Date: Thu, 2 Nov 1995 12:46:51 -0800 From: Ron Buckmire Subject: Zimbabwe Parliamentary Debate on ``Homosexualism and Lesbianism'' Date: Thu, 2 Nov 95 20:28 GMT+0200 ZIMBABWE PARLIMENT DEBATES "HOMOSEXUALISM AND LESBIANISM" HARARE : 6th SEPTEMBER 1995 ________________________________________________________________________________ MR MUDARIKI MP: I move the motion standing in my name that, this House unreservedly condemns the evil and iniquitous practice of homosexualism and lesbianism; EXPRESSES its support for and solidarity with the President's stand on homosexualism and lesbianism representing the views of the vast majority of Zimbabweans; and URGES Government to take all the necessary steps to stamp out this evil practice in order to protect and preserve our time honoured African cultural values and morals. MR GEZI MP: I second. MR MUDARIKI MP: Mr Speaker, I rise to register my full support for the stance taken by His Excellency the President, Mr R G Mugabe, Karigamombe, in condemning in the strongest sence homosexuality and lesbianism where it is practised. Here in Zimbabwe the practice is taboo and this cannot just be condoned or tolerated. We urger His Excellency the President to remain steadfast and not to capitulate to reactionary forces in the so-called international pressure. We cannot be blackmailed because of the pink dollar or the pink pound. Seventy American homosexual congressmen wrote a letter to our Head of State condemning his patriotic stance against the evil system of homosexualism and lesbianism. In my view, it is a misdirection of efforts especially coming from black congressmen whom as you are aware are running away from solving the concreteproblems in the United States faced by black Americans. In particular, places like Harlem where Blacks are suffering, I am told, miserably d! ue to lack of assistance from Washington. It is to be noted that the majority of people all over the world do not accept the concept of sexual relations between people of the same sex. But sex perverts would want to justify their wayward behaviour by claiming the homosexualism or lesbianism is a perfect process. But as far as I know, that does not exist anywhere and there is no ambiguity from a cultural or societal value perfective. All over the world the practice is regarded with disdain. I just want to warn our heroic people that if we allow or condone such bastardly acts under te so-called human rights banners, if we are not careful, we shall also have rapists, murderers, criminals and those sodomists who are militating to have sex with four year olds claiming their human rights. So we just have to be very careful in discussing this. In our African cultural inheritance, there is no room for such devients in culture, this abominable practice of homosexualism and lesbianism is totally foreign to the African culture, it encourages devilish acts and in my view, it should be thoroughly punished. I do not know whether we have here in this country what exists in other countries, the Immorality Act. If it is not there, I think we as honorable members must try to look at some of these issues and come up with laws to protect our people. In the western world where human rights movements have existed for decades, the situation is no better. Gay attacks are the order of the day. If you go to Britain, you will get stories in the newspapers and also on television about gays being bashe! d up a nd indeed families go through difficult times if they discover that a member of their family is involved in this practice. It is not uncommon for a child to be disowned over the issue in the counties like the United States. Until recently a member of the armed forces in the United States who happened to be gay was summarily dismissed from the United States army despite the fact that President Bill Clinton got a number of votes from the gays. How many times have we read in the international or local press here that a film or play has been changed because various bodies in the West oppose the portrayal of gay activities in it. It is not just acceptable anyway including the so-called free world. The problem in this country is that we have what the President called, when he was opening the Jongwe Publishing Hoouse, "The mellow yellow press". For the mellow yellow press in this country to support the causes, the cause of the Gays and Lesbians Association of Zimbabwe is misdirection and immoral. It is significant to note that the mellow yellow press is always supporting minority reactionary views in this country, be it political or social. It might as well support as I said for sodomists ! who ad vocate sex. Mark Raker, {Mudd Raker - Financial Gazette} as a foreigner, must be humbly advised not to try and pollute our African cultural inheritance. I want to point out a very important factor which is always being mentioned by the mellow yellow press in this country and South Africa, honorable members we cannot compare ourselves with South Africa because in South Africa the instruments of power are still in the hands of the apartheid armpits. So, how can you compare South Africa with us ? South Africa, its stage in its struggle is in the same shoes like we were in when we took over power on the 18th April 1980, from the Smith terrorist regime. The so-called free press who support homosexualism and lesbianism in this country really shows that their policies are not ! for th e majority of our people. Whatever the convictions of the private press, what has to be realised is that the majority's will must prevail in the final analysis. There is a tendency by rumour aspiring demagogues in the yellow press to always support the views of the minority in these matters in order to impose sectarian and minority agendas alien to the African masses and to impart foreign beliefs on our heroic people who waged a heroic struggle whilst walking on foot against the mighty forces of the Smith regime. We are a heroic people and that is where we must get our inspiration from. We defeated settler colonialism here, supported by a number of western Governments. In some parts of the world some resorts have been set aside especially for people who sunbath or swim whilst in the nude. If this performance of nudism should go on to our streets as part of their exercise of free expression, should Zimba! bwean society be forced or obliged to accept these shameful practices as fundamental human rights ? In Zimbabwe and in every African country, society comes first and individuals second. In the old days when land was abandoned, anti-social people of all tribes were warned to change their behaviour, failing which they were asked to relocate if they did not want to conform to the wishes of the society. I want to challenge those who advocate homosexualism and lesbianism, that they must conduct a survey of opinions of all Zimbabweans on this issue and I want to see whether they will win. One can easily find that from what we have read from the press, from talking to people in our constituencies and the masses who go to church, the majority of people in the countryside are advocating stiff penalties for such kind of behaviour. Sometimes we forget that we are a tiny minority living in urban centres, only less than million , because the rest of our masses are out in the countryside. So t is important for people to understand these matters. Homosexualism and lesbianism are not part of Zimbabwean culture as you are aware and so we do not want these pseudo Nobel Prize winners to come and teach us here about how to behave, about democracy or about human rights. Homosexualism is taboo and socially unacceptable. Honorable members will recognise that the family unit, as the fabric of society is the most important unity which we have to preserve in our country. Gay society on the other hand, or lesbianism, should be brought back to the mainstream of our society. I was happt to note that even the minority parties who just came up at the election time are also condemning this evil practice and this is what we should look at as Zimbabweans. All of us, trade unions, political parties, churches and traditional healers must wage a heroic struggle against this sexual activity. Zimbabwe should be respected and allowed to uphold its own traditional and Christian stance on the immorality of bad behaviour. The sanctity of the family must be preserved at all costs and no outsider should force us, as Zimbabweans, to behave otherwise even at the expense of having aid cuts. In conclusion, I want to urge all patriotic Zimbabweans, no matter what colour, to continue to rally behind the stance taken by the First Secretary and President of ZANU PF and Executive President of the Republic of Zimbabwe. As you are aware he is the founder of the nation. He is our guide and our Commander-in-Chief and everyone must take the cue from him and never allow reactionary interest to derail our struggle. We are faced with enormous problems and we should not be spending time listening to people who want to detract us from our choice of path, of shaping our own cultural destiny in this country. [HONORABLE MEMBERS: Hear, Hear.] MR GEZI MP: Mr Speaker, I think chiefs in this house are the people who usually help us in the preservation of our cultural values. The relationship between homosexualism and lesbianism is not well defined and we do not even know how they love each other, but we hear that the practice is going on. Why they like such practices, we do not know. We do not even know what they get out of it. Some of their supporters are in South Africa and others wrote to the papers in America saying if Zimbabwe is to ban homosexualism and lesbianism, we would have violated the human rights of such people. What is surprising is that those children who are innocent and cannot fend for themselves are also taken by these people who engage in such bad practices. Small boys and girls are taken by homosexuals and lesbians respectively and if we allow these practices to go on we would have done a ! bad th ing. The human rights activists agreed that it is bad, indeed if these little boys and girls are taken by homosexuals and lesbians. So we should make sure that we preserve and we do not violate the rights of these small children. Those people who are in the rural areas, whom we represent, expect that we should explain to them in this House. They hear that there is homosexualism and lesbianism going on. They have even asked us and said that this is not a good practice. They say that if homosexualism and lesbianism is to go on, it should be done privately. those who go to church know that God created man. Therefore, if a human being is living by the means which God did not want, then we cannot say that he is a human being. We were told that the first man was created alone. After that God discovered that he was lonely. He took a rib from this man and created the womanso that the man would have company. But what is surprising is that this man wants another man instead of a woman. What is going on is that a man is taking another man and indulging in sexual activities. This we are not going to allow Mr Speaker. We have even asked these men whether they have been able to get pregnant. They have not been able to answer such questions. Even the women who are engaging in these lesbian activities, we have asked then what they have got from such practices and no one has been able to answer. From the way I see it, these people who engage in such activities are sick in the mind. We really need specialists to look into such cases. If there are no such specialists, then there is a need that we take back some of our children to school so that they learn more of such activities. It is disgusting to find that a man needs a man instead of a woman. Is this not sickness Mr Speaker ? We will not allow such practices to go on. I stood up to stand by the honorable President. We should tell him that he is not alone. The whole nation is rallying behind the President, that such evil practices should be stemmed out. Our children will grow up not knowing the correct practices. If they are taking foreign cultures into our country, then they should go back and leave us untarnished. In supporting the honorable member, Mr Mudariki, I would like to ask Mr Chihuri the head of the police that police should be on the look out and look for homosexuals and lesbians. They should take them and put them somewhere where they can never be seen because we cannot mix with such people. They will tarnish our image. We should look at ways of keeping these people separate from those who are normal. The problem is that if we take them to jails, most of the problems emanate from these jails. You will find that when they are put in jails, they will start engaging in these homosexual and lesbian practices. The question is, what do we do with these people ? If we let them free, you will find them in the night going for other men instead of ! women to have sex with. The Minister of Home Affairs should look for ways on ho to deal with such people. These people do not belong to our culture. If they want to fall in love with their male or femalecounterparts, then they should live somewhere where they do not mix with us. The problem is how do we procreate ? If homosexuals and lesbians engage in sexual activities, nothing comes out from such acts. Our leader even asked them, where are the children ? With these few words, I am supporting the stand taken by His Excellency the President on homosexualism and lesbianism which is a foriegn thing. [HONORABLE MEMBERS: Hear, Hear.] MR MATURA MP: I also rise to support the stance taken by President Mugabe. in our country we have a rule that if you have a beautiful daughter, she cannot be proposed to. But it is surprising that a man can also propose love to a man. If this was to be talked about in rural areas where we hold our meetings, people will run away from such meetings. It is really disgusting and humiliating. Even in this homorable House no honorable member will dare go out to the rural areas and tell his constituency that they have been discussing about homosexualism and lesbianism. Therefore, we support our President for taking such a stance. Even if we are to stand up and discuss such sexual indulgencies, we will not be taken as people in their proper sens! es. T herefore. we should discuss developmental issues rather than discussing issues relating to people who are sick in the mind. I therefore propose that we take the stance and agree that such acts are foreign to our culture. I propose also that such a motion be removed from the Order Paper. TEMP. SPEAKER : I am afraid homorable member, Mr Matura, you are out of order. MR CHIGWEDERE MP: I stood up to move a motion against what the honorable member, Mr Matura, had said. MR GEZI MP: I move that the debate do now adjourn. MRS CHIDZONGA MP: I second. Motion put and agreed to. ________________________________________________________________________________ Please send comments/letters of protest to : The Parliament of Zimbabwe P O Box CY 298 Causeway HARARE, ZIMBABWE The Office of the President Private Bag 7700 Causeway HARARE, ZIMBABWE ________________________________________________________________________________ GAYS AND LESBIANS OF ZIMBABWE (GALZ) Pvt Bag A6131 Avondale HARARE, ZIMBABWE ________________________________________________________________________________