Homosexuaity in Zimbabwe
Rootsman
In the black townships of contemporary South Africa, Miller (1992:4,8) reported
a party sponsored by Gays and Lesbians of the Witwatersran
(GLOW) in which
the 40 or so guests were mostly men, all quite young and very campy.
They referred to their boyfriends as wives and barked
orders at them. The boyfriends were deferential... GLOW attracted
younger black men who, traditionally deprived of many social
outlets, saw the organization as a place to have fun.
Similarly, Isaacs and McKendrick (1992:110) mention
a discotheque in Salt River, adjacent to the [Cape Town] suburb of
Woodstock, on occasions hosts drag competitions for
so-called ‘couloured’ gays.... Of note [in a September 1988
observation] was the number of families of gay participants who
offered not only their moral support, but who applied make-up and who
helped to costume their sons.
Although writing about the emergence of white South African gay identity and
community, they also noted that
Soweto reputedly has 15 small shebeens and music halls exclusively
for African gays. In Cape Town, a new group of African
gays has recently emerged under the title of the African Gay
Association (AGA), and has an active membersjip of up to 70
persons. A particular club in the centre of Cape Town provides a
venue for predominantly ‘coloured’ gay men and women (p.
100).
A 28-year-old (soon thereafter dead) black gay leader from Soweto called Linda
Ngcobo, the founder of GLOW, described township gay culture
to Miller (1992:14, 17) as centered on cross-dressing and role-playing:
No one, including gay men, seemed to be quite sure what “gay”
meant — were gay men really women? men? or something in
between? This confusion was compounded by the fact that sex education
was extremely limited in the townships; moreover,
among some tirbes, talking about sex at all was taboo. “Moffie,”
the derogratory Afrikaans expression for male homosexual,
widely used in South Africa, literally means [and abbreviates]
“hermaphrodite.”... Some, like Linda, were treated as women by
their families [his parents expected him to do “women’s work,
including washing, ironing, and baking] and seemed to believe that
deep down they actually were females.
Linda also recounted the belief of an early boyfriend and his family that he
could bear a child.
I wouldn’t have lent much credence to this story except for an
article about township gay life I had read in the Weekly Mail
newspaper. In the article, the reporter asked a member of a gay male
couple if he practiced safe sex. The man said he was
“scared” of condoms, because, “if I used them I won’d be able
to have a baby. I am throwing my sperm away.” The reporter
pressed him: By sleeping with a man, wasn’t he throwing his sperm
away as it was? “No,” the man replied. “One day my ‘wife’
and I hope to have children like any normal couple” (p. 15).
Male pregnancy is not the only “exotic” belief about homosexuality. A
32-year-old man named Robert who had left his 20-year-old male second
wife along with a female wife and child in the diamond-mining center of
Kimberley told Miller (1992:54) that if his parents find out about his
homosexuality they “will think I am bewitched and will take me to a witch
doctor, “ as Simon Nkoli’s did.
Nkoli recounted that in Soweto
townships, people use the Sesotho wor sitabane to describe gay
people. It means a person who has got two organs—sexual
organs—a vagina and a penis. . . . We never really saw people with
two organs. But if you are a feminine man, many will say you
are a sitabane. And if you happen to be over twenty years old and you
don't have a girlfriend, many will presume you are gay. . .
[even though] in the black community, people don't know what gay is.
(1993:22)
Nkoli's stepfather was certain that Nkoli must be normal, because he did not
have a female organ (along with his male one), and his siblings
were asked, "Is it true that your brother has got two sexual organs?" and
fellow students would ask to examine his genitalia (pp. 23-4). A lesbian
born in Soweto in 1974, seventeen years later than Nkoli encountered the same
belief that "gays have two genitals" and for a time though, "I
can't be gay because I have to have two things" (Mamaki 1996:3). The general
Southern African derogation moffie derives from (condenses)
hermaphrodite, as already mentioned.
Whether the indigenous cultures conceive of two or three sexs/genders,
husband-wife roles continue to be the idiom for same-sex relationships
in the homelands. The relationships also seem to be marked by at least some
disparities in age, compounding the patriarchal authority, as also
in black African male-female relationships.
A public black gay subculture has been identifiable in Cape Town since at least
1950 (Gevisser 1995:72) reported on in national publications
aimed at black audiences. Chetty (1995) tracked down three of the “moffie”
performers photographed and discussed in the 1950s. All three were
hairdressers and all three reported early and ongoing family support for both
homosexuality and cross-dressing from an early age.
In the largest cities, an interracial gay liberation movement is mobilizing, as
Bull (1990) and Miller (1992), and Gevisser and Cameron (1995)
document. On 13 October 1990 in Johannesburg 800 (30% of whom were black)
people participated in the first Gay Pride Parade in Africa (Bay
Area Reporter, 1 Nov. 1990).
The interim constitution’s bill of rights (section 8, part 2) that followed
the end of apartheid and the coming to power of the African National
Congress (ANC) in 1994 included a sexual orientation clause. The major
opposition party in South Africa, the Intkatha Freedom Party, also
included sexual orientation in its proposed constitution (Gevisser and Cameron
1992:96). The ANC provision was incorporated in the new
constitution (as section 9, part 3) that was adopted on 8 May 1996, making
South Africa the first nation in the world with protection of
persons from discrimination by sexual orientation included in its constitution.
Patron (1995:22) suggests that “perhaps it is because the South
African liberation struggle lasted so long that the liberation movement was
able to achieve a level of maturity that recognized the necessity of
full and genuine inclusion of all minorities in society”— in explicit
contrast to neighboring Zimbabwe.
Lurink (1995) reported:
Until July this year, gays and lesbians in Zimbabwe lived relatively
undisturbed lives, even though the number of gay bars in Harare
was limited eventually to one. And to use the term "homosexuality" in the
media was not done. Maybe the gay movement’s "coming
out" by applying for a stall at the book fair, and its first publications
appearing in Shona and English, were going just a step too far.
Maybe it was seen as a provocation by those in power. Maybe the economic
misery and the approaching presidential elections next
year created a need for a new scapegoat. Maybe the South African winds of
change shook nerves in Harare’s presidential offices. But
Evelyn’s explanation is more psychological. She suspects that Mugabe
himself, when he underwent a 12-year prison sentence under Ian
Smith, may have been sexually abused. "It happens all the time in our
prisons. Moreover, his white adversaries once smeared him as a
`moffie.’"
Evelyn also supplied Lurink with a Shona word for "gay": ngochane. Coutinho
(1993:63) noted that homosexual behavior was not sanctioned in
traditional Shona and Ndebele law and reported that "older gay men tell tales
of dodging the police while cruising Salisbury’s Cecil Square (now
Africa Unity Square in Harare) as far back as the early 1950s. Older black gay
men recall tales of romance and hardship on the other side of town
in the single-sex hostels for migrant labors" and also in prison. An
organization called Gays and Lesbians of Zimbabwe was formed in 1990.
"With its limited and apolitical agenda, GALZ is treading a cautious path
designed to break down isolation without drawing unwanted attention
from the police" (p. 65), and in the townships "small networks of gay men are
emerging" (p. 64).