The Struggle for Sexual Minority Rights in Zimbabwe in Context

Abstract

This chapter examines the history of sexual minority rights activism in Zimbabwe in its wider context. It situates advocacy over sexual minority rights in the context of broader struggles for gender equality and the women’s movement in Zimbabwe, as well as in relation to the instrumental deployment of homophobia and homonationalism by African political and religious leaders. This latter has been part of the process of constructing a new hegemony in post-colonial and post-apartheid southern Africa. The chapter first provides an overview of the coming out by Zimbabwean sexual minorities and the reactions against this within society and by the state. We discuss the factors that have enabled GALZ and other sexual minority activists to survive for nearly three decades against compelling odds, and what this may mean for the struggle for gender equality in the future.