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In and Out of the Zimbabwe Closet

-Dick Lipez

November  1997

One of the PCVs I met last month on a vacation trip to Zimbabwe had been a gay-rights leader at his Mid-Western University. So his friends there were aghast when he told them the Peace Corps had invited him to teach for two years in Zimbabwe, and he had leaped at the chance to go. This was the notoriously homophobic African country, after all, where in 1995 President Robert Mugabe had shut down the gay booth at the International Book Fair, calling homosexuals "sodomites and sexual perverts" who were "worse than dogs and pigs."

The movement activist, now a science teacher in a rural secondary school, had a good answer for skeptics: Zimbabwe was still in the dark ages on gay matters, yes (or at least it's president was) but the country's backward ways were being challenged by a feisty young gay movement, which had prompted Mugabe's outburst in the first place. So this was the African country for a U.S. movement man to head for.

The volunteer is still glad he went to Zimbabwe. He's thriving as a teacher, linguist and explorer of local family history, but sad to say after a year his life as a gay man is zilch. The problem is that Zimbabwean gay life, such as it is, goes on pretty much in the cities, and most PCVs, like the science teacher, live and work in the bush.

A gay Peace Corps staffer in Harare (the capitol) is nicely attentive to gay and lesbian PCV concerns, and slipped the teacher the name of someone to look up in Bulawayo (Zimbabwe's other sizable city), but the volunteer is reluctant to take a chance. "If anybody at my school found out I was gay," he says, "I'd just be gone." Local attitudes are so bad the teacher told me, that he might even be attacked. He harbored some hope of hooking up with one of the new trainees due in mid-October. Failing that, the teacher says, "I'll have a personal life later."

His caution is well considered. Homosexuality is reviled in both Shona and Ndebele (the two largest tribal groups in Zimbabwe) cultures, and the Christian missionaries did not bring enlightenment in that regard. Man's sexual duty is to try to make as many children as possible, and few shirk that duty. Most Zimbabwean men have very active and non-monogamous heterosexual lives, and the national HIV infection rate of some 25 to 30 percent is in part a result of these sexual values. When my partner, Joe Wheaton, told our Shona guide in a game park that he had no interest in marrying (Joe didn't say why), the incredulous young man moaned, "You are lost! You are lost!" Even masturbation is thought of as a vile waste of sperm.

It's too bad that gay volunteers have to be so careful, for the movement in Zimbabwe, while still small and vulnerable is wonderfully vital. We spent an evening with Keith Goddard, the white "Rhodie" (as in "Rhodesia", Zimbabwe's colonial name) program manager, and apparent guiding spirit, of Gays and Lesbians of Zimbabwe (GALZ), and visited the group's comfortable community center in a Harare residential neighborhood. Goddard said the book fair brouhaha had both galvanized local gays, black and white, and brought in financial support from Dutch and other gay and lesbian organizations. GALZ provides counseling and support for men and women emerging from traditional cultures (English included) of repression and denial. It sponsors social events, and it works with other human rights groups for organized free expression, a perilous and delicate matter in this 17-year-old one party state.

Goddard estimates that, as elsewhere on Earth, somewhere between two and ten percent of the Zimbabwean population is gay. And while homosexuality is not illegal in Zimbabwe, homosexual acts are, so blackmail is a problem. Police in Harare have been known to work with street hustlers to extort money from gay men. Police raided the GALZ center repeatedly last year, but on each occasion Goddard and others went directly to high police officials to insist that GALZ had done nothing illegal and that the raids should stop. For now, they have, and one police official now attends GALZ social events, both to protect GALZ, Goddard says, and to keep an eye on the group.

Most politicians won't even talk to GALZ directly, and those church and secular officials who do must be educated from the ground up. When some straight, male officials denied that black African lesbians even existed, Goddard produced a friend who was. "Ah, but we know what she needs," Goddard was solemnly informed. Harare could be Scranton in 1951.

The Peace Corps is doing what it can to help gay and lesbian volunteers in Zimbabwe make the best of a difficult situation. The staff nurse lets trainees know that they can come to her for guidance, and Peace Corps Director, Sally Collier, is as warmly understanding as any country director could be. But except for those gay PCVs whose skills and backgrounds might lead them to one of the few urban assignments in Zimbabwe, this will continue to be a Peace Corps country where gay volunteers are likely to find their fulfillment in ways other than sexual, romantic, and in the cause of gay rights. And the estimable GALZ and its worthy activities are likely to remain tantalizing out of reach.

Dick Lipez served as a volunteer in Ethiopia from 1962 to 1964. He's an editorial writer and the author of the Donald Strachey mystery series published under the name of his alter ego Richard Stevenson.

 

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Updated on 09/12/98

 

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