THE Rainbow Project (TRP) is currently organising a Gay and Lesbian Awareness Week consisting of radio talk shows and panel discussions on the issues relating to gays and lesbians in Namibia.

In Namibia to support the Rainbow Project's initiatives are representatives of gay and lesbian associations throughout southern Africa.

Prudence Mabele, one of the participants from South Africa, is the Director of Positive Women's Network, an NGO based in Pretoria.

She is black, a lesbian and happily married to another woman. She was married in a church by a pastor and says that being a lesbian has not clashed with her culture. She has known that she preferred women since she was nine years old.

At a TRP press conference this week she said: "It was quite a challenge coming out as a young, black lesbian but good things are happening..."

She told the story of two married, lesbian police women who won their case in South Africa's courts to have a joint medical aid scheme. The partner was thus recognised as a spouse.

Many of the rights gays and lesbians are fighting for in Namibia are taken for granted by heterosexual couples as their right to raise and adopt children and freedom to marry is enshrined in the Namibian constitution.

South Africa was the first country in the world to give recognition to sexual orientation rights as human rights.

Back home in South Africa, Prudence helps lesbians, especially black lesbians, understand the issues they are confronted with and explore the cultural clashes they have to deal with e.g. the issue of lobola. She says it is imperative that stereotypes die.

"As long as I pay tax, fight crime and exercise good citizenship I have the right to demand equal rights - rights that heterosexual couples enjoy... I should have the right to divorce and that my partnership with another women be recognised as a marriage."

Gay people participated in the South African liberation struggle and there were and still are gay people in the military . The African Renaissance demands participation from all people in a nation and homophobic or negative statements should not be tolerated, she adds.

TRP was formed in reaction to remarks by some of Namibia's government leaders including President Sam Nujoma, who said that gays and lesbians are un-African and un-Christian in 1996. Senior government officials including Ministers Helmut Angula and Jerry Ekandjo have also made anti-gay remarks .

TRP aims to attain equal rights and opportunities in all aspects of life for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual and transgendered people in Namibia.

During the awareness week they will seek to promote the visibility of especially lesbians and educate others against intolerance as well as to promote safer sex especially among gays and lesbians. Ongoing objectives include lobbying for equal rights through law reform and the encouragement and promotion of civil, social cultural, economic, educational, sporting and political opportunities .

Six members of TRP of Namibia participated in the 19th World Conference of the International Lesbian and Gay Association (ILGA) in Johannesburg from 19-25 September 1999 .

This was the first ILGA conference to be held in Africa and the aim was to co-ordinate the activities of organisations who fight for the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual and transgendered people throughout the world.