999 was a period of high exposure for gays and lesbians in Zimbabwe. On October 25, GALZ representatives were finally permitted to testify before a commission drafting a proposed new constitution: "Sexual preference," one told the audience amid extensive media coverage, "is a human right."

Five days later, on October 30, President Mugabe was in London for what the press later called a "private shopping trip."¹⁵⁷ A group of protesters from the British gay and lesbian group OutRage! surrounded his car. One demonstrator, Peter Tatchell, took the president by the arm and said, "President Mugabe, you are under arrest for torture." Subsequently, Tatchell cited not only Mugabe's incitements to homophobic violence, but murders in Matabeleland in the early 1980s and the torture of two independent journalists, as justification for a citizen's arrest.

When police arrived, Tatchell asked them "to arrest President Mugabe, using the powers in the Criminal Justice Act and the United Nations Convention Against Torture." In the end it was Tatchell who was arrested, and Zimbabwe lodged complaints with the British government. ¹⁵⁸

Mugabe's relationship with Britain, never warm, had deteriorated sharply over British opposition to land seizures. The president made the London incident an international issue. In ensuing weeks, he accused the Blair administration of organizing the protest in an attempt to halt his "land reform" program: "They are even using gangster gays on us," he stated. "And each time I pass through London, you get people milling around, trailing you. [You] see that is the gangster regime of Blair."¹⁵⁹ Zimbabwe's state-controlled press joined in. In the ZANU-PF paper, People's Voice, one commentator wrote:

This incident was no doubt well planned.... It was a stone's throw away from M15 headquarters which means security agents witnessed the whole drama.... To make matters worse the British government has declined to apologize because it says it cannot be held responsible for acts of people who elected it into power.

Zimbabweans have their cultural values and customs. It would be an act of sheer folly for anyone to attempt to dictate to us on matters of our culture and customs, still worse where it concerns homosexuality which is alien to our society. Zimbabwe will never tolerate gays and lesbians, not even under any amount of pressure from some quarters. Zimbabwe, like other nations as well as churches, opposes homosexuality because it is against the concept of family and reproduction. We are at a loss as to why some nations are so fond of gays and lesbians.¹⁶⁰

"How dare spineless British gays lay they [sic] dirty hands on our President!" another columnist exclaimed. "We, the people of Zimbabwe ... abhor gays and lesbians. We loathe them in the deepest sense of the word. Yes, we cannot legalise homosexuality and those who do not agree with us must leave Zimbabwe aboard the next flight from the Harare International Airport! Got it, leave this country and leave now!" ¹⁶¹

Zimbabwe's press reported on the protest the day after it took place.¹⁶² Even more rapid repercussions ran through Zimbabwe's security establishment, however: the Central Intelligence Organization (CIO), responsible for the president's safety, was deeply embarassed. "If it's true that the president was physically assaulted, the security personnel would either be replaced, demoted, or fired for laxity," a CIO source told a Zimbabwean reporter.¹⁶³ Some CIO officers apparently decided to make amends through an immediate, and vengeful, display of dedication.

Fatima tells the story of what happened to him on October 31, the day after the London incident:

It was a Sunday. That Saturday night we had come from the [GALZ] center. We went to a nightclub here in Harare, a few of us together, and then me and my friend Robert, we left at 6 a.m. We slept for three hours, and then we woke up and it was Sunday morning, and we said, let's go out.

We went to a place called the Eight Miles Shopping Center, in Southerton [a suburb of Harare]. We were sitting in a little terrace. It was about 10:30 a.m. I had put a bandanna in my hair, which had a kind of a British flag pattern in it.

One of the men near the terrace, he called me over. "Come here," he said. And then he started saying to me, "You homosexuals, are you British? You want to make this country like your country, a gay country. Our president was beaten up in London, and here you are, demonstrating."

I said, "It is just a bandanna, I didn't know there was a problem." Suddenly there were four people all over us, all plainclothes police. They showed us their I.D.s, they were CIO. They handcuffed me and threw me in a car. They called my friend over, and they said to us, "You gay people, you should be killed."¹⁶⁴

Robert, Fatima's friend, was twenty-one at the time. He remembers:

These men, they all came out of a blue Peugeot 504 sedan. They called Fatima over. He went over to their car and took out his I.D. I went over too, to see what was happening. I approached them and they chased me away. They said, "You are loitering for prostitution."

A friend was near there in his car, the one who had dropped us there at the shopping center. And I went to him to protest. And that made them really angry. They came to the car where I was talking to him, and they grabbed me by the trousers and pulled me to their car. They said I was under arrest because I was talking to a white man.

They put me in the same car with Fatima. They were CIO; they showed their I.D.s. The man who had Fatima said he wanted to kill me. He said they would take me out and dump me somewhere. They asked me how much money I had. I had Z$30 [U.S.$1.50] in my pocket-I was a student, I was looked after by my parents. But the idea was, we were gay, so we must have money, we must be looked after by somebody.



Then a police car came; they called in a car that was attending an accident scene. They put me in that car and took me to Warren Park police station. But before taking me, they beat me first.

They forced me to sit on the ground outside where Fatima was. They beat me for a long time on the ears and on the head, till my ears were bleeding. I went to the doctor next day, and I had a perforated eardrum.

Then the man in the car, a regular policeman, he took me to Warren Park. At the station, the policemen were OK, they said, you can go. They told me, don't hang around with these people any more. I think they were scared because I was bruised so bad. I wasn't charged, and I didn't pay a fine.¹⁶⁵

Fatima remembers:

They beat my friend. They didn't beat me then, but they beat him until he was bleeding. They were slapping his face till he was bleeding from the ears. Other people were around, and were just watching, but I heard some of them saying, "They are beating the homosexuals." Then they stopped another car-the driver was also a policeman-and put Robert in it. They said to the driver, "Take this homosexual and drop him somewhere far from town." I thought that would be it, I thought no one would ever see us again.

Then there was just me left. And they kept me in the car and drove around with me. They would stop from place to place, in a field or a parking lot, and beat me, on the chest and the face. That went on until night, with me handcuffed. Finally the officers took me to a police station called Braeside, near Queensdale. It was night by then, and they handed me over to the policemen there.

They threw me into a cell and took off the handcuffs. There were other prisoners there, six of them. They said, "Here's a homosexual. You can do whatever you want with him. You can have sex with him if you want."

For some reason the prisoners left me alone. I was pretty bruised. I slept there one night. In the morning, the policemen said I would have to pay a fine, Z$100 [U.S.$4], because I was doing prostitution.

I phoned Tina; I was staying with her at the time. She came to pay the fine. They gave me a booklet and said, I must write down everywhere I go, and the CIO would come and check it.¹⁶⁶

Tina Machida remembers:

Fatima was staying with me because he had no place else to go. And the police, they said, what are you doing with this child? What is your relation to him? I said, he has no family he can stay with. But they took this book and said to write down everything he did, keep a record of where he is going. I was frightened, they already have records on me. I had to ask Fatima to move out.¹⁶⁷

Fatima was forced to move into the GALZ center. He says he still flinches in fear whenever he sees policemen or police cars. His friend Robert says, "GALZ told me I should sue. But a friend told me it was an especially bad idea to mess with CIOs. So I tried to forget about it. It's very unsafe here. I am much more careful in straight places now. It's very unsafe to let anyone know you are gay."¹⁶⁸

B. Words Hurt: Stories of Police Abuse

Fatima's story shows how the official language of homophobia, voiced at the highest levels, can translate almost immediately into violence by state authorities on the streets.

It also shows the background of prejudice and hatred in community and family which makes people easy targets of official injustice. Expelled from his home at the age of nine for being "too feminine," Fatima was a vulnerable target for state repression and revenge.

This chapter and the next will examine how sexual or gender non-conformity subjects people throughout southern Africa to violence, repression, and discrimination. Abuse can come from many quarters. This chapter will recount some of the actions of state authorities, enabled by the laws already described. The next will examine how people are subject to violence at the hands of non-state actors in their communities; in public spaces; and in their families and domestic lives.

It is important to remember, however, that-as Fatima's story illustrates-these spheres and stories cannot easily be separated. They combine, intertwine, and reinforce one another, to enforce heterosexual norms and suppress either "deviance" or dissent.

The most common forms of day-to-day harassment are simply based on the look or behavior of the victim. Certain kinds of appearance, gesture, dress become no longer casual but criminal, no longer innocent but infused with meaning. In southern Africa, public statements by political leaders decrying "gays" or "lesbians" or "homosexuals" work to make those identities a vivid presence in the public eye. Whatever the terms they use or the specific behaviors they abominate, they help to define and focus attention on-in some cases, to create-a class of people corresponding to the despised name. Regressive language and an often-repressive legal system collude and combine. They make gays and lesbians visible in rhetoric and imagination before they are ever perceptible as a political or social force. They put the public-and the police-on the lookout for telltale signs that will betray a person as belonging to one of those obscure communities.

Those signs vary, depending on the scraps of information or belief police or public have about "homosexuality" or "perversion." They may be public displays of affection between members of the same sex-actions which heterosexuals would take for granted, but which gays or lesbians learn to suppress. They may be articles of clothing or styles of dress. They may be as simple as a way of walking, talking, or moving.

Police in the region rarely consult a lawbook before deciding whom to harass. Yet they can also take their pick of laws to invoke against the offending person. As discussed below, laws criminalizing consensual homosexual sex exist in Botswana, Namibia, Zambia, and Zimbabwe; and police regularly infer private sexual conduct from public gesture or dress. Prohibitions of "public indecency" or prostitution are ready instruments to rid streets or sidewalks of unwanted behaviors.

In Namibia, on April 30, 2001, members of the Special Field Forces (SFF), an elite police unit, moved into Katatura, a Windhoek township, and began rounding up men wearing earrings. They were acting in evident response to weeks of mounting homophobic statements by the president and ruling party. The SFF, indeed, report directly to the president and are not subject to oversight or accountability by any other part of the government.¹⁶⁹ The president had warned homosexuals that "The police are ordered to arrest you." The SFF took him at his word.

Stallon Shimanda was stopped by the SFF at a shopping center and asked, at gunpoint, why he was wearing earrings. Shimanda told the Namibian newspaper:

I pleaded with these SFF guys that I bought the earrings and they were not stolen. Even when I asked them to take me to the Police charge office instead of taking my earrings, they did not want to hear anything else other than demand that I remove them and give them the earrings.... They claimed that it was an order from the President to take earrings off any male person. They asked who was I to contradict a Presidential order.

One of the SFF members, Victoria Pinias, told a reporter for the Namibian, "Where did you see men wearing earrings in our Oshiwambo culture? These things never happened before Independence. Why are they only happening now after Independence?... We will order any men to take their earrings off or will use force to rip them from your ear if you don't want to comply."¹⁷⁰

"These are the people we fear," explains Ian Swartz, director of The Rainbow Project (TRP). Since TRP's founding in 1997, it has received numerous reports of SFF personnel harassing people on the streets. "They swagger around with machine guns-they harass and abuse people-activists, political opponents, gays, etc."¹⁷¹

Phil ya Nangoloh, of the National Society for Human Rights, says,"There is no legal justification for the SFF. They are not part of the police. They are not part of the army. Yet there are more SFF forces than police, more than four thousand. They are deployed throughout the country but they have no training in how to handle civil matters. They answer only to Nujoma and what the president says is regarded as the law."¹⁷²

The perception that no one can or will hold the SFF accountable for abuse leaves victims reluctant to come forward with their stories. For example, five gay men who were beaten on the street of a rural town in northern Namibia by a group of SFF officers in 2001 called TRP for assistance. They explained that they could not report the beatings to the police, nor could they go to their homes, because they would never be able to adequately explain their physical injuries to their families. In desperation, they fled to Zambia, then finally returned home to Namibia. In addition to TRP, the men called the Legal Action Center and Behind the Mask, a South African resource center for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people across the continent. However, in the end, they decided not to come forward publicly, because they feared retaliation by the SFF, as well as rejection by their families and communities.¹⁷³

Simone, an eighteen-year-old lesbian who lives in Windhoek, described her fear of the SFF. "I used to feel safe on the streets, but after the President said to deport us, now I am afraid, I'm scared of the SFF-it's their job to collect us and deport us."¹⁷⁴ She also reported that some verbal harassment on the streets now takes the form of people saying, "Call the SFF, we've got a moffie here."¹⁷⁵ Another Namibian lesbian told us in 2001, "Everyone is afraid after the President's remarks: afraid to walk alone, to go into government buildings, afraid when you see the police or a soldier. I realized that people are serious about not wanting lesbians and gays in Namibia."¹⁷⁶ Although many of the lesbians and gay men interviewed for this report said they felt safer in Windhoek than in any other part of the country, several explained that they stay home after dark. "The SFF attack at night-I just won't go out after dark."¹⁷⁷

Swartz notes, though, that it is not just the SFF who abuse suspected homosexuals. He took a report from two women who are lesbians in the northern town of Ondangwa. One evening they went to a shebeen (township pub) with five gay men. The owner of the shebeen called the police to report their presence. They were taken to a holding cell and beaten by the police. Before they were released from police custody, they were told that they had to change or leave because they "were not welcome here." ¹⁷⁸

In Namibia, "If you are educated and financially independent, the police and SFF won't harass you," Ian Swartz explained. "But if you are poor, black and of course if you are a sex worker, they will harass you and beat you and no one will care." In Windhoek, Swartz says, transvestite sex workers report steady abuse by government authorities.

Norman Tjombe of the Legal Action Center confirmed Swartz's account. LAC has received numerous reports of police harassment, especially of gay, lesbian, or transgender people who are involved in sex work. "The police harass them, then beat them with sjamboks [rubber batons]," Tjombe explained. He says that persecution of sexual or gender non-conformity is not a written policy, but "when it is promoted by someone as high as the president or minister in charge of law enforcement, it becomes the de facto government policy."¹⁷⁹

Two stories from Zimbabwe and Zambia also indicate how which police there may punish signs of affection between men. In Zimbabwe, Andrew K. recounts how, in 1999,

I went to a party in Waterfalls [a suburb of Harare], and I was detained there with a friend after the party. We went out in the street while the party was going on. It was after dark. Probably we were touching each other, holding hands, not more. Then the police came, two or three of them on foot. It was a gay party, so I wonder whether they were waiting for someone to leave it doing what we did.

They handcuffed us and took us to the station, Waterfalls Police Station. They said it was because we were holding each other's hands and being homosexuals. It was because we were touching each other romantically, I think, like heterosexual lovers; they couldn't stand that. My friend was taller that I was, so they said to me, "You are the woman." They wanted me to undress and show I was a man, but I refused.

We spent just one night at the station; in the morning I had to phone a friend to come and fetch us. He paid money for the fine, I don't remember how much. They didn't give me a paper so I don't know what the fine is for. It affected me very much. It made me want to leave the country.¹⁸⁰

In Zambia, Aubrey M. reports:

In April 2000, I left a disco in Lusaka with someone. Of course it wasn't a gay disco, but I suspected this man was gay, and I was right. We drove for awhile in the man's car and we ended up at about 4 a.m. in the Northmead area [a Lusaka suburb], parking on a quiet road under some trees. We started kissing.

A police car pulled up. And one paramilitary policeman comes rapping on the window. He wanted to know what two men were doing there together, in the car. He wanted to know if "something" was going on. You could see that he was really suspicious, and really curious at the same time.

We were really scared. I thought fast: I told him we had been in the car with a [female] prostitute, and she had just left. He looked almost relieved that there was a way out.

Nonetheless, the sight of two men alone in a car alarmed him. He insisted on taking us to the police station, getting our names and seeing our I.D.s. At the station he told people he "almost" had a case of some homosexuals. We had to pay a bribe of 20,000 kwacha [ca. U.S.$10] to get him to let us go. ¹⁸¹

Even a hairstyle can initiate harassment. Francis Chisambisha remembers another incident in Zambia, several months after the furor over his coming-out had receded. Early one evening, Chisambisha was chatting with two gay friends on a streetcorner in the Ramwala area of Lusaka, when four policewoman confronted them. "They said, `We've been watching you, you've been standing here for some time. Let's go to the police station.'"

The three were taken to the police station at the Intercity Bus Terminal. Chisambisha is sure the officers did not recognize him. "If they had it would have been bad for us. One friend even had a copy of the LEGATRA constitution in his bag; he managed to throw it out along the way." At the station, though, police told his friend, who had long braided hair: "You're the people we have been looking for. You want to behave like women. Look at your hair! We will lock you up and you'll appear in court.'" The three were interrogated separately for over three hours, and freed only after paying a bribe of 8000 kwacha [ca. U.S.$5].¹⁸²

Francis Chisambisha, whose coming-out in the press provoked months of controversy in Zambia, recounts how his public identity exposed him to harassment. Chisambisha remained in the country for over a year after the collapse of LEGATRA and the end of the furor, staying with friends and relatives in the Kabwata district of Lusaka. He says, "For a long time I did not have so many problems. My picture had been in the paper, but it made me look bigger and taller than I am." A strange incident happened in the autumn of 1999:

I was approached by one of the ministers, the deputy minister of home affairs [Edwin Hatembo]. He came to me through two other friends of mine, who knew him a little. They all came to me together, we met in a bar in Woodlands. The minister said, "You have challenged the president, are you really gay, did you come out of your own consent? Don't you know you have challenged the president?" He said they could give me immunity if I went on national T.V. to confess that I am not gay, that some people who were challenging the president had used me. He said they could take me anywhere in the world, they could get me back into school.¹⁸³

Chisambisha refused. He managed to attend an international gay and lesbian conference in South Africa in the autumn of 1999; when he returned home, his situation changed.

Strange people began visiting me. One of them told me he was a police officer; he said, "I want you to be my friend; tell me about this conference." He visited me a lot. Sometimes he would leave a message with the cousin I was staying with, to come meet him in a pub. Or he would just wander in after work, sometimes in civilian clothes.

I was about to go for the night in November of 1999. It was three days before [former president] Kaunda's son was shot [on November 4]. Suddenly, six police officers surrounded me and said, "Where are you going?" They were from a branch of the National Service Squad, an anti-crime unit. They took me back to the house. They were very flirtatious with me in the car, rubbing against me as if they were tempting me for a reason. The people I was staying with came out and the police told them, "There is no reason for him to be out. Keep him in or we will arrest him."¹⁸⁴

Some months later, feeling "watched," Chisambisha fled Zambia and sought political asylum in South Africa.

Non-conforming gender identity or expression is particularly likely to become a magnet for abuse. "Sexy" is the nickname of a thirty-one-year-old gay man in Gaborone, Botswana. He remembers what happened to friends of his in the city in 2001:

These two friends of mine, they were staying at my house. They wanted to go to this club that allows every person-they don't discriminate. So they put on those wraps, those sarongs, put on some high heels and some makeup and went to that club. When they got there, they had fun with some friends, people were just happy seeing them in that way.

But after that, they went to another club. Immediately when they got there, people saw them and reported them to the police. So the police came and arrested them. There was no charge they could lay to those two guys, so they just used "common nuisance." They were sent home after they were finished with the police and they were fined 50 pula [U.S.$10].¹⁸⁵

Chauta, from Lusaka, Zambia, is twenty years old. At twelve, he realized (he still uses the male pronoun) he was "a woman trapped in a man's body": he felt "out of place with groups of guys, whereas with a group of girls I felt free, felt that I could do what I wanted." He knows of only two other biological men who feel, and dress, the same way. Recently a friend has helped him contact a transgender group in South Africa, and he hopes to visit there someday.

When, at twelve, he told his mother of his discovery, "She was supportive: `You are still my child.'" Since fourteen, he has engaged in a kind of cross-dressing, usually wearing very tight trousers, called "hipsters" in Lusaka, "the kind fashionable women wear. And I wear these women's long body tops, with low-cut chests. And makeup."

"It isn't quite easy in Zambia," Chauta says. "The police say, this kind of thing shouldn't be permitted in Zambia." He remembers many incidents of harassment. A typical one happened only a few weeks before our researcher spoke to him:

I was having a drink in Nchilenge [a town in Luapula province] with my cousin. We didn't know there were cops there. But this guy in the bar started harassing me because he thought I was a woman. To get away from him, I left the bar for a while. As I tried to come back in, I was stopped by two cops. "Why are you dressed like this?" they said. They said they would take me to the police station, for dressing like this.

They held me there for three hours, at the reception. I paid them all the money I had on me to get away; I knew if they put me in the cells I would have trouble with the men there.¹⁸⁶

It is in Zimbabwe, where gays and lesbians have struggled hardest to achieve visibility, that we found the most widespread accounts of police harassment. In part this reflects the existence, and success, of GALZ as a resource to which victims of violence can turn, so that their stories are recorded even if redress is remote. In part, though, it reflects the mixed benefits of visibility itself, leading as it does to a heightened awareness of homosexuality, and a heightened threat.

The following stories from Zimbabwe are examples. They show recurring themes:

· Police attention to-and regulation of-gender norms in behavior and dress: any deviation from "masculine" or "feminine" expectations can become a criminal offence.

· The identification of either gender or sexual non-conformity in public with prostitution-which appears to serve as a catchall category for the unwanted public expression of sexuality.

· The familiarity of gay activists, or even some "known" gays, to the police.

These three combine to put many GALZ members, and others, at regular risk.

1. Tina's story

Chipo (Tina) Machida is a prominent lesbian activist who has been organizing black lesbians, both within and outside GALZ, for nearly a decade.

On February 14, 1998, she remembers, a group of about twenty GALZ activists, both men and women, had gathered at one member's home in the afternoon, for a Valentine's Day party. Three policemen knocked on the door: "They said, `You are making a lot of noise, is this a shebeen?' And they took down names, and then they took most of the beer away."¹⁸⁷ The group then went to a popular nightclub, Sandro's, in downtown Harare.

At about midnight, according to Machida, six or seven of the group decided to go home. Outside the club, while they were getting into a car owned by one of them, "three cops in uniform and three in plainclothes came up. The plainclothes pulled us out of the car. We thought they were robbers-but they handcuffed us." Machida recognized one of the uniformed police as having interrupted the private party earlier. "He had followed us to the nightclub to carry on harassing us."

Two members of the group, Tina and Wallace M., were arrested. "We were on the executive committee of GALZ at the time, and that may be why they picked us out." The officers refused to give a reason for the arrests, or to reveal their own names or numbers. Only after the two were taken to Harare Central were they told, according to Machida, that they had been arrested for "public indecency."¹⁸⁸ Machida says,

At the police station, we told them, "Why don't you just write what you are arresting us for: for being gay, instead of making up these other stories? All we did was get into a car to go home." The officer who interrogated us was waving a gun. He called us names: He kept asking both of us, "Are you a man? Are you?" He said, "Our president doesn't like people like you."

Wallace says,

When I was in detention, I was beaten-on the legs, the chest, everywhere except the face. It was a nightmare. You fall into the hands of the police and you realize all your talk about human rights means nothing to them: they can keep you there for as long as they want.¹⁸⁹

At about 4:45 a.m., according to Machida, a high-ranking officer whom others called the "Big Chief" came in. He told the two to pay the fine for public indecency, and go home. "We had phoned Keith [Goddard, the programmes manager of GALZ]," says Machida, "and he said not to agree to pay the fine. But we knew they would lock us up until Monday, and they were threatening to put me in with the men. They told Wallace, you will be the guys' wife today." Each agreed to pay a Z$60 (U.S.$4) fine.

GALZ pressed suit against the Harare commissioner of police for unlawful arrest.¹⁹⁰ The case, however, never reached court. "There was really no guarantee," Machida says, "that if I pursue this, I will have protection":

I'm already a target: I don't want to be cross-examined and have my picture in the newspaper for suing the police. I would never deny I'm a lesbian. But what will be the consequences of standing up to the police that way. I have an eight-month-old baby. What will happen to my baby? They can take it to a children's home if they want.

In January 2000, Machida was arrested again:

It was early evening, I was coming home from shopping with my friend Elena. It was in Longford [a suburb of Harare], the bottle shop had just closed, and we had our beers closed in a paper bag. The police were waiting for us near the shop-three plainclothesmen.

We were arrested and taken to Braeside police station, then to Central Station. They charged us with soliciting for prostitution.

It was such nonsense! They didn't even make a secret that they were doing this because we were lesbians. The officers kept saying: "You think we don't know you, but you are Keith's friend, you work for GALZ." And again one of them whispered to us: "You'd better not stay the night, because we aren't going to put you in the women's cells, but in the men's."

We were frightened. We didn't have a cent between us. I phoned a friend to bring some money to pay the fine-it was Z$100 [U.S.$3]. And they let us go. For us it is difficult to take the matter further. They will keep targeting you.

2. Romeo's story

Romeo Tshuma is a long-time GALZ member, employee, and activist. He recalls:

One night in late 1997 I went to a nightclub with some friends. Or we tried to go. When I was getting out of the car, a plainclothes policeman came up to us and said something to me about "impersonating a woman for the purposes of prostitution." Impersonating a woman? I didn't know what he meant. I was wearing tight jeans and a close-fitting shirt. The policeman didn't bother my friends-they included both gay and non-gay people. All of them walked inside. The policeman only stopped me, showed me his I.D., and said I was guilty. I tried to cry out to my friends: he seized hold of me and said, "You will explain it at Harare Central."

He put me in a car. There were three policemen in the car in addition to him, all in plainclothes. We arrived at the Central Police Station. They didn't take me to the ordinary holding area: they hauled me upstairs to a room. The policeman who took me there said to a sergeant, "Well, is this a man?" And the sergeant said, "Look at you! Are you a woman? Are you gay?" I said, "I am a man and I am gay. There is nothing wrong with that."

They tried to get me to take off my clothes to prove that I was a man. I refused, and they threatened to beat me up. So I dared them to arrest me and open a file. The officer who arrested me was named Makoni; he pushed me around a lot, shoving me; he was a very violent man. But the sergeant in uniform kept asking me questions for four hours: questions like, "Do you get fucked in the ass? Is it painful? What does your family say? Do you know this is not acceptable in this country?"

I was arrested around 11 p.m. Around 4 a.m. they finally let me go, with no charges.¹⁹¹

Tshuma was detained again a year later:

In 1998, a friend from Swaziland came to visit. He was staying with me in the GALZ office. We went out to a Chicken Inn on Speke Avenue to buy takeaway. Two guys started following us on the street: plainclothes police, again.

We ordered food and decided to eat there, so we went upstairs in the restaurant. And the two men followed us. One of them came up to us and said: "Hello, there, I know you." They produced police I.D.s and said: "Let's go to Harare Central for some questions."

I refused. I tried to run away. I barged out of there and went out on the street: I knew I couldn't get away from them for good, but I wanted to call GALZ to let them know I was at the police station, so they would come and pay bail if necessary. After I made the call I came back and my friend and the police were not there. He had been taken to the police station.

So I went to Harare Central, and they were waiting for me. One of the plainclothesmen met me and said, "Come inside, you ran away." Then he slapped me.

But by then they had interrogated my friend and he asked if he could call the Swazi embassy, because his sister was married to a high official there. So the cops panicked. And after the plainclothesman slapped me, another policeman came up and said: "Don't do that, these guys are related to the ambassador."

I started screaming and demanding that they arrest me and open up a file. They refused, and they started treating me very nicely, till a car from the Swazi embassy actually came to pick us up. And the cops told my friend, "It was a mistake."

I asked for paper, and I wrote down the names of the two policemen. But before they let us go, the police took [the paper] away. They said to us, "Don't do this again!" Do what? But you know, we actually felt that whatever we were doing was not right.¹⁹²

3. Kuda's story

Kuda Kwashe is a GALZ member and self-described "proud queen."¹⁹³

On January 17, 1998, at about 4 p.m. he was walking through the Montagu Shopping Center in Harare. By his own account he was wearing "clogs and short-shorts, and a regular T-shirt." He was stopped by a police officer who identified himself as Constable Machote, along with two other officers who refused to identify themselves.

Kwashe was told he was being arrested for "dressing like a woman," although he was not wearing women's clothes. The police also told him that he "walked like a woman." Kwashe demanded to know what law he was violating.¹⁹⁴ In response, the officers physically forced him into the back of a police car. There, he says,

They called me a whore, a white man's whore, and all sorts of other things. They kept calling me a woman, they wanted to know what I had under my shorts. I got very angry.

According to the police, Kwashe (who is over six and a half feet tall) became enraged and smashed the window of the police vehicle.

Kwashe was taken to the Harare Central Police Station. There, he says,

They gathered a bunch of the police together. They were having a little party. They called me names for hours, they were really enjoying that, and they spat on me again and again. They couldn't get over the clothes I was wearing.

Kwashe was detained for over six hours, and was finally released after being required to pay Z$600 [U.S. $40] in damages for the broken window. No charge was preferred, however, which GALZ advisors considered "virtually an admission by the police that he was not at fault."¹⁹⁵ Kwashe says, "I know the police watch me since then. Well, let them. I'll walk the way I want."

4. Dominic's story

Dominic S. is twenty years old, and lives in Bulawayo. He says:

At Christmas 1999, I went to a nightclub called Fuse. I had a fight with this guy-he provoked me. When I am at straight clubs I try to pretend, it's safer that way. I hang around with girls and I joke with them, flirt with them. Well, this man came over and said, "You are a poofter: you're gay, I know you are gay. You can't have that girl. Get away from her." He held up his hand to hit me and we started fighting.

The security guard threw us out, but first he called the police. So the police picked us up on the sidewalk outside, and took us both to Bulawayo Central Police Station. But the other guy knew what to say. He changed his statement to say, "Dominic was making advances on me, he tried to sexually assault me." So the police let him go. But I was detained for three days, and charged with indecent assault.

The police didn't beat me but they humiliated me. They kept asking me, "Why are you gay? How many white people do you know? Why are you wearing earrings?"

I was only allowed one phone call, on the first day. The police had written a document saying I was charged with indecent assault, and if I could not pay a Z$500 [U.S.$25] fine I would be held for three weeks. I could only make a phone call after I signed it. Looking back I guess that paper was an admission of guilt. I had seen quite a bit of the gay community in Bulawayo, but nothing had prepared me for this, and I didn't know what to do.

I called a friend, but he didn't get the message for two days. When he did he came to the police station; he was told that I was a gay guy who had committed the crime of hitting a straight guy, and perhaps I had tried to rape him. My friend bailed me out by paying the Z$500 fine.¹⁹⁶

Dominic was arrested again in early 2000:

I was with a friend in this place we ordinarily go to on Sundays to have tea. It's a coffee shop in Bulawayo, and the guys who work in the place know we are gay and usually tolerate us.

One day a cellphone was stolen inside the café. My friend and I were sitting there; everyone was being searched when they were leaving by the café security. It was a private security firm, called Mills Security.

The security guards came to our table and said they were taking us to the police. They said, "Gays can do anything, they are a menace to society. You cannot trust them."

They didn't even bother to search us, they just said, "We are taking you to the police." I guess they thought if they could get us arrested it would get them off the hook for having let the theft take place.

My friend had his cellphone, and insisted he would talk to a lawyer he knew. So they held him there. But the café security took me physically and drove me to the police, to Bulawayo Central. The police there knew me. The sergeant at the desk said, "Oh, this one again." And he said, "Gay people are always a problem."

I have never in my life been so ashamed. It is a small town, really; everyone knows me, and I had colleagues from school who worked at the police.

I didn't answer any of their questions. They were saying, "You can go to prison for ten years." I was worried what my father would say, and my mother, knowing I am the only child. She looks to me to help her in the future but there is little I can do. They told me they would bring me up for not answering their questions.

They didn't ask me any questions about the theft of the cellphone. All their questions were about being gay. "You are wearing a beret-why? You know this sickness is not allowed. Why do you accept Western culture? We know you gays are being used by white men. You do it for money." I said: "I am not a prostitute." They didn't believe me. About twelve policemen gathered as if I were the evening's entertainment, asking me the same questions. They threatened to take me to the other room, where they said they tortured people.

I was held for about an hour. My friend went to talk to the boss of the security firm at the restaurant-Mr. Mills. He threatened to sue. Mr. Mills called the police and said it had been a mistake. So in the end they let me go.¹⁹⁷

As in Kuda Kwashe's case, Dominic reports that police interpret gender nonconformity as evidence of criminality. "Even stranger things have happened because of just the way I walk," he says. In June of 2000,

It was late at night and I was coming home from a club. I was just walking to where I take my minitaxi, in the center of Bulawayo. A policeman stopped me and said: "Are you a woman?" I was so surprised I didn't know what to say. He said, "I am arresting you for soliciting for prostitution."

Well, there were girls nearby who were prostitutes. But I finally said, "I am a man." I guess my voice was deep enough to convince him. "I'm sorry," he said, "I thought you were a woman. But you should be careful," he said, "you could get into trouble that way."

5. "Natasha's" story

"Natasha" is the adopted name of Thema N., a male-to-female transgender person. ("Natasha" refers to herself as "gay," not "transgender," but uses the feminine gender.) She was twenty-five years old when our researcher spoke to her in 2000, and was living in Mzilikazi in Bulawayo.

Natasha's story suggests that police and prison authorities single out gender-nonconforming people for particular abuse. It also suggests, however, that she was made vulnerable to such abuse by previous patterns of social and cultural exclusion. Both society in general and the law in particular enforce, in different ways, rigid norms of gendered behavior. The former punished Natasha by making her an outcast: the latter, by making her an inmate.

"I discovered I was gay at the age of five," she says. "I used to play with the girls and their dolls; I felt so feminine that I always used to see myself as a woman."¹⁹⁸

My family were very understanding at first. My mother thought that having this girlish boy was just like having a child who was disabled, and she took it as a trial. I started meeting other gay people in 1988. There were not many but I did have a sort of community. I was the most feminine, and now I am a twenty-four-hour drag queen. I have worn women's clothes since 1987, when I was thirteen years old.

I know four or five other drag queens in Bulawayo. One is in prison now; the others have gone to South Africa. We don't fight among ourselves; we are a community amongst ourselves. Whenever we are together we are still friends, because of what we do.¹⁹⁹

Natasha left high school at fourteen, partly, she says, "Because the other pupils made it impossible." She worked briefly at hair salons: "But even there it is very hard to keep work, because people think I am sick, being a man biologically." Eventually she moved into prostitution. "I used to go to South Africa, and there, in Joburg, I would stand with straight women that would do the same job.. . . Back then they could tell I was a man, biologically. Now men just pick me, not knowing whether I'm gay or male or not."

Natasha supports her parents and a brother on her earnings. Ultimately, she hopes to return to South Africa and undergo sex reassignment surgery (SRS); doctors have told her the procedure is illegal in Zimbabwe. Her I.D. still reflects a male identity, which makes it hard for her to find either accomodation or a job. "In the law they know I am still a man, and this is Zimbabwe. If you go and ask about these things, they will make your life very difficult."²⁰⁰

Natasha has had many experiences with police and courts, particularly in Bulawayo, where she is regularly arrested-usually, it appears, under the provisions of the Miscellaneous Offences Act, a catchall law used to control prostitution or "disorderliness."²⁰¹ Generally, these end with paying the police-in the form of bribes, or of fines at Bulawayo Central Police Station; if she has no money on hand, though, a prison sentence can result. Natasha believes the courts usually treat transgender sex workers no differently from women sex workers. The police are a different matter, she says: "They single you out, they really hate you if you are like me. The bribes are twice as much as for the regular women."

Almost every time I go to the streets I pay some policeman. The police know who you are, and they come through and when they see you they take the money. Usually they ask Z$100 to Z$150 [U.S.$3-5] each time. They only make you pay a fine as opposed to a bribe if they catch you the second time in a night-for instance, the first time a policeman comes, you bribe him; but if the same or another comes along again, they have to take you in. Then you spend the night at the station and pay in the morning. ²⁰²

The first time Natasha was jailed in Bulawayo Central,

I was taken to the cells and I slept alone in a different cell from the others. I was in the men's section but alone. They gave me my food alone and I was never allowed to talk to the others. Even when I was taken to wash, they took me separately and closed the door and left me in there alone. They were not really trying to protect me: they wanted to prevent me from sleeping with other men. They thought I would get at them if I was put with them.

But every time I was in jail the guards would use us, all the drag queens. They used to say, "You bitches come here"-if we don't, they will beat us, or force us into doing things we won't like. They would kick us, or strip us in front of the other men, which was very painful and embarassing. Sometimes we were never given food, just because we were homosexual prostitutes. They used to force us, at Bulawayo Central, to have sex with them.

Sometimes also in the streets, if you don't have money to bribe them, the police will force you to have sex with them. And sometimes they will deny you a condom. Sometimes three or more of them will force you to have sex with them. Then they will rob you, too. Sometimes the policemen will come to your place to collect the bribes you owe them. Then they will wait for you to finish your business and take all the money you have earned. They are like amateur pimps, really. All this has happened to me many times.

Actually, the thing that hurts the most, it is strange to say this, but it is the swearing at you. Calling us "you bitch," "you mother," "you pervert," ngochani [a Shona term now used, in a derogatory sense, for people suspected of same-sex sexual conduct, particularly men]. And they do that constantly. You must believe how this hurts me. I am a human being and I have my dignity.

Natasha spent two months in prison in mid-2000:

The last time I was arrested was May 5 of this year. I was standing on the street with two other friends like me [transgender sex workers]. Two guys came, and wanted to pick one of us. Then two policemen in plainclothes came. They asked us what we were doing there. We retorted, we were waiting for these two guys... The policeman said we were loitering. We asked them to give us a fine. They denied it and said, we'll meet in court.

I was arrested the very same day. Some other policemen came and picked me up. They just came for me, because I had spoken up....

Some of the police know about me [being transgender]. The ones who arrested me didn't, and so I had to tell them. They locked me up in the cells, alone, for one and a half days.... The judge denied the fines and gave me a sentence for three months, with one month suspended. He said he'd seen me too frequently in court, so that the only thing to do with me was to take me to jail. I was taken to Bulawayo Prison.

She was placed in the men's section, in what she describes as a severely overcrowded cell.

Some of the inmates knew about me: some of them used to be my clients on the road. There was another prisoner like me [transgender] there, "Maia." We were kept in separate cells. We weren't allowed to exercise like the other prisoners. In the afternoon she and I were let out of our cells and forced to do work. Some of it was ploughing in the fields, some of it was cleaning the garden or watering vegetables. The other prisoners worked in other places. If we failed or got tired, the guards beat us. Often they forced us to have sex with them, or with other prisoners in front of them.

They hated us because we were homosexuals. If any guard felt like being rude or brutal, he could take it out on the two of us, he could just come and beat you up. If we were late for anything, for lunchtime or dinnertime, they would beat us up again. We complained to the officers above the guards, and it got better, but only for a little while.

The cells were very cold. There were no mattresses, just a blanket on the floor. Mats or carpets were only given to those who were sick. But the other prisoners would give me mats or blankets in return for sex. They gave me and "Maia" soap to wash, milk, and bread in return for sex. Sometimes the guards would do that as well.

I got sick. I had a pain in my eye, and if I walked I had heart palpitations. Some of the other prisoners tried to strangle "Maia" because they wanted to have sex with her. The guards used to frighten her with dogs. My leg was hurt by beatings; it was dislocated by some other prisoners when they held me down for sex. It was hard for me to work, but the guards would call the dogs to threaten me when I got tired.

My leg still hurts. I saw a doctor in the prison clinic; he gave me two tablets for my eye but when I told him about my leg he ignored me. But now I am free. Mentally I am OK: all I need is to be free, and then the other things fall away. ²⁰³

C. Under Permanent Investigation: The Effect of Sodomy Laws

In November 2000, Namibia's minister of home affairs Jerry Ekandjo was asked in a riotous National Assembly session to account for his recent, ominous language. An opposition member reminded Ekandjo, while SWAPO members of Parliament shouted insults at her, that he had recently called for "eliminating" gays and lesbians. Where in Namibia's laws, she demanded, was there anything to justify such "elimination"? An emotional Ekandjo referred her to anatomy and religion before citing the law:

If one man allows another man to penetrate a penis through his anus, whether voluntarily, that is what we call sodomy. Homosexuality is un-Christian. Sodomy is similar to rape. As far as I am concerned sodomy is a crime. Yes, homosexuality is a crime.²⁰⁴

A close reading of Ekandjo's statement reveals much about the relations between law, stigma, and identity-in southern Africa as elsewhere.

The minister was right on one matter: "sodomy" is a crime in Namibia. So-called sodomy laws-laws which include the criminalizing of consensual, non-commercial adult homosexual conduct-have been held by the United Nations Human Rights Committee to violate basic rights to privacy and non-discrimination.²⁰⁵ Nonetheless, they persist in many jurisdictions around the globe. Their language rarely mentions homosexuality per se: they usually far pre-date the coinage of that term. The words with which they describe what they punish are various and often vague. For example, "sodomy" sometimes means, as the minister indicated, anal intercourse between men; sometimes only the passive partner is penalized, sometimes both partners. In other jurisdictions, "sodomy" may mean anal, or also oral, intercourse between any two people, heterosexual couples included. In still other laws, "sodomy," or other terms, may be used to criminalize any sexual conduct between two people of the same sex, regardless of the orifice(s) used.

Namibia and Zimbabwe still retain the crime of "sodomy" as part of their common law, inherited from the first Dutch colonists who founded the Cape Colony in the seventeenth century. South Africa also kept the common-law offense of "sodomy" until, in 1998, its Constitutional Court found it to violate the Equality Clause. Zambia and Botswana do not mention "sodomy," but have provisions in their colonial-era, British-inspired penal codes which criminalize "carnal knowledge against the order of nature" with severe prison terms.

"Sodomy laws" in southern Africa: How consensual homosexual conduct between adults is criminalized

Namibia and Zimbabwe both hold that "sodomy" is a crime, under the common law in force in both. South Africa shares the same common-law tradition, and "sodomy" was illegal there until a 1998 Constitutional Court decision found its criminalization violated the constitution. One standard legal reference work defines "sodomy" as "unlawful and intentional sexual relations per anum between two human males." The lesser crime of "unnatural offences" is also still in force in Namibia and Zimbabwe. It is understood to criminalize non-anal sexual relations between men. Penalties for these offences vary at the discretion of judges.

Botswana and Zambia both have penal codes inherited from the era of British colonialism:

Botswana Penal Code

Section 164:

Any person who-

a) has carnal knowledge of any person against the order of nature; or

b) has carnal knowledge of an animal; or

c) permits any other person to have carnal knowledge of him or her against the order of nature;

is guilty of an offence and is liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding seven years.

Section 165:

Any person who attempts to commit any of the offences specified in section 164 is guilty of an offence and is liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding five years.

Section 167:

Any person who, whether in public or private, commits any act of gross indecency with another person, or procures another person to commit any act of gross indecency with him or her, or attempts to procure the commission of any such act by any person with himself or herself, with another person whether in public or private, is guilty of an offence.

Zambia Penal Code

Section 155:

Any person who-

a) has carnal knowledge of any person against the order of nature; or

b) has carnal knowledge of an animal; or

c) permits a male person to have carnal knowledge of him or her against the order of nature;

is guilty of a felony and is liable to imprisonment for fourteen years.

Section 156:

Any person who attempts to commit any of the offences specified in the last preceding section is guilty of a felony and is liable to imprisonment for seven years.

Section 158:

Any male person who, whether in public or private, commits any act of gross indecency with another person, or procures another male person to commit any act of gross indecency with him, or attempts to procure the commission of any such act by any male person with himself or with another male person, whether in public or private, is guilty of a felony and is liable to imprisonment for five years.

For more detail on these and related laws-and on the definitions of "sodomy," "carnal knowledge," "gross indecency," and other terms-see the Appendix.

These laws are only part of a confusing canon of provisions by which states may try to regulate people's sexual behavior. Laws on rape, as minister Ekandjo intuited, may be connected to sodomy laws in intricate and often incoherent ways. For instance, until a few months before the minister spoke, no law specifically criminalized a man raping a man in Namibia. If prosecuted, the act would be charged only as "sodomy"-with a much lower penalty than a man who raped a woman would face. Consensual and non-consensual "sodomy" were simply not separated in the law.

Natasha, in Bulawayo, knew that being a cross-dressing prostitute was the reason for her repeated arrests; unsurprisingly, though, she rarely knew the specific charge, which probably came from a law on public conduct in which sex was not even mentioned. The police, indeed, may have known only marginally more than she did. The simple lesson is that sex laws are complex. Yet probably in few places are laws targeting sexuality as confusing as in much of Africa, with its overlay of colonial, modern, and customary legal forms. The Appendix to this report attempts to detail (though not exhaustively) many of the laws in southern Africa that punish consensual sexual conduct between adults, or which are used to target people for their sexual orientation or gender identity.

Minister Ekandjo was technically wrong on another matter: "homosexuality" is not a crime in Namibia, or elsewhere. The letter of the sodomy laws criminalizes conduct, not the condition of being "homosexual." And yet the minister, in a different sense, is on the mark. On paper, sodomy laws simply punish certain sexual acts (however vaguely defined), including consensual acts that usually take place in private. However, the state apparatus rarely confines itself to seeking out the secretive conduct itself and catching offenders: instead it extends to identifying and singling out the kinds of people presumed to be prone to, or proselytizers for, the criminalized behaviors. Sodomy laws help create "sodomites." The public is encouraged and co-opted into this effort.

Sodomy laws thus impute to people not just the commission of an act, but the propensity to commit it. They invite authorities to assume that a single lapse points to a habitual condition.²⁰⁶ That condition in turn ultimately justifies judgment on a person's nature: a nature which must then be legible in mannerism, appearance, dress. The laws collude with other forces-social prejudice and stereotype, folklore, and religious teaching-to generate an atmosphere of stigma, in which certain outward marks signal the presence of a certain kind of person, and certain identities and groups become automatic targets of the law.

The effect of sodomy laws thus goes beyond the legal penalties they provide. They create and maintain prejudice and stigma. They separate out people-variously called "sodomites," "gays and lesbians," "homosexuals," or other names-and define them as objects of contempt and hatred. Minister Ekandjo is correct. The language of the law itself does not justify a call to "eliminate" certain kinds of persons from the land-but a logic connects them.

It is impossible to say how frequently the sodomy laws in the region are actually enforced. A high official in the police in Harare, Zimbabwe, told our researcher in 2000 that he believes "two or three" arrests for consensual sodomy happen every year in the city.²⁰⁷ The head of the crime division of the Zambian National Police told us in the same year that he believes three to five people are charged annually under section 155 of Zambia's penal code.²⁰⁸ The last known arrest in Botswana for "carnal knowledge against the order of nature" to reach a Magistrate's Court happened in 1994; however, as discussed in the Appendix to this report, other cases may apparently reach customary courts, where records are still less carefully maintained. Namibia's Legal Assistance Center told us in late 2001 that it understood two arrests for sodomy had taken place in the north of the country earlier that year.²⁰⁹

Extent matters less than the power of example. A sodomy arrest is a rude reminder that the state respects neither the private spaces nor the intimate experiences of stigmatized populations. The arrest brings the threat not only of fines or jail, but of public shame. A statement taken by Gays and Lesbians of Zimbabwe in 1997 recounts what many would call a typical story:

"Martin" and I had met on this particular day and took a drive along the Beira road towards the border on the outskirts of Mutare. Admittedly although it was a very private spot it was a particularly dangerous one, where border jumpers and smugglers used to cross.

The police overwhelmed the car and dragged "Martin" away. I watched as he was slapped repeatedly and then driven away. Only hours later did I see him again at the Police headquarters in Mutare.

During this absence they had obviously extracted the information they required to lay a charge. They did see me with my pants down but at no time did they actually catch us engaging in their so-called "unnatural act" .... Even when I was spotted by the C.I.D. [Criminal Investigations Division] officer with my pants down he was a good 20-30 meters away. "Martin's" pants were not pulled down and at no time was he seen in a compromising situation.

We were coerced into giving statements by the C.I.D. Assistant Inspector Masendeka. He threatened to place me in handcuffs and leg-irons and lock me in a cell should I fail to cooperate. He wanted to know what we were doing there and why.

We were detained for six hours and eventually using a well-worn approach he won us over with his "Please help us to understand what this is all about, we want to help you" technique.

Suggestions of being released should we cooperate in this regard were made and we made full statements of what we had been up to.

We were told the next day that unfortunately we were to be charged. We were told the best thing to do was to sign an admission of guilt and that the whole ordeal would be dealt with promptly with no more than a fine. To frustrate the course of justice would lead to delays, perhaps an appeal, and further investigations, and this would only attract the attention of the media.

We foolishly fell for this ploy that inadvertently led to our own prosecution by providing the State with all the evidence needed to make a case.

The magistrate, a Mrs. Hlekani Mwayera conducted her court in a heavyhanded and uncompromising way and I wish that it be recorded ... that under the present political climate in Zimbabwe, where gross repression and violation of human rights goes unchecked, she had to adopt this unfortunate position....

She sentenced us to a Z$500 [U.S.$25] fine and three months' jail suspended for five years, in defence of the State she said that the type of crime was on the increase and harsher penalties had to be imposed to protect morality.

The news paper carried the article on the front page in graphic detail ... [saying] "Caught in the Act."

"Martin" subsequently lost his job at his security company.²¹⁰

Not all arrests under sodomy laws begin with public displays of affection, however. In Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, on November 11, 1998, Darnley A. and Ronald W. were arrested for sodomy. The two gay men had been involved in what one of their lawyers called a "domestic altercation" in their home; when police arrived, one of the pair was initially held for assault. However, police dropped the charge, and replaced it with consensual sodomy, on determining the two men were engaged in a sexual relationship.²¹¹

A well-known case in Maun, Botswana, similarly showed the fragility of privacy protections. On December 26, 1994 two men-Graham N., a British citizen, and Utjiwa K., a Botswanan citizen-were arrested in their home. The police, reportedly acting on suspicion, had seen the two through their window engaging in erotic behavior.²¹² The pair faced "alternative" charges of either "carnal knowledge against the order of nature" (section 164 of the penal code) or "gross indecency" (section 167).²¹³ The former carried a potential seven-year prison sentence, the latter carried no stipulated sentence; the "alternative" evidently represented an incentive to plead guilty to the latter and avoid prison. The British citizen complied, and received a fine of P1000 (U.S.$100); he later left the country. The Botswanan refused to bargain; his attorney raised constitutional issues, resulting in the case being referred to the High Court of Botswana at Francistown.

Almost seven years of suspensions followed. Arguments were finally heard in September, 2001, with defendants arguing that the relevant sections of the Penal Code violated constitutional freedoms of assembly and association, as well as rights to privacy and equality. ²¹⁴ The Francistown High Court finally passed judgment on March 22, 2002, and upheld the constitutionality of the provisions; Justice Mwaikasu reportedly stated that "public morals or moral values" were "pivotal to the balancing of the interests of the members of a given society and stand as the binding fabric of any society."²¹⁵

In Zambia, one recent case exhibits the battery of prejudices with which the criminal justice system confronts homosexuality. The indictment in the case states that on May 16, 1998, in Kabwe, Emmanuel Sikombe "attempted to have carnal knowledge of Mukamba Mokoma against the order of nature." It asserts (confusing terminologies from two different articles of the penal code) that he "did an act of gross indecency with another male person by putting Mukamba Mokoma's penis in his mouth."²¹⁶

Sikombe was thirty-seven, a secondary school teacher, and married with three children but separated from his wife. He taught geography and mathematics at Muteteshi Basic School in Kabwe, and sometimes gave extra lessons at his home. On May 16, two students visited him for lessons: Bornwell Sinupwe, twenty-two years old but in the last year of secondary school, and Mukamba Mokoma, twenty-four years old, who had been receiving maths instruction. ²¹⁷

What happened was the subject of differing accounts at Sikombe's trial, which took place over a year later, on April 27, 1999. Mokoma alleged that he woke to find Sikombe placing his penis in his mouth. Sikombe denied the charges, and suggested that Mokoma had reported him to the police in order to blackmail him. On May 18, Sikombe was summoned to the police and told that Mokoma had accused him of possessing "pornograppic materials" [sic].

Sikombe was arrested but released on bail after a hearing on May 21. Trial was postponed for almost a year because the complainant disappeared to the Western Province,despite demands from the court for his return. ²¹⁸

The trial record shows police and prosecutors were initially confused about how to correlate the alleged act with charges in the penal code. Inspector Pascal Chakota testified that initially "I arrested [Sikombe] for sodomy." "Sodomy" is not mentioned in Zambian law, but "carnal knowledge. . . against the order of nature" is; legal history suggests that this crime should be restricted to anal, not oral, sex.²¹⁹ However, Sikombe was instead formally charged with under section 156 of the penal code, with what the trial documents call "attempt to commit unnatural offences"-though "unnatural offences" are not mentioned in Zambian penal code.²²⁰ Finally, this was changed at his first hearing to "indecent practices between males" under section 158.²²¹ The question of whether the alleged relations between Mokoma and Sikombe were consensual or not was not raised by the prosecution, and did not figure in the judgment.²²²

Rather, the judgment focused on Sikombe's sexuality. The record suggests that Sikombe was under suspicion in the community as a man living alone. Kambole Muganba, the complainant's brother-in-law and "guardian," testified:

Accused was at the College there for about 3 months. He was new. I learnt in the 3 months that his home was always visited by boys.... I never saw any woman. He was staying alone.... I don't knew [sic] why he preferred boys to girls.

Perhaps the most remarkable item in the trial record is the statement of Magistrate F. B. M. Ngosa, in sentencing Sikombe to five years' imprisonment on July 12, 1999. It virtually anthologizes the judicial system's prejudices about homosexual conduct-as a threat to manhood, to health, to morality, and to biology:

I am aware that accused is a first offender and he deserves liniency. However, accuseds behavior is alien to the African Custom. I fail to understand him to be honest. He claims to be married person. I wonder how he could opt to act the way he did. There are so many prostitutes if the problem was that he needs to relievy himself of the sexual draught he was passing through because of the absency of his wife surely the mouth is not the same as a vagina. God gave specitic functions to each organs he gave them. The mouth is for eating etc and the vagina is for both sex and urenating . Accused couldn't change God's desire. For behaving in the way he did, he emplied God made a mistake his distribution of functions. We are living in an HIV AIDS area and this behaviour couldn't be condoned by this court. If accused is HIV positive naturally [the complainant] has become one.²²³ Accused in my view if he is a sick man and he has done this to many boys he is a sexual serial killer. There has been secretion of fluids. He is merelly bankrupt and devoid of human, behavior and good behaviour. A detrrent sentence is appropriate.

Our researcher interviewed Sikombe in 2000 at Mukobeko Medium Security Prison, outside Kabwe, where he was serving his sentence. He denied all the charges: "I think Mokoma had heard things about me and wanted to blackmail me if he could. But when he took the story to his brother-in-law they believed him and they decided to go to the police instead." He also said he had been abused in prison because he was said to be homosexual. Each block in the penitentiary was presided over by a captain, chosen by guards from among the prisoners. "The captains beat me because they say I will corrupt the other prisoners. The guards stop it when it happens in front of them, but they know it goes on behind their backs. When we go to the [prison] farm to work, the captains do the beatings then, not inside."²²⁴ Sikombe was ultimately released on parole on November 22, 2000. He informed us in 2001 that his prison record had left him unable to find work.²²⁵

D. Extortion

The possibility of extortion in the Sikombe case illustrates one of the central effects of sodomy laws. As Keith Goddard of GALZ says, "Sodomy cases are broadly advertised in public space through the State press, with names released. The angle of these articles is always to shame the accused and, as far as possible, to suggest that abuse was involved."²²⁶ The Victorian law on "gross indecency," on which several colonial-era southern African provisions were modelled, was known in Britain as the "blackmailer's charter": it encouraged entrepreneurial initiatives to exploit the stigma it imposed.²²⁷ Such laws in Africa today have a similar impact.

Blackmail appears to be most feared by gays and lesbians in Zimbabwe, in part because of the public notoriety thrust on homosexuality there in the last seven years. One legal advisor to GALZ reports that "between three and ten" cases of extortion come to the organization's attention annually, and suspects those are the "tip of the iceberg: most victims don't want anyone to know, not even us."²²⁸

The same source believes that "a disproportionate number of victims are white," because they can afford to pay. However, our interviews suggest this may not be so. The belief, fostered by media and state, that homosexuality stems from white corruption leads to the idea that gay and lesbian blacks are receiving white money. As Robert says of the police who beat him, "The idea was, we're gay, so we must have money, we must be looked after by somebody." And the identification of homosexuality with prostitution-a common identification by police and public alike-means that many of the poor and unemployed assume that gays have ready and regular access to cash.

Simba M., thirty years old when our researcher spoke to him in 2000, is nicknamed "Teresa" by his gay friends. He does not cross-dress but proudly calls himself effeminate. He was born in Mashonaland East but has lived in Bulawayo since 1993. From an early age, he says, he liked to talk and be with girls: "My family said I would `swing' like a girl when I walked. And I ended up knowing I was gay. I didn't even know there were words for it. I thought it was normal for everyone, I had no sense of being different from the others."²²⁹

In his family only his three sisters know about his sexuality: he has not told his four brothers or his parents. Still, he is highly visible in Bulawayo's small gay community, which he first discovered in the mid-1990s. In 1995, he visited the GALZ Center in Harare: "It made me feel strong and safe. I thought what we were doing was allowed in Zimbabwe. I saw that people there were free. I didn't imagine that there were blackmailers, that there was a law." He continued:

In October of 1996, I began to realize we were less free. I met a guy in Bulawayo who was a blackmailer. I took him to my place because he had offered to give me a massage. He pretended to be gay, even though he is not-I found out later that he had done this to other friends of mine as well.

He gave me a massage, and then he said: "You know, this is illegal. I am going to the police and telling them what you are doing." I didn't know what he meant. We hadn't had sex. I had some idea that gay sex was illegal, but I had no clear idea. I said: "No, it was only a game." He said: "We know you, we always see you in town, you walk like a woman, with different types of guys."

Then I understood what was up. He asked for money or he would go to the police. I had only Z$1,000 [ca. U.S.$100], my money for rent and to buy a little food and go to Harare-I was going to visit GALZ that week. I told him I had Z$50 but I made the mistake of taking Z$100 [U.S.$3] out of my pocket-he said, give me all the money you have, and I had to give him the Z$1000.

After I paid out, I was afraid he might come back and try something; so I left the house for three weeks and went to stay with my sister, without telling her what happened.

A year later I saw him again in a nightclub. He just stared at me. Probably he was prowling for other gay guys. It was his thing: he pretends he's gay and interested and at the end of the day he gives you hard times.

Another, more serious incident happened in 1999:

I had a friend, named Lloyd. He is definitely gay. He came to my place as a friend, and started to admire the place and me. He wanted sex. He was only seventeen or eighteen; I knew he was too young, so I refused, I told him, if you were five years older I might, but not now. He said it was OK and that he loved me, but I still refused.

But he had no place to go, because of his family. So I let him stay with me for some weeks. There was no sex, though.

Then Lloyd disappeared and went elsewhere, I don't know where. But sometime later, I met Lloyd on the street. He talked strangely and said, I am coming to your place without an invitation. After a week, on a Sunday he came to a kiosk which my sister owned. I was there with two gay friends, Carlos and Lionel-they all worked there on Sundays. This was a Sunday in June of 1999. He started to threaten me, he was shouting and threatening, saying he would tell the police I had had sex with him unless I gave him money.

We left him there, and the three of us went back to my place. I hoped he would calm down. We started to cook dinner. He came back around 8 p.m., knocked at the door but would not come in. He was very angry and he demanded money. I closed the door on him. Then he started kicking on it. He kicked it in and came in the apartment. He wanted to beat me up; he hit Carlos and Lionel. My neighbors started to come to help, and then Lionel called the police.

When the police came they only listened to Lloyd. He was screaming at them that I had had sex with them [Lionel and Carlos]. So the police took all of us to Bulawayo Central. They refused to take my report; they only wanted to take Lloyd's report.

"Teresa's" friend Carlos remembers:

The way the case was handled was completely unprofessional. The officer in charge went around the police station calling other officers to come see what happened, to look at the "women." He was making fun of "Teresa," and started making fun of Lionel and myself. He took "Teresa" separately into an interrogation room. Then they brought Lloyd into the room and helped him make fun of her. The policeman who was presiding over the interrogation said, "Why are you wearing earrings? Why are your friends wearing women's hairstyles?" And Lloyd would pitch in: "How came a man makes dinner for other men?"²³⁰

In the interrogation room, according to "Teresa,"

The officer wanted me to take off my pants, to see which genitals I had. He was saying that if I was a girl, he wanted to have sex with me. Lloyd was telling them I had taken him home drunk from a bar, fondled him, led him to come, and then taken his sperm to sell for money to a witch doctor. The message was that this was one way gays get money, selling other men's sperm. The police believed it. He also said I had given him an STD.²³¹

Carlos and Lionel remained at the front desk. "We could hear voices in the distance screaming at `Teresa' and we got angry and started shouting. I banged on the desk at the front office, and demanded the officer there that they should ask these questions of me. We said that if they hurt `Teresa' we would charge them with assault. The officer who was interrogating `Teresa' came out. He told us that he would also charge Lionel and myself with sodomy, `Because I believe you fuck.'"²³²

A high police official-Carlos believed he was an assistant commissioner-eventually arrived:

He demanded to know, "Who penetrated who? If Lloyd penetrated `Teresa,' he is guilty of sodomy." So Lloyd started changing his story, saying that "Teresa" had fucked him. The police only laughed at this, because "Teresa" was feminine. But they also threatened "Teresa" that they would charge him with rape. ²³³

The police demanded that Lloyd and "Teresa" submit to forensic examinations to determine whether and how sexual relations had taken place. "We all took a taxi to Central Hospital," Carlos said-"they wouldn't let us take a police car, and they insisted that we pay. Lionel and I insisted on following. It was midnight, and the doctors only arrived at 1:30. Lloyd and `Teresa' were both there in police custody. But the doctors said they could only do the tests the next day, so they asked us to come back next afternoon."²³⁴

Lloyd did not appear the next day. "Teresa" says,

I had a form from the police saying that I was under investigation for rape. They checked my private parts to see if there were any signs of sex, or sperm going through, and they also checked my anus. They also checked to see if I had any STD but this came back negative. They were very cold during the whole thing.

After that, the police made me come back to the station every day for the next month. And after that, for two more weeks I had to go every Monday. The police said they wanted to see the two parties, but Lloyd never came to those meetings. They would ask me a few questions and then send me home. Eventually Lloyd called them and said he was dropping the charges. And that was the end of it.

Later I went to Lloyd's place and met his father, who said, "Oh, this is not the first time this has happened." Lloyd had done it to a pharmacist at a psychiatric hospital, who apparently actually went to jail.

Afterward, my landlady threw me out of my apartment after giving me twenty-four hours' notice. My boss at work heard something about the story and started probing, but apparently he couldn't confirm anything. My great luck was that it never came out in the papers. But a lot of the police knew I was gay, and so they believed anything this man [Lloyd] said about me. When I see the police now, on the streets, I am afraid.²³⁵

Our researcher was also able to interview Lloyd, the alleged extortionist. He refused to speak about the reported incidents. However, the need for secrecy in his own life appeared to weigh heavily on him.

I have not told any of my family members I am gay; I'm afraid. They are religious people. It is extremely difficult for me. I am not ashamed-it is inborn in me, it is an inborn thing-but I can't tell anyone; they do discriminate.

People in my neighborhood do suspect I'm gay. They ask me and bother me: "Why don't you walk around with girls, there are girls who are interested in you and you give them the cold shoulder. What is your problem?" They will discuss it in public. I am pointed out.

I know fifteen or so gay people in Bulawayo. None of them are my friends.²³⁶

Sex as well as money can provide a motive. Nhlanhla N., twenty years old when our researcher spoke to him in 2000, lived with his family in the Mzilikazi district of Bulawayo. He feels he has been conspicuous in his neighborhood as a "sissy" since his early teenage years. And, he says,

When I was sixteen, in 1996-97, there was this guy who forcibly wanted to go out with me, forcing me to have sex. He would just come to my house when my mother was not there and say, "Let's have sex." And grab me and take me and I would threaten to scream and only then would he leave. If I'd go to stores, he would run after and try to grab me and take me to his house. And I would have to run away.

He felt angry because I rejected him. He is a jailbird, he had been in prison. So he said, "Since you don't want to come to do whatever I want to do with you, then we will meet in prison." He threatened he would tell the police that I was gay. He used to say that again and again. He said also that he would turn himself over [to] the police for stealing, and say that I was his accomplice.

I was so scared. But I never did give in. And then he disappeared, because he was in prison again. But he is out of jail now. When I go to stores I sometimes bump into him. Once he did it again, he threatened he would send me to jail with him. I ran away, and since then I haven't met him.²³⁷

"Munashe" tells another story of extortion. He is twenty-eight; since 1995 he has taught secondary school in his home city of Mutare. In early 1999, he says,

I met this guy through a friend of mine. He is not gay, but he is quite handsome, though. And he knew that my friend and I were gay. We would go out and buy beer, and he thought maybe we had money.

One night, I went to my gay friend's place, and this straight guy was there. After a while I said I was going home, and he said, "It's late, I'll accompany you part of the way." Halfway to my place, I decided to stop at a pub. He asked if I had money to get him a beer too.... And then in the pub the guy said, "It's late, why don't you let me sleep in your home?"

I found no reason why I should be suspicious; I treated this guy as a brother. But when we got home he was very curious about sex. He wanted to know how gay people did it. I told him about it, and I said, some do it not because they are gay, but for money. To my surprise, he said he wouldn't mind doing it if a person offered [him] money. He said, "We can have sex if you help me with Z$200 [U.S.$12]."

I refused. I told him, "You are a friend; I can't have sex with you. I don't have sex with people and pay them money. And I am not a rich man."

So he said, "How much will you give me for escorting you home from your friend's place?" I told him he had offered that and it was free. But he insisted on being paid. He said, "Give me Z$100 [U.S.$6] or I will take something from the house. I can even go to the police and tell them that you tried to seduce me." And then he raised the price to Z$200. I tried to get him to come back the next day but he wanted the money now, or something as an assurance. He was holding a pint bottle of beer, and he broke it and threatened me with it.

I was living with my younger brother and [he] woke up because the guy was screaming: "He promised me money: Give me money!" He told my brother that I had tried to fuck him. And he said: "I will come to your school and tell your headmaster he employs gay people. I will go to the police." There were other lodgers there, it was after midnight, and they all came.

I had to give him some money to make him go. But he would come by often in the evening after that, still demanding money. Every week, once or twice a week, he came; sometimes he knocked on my bedroom window at 2 A.M. I am terrified. He said, "I will make life hell for you if you don't give me money." The headmaster and the other teachers at my school didn't know about me.

I called GALZ in Harare. They said to tell him that I would go to the police if he didn't stop, and to make sure I had people around me as witnesses when I talked to him. And when I did that, he stopped.²³⁸

GALZ advised a high-risk strategy, based on the belief that, given two crimes-sodomy and extortion-authorities would not prosecute both; and on the bet that, of the two, they would prosecute extortion.

Yet the most famous case of extortion and sodomy in Zimbabwe showed that police were quite willing to take both blackmailer and victim to court. In that case, an attempt at extortion gave authorities the chance to open a political prosecution for non-consensual sodomy (and Zimbabwean law at the time made no distinction between consensual and forced sodomy). The prosecution was aimed at discrediting Keith Goddard, programmes manager of GALZ.

In 1997, Goddard began receiving letters from a man named Siphephele Vuma. In the first, dated May 31, 1997, Vuma wrote "informing you about my misfortunes and financial problems," and gave Goddard "up to the 25^th of June to send me a telegram worth between Z$7,000 and Z$10,000 [U.S.$350-$500]." Goddard did not know who Vuma was; the letters were unsolicited and he did not respond. Vuma wrote Goddard again later in 1997, claiming that sexual relations had taken place between the two, and demanding goods and cash. Goddard then took the two letters to the police, asking them to investigate. The police apparently did nothing.

In January 1998, a third, threatening letter from Vuma accused Goddard of having sodomised him, and demanded goods and cash totaling approximately U.S.$2,000. Goddard also handed this letter over to Harare police.

On May 1, 1998, Sergeant Dowa of the Harare Central Police Station CID (CriminalInvestigations Department) visited Goddard, asking him to file a complaint against Vuma for attempted extortion. Two weeks later, Goddard was summoned to the police station. He was asked to identify a young man sitting in the office. Goddard said he had seen the man only once, shortly before he received the third extortion letter, when the man had approached him at the GALZ office. Sergeant Dowa confirmed that the man was Siphephele Vuma.

Goddard was asked to leave the room while Vuma made a statement. Called back, Goddard was told he would be charged with having sodomised Vuma at gunpoint.²³⁹

A remarkable pair of parallel-and paradoxical-trials then began, in which both alleged sodomite and alleged blackmailer faced charges. Vuma was arraigned on June 9, 1998, charged with attempted extortion for demanding (in the end) Z$7,000, a color television and VCR, a stereo, a two-plate stove, an electric kettle and electric iron from Goddard. Initially, Vuma pleaded guilty; however, the judge, Regional Magistrate Custom Kachambwa, changed his plea to not guilty, saying Vuma's conflicting explanations for his actions-in particular, his claim that he had been sodomised-"amounted to a defence."²⁴⁰

Goddard appeared in court on June 12, 1998, and was arraigned for sodomy. The state alleged that, on February 13, 1998, he had met Vuma at a Harare nightclub, taken him home after promising him a job, and then "produced a pistol, inducing Vuma into submission."

Derek Matyszak, one of Goddard's attorneys, notes that "any confidence in the independence of the judiciary is not sustained down at the magistrate's court. Magistrates are civil servants, and all promotions go through the president'''s office. It is absolutely plain that Keith's was a political trial":

The victim of a blackmailer reported the blackmail to the police, and was himself arrested for sodomy. Even the police could see this was a problem. So they arrested the blackmailer as well, to make themselves look impartial.²⁴¹

Goddard's case was repeatedly postponed, and ultimately placed on remand, obliging him to appear in court monthly but inconclusively. In May 1999, according to Matyszak, the prosecution decided "there was no way the sodomy case would kick off while the complainant, Siphephele Vuma, was going through trial at the High Court where he is being charged with extortion."²⁴² This ensnared both cases in a catch-22, since Vuma's only defense against the extortion charge was to prove that forcible sodomy had actually taken place.

Vuma's case, therefore, also lingered in limbo. Ultimately, Vuma claimed that only the third letter he had allegedly written Goddard was authentic, and was a legitimate claim for compensation for the trauma he had suffered due to assault; the other two letters were forgeries, he asserted. (Only the third letter was written after the date when, as he finally told police, the alleged sodomy had taken place.) Vuma said he had written the letter on the instructions of a police officer in his home town of Chipenge; he could not remember the name of the officer, who he said had since been transferred.²⁴³

Over three years later, both cases remain unresolved. Goddard's case was eventually removed from remand, but he is still subject to summons at the prosecutors' discretion. Matyszak believes that "The state now realizes it had no basis for arresting Keith; on appeal, at the least, to a court less politically malleable than the Magistrate's Court, they would lose, and they do not want a judgment from a High Court saying they should never have brought charges." Yet the charges still remain a potent potential form of harassment against both Goddard and GALZ. As Matyszak says, "They have a loaded gun in the drawer; and any time they want to get at Keith, they will dust it off and the whole thing can be set in motion again."²⁴⁴

E. State Discrimination and Abuse in other Spheres

Repressive law and homophobic rhetoric, particularly in combination, have a sweeping and negative effect on the capacity of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people to organize, to express themselves, to appear in the public sphere, to exercise basic freedoms, and to access essential services.

1. Association and assembly

Even the existence of gay and lesbian organizations-their basic right to association-is endangered. The example of Zambia, where state officials warned that any attempt to register such an organization would be a criminal offence, far from being extreme, is exemplary of the problem. In Botswana, the law has left the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender rights group LEGABIBO only able to operate under the auspices of a supportive human rights organization, Ditshwanelo. LEGABIBO's leader told us,

We have to register, which we intend to do-everybody is quite unanimous about that. We need to be able to set up an organization, a body that is responsible for the funds which we hope to raise through donors and so on. The catch, though, is the government has stated quite categorically that they will not register us because we engage in activities which are not compatible with the penal code.... [I]f we try to register, the government will refuse, but in order for us to get funds and to run any programs, such as the HIV/AIDS program, we need to get donors.²⁴⁵

Public gatherings of homosexuals-the exercise of the right of assembly-are almost inconceivable under the pressure of law and state homophobia. The few attempts of gays and lesbians to engage in public political manifestations, always in coalition with and to some extent under the protection of other, more mainstream groups, have been met with intimidation. In 1998, when GALZ was invited to join an NGO-sponsored march through central Harare to celebrate Human Rights Day on December 10, its prospective presence provoked threats. However, authorities refused to assign police to protect the marchers-saying that GALZ's participation might provoke a riot. Although the march took place without incident, some other organizations withdrew in fear.²⁴⁶

When Namibia's The Rainbow Project (TRP) organized a series of workshops for discussing sexuality in November 2001, the largest security firm in Windhoek refused to hire out security guards to protect the event, reportedly because it feared its own contracts with SWAPO would be jeopardized.²⁴⁷ When TRP and a coalition of NGOs organized a march in Windhoek to protest President Nujoma's homophobic attacks in April 2001, the SWAPO Youth League-which had declared they would present a petition to the National Assembly to arrest all gays and lesbian immediately-threatened to disrupt it. Organizers asked for a police presence to ensure the marchers' safety. Their request was denied. Instead, officials assigned members of the Special Field Forces (SFF)-the president's elite troop, repeatedly implicated in attacks on activists-to guard the march. The "protection" amounted to intimidation.²⁴⁸

2. Censorship

State censorship, the denial of the fundamental right to freedom of expression, is a basic threat to conditions of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender existence. Censorship prevents self-expression, the assertion and communication of an identity. The often violent punishment of non-conforming modes of dress, appearance, and manner-the steady police harassment, described above, of people who break gendered norms for public behavior, as well as the condoned community retaliation against such people, to be explored below-is a form of censorship.

Censorship is also used to stifle the development of a community. It represses the sharing of experiences and the exchange of information which help people discover what they hold in common with others. In this form-directed at organizations as well as individuals-the censorship of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender expression in southern Africa is particularly egregious. It prevents groups from engaging in outreach, supporting their members, or establishing a public presence. As explained in the Appendix below, the censorship powers of most governments in the region remain extensive. Zimbabwe's extraordinarily broad Censorship and Entertainments Control Act-one of the repressive instruments left behind by the white settler regime-was invoked against GALZ to bar it from the Zimbabwe International Book Fair in 1995. It has repeatedly been used to confiscate GALZ materials. GALZ maintains a resource center in its offices, full of materials on homosexuality meant to inform and support its members as well as inform the general public. Derek Matyszak, an attorney who has worked with GALZ, says that the center is "under constant threat of being seized. The video library is actually kept off premises. The police could sweep in and take all the books and videos, a storehouse it took GALZ years to accumulate, and it could be years before GALZ got them back, if at all."²⁴⁹

Romeo Tshuma remembers a 1996 raid on GALZ's quarters: "We had just moved to this house. Two policemen came here and demanded that I produce a list of the executive committee and membership. We managed to hide the list of members-it was taken to someone's house. They kept coming back and searching the offices."²⁵⁰ In the 1996 raid, another member says, "They [the police] did not know where to start. They couldn't tell one video from another." And he adds, "They sweep irregularly. They have generally left GALZ alone in recent years-either because they have lost interest, or because they are afraid of the international response. But of course they always have the power to come back."²⁵¹

Materials and information sent to GALZ from abroad are routinely seized under the Censorship and Entertainments Act, which creates a Board empowered to ban materials from public viewing or sale. The issue has become a running contest between GALZ and the government. As long ago as 1994, Matyszak says, "GALZ decided to test the Censorship Board, to see if they really would ban anything homosexual, regardless of how sexual it actually was. They rigorously cut out any references to homosexuality from publicly shown films-the kiss between two men in the film American Beauty was cut out, for instance. What would they do with a film for private viewing?"

GALZ selected and submitted the Merchant/Ivory film Maurice, based on E.M. Forster's novel, to the board. The board banned it; "it was clear from the language of their decision," Matyszak says, "that they had barely seen the film."²⁵² The rejection notice stated that

an examination of the video would speak for itself, and the entirely homosexual theme of the content. It was considered that the film offended ... and was accordingly rejected. The subject matter of the film is of course contry [sic] to Zimbabwean legislation.

The film would have little appeal to the normal Zimbabwe cinema audience, other than perhaps one of prurient interest, but obviously of greater interest to those persons inclined to such perverted sexual activity as may be found in the organisation to which the video was sent from a source in England, namely the Gays and Lesbians of Zimbabwe.²⁵³

GALZ tried to sue the board in the Maurice case, but eventually dropped it-"we had other legal battles at the time," Keith Goddard says.²⁵⁴ Matyszak adds, "the upshot is that GALZ simply doesn't expect to import films now."²⁵⁵

Goddard told us in 2000,

Stuff continues to be seized, but irregularly. They will let blatantly sexual material sent to us get through, but seize a book about gay clergymen. It is totally and completely inconsistent.

Now, when we ask the board about seized material, sometimes they will say it has been burnt. Sometimes also, they will release it, without our even going through our lawyers, if we give a call. There's no pattern to it at all.⁰

One seizure notice which GALZ showed our researcher was a three-page list of items confiscated; the extensive roster included four copies of the Advocate and three of Out-both are U.S. gay news magazines; one book called, Coming Out; and "one envelope of newspaper cuttings."¹ Other, more recent notices recorded the seizure of the book, It's Not Unusual (A Gay and Lesbian History), and the video, An Evening with Elton John.

3. Human rights abuses in the context of schooling

Young lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender people face discrimination in school environments, where authorities routinely either participate in, or fail to protect them against, harassment and abuse. Discrimination is often rife in places where tolerance should be taught. In Namibia virtually every gay or lesbian person interviewed for this report told of persistent discrimination in public schools.

"It started in grade school," one woman said: "I was different and the teachers seemed to know. They would harass me. They would not let me attend classes-they would ask me, `Are you a girl or a boy?' And when the other students harassed me, I could not go to the teachers because they would agree with the students. Finally I just gave up even trying to go to school. I failed tenth grade. Now I can't get a job."²

Genevieve, in Windhoek, told us she was repeatedly harassed by her teachers and the principal of her secondary school because she wore her school uniform with trousers instead of with a skirt. As a result, she failed tenth grade and dropped out of school. What particularly confused Genevieve was that, during the winter, girls were told to wear trousers with their uniform; but she was punished for continuing to wear the winter uniform after the weather changed.³

Isaiah, a twenty-year-old gay man who managed to get through primary and secondary school and is studying at the university, explained, "School was not my favorite place-I was frightened in the classroom because if I could not answer the question I was harassed. The male students would beat me on the head and call me `moffie,' but none of my teachers ever tried to stop it." Isaiah credits the fact that he nonetheless stayed in school to his having discovered three other gay boys. "We were all harassed-they would come up to us and shove and push us and call us `moffies,' but at least we were not alone."

Harassment has continued even at the university. The day after President Nujoma called for gays and lesbians to be deported, Isaiah says, he arrived at the campus to find a group of students greeting him with the chant, "You are going to be deported."⁴

Isaiah, like many of the gay men and lesbians interviewed, expressed intense fear of being deported. "I feel very frightened because I think [Nujoma] meant what he said and where would I go?"⁵ For numerous young people who were forced out of school because of their sexual orientation, the very idea of being deported is confounding. "I am Namibian, I was born here, I've never been out of the country, what would I do?" asked Irma, an eighteen-year-old lesbian from Windhoek.⁶ A few voiced defiance in the face of the threat of deportation. One lesbian said, "After I saw the president's speech I thought `I'm a human being and I happen to be Namibian and a lesbian but Namibia is my country-I deserve respect, and besides, where are they going to deport me?'"⁷

The men we interviewed spoke more of verbal and physical harassment at school. The women reported fearing sexual violence. "There is a myth that everyone talked about at school," one young woman recounted- "that being raped by a man will turn women straight. They say, `lesbians must be raped to be turned normal.'"⁸

For women's rights activists, the harassment of lesbians and the acceptance of rape as a "cure" are consistent with a culture they say condones sexual violence against women. Elizabeth Khaxas of Sister Namibia points to a high teen pregnancy rate, and the subsequent school dropout rate, as similar phenomena stemming from the same root causes. She comments, "Most young black lesbians that we know dropped out of school. But it is not just lesbians, it is other girls who leave because they become pregnant. Once a girl is pregnant, she cannot go back to school. Many of these pregnancies are a result of sex with a teacher. But teachers protect themselves, the principals protect the teachers, and the school boards are not strong enough to stop this abuse."⁹ Khaxas believes that neither violence against lesbians, nor other syndromes which impede women's access to education, can be remedied without state action to promote equality: "These girls experience intense pressure to have sex. The Legal Action Center has done several reports about the high incidence of rape and domestic violence in Namibia. Violence is used to keep women in their place. There is a national campaign to address HIV but it does not address inequality and how women cannot talk to men, including their husbands, about sex. Girls will keep being pressure to have sex or raped and then they will drop out or get forced out of school until we address this basic problem." ¹⁰

4. Health and HIV/AIDS

The prevailing pattern of HIV/AIDS transmission in southern Africa is through heterosexual contact. Yet lack of access to information, along with discrimination in provision of basic services, puts lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people in the region at particular risk both of contracting HIV/AIDS, and of suffering disproportionately from its medical consequences.

Only in South Africa, among countries in the region, is information on HIV/AIDS prevention specifically targeted toward women who have sex with women, or men who have sex with men. Elsewhere, states refuse to distribute such information-much less engage in active outreach or campaigns-because it would mean "promoting homosexuality."

In Botswana, AIDS education and prevention programs aimed at heterosexuals are increasingly visible. One gay man says,

Everywhere, wherever you go, there are posters on the road, stickers-they are really preaching about it. Every Monday there is a radio program that talks about AIDS and they talk about a lot of different issues.... Our government is supplying condoms for free. You can go to hospitals, schools, everywhere, sometimes even on the streets. They are trying to promote it, they really are helping people.

But they aren't focusing on gay people, it is for everyone else. For gay safer sex, [my friend] "Sexy" and I went [to Zimbabwe] to a safer sex workshop at GALZ. ¹¹

In Namibia, a national campaign to prevent HIV transmission and promote awareness does not address same-sex sexual relations. State officials who tried to promote outreach to men having sex with men and other stigmatized, vulnerable groups have been harassed or silenced. In 1998, our researcher spoke with Michaela Hubschle, then deputy minister in Namibia's Ministry of Prisons and Correctional Services. Hubschle was a strong proponent of prisoner's rights who had actually organized observances of Human Rights Day in penitentiaries. "Very few people since this country was created want the human rights of prisoners, and their health, protected," she said. "If you try and do anything they not only belittle it but abuse you." Hubschle had publicly called for distributing condoms in prisons, after consulting with The Rainbow Project on HIV/AIDS issues for men having sex with men. She had also condemned the law against homosexual sex, since men who admitted to homosexual conduct in prisons were made subject to additional penalties. Speaking before prisoners themselves in Windhoek, she deplored the fact that "these practices ... are usually met with disciplinary measures, not health measures."¹²

As a result, she said, other ministers refused to meet with or speak to her. Forces in her own party, SWAPO, were "preparing a campaign" against her.

SWAPO people went to the papers asking that I be exposed. Exposed for what? It is as if they think they can blackmail me because they have information on me. One paper called me the "Minister of Condoms."

You see how things are done here. On my answering machine two weeks ago was a message with twelve and a half minutes of insults. "We will fuck you, we will never use condoms, it doesn't matter if you get AIDS." They made the sounds of someone with an orgasm. Who gave them the direct office number?¹³

Hubschle left the government in 2000; she now works as an advocate for human rights.

In 2001, urged by South African officials to consider distributing condoms in detention, another Namibian official reiterated, "Giving condoms to prisoners is the same as promoting sodomy.... Consenting sex between two male prisoners will be considered sodomy and it is punishable."¹⁴

Similarly, when Namibia's health minister, Dr. Libertina Amathila, urged in 2001 that the government consider decriminalizing (and regulating) sex work as an HIV prevention measure, she was subjected to a storm of attack. SWAPO's chief whip in the National Council accused her of "promoting" prostitution¹⁵; a branch of the SWAPO Women's Council called for harsher strictures on prostitution as well as homosexuality (saying among other things that both practices interfered with Namibian women finding partners).¹⁶ The minister withdrew the proposal.

Part of the worldwide history of responses to HIV/AIDS is the story of NGOs filling the gaps left by government inaction. Some groups in southern Africa courageously try to compensate for state neglect. However, the criminalization of homosexual conduct means that even NGOs who try to make accurate, life-saving information available to men who have sex with men or women who have sex with women] could conceivably face prosecution, or a campaign of hysteria and harassment such as the one that extinguished the fledgling group in Zambia (see above). At the very least, groups such as GALZ, which manage to provide essential information and counselling to their own members, still find themselves hindered from engaging in broader, public outreach campaigns.

"Tsitsi Tiripano" was the pseudonym adopted by Poliyana Mangwiro, an open lesbian activist in GALZ who died of AIDS-related complications in May 2001. She had been openly HIV-positive, and helped sustain "GALZ Positive," a counselling and support group for HIV-positive members. Mangwiro told our researcher in 2000,

I am living with HIV/AIDS since 1998. I am the only positive lesbian I know in the country. It was a double coming out and it was very difficult for me.

Now GALZ is standing up for gays and people are standing up for themselves; but it is different around HIV. Even other members look at you with a lot of fear. It is more difficult if you are in GALZ Positive, it is hard to stand up and harder to be stood up for, you know?

There is no medicine [for most people living with AIDS in Zimbabwe]. The only treatment I am on is vitamin supplements. The Ministry of Health won't help GALZ Positive or communicate with us. They say, homosexuals are spreading AIDS.

Even customs officials, Mangwiro said, confiscated condoms shipped to GALZ Positive from abroad: "They say, are you a health center?"¹⁷

Romeo Tshuma, thirty years old, is also a leader in GALZ Positive. He joined GALZ in 1996. "It was a bad time. I wasn't sure I was doing the right thing by working here. There was much police pressure, it was very scary. But I decided to work for the center and for the community."

In 1998 he took training as a counsellor in GALZ's support programs:

I was trying to gain confidence and strength to learn my HIV status. I was suspecting it. Late in 1998 I went for the test and learned I was positive. I understood my situation through the examples of others, and through what I had learned through counselling.

After that, I was admitted to a local hospital with TB [tuberculosis]. GALZ members were gossiping about me. So I decided not long after that to tell the rest of the organization I was HIV-positive. I came out because I wanted to help other people and be an example that we can survive.¹⁸

As of 2000, GALZ Positive had twenty-six members. Public officials spurned contact with the group, and Tshuma says he would often have to "force himself" into meetings to talk about being gay and HIV-positive. The National AIDS Coordination Program-a state-coordinated coalition run through the Ministry of Health-would not let GALZ Positive join; its head, Chipo Mbanje, "refused to talk to me," says Tshuma.

The Zimbabwe National Network of People Living with HIV/AIDS (ZNNP+)-a national support organization, largely funded by the state, which also carries out awareness campaigns-also rebuffed approaches. After many attempts, Tshuma says, he finally got GALZ Positive invited to the 1999 general congress of ZNNP+. A few days after an invitation arrived, however, another letter came, saying the invitation had been a "mistake."¹⁹

Peter Joaneti, another GALZ Positive member, has belonged to its parent group since 1994; he tested HIV-positive in 1996. He was furious at the ZNNP+ excuse that they "had used the wrong directory" in inviting GALZ. He says,

GALZ Positive decided they should send me to the general congress anyway. I phoned three former board directors of ZNNP+, who were sympathetic, and they all said I should go.

On the very day I went to check in, someone from their office phoned and said I should not come, there would be problems if I came. I went anyway. I was told, when I got there, that I could come in but only if I didn't introduce myself as a member of GALZ.²⁰

"They told us," Tshuma remembers, "to hide our identity so people wouldn't be violent toward us. But they were really afraid the government would defund them if they admitted GALZ." Joaneti insisted on saying whom he represented. "I was provocative and it was good." He was asked to serve on the Youth Advisory Board of ZNNP+. However, he adds, "Now I always introduce myself as gay. But not necessarily from GALZ." Tshuma adds, "We are a ZNNP+ member now. But they still don't send us information about meetings and such things. I met with the president of ZNNP+ six months ago and he said, `I'll let you know of anything happening.' But we still have no word."²¹

Prejudice and discrimination also affect lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people's access to medical treatment for HIV and other conditions. Confidentiality can be violated and verbal abuse inflicted by those supposedly sworn to give care.

Wendell, a gay man in Namibia, says, "We don't have people, like doctors, who are gay-friendly and would examine you and say, well, you have got this STD [sexually transmitted disease], you should do this, and things like that ...[b]ecause there are several times that people were laughed at because the STD was on the wrong side [anal]-which really offends you as a person."²² Derrick, a gay man and youth activist in Windhoek, refers to his own experiences as well as those of lesbian friends:

What happens with lesbians, such as with STDs, they report it and [medical professionals] will definitely tell the lesbians, "Come and get your boyfriend." And the girl will say, "I don't have a boyfriend." And then they will say, "Where did you get it? Huh? Are you telling me you got this from a woman?" And blah, blah, blah-the way they talk to you is so bad, really.

And the woman will come back from the hospital and say, "Oh, the nurse said this to me and that to me." And then the rest that are infected will be scared to go to the hospital. We need to get some good doctors and nurses for the LGBT [lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender] people, where I can feel comfortable to talk with.... Imagine me going to a doctor and saying "I'm a homosexual and I want this and that from you." You see, it's really best if you find and stay with one doctor that you can really talk face-to-face. I need a doctor I can trust, a doctor that will never take my problems outside. Especially here, the story spreads very fast.²³

Romeo Tshuma recalls that in late 1998, "when I had TB, I went to Belvedere Clinic, a municipal clinic. I gave them the GALZ address. The presiding doctor recognized the address and said, are you homosexual? And then he didn't want to treat me, he said he didn't know how. But I made him treat me."²⁴

Tshuma also remembers,

I had a friend who died. He had AIDS and had another STD. He went to a local clinic in Mbare [a high-density area of Harare]. The nurses were not helpful. No, it was worse than that. They embarrassed him, after that he wouldn't go to a hospital because of the embarrassment. They called the other nurses round, they said, "Come and see, how can a man have an STD in his ass, are you a homosexual?" He died in part, I think, because he had no place to go.

"Even now," Tshuma says, "when GALZ Positive members go to the clinics, they say, `Oh, the gay guy is here.' A person can feel intimdiated by this. They gather around because they want to see what a gay person looks like."²⁵

Tshuma is nonetheless committed to political activism.

Knowing my status has given me peace and strength. I say to people who are worrying about being tested, that you need to know what you are facing. I feel really strong today. Not, I think, because of medication. It was my mind that gave me the strength to get as well as I am today. I know I have one thing to fight for; I only have one thing to think about in my life-I am HIV-positive and I will fight for my health and my rights.

Still, he says, the road has been hard. "My brother said to me when I first came out as gay, I wish you were not part of the family. This was in 1998. He actually said to me, before he even knew that I was HIV-positive: `You will die of AIDS: only gay people die of AIDS.'"²⁶

Peter Joaneti says,

There is a double discrimination in society for gay and HIV-positive people. In the community, in the gay world, people gossip about your HIV status, talk about your personal life and health. And people out there say you are HIV-positive because you are gay. And they believe gays cause the spread of HIV/AIDS.²⁷

That some in Southern Africa still believe AIDS to be a "gay disease," despite the massive AIDS crisis across the continent spread by unprotected heterosexual sex, is still further testimony to the lethal failure of states to promote full awareness. As The Rainbow Project's Ian Swartz observes, governments refuse to include homosexuals in any HIV/AIDS materials on HIV/AIDS, but their leaders persist in blaming homosexuals for AIDS in Africa.²⁸

Still worse, if some heterosexuals feel that gays cause HIV, some homosexuals feel themselves invulnerable to it-precisely because they have never seen AIDS information directed at them. In Namibia, Derrick, who gives safer-sex workshops for gays and lesbians for The Rainbow Project, told us, "Some of the youth believe that if you are gay-ah, it was so hard when we first started with the youth!-that if you were gay or lesbian, that you don't get AIDS."²⁹

156 IGLHRC interview by Scott Long with Tendai N., Harare, Zimbabwe, August 9 2000.

157 "UK: Gay Activist Freed After Mugabe Row," BBC, October 30, 1999.

158 "UK: Gay Activist Freed After Mugabe Row," BBC, October 30, 1999. See also, OutRage! press release, "Zimbabwe's President Mugabe Detained on Charges of Torture by Gay Rights Protesters," October 30, 1999.

159 "President Repeats `Gay Gangster' Accusation," Herald, Zimbabwe, November 13, 1999. See also, "Mugabe: UK Set `Gay Gangsters' on Me," BBC, Monday, November 8, 1999.

160 "British Gay-Gangster Tactics Won't Work," People's Voice, Zimbabwe, November 14-20, 1999.

161 Zvenyika Kambizi, "Really Bad Fellas, These British," People's Voice, Zimbabwe, November 14-20, 1999. See also, "Attack on Mugabe Sign of UK Dictatorship," Sunday Mail, Zimbabwe, November 28, 1999; "Perverts' Weird Rights Shocking," Herald, Zimbabwe, November 15, 1999; and "Homosexuality: Do Not Force it on Zimbabweans," Herald, November 16, 1999.

162 "Gays Pounce on Mugabe," Sunday Mail, Zimbabwe, October 31, 1999; and "Gays Ambush Mugabe," Standard, Zimbabwe, October 31-November 6, 1999.

163 Dumisani Muleya, "CIO Quizzed Over Gay Ambush of Mugabe in UK," Zimbabwe Independent, November 5, 1999.

164 IGLHRC interview by Scott Long with Tendai N., Harare, Zimbabwe, August 9 2000.

165 IGLHRC interview by Scott Long with Robert, Harare, Zimbabwe, August 10, 2000.

166 IGLHRC interview by Scott Long with Tendai N., Harare, Zimbabwe, August 9, 2000.

167 IGLHRC interview by Scott Long with Tina Machida, Harare, Zimbabwe, August 10, 2000.

168 IGLHRC interview by Scott Long with Robert, Harare, Zimbabwe, August 10, 2000.

169 Human Rights Watch interview with Norman Tjombe, Legal Action Center, Windhoek, Namibia, July 19, 2001.

170 See Max Hamata, "SFF Launch Earring `Purge,'" Namibian, May 2, 2001; and "Govt. Repeats That No `Earring' Order Given," Namibian, May 9, 2001. Government spokesmen denied that any order from the president lay behind the actions, and after reporters documented the arrests, SFF officials reportedly reprimanded some of the arresting officers. However, SFF officers also threatened a journalist from the Namibian who was interviewing two of the victims, destroying his notes and threatening to impound his camera.

171 Human Rights Watch interview with Ian Swartz, Windhoek, Namibia, July 16, 2001..

172 Human Rights Watch interview with Phil ya Nangoloh, Windhoek, Namibia, July 19, 2001.

173 Ibid.

174 Human Rights Watch interview with Simone (not real name), Windhoek, Namibia, July 18, 2001.

175 Ibid.

176 IGLHRC interview by Kagendo with Isabel (not real name), Windhoek, Namibia, November 20, 2001.

177 Human Rights Watch interview with Sarah (not real name), Windhoek, Namibia, July 17, 2001.

178 Ibid.

179 Human Rights Watch interview with Norman Tjombe, Legal Action Center, Windhoek, Namibia, July 19, 2001.

180 IGLHRC interview by Scott Long with Andrew K., Harare, Zimbabwe, August 3, 2000.

181 IGLHRC interview by Scott Long with Aubrey M., Lusaka, Zambia, July 26, 2000.

182 IGLHRC interview by Scott Long with Francis Chisambisha, Johannesburg, South Africa, July 17, 2000.

183 IGLHRC interview by Scott Long with Francis Chisambisha, Johannesburg, South Africa, July 17, 2000. One of the friends who had introduced the minister to Chisambisha later confirmed that the meeting took place: IGLHRC interview by Scott Long with "D.", Lusaka, Zambia, July 24, 2000.

184 IGLHRC interview by Scott Long with Francis Chisambisha, Johannesburg, South Africa, July 17, 2000.

185 IGLHRC interview by Kagendo with "Sexy," Gaborone, Botswana, November 7, 2001.

186 IGLHRC interview by Scott Long with Chauta M., Lusaka, Zambia, July 28, 2000.

187 Quotations from Tina Machida are from IGLHRC interviews by Scott Long in Harare, Zimbabwe, August 10, 2000.

188 Apparently under the Miscellaneous Offences Act: see Appendix, below.

189 IGLHRC interview by Scott Long with Wallace M., Harare, Zimbabwe, August 4, 2000.

190 Letter from Kantor and Immerman, legal practitioners, to commissioner of police, June 29, 1998, "Notice in Terms of Police Act (Chapter 11:10) and State Liabilities Act (Chapter 8:14)." On file with Human Rights Watch.

191 IGLHRC interview by Scott Long with Romeo Tshuma, Harare, Zimbabwe, August 8, 2000.

192 IGLHRC interview by Scott Long with Romeo Tshuma, Harare, Zimbabwe, August 8, 2000.

193 IGLHRC interview by Scott Long with Kuda Kwashe, Harare, Zimbabwe, August 16, 2000.

194 Although Kwashe was never charged with an offence, and was not cross-dressing, a provision in Zimbabwe's Miscellaneous Offences Act criminalizes any person who "appears in any public place" without wearing "such articles of clothing as decency, custom, or circumstances require": the language is an open invitation to police regulation of any remotely unconventional dress. See the Appendix for more information on this and similar provisions in the region.

195 Letter from Kantor and Immerman, legal practitioners, to commissioner of police, June 19, 1998, "Notice in Terms of Police Act (Chapter 11:10) and State Liabilities Act (Chapter 8:14)." On file with Human Rights Watch. See also, communication from Kantor and Immermann to Keith Goddard, December 1, 1998.

196 This and subsequent quotations are from an IGLHRC interview by Scott Long with Dominic S., Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, August 14, 2000.

197 IGLHRC requested a meeting with Mills Security officials in Bulawayo in August 2000, but the request was denied.

198 IGLHRC interview by Scott Long with Thema N., Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, August 13, 2000.

199 IGLHRC interview by Scott Long with Thema N., Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, August 14, 2000.

200 Ibid.

201 See Appendix for more information.

202 IGLHRC interview by Scott Long with Thema N., Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, August 14, 2000.

203 Ibid.

204 Quoted in Max Hamata, "Ekandjo elaborates on anti-gay stance," Namibian, November 3, 2000.

205 Nicholas Toonen v Australia, U.N. GAOR, Hum. Rts. Comm., 15^th Sess., Case no. 488/1992, U.N. Doc. CCPR/c/50/D/488/1992.

206 It is worth noting that the law used to punish homosexual conduct in Egypt, a law on the combatting of prostitution (law 10/1961), actually requires that "debauchery" be "habitual"-that is, that "debauched" acts (defined in jurisprudence as anal intercourse between men) be committed by the accused at least twice with the same or different people.

207 IGLHRC interview by Scott Long with superintendent Wayne Bvudzijena, Harare Central Police Station, Harare, Zimbabwe, August 10, 2000.

208 IGLHRC interview by Scott Long with Colonel C. Musemba, superintendent of crime, Zambian National Police, Lusaka, Zambia, July 24, 2000. Colonel Musemba promised to produce statistics of arrests and convictions under articles 155 and 158, the relevant provisions of Zambia's penal code (for more information, see Appendix); to date these have not been forthcoming.

209 IGLHRC interview by Kagendo with Clement Daniels, Legal Assistance Centre, Windhoek, Namibia, November 16, 2001.

210 February 25, 1997 statement in GALZ files; "Martin's" name has been changed.

211 They were convicted and fined Z$400 each; both later left the country. IGLHRC interview by Scott Long with attorney L. Nkomo, Webb, Low, and Barry, Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, August 14, 2000. A constitutional challenge to the common-law offense of sodomy was later attempted based on this case. See Appendix below.

212 "Two Charged for Homosexuality," Botswana Guardian, January 13, 1995; and "British Citizen Faces Gay Charges," SA Times, South Africa, January 18, 1995.

213 See Appendix for more information on the laws.

214 IGLHRC interview by Kagendo, with Gideon Duma Boko, Lecturer in Law, University of Botswana, November 9, 2000; and "Applicant's Heads of Argument," High Court of Botswana at Francistown, in the matter between Utjiwa K. and the state (no date or case no.). For further information on the constitutional aspects of the case, see Appendix below.

215 Cited in e-mail to Scott Long from Maureen Akena, Ditshwanelo, September 16, 2002.

216 All citations are from the case file and trial transcript obtained by IGLHRC: Case no. IB/535 of 1998, in the Subordinate Court of the First Class for the Kabwe District, "The People v Emmanuel Sikombe." The transcript was hastily typed; errors in the citations are in the original.

217 Despite their recorded ages both are repeatedly referred to as "boys" in court records. Mokoma is also identified in the transcript as "Lukamba Lukopa," apparently a misprint.

218 Throughout the process Sikombe was represented by a public advocate from the Kabwe Legal Aid Society.

219 See Appendix for details of the interpretation of "carnal knowledge . . . against the order of nature" and other provisions in Zambian law.

220 "Unnatural offences" are a complex of crimes in Roman-Dutch common law (which is not in force in Zambia), covering non-anal homosexual acts. Section 156 of the Zambian Penal Code, however, criminalizes only the attempt to commit "carnal knowledge" or anal sex. Prosecutors appear to have treated oral sex as though it were an attempt at anal sex.

221 As explained in the Appendix, "gross indecency" is a Zambian inheritance from nineteenth-century British law, where it was meant to criminalize oral rather than anal sex. What is notable is the succession of false starts necessary before the police found a charge corresponding to the act. Meanwhile, the sentence Sikombe faced was thus reduced from seven to five years.

222 Mokoma claimed Sikombe sucked his penis twice during the night. Sikombe continued to deny the charges, saying, according to the court transcript, "Anyone can accuse any one for the purpose of obtaining money." The three men-Mokoma, Sikombe, and Bornwell Sinkupe-had slept in the same bed that night; Sinkupe testified that he had seen nothing happen: the transcript records him as saying, apparently to the accused, "I have spent nights with you before this incident. Nothing of this before happened to me."

223 No evidence to this effect had been introduced.

224 IGLHRC interview by Scott Long with Emmanuel Sikombe, Mukobeko Prison, Kabwe, Zambia, July 22, 2000.

225 Letter from Emmanuel Sikombe to IGLHRC, February 2001.

226 E-mail communication from Goddard to Scott Long, IGLHRC, August 25, 2002. Prior to 2001, when Zimbabwe finally revised its legislation, a man accused of raping another man was not charged with rape-which was restricted to penis-vagina penetration-but with "sodomy," a crime which made no distinction between forcible and consensual commission. The result, Goddard contends, was that people accused of "sodomy" tended to be categorized in the public imagination with rapists as a class. Legal change has not resulted in the shifting of this stigma.

227 H. Montgomery Hyde, The Other Love: An Historical and Contemporary Survey of Homosexuality in Britain (London: Heinemann, 1971), p. 136.

228 IGLHRC interview by Scott Long with attorney who wished to remain anonymous, Harare, Zimbabwe, August 5, 2000.

229 All quotations from "Teresa" are from IGLHRC interviews by Scott Long in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, August 13, 2000.

230 IGLHRC interview by Scott Long with Carlos Mpofu, Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, August 12, 2000.

231 IGLHRC interview by Scott Long with "Teresa," Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, August 13, 2000.

232 IGLHRC interview by Scott Long with Carlos Mpofu, Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, August 12, 2000.

233 Ibid.

234 Ibid.

235 IGLHRC interview by Scott Long with "Teresa," Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, August 13, 2000.

236 IGLHRC interview by Scott Long with Lloyd, Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, August 13, 2000.

237 IGLHRC interview by Scott Long with Nhlanhla N., Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, August 13, 2000..

238 IGLHRC interview by Scott Long with "Munashe," Harare, Zimbabwe, August 5, 2000.

239 IGLHRC interview by Scott Long with Keith Goddard, Harare, Zimbabwe, August 5, 2000; and "Statement from Gays and Lesbians of Zimbabwe," June 17, 1998, on file with GALZ.

240 "Chipinge Man Facing Charges of Extortion," Herald, Zimbabwe, June 11, 1998.

241 IGLHRC interview by Scott Long with Derek Matyszak, Harare, Zimbabwe, August 8, 2000.

242 "Trial into Sodomy Allegations Against Goddard Not Now," Herald, Zimbabwe, May 12, 1999.

243 IGLHRC interview by Scott Long with Derek Matyszak, Harare, Zimbabwe, August 8, 2000.

244 Ibid.

245 IGLHRC interview by Kagendo with Mike, Gaborone, Botswana, November 8, 2001.

246 IGLHRC interview by Scott Long with Keith Goddard, Harare, Zimbabwe, December 6, 1998.

247 IGLHRC telephone interview by Scott Long and Kamal Fizazi with a march organizer who wished to remain anonymous, March 23, 2001.

248 Human Rights Watch interview with Ian Swartz, Windhoek, Namibia, July 16, 2001.

249 IGLHRC interview by Scott Long with Derek Matyszak, Harare, Zimbabwe, August 3, 2000.

250 IGLHRC interview by Scott Long with Romeo Tshuma, GALZ, Harare, Zimbabwe, August 8, 2000.

251 IGLHRC interview by Scott Long with a GALZ member who declined to be named, Harare, Zimbabwe, August 3, 2000.

252 IGLHRC interview by Scott Long with Derek Matyszak, Harare, Zimbabwe, August 3, 2000.

253 Notice from the Censorship Board, dated March 1, 1995, on file with Human Rights Watch.

254 IGLHRC interview by Scott Long with Keith Goddard, Harare, Zimbabwe, August 3, 2000.

255 IGLHRC interview by Scott Long with Derek Matyszak, Zimbabwe, August 3, 2000.

0 IGLHRC interview by Scott Long with Keith Goddard, GALZ, Harare, Zimbabwe, August 5, 2000.

1 Notice of Seizure ref. 2/10/96, Harare Main Post Office, 20 October 1996.

2 Human Rights Watch interview with Elden (not real name), Windhoek, Namibia, July 18, 2001.

3 Human Rights Watch interview with Genevieve (not real name), Windhoek, Namibia, July 18, 2001. Although schools traditionally have had significant latitude to control student dress, including requiring that students wear school uniforms, they may not punish students merely for breaching stereotypes controlling how girls and boys should dress-for wearing the school uniform designated for the opposite sex, for example. Article 5 of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women mandates states "To modify the social and cultural patterns of conduct of men and women, with a view to achieving the elimination of prejudices and customary and all other practices which are based ... on stereotyped roles for men and women."

4 Human Rights Watch interview with Isaiah (not real name), Windhoek, Namibia, July 18, 2001.

5 Ibid.

6 Human Rights Watch interview with Irma (not real name), Windhoek, Namibia, July 20, 2001.

7 Human Rights Watch interview with Justine (not real name), Windhoek, Namibia, July 19, 2001.

8 Ibid.

9 Human Rights Watch interview with Elizabeth Khaxas, Windhoek, Namibia, July 17, 2001.

10 Ibid. See also: Sexual Violence against Girls in South African Schools (New York: Human Rights Watch, 2001).

11 IGLHRC interview by Kagendo with Ronza, Gaborone, Botswana, November 7, 2001.

12 Quoted in Crispin Inambao, "Prisoners Should Not Be Condemned to AIDS Sentence," Africa News Service, June 15, 1998.

13 IGLHRC interview by Scott Long with Michaela Hubschle, deputy minister of prisons and correctional services, Windhoek, Namibia, December 17, 1998. This was not the last warning that Hubschle faced apparently from someone within SWAPO. The next year, when she stated publicly that officials "responsible for torture must be immediately suspended from their duties and stand trial," the Namibian received a letter to the editor accusing Hubschle of echoing statements by human rights leader Phil ya Nangoloh, and urging her to resign for "collaboration with the enemies of our struggle for freedom and independence." The letter was hand-delivered to the Namibian in a government envelope. See "Call for Michaela Hubschle to resign," Namibian, September 17, 1999.

14 Deputy Commissioner of Prisons Fwafwa Mabakeng, quoted in Max Hamata, "Condoms clash on cards," Namibian, September 6, 2001.

15 Henock ya Kasita, quoted in Absalom Shigweda, "Prisoners told `go play with yourselves,'" Namibian, May 10, 2001.

16 Petition from the Khomas regional branch of the SWAPO Women's Council to Justice Minister Ngarikutuke, in Christof Maletsky and Patience Smith, "SWAPO women add voice on homosexuality, prostitution," Namibian, May 28, 2001.

17 IGLHRC interview by Scott Long with Poliyana Mangwiro, GALZ, Harare, Zimbabwe, August 11, 2000.

18 IGLHRC interview by Scott Long with Romeo Tshuma, GALZ, Harare, Zimbabwe, August 8, 2000.

19 Ibid.

20 IGLHRC interview by Scott Long with Peter Joaneti, GALZ, Harare, Zimbabwe, August 9, 2000.

21 IGLHRC interviews by Scott Long with Romeo Tshuma and Peter Joaneti, Harare, Zimbabwe, August 8 and 9, 2000.

22 IGLHRC interview by Kagendo with Wendell (not real name), Windhoek, Namibia, November 15, 2001.

23 IGLHRC interview by Kagendo with Derrick (not real name), Windhoek, Namibia, November 15, 2001.

24 IGLHRC interview by Scott Long with Romeo Tshuma, Harare, Zimbabwe, August 8, 2000.

25 Ibid.

26 Ibid.

27 IGLHRC interview by Scott Long with Peter Joaneti, Harare, Zimbabwe, August 9, 2000.

28 Human Rights Watch interview with Ian Swartz, Windhoek, Namibia, July 17, 2001.

29 IGLHRC interview by Kagendo with Derrick (not real name), Windhoek, Namibia, November 15, 2001.