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All
Africa symposium on HIV/AIDS & Human Rights
International
Capital Corporation Limited & The Gays and Lesbians of Zimbabwe
(GALZ)
June,
2004
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Foreword
Towards an all-africa rights initiative
On 7 February 2004, 55 participants from 22 LGBTI groups representing
seventeen African countries met in Johannesburg for an eight-day
All-Africa Symposium on HIV/AIDS and Human Rights. The major purpose
of the meeting was to develop strategies for African LGBTI organising
in hostile climates at local, sub-regional and regional levels as
a coordinated response to HIV and AIDS amongst men who have sex
with men (MSM), women who have sex with women (WSW) and bisexual
people on the African continent.
It was an important
occasion. A number of efforts have been made over the years to encourage
African LGBTI groups to cooperate, the most significant being those
of The International Lesbian and Gay Organisation (ILGA), the largest
international membership body of LGBTI groups. ILGA's highest decision-making
body is the World Conference, which meets, on average, once in every
two years. At the 1992 Paris World Conference, ILGA adopted a policy
of dividing its membership into regions, of which Africa formed
one. Since then, at World Conferences, regions are expected to caucus
separately and to bring resolutions to the plenary for adoption.
Each region is expected to appoint two representatives to the ILGA
Board, one male and one female. But whereas ILGA Europe, America,
and to some extent Latin America, have been strikingly successful
in their attempts to organise and push the international LGBTI agenda,
until very recently, the African Region has not managed to put in
place sustainable regional structures to fulfil any major objectives.
There are many
reasons why, in the past, African LGBTI communities have failed
to cooperate, the most obvious being the open hostility to LGBTI
organising by most African governments and strong social disapproval
of homosexuality. At the local level, LGBTI organising has often
been weak (or simply non-existent) and seriously under-resourced.
LGBTI communities get no access to what limited state resources
are available for social development and, in fact, these are more
likely to be committed to the oppression of LGBTI people. Section
IV of this report, "Issues affecting LGBTIs in Africa and What
LGBTIs Need", clearly shows that the major problems faced are
common to all three regions represented and that many difficulties
stem from the denial by states that homosexuals exist in African
cultures.
Until ten years
ago, LGBTI issues were not a priority for international funders
of human rights organisations and they were still the subject of
heated debate for many international human rights watchdogs like
Amnesty International. Even HIVOS, now a major funder of LGBTI programmes
in the developing world, went through a great deal of internal soul-searching
at local level before it became comfortable with supporting the
Gays and Lesbians of Zimbabwe (GALZ). At the Paris World Conference
of ILGA in 1992, Amnesty International was only just beginning to
adopt lesbian and gay activists as prisoners of conscience and it
was not until 1995, with the London Office's open support for GALZ's
struggle against the vitriolic attacks on gays and lesbians by the
Zimbabwean President and his government, that Amnesty truly started
to mainstream LGBTI issues in its work.
Clearly, no
African LGBTI network is possible if groups are struggling at the
starting line to gain registration and simply exist and if lesbians
and gay men are so terrified of the consequences of admitting to
their sexual orientation openly. Even in Southern Africa, where
the movement is more open, better structured and reasonably well
resourced, major difficulties at local and national levels have
understandably overridden concerns for building an African LGBTI
network, especially on a continent where communication is difficult
and where it is easier and cheaper to travel to Europe and the United
States than, say, to Rwanda. Southern Africans, who often forget
striking differences in culture, economic infrastructure and creed
on the continent, have also expected LGBTI communities in other
parts of Africa to follow their bold example and simply speak out.
In discussions
about an African LGBTI network, the issue of South Africa's role
has often been raised. Being the first country in the world to secure
constitutional protection for LBGTI people, which promptly led to
the dismantling of its homophobic legislation, South Africa was
considered by many to be a special case and unconnected to the struggles
of LGBTI in other African countries. In fact, the sexual-orientation-clause
success story masked a serious underlying problem: those who are
wealthy have generally been able to buy their freedom and the sexual
orientation clause simply meant they were able to buy this freedom
more easily through appealing to the law. In stark contrast, the
poverty-stricken lesbian in a rural area is still unaware of her
legal rights and the cost of legal assistance puts the law completely
out of her reach. Her lack of financial and social independence
makes any attempts on her part to seek legal redress seem rash and
irresponsible and such attempts are likely to turn her into an outcast
and deprive her of the social support she so desperately needs.
Whilst LGBTI activists in the rest of Africa pray for the day when
they will be constitutionally protected, the techniques that they
have learnt in normalising themselves in hostile environments have
been a great deal more useful in strengthening the position of the
weak and powerless rather than guaranteeing the rights of the rich
and powerful. In this regard, South Africa has much to learn from
the methods of countries to the North although, by the same token,
South Africa has a lot to offer the rest of Africa in terms of legal
strategy and activism.
The victimisation
of Africa has also played its role in preventing African LGBTI from
moving towards coordinated action. With communication easier with
the West and the vision of international human rights groups as
merciful saviours, many LGBTI groups expend most of their energies
on wooing international funders and seeking assistance from organisations
like Amnesty International, ILGA and the International Gay and Lesbian
Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC), instead of looking to like-minded
groups on the continent for mutual support. Many international human
rights organisations, like ILGA, are confused with funders and it
is common for African LGBTI organisations to join ILGA as an automatic
gesture accompanied by the belief that the international body has
the power and resources to deliver them from evil.
Although many
closeted groups conduct important work quietly, some have emerged
for the singular purpose of tapping into foreign funding and attending
foreign conferences: for them there is no genuine commitment to
fighting for change and they remain quite comfortable with playing
the victim. At times, this has extended to explicit acts of fraud
whereby individuals, under the guise of spurious organisations,
have claimed acts of oppression in order to access funds for personal
gain. This has led to division and suspicion where established LGBTI
groups in Africa have sometimes voiced scepticism about the emergence
of new LGBTI organisations, to the extent that some organisations
are seen as groups of heterosexuals jumping on the LGBTI bandwagon
to access foreign cash.
The increasing
spate of those seeking asylum in the West on grounds of persecution
related to their sexual orientation has not only drained the continent
of leaders with experience, disrupted activities and wasted scarce
resources, but has given the general impression, in some quarters,
that LGBTI organising is largely geared towards opening up escape
routes from the continent. Understandably, the claims made by asylum
seekers are often exaggerated, once again feeding the myth that
it is impossible to be gay or lesbian and live in Africa
Much of the
African LGBTI discourse is centred on the hopeless situation facing
LGBTI rather than highlighting any achievements or progress. To
a large extent, African LGBTI have fed the international press,
international human rights organisations and funders with what they
think they want to hear, since it is tales of tragedy and disaster
that seem to attract international attention and accompanying resources.
This dependency on the West has seriously discouraged self-motivation
and self-reliance and detracted from the ability of groups to recognise
the value of cooperation with other LGBTI groupings on the continent.
Some have decided that such cooperation is a potentially expensive
and pointless exercise. This report shows, however, that there does
exist a genuine commitment to the struggle for LGBTI emancipation
on the African continent: other than in Southern Africa where organising
has traditionally been stronger, Uganda, Sierra Leone, Rwanda and
Ghana are but four countries from the rest of Africa where the All-Africa
Symposium proved that ground-breaking achievements are taking place
throughout the continent.
The first real
opportunity for African LGBTI cooperation presented itself at the
1999 ILGA World Conference in South Africa, which was organised
by the National Coalition for Gay and Lesbian Equality (NCGLE).
The Coalition (now The Lesbian and Gay Equality Project) had been
instrumental in ensuring the inclusion of sexual orientation as
a specific ground for non-discrimination in the constitution for
the New South Africa. For the first time, the African region was
exceptionally well represented: Zimbabwe sent fifteen delegates
and many South African groups were also present. In addition, there
were delegations from a number of other African countries. A prominent
South African LGBTI activist, Pumi Mtetwa, was elected co-Secretary
General. ILGA agreed to sponsor a desk at the NCGLE to handle matters
relating to building up the African region. But, within months,
the promise of a strong African region came to grief and the office
closed. Pumi Mtetwa left South Africa to take up employment in Latin
America. At the 2000 ILGA conference in Italy, Africa was again
seriously underrepresented.
In 2000, HIVOS
approached GALZ to assist with the training of LGBTI organisations
it was supporting in East Africa - namely Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania.
HIVOS felt that GALZ and The Rainbow Project (TRP) in Namibia represented
useful examples of how LGBTI organising is possible in hostile climates.
GALZ subsequently hosted a seven-day training course in October
of that year, labelled The Africa Exchange Programme (AEP), for
five East African groups and TRP. Much of the discussion centred
on what LGBTI groups should organise around, and more specifically,
on whether they should present themselves openly as LGBTI or disguise
themselves under the banner of HIV and AIDS. As was pointed out
in one of the sessions, the gay rights movement in the United States
came out of the civil rights movement at the end of the 1960s at
a different point in time and in a different historical context.
Gay and lesbian activists in the 1970s concentrated on civil liberties
such as the right to privacy, freedom of expression and the repealing
of homophobic laws, all of which fall under the gambit of what are
generally referred to as 'first generation rights'.
Africa in the
21st century is a long way from the United States of the late 1960s.
Primary concerns for contemporary Africa are poverty reduction,
HIV/AIDS and the like - in short the basic day-to-day struggles
to exist. Gay and Lesbian emancipation in the West was also linked
strongly with radical feminism, which has been glaringly absent
from most African LGBTI discourse outside South Africa and Namibia,
making most LGBTI organising in Africa heavily male-dominated. The
All-Africa Symposium made important strides in rectifying the situation.
Although lesbians still remain largely invisible in most parts of
Africa, a third of the delegates were women and an assertive statement
from the women's caucus demanded more time for women's issues within
the mainstream of the programme (see appendix 3). In addition, one
man and one woman from each region present were elected to the standing
committee and the African Lesbian Alliance (ALA), established in
June 2003 at the Johannesburg 4th Conference of the International
Association for the Study of Sexuality, Culture and Society (IASSCS),
agreed to form the women's secretariat.
Many of the
groups at the 2000 AEP meeting had managed to register with government
under the guise that they were AIDS service organisations and much
of their work focused on safer sex for MSM or general HIV/AIDS interventions
for men and women. What are generally called 'second generation
rights', relating to issues of poverty alleviation and resource
mobilisation, loomed large and took priority over fighting for basic
civil liberties. The importance of tackling HIV was again reflected
in six sessions of the All-Africa Symposium being devoted to the
issue and the fact that HIV and AIDS were frequently referred to
throughout the whole event. The African Lesbian Alliance (ALA) inserted
a separate session dedicated to the stories of three lesbian mothers
living with HIV.
At the previous
AEP meeting, questions of sexual identities were also explored.
African homosexuals have uncritically adopted Western labels of
lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT) and have also adopted
the rhetoric that surrounds them such as the slogan 'gay and lesbian
rights are human rights'. Words for same-sex sexual relationships
do exist in many African languages but, owing to the offensive nature
of most of them and their general obscurity in international circles,
they have never become labels that people can formally adopt and
organise around. This has led to a threefold problem: 'gay' and
'lesbian' continue to be interpreted by African governments as foreign
political labels; many who engage in same-sex sexual activity do
not identify as gay or lesbian; and many who adopt the labels are,
in sexual behaviour, bisexual and even, in a small number of cases,
exclusively heterosexual.
At the All-Africa
Symposium, the question was raised on the first day as to whether
an 'I' should be added to the acronym LGBTI to make visible the
interests of intersex people. Nobody identified him or herself as
intersex and no decision was made about the inclusion. As a result,
LGBT and LGBTI were often used loosely and interchangeably although
this report has opted to be more consistent as well as inclusive.
Whereas gay-identified
men can often hide their sexual relations with women, lesbian women
may fall pregnant which has led to accusations of some women being
labelled 'false lesbians', traitors to the cause or women cashing
in. Lesbian women with children, in particular, are often turned
into apologists and have been known to describe their sexual encounters
with men as rape or 'a kind of rape', implying that there was at
least some element of consent. Discussions around sexual rights
relating to the right to bodily integrity, the right to choose one's
sexual identity, the right to all safe and consensual sexual activity
with other adults (even if this seemingly conflicts with one's sexual
identity) and the right to bear children are still very much in
their infancy within the African LGBTI discourse and, even at the
symposium, they remained largely in the shadows. It is not clear
at the moment whether many African LGBTI organisations would consider
it part of their mandate to care for the children of lesbian or
bisexual-women members who have died from AIDS even thought this
was clearly an issue of paramount importance to the three HIV positive
women who spoke at the symposium.
Because of gross
generalisations within the HIV and AIDS movement relating to lesbian
sexual behaviours, African lesbians are placed on the lowest rung
when it comes to risks associated with acquiring or transmitting
the HIV virus. For lesbian women who are exclusively WSW, this is
undoubtedly true, but most women in Africa do not enjoy that luxury
of choice and certainly most do not have access to expensive technologies
for artificial insemination. Although great strides have been made
by international HIV and AIDS service organisations through the
adoption of the apolitical term MSM, so as to include non-gay-identified
men, it is positively dangerous for these same organisations to
continue to refuse acknowledgement of self-identified lesbian women
as a vulnerable group when it comes to HIV. The testimonies of the
three women in this report are evidence of how lesbian women are
at risk of falling between the cracks when it comes to HIV/AIDS
interventions.
The All-Africa
progamme, which led to the 2004 All-Africa symposium, came together
as a result of a number of welcome opportunities and a crisis in
Egypt. A senior advisor to the World Bank, Hans Binswanger, openly
gay and openly HIV positive, had been lobbying within the World
Bank and UNAIDS for support for MSM programmes in the developing
world. He and others shared the belief that World Bank and UNAIDS
grants to governments did not filter down to MSM because of homophobic
attitudes, in particular the refusal by African governments to admit
to the existence of LGBTI communities in their countries. His efforts
led to the World Bank committing financial support for LGBTI groups
organising around their sexuality using the platform of HIV and
AIDS. This concept dovetailed well with the policy of HIVOS, which
remained committed to providing additional support to the building
of infrastructures in LGBTI groups as a strategy especially for
combating HIV amongst MSM and bisexual women. With such powerful
allies on board, who not only recognized the existence of homosexuals
in Africa but also realized the importance of underpinning their
efforts to organise at local, sub-regional and regional levels,
any efforts by African groups to collaborate were now likely to
be properly resourced and professionally executed and managed.
The relevant
structures and political will to carry out the project existed in
Africa. Inspired by strategies of self-reliance implemented by the
South India AIDS Programme (SIAP) in Chenai, GALZ launched a national
Affinity Group programme, in 2001, designed to assist LGBTI communities
outside Harare to organise around their sexuality using the platform
of HIV and AIDS and, as far as possible, to be self-reliant. The
experience made the organisation well suited to helping apply these
strategies to other parts of Africa.
In 1998, a website
called Behind the Mask (BTM) was set up to gather and disseminate
information about LGBTI issues in Africa and facilitate communication
between activists. It quickly gathered the names of groups and individuals
in 36 African states and started to publish stories relating to
LGBTI activities in these countries. This list of contacts and the
knowledge of East Africa of a Ugandan activist, Ronald Lawabaayi,
were vital resources when it came to identifying groups to attend
the symposium.
The Egyptian
crisis, described in this report, highlighted the urgent and important
need for African LGBTI groups to consolidate their efforts at a
continental level. Clearly a coordinated campaign by African LGBTI
groups would have gone a long way towards dispelling the myth that
homosexuality is foreign to the African continent, even if this
campaign had not achieved the objective of halting the MSM witch
hunt. In addition, despite successes in getting the men released
or retried by more sympathetic courts, American interventions still
fuelled the stereotypical image of homosexuality as a foreign perversion
imported from the West.
As a first step
to setting up the All-Africa Programme, the GALZ leadership met
in Kadoma, Zimbabwe, in August 2003, to design two LGBTI training
manuals for Africa, one on mobilising in a hostile climate, the
other on organisational development. The contributors drew mostly
on GALZ's experiences over the past ten years and on strategies
related to the setting up of the Affinity Group programme, in particular
that groups should be encouraged to organise around their sexuality
using the platform of HIV and AIDS.
Soon after the
Kadoma meeting, it was decided that the first of a series of pan-African
LGBTI conferences should be held in Tanzania to which groups from
Anglophone Africa would be invited to discuss strategies for the
deliverance of training to newly-formed or struggling LGBTI groups.
The two recently completed manuals would also be used as a basis
for discussion leading to their revision. Ronald Lwabaayi was appointed
as coordinator for the event.
Doubts arose
about the suitability of Tanzania as a venue. A story had appeared
in the Tanzanian press that a group of gay tourists were to visit
Tanzania on a safari. Although the story turned out to be fabricated
and was seemingly an attempt to whip up anti-gay sentiment, it was
felt that the risk of the conference being disrupted and delegates
being refused entry to Tanzania were too great to be ignored. The
primary objective was to ensure that LGBTI groups could meet safely
and conduct their business undisturbed. The symposium was moved
to South Africa.
Behind the Mask
offered to act as host. Their knowledge and experience of LGBTI
groups in Africa put them in the perfect position to contact groups
and make all the arrangements. Ronald Lwabaayi went to Johannesburg
in January 2004 to assist and the symposium finally took place in
February in Johannesburg.
The event was
a major success. Participants were divided into three regions, Southern,
East and West (subsequently referred to as the Southern African,
East African and West African Alliances) and each drew up detailed
work plans for the coming year. The elected six-member steering
committee was given a detailed agenda to complete within two years,
the major tasks being the drawing up of a constitution and making
arrangements for a second conference in West Africa to gather input
from Francophone and Lusophone countries.
The conference
decided to rename the All-Africa Programme The All-Africa Rights
Initiative (AARI), a suitably neutral label that would not attract
unwanted attention from governments or suspicious immigration authorities
and which indicated that LGBTI groups in Africa would now be highly
active in supporting the efforts of other human rights groups.
The symposium
also provided a useful and timely platform for LGBTI groups to draw
up a statement regarding a resolution that Brazil had brought before
the United Nations Human Rights Committee in 2003 and which was
coming up for formal adoption at the 60th Session in March/April
2004. This time, groups agreed that the countries present should
be specifically mentioned at the end of the statement and plans
were made to ensure that, Fadzai Muparutsa, a prominent African
lesbian activist was included in the Zimbabwean Human Rights NGO
Forum delegation to the UN. Her responsibility would be to lobby
African leaders to support the Resolution. Ms. Muparutsa did indeed
travel to Geneva as part of the Human Rights Forum delegation but,
sadly, Brazil, ostensibly under pressure from the Vatican and some
Islamic countries, withdrew the resolution at the end of March and
voting on it was postponed for a year.
There was widespread
agreement at the conference about the general problems facing LGBTI
communities throughout Africa and a session was devoted to exploring
possibilities of approaching the African Commission as a united
front of LGBTI groups throughout Africa. It was understood that
a combined effort of this nature would be likely to have much greater
impact on the African Union than isolated complaints from countries
in Southern Africa and would make it difficult for the Commission
to ignore what is evidently a critical mass of oppressed people.
Realising that
continuing communication would be of paramount importance in the
maintenance of the new network, Behind the Mask had set up a listserv
called The Link a few months before the conference took place. It
replaced SAGLES (Southern African Gays and Lesbians), a listserv
started in 1998 by Global Ministries in the United States to facilitate
discussion around a Southern African LGBTI presence at the 8th Assembly
of the World Council of Churches, which took place in Harare in
December of that year. After 1998, SAGLES might have broadened its
mandate to include All-Africa issues but very few LGBTI groups at
that stage were linked to the Internet and most found difficulty
accessing it. SAGLES closed down when new regulations requiring
registration and payment were introduced in the United States. Nobody
thought it was worth saving it or replacing it.
E-mail and the
Internet have, nevertheless, been vital tools for LGBTI activism
in Africa since the early 1990s, especially in countries where homosexuals
are denied access to state media and where the independent media
is weak or equally prejudiced. The digital divide may still be wide
between North and South but the steady increase in access by Africans
in Africa means that many LGBTI communities on the continent are
now easily reachable. The fact that, for the All-Africa Symposium,
Behind the Mask was able to issue virtually all invitations and
make most necessary arrangements via e-mail is a clear indication
that African LGBTI communities are now far better networked electronically
than they were, say, five years ago.
The major question
mark surrounding the All-Africa Symposium has been "Why should
it work this time round?' The reasons are clear. This initiative
has largely been driven by Africans, with promises of strong financial
backing from international bodies like the World Bank and HIVOS
and encouragement from UNAIDS. The conference delegates also provided
a united front: all groups present agreed that the principle strategy
should be for LGBTI to organise around their sexuality using the
platform of HIV and AIDS, and that ongoing training was of paramount
importance. The ALA is also strongly committed to ensuring the visibility
of lesbian and bisexual women in the coalition and all regions pledged
to support their efforts. Those on the committee were elected for
their high level of expertise in fields such as HIV and AIDS, the
media, organisational development, finance and activism. All groups
present were legitimate and many are engaged in intensive LGBTI
activism in their home countries.
Regions spent
considerable time on working towards the development of action plans
and the steering committee was given a full programme to complete
within two years. It will be held accountable for its actions at
the third conference at which Anglophone, Francophone and Lusophone
countries will come together for the first time.
In short, the
time was ripe for LGBTI groups in Africa to meet and put in place
structures for mutual collaboration that will strengthen the movement
towards LGBTI emancipation on the African continent. Sessions on
the Brazilian Resolution, the African Commission and the Egyptian
Crisis made clear the potential value of unified collaboration and
response.
As to whether
AARI will be come the African region of ILGA remains unresolved.
There are arguments that Africa should rely on its own strengths
and resources for a time until it is strong and independent enough
to contribute meaningfully to a larger body and when all taints
of foreign imperialism have vanished from the debate about the place
of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in Africa.
Keith Goddard
Director, Gays and Lesbians of Zimbabwe (GALZ)
June 2004, Harare, Zimbabwe.
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