In Africa, a step backward on human rights

By Desmond Tutu
Washington Post
Friday, March 12, 2010; A19

Hate has no place in the house of God. No one should be excluded from our love, our compassion or our concern because of race or gender, faith or ethnicity -- or because of their sexual orientation. Nor should anyone be excluded from health care on any of these grounds. In my country of South Africa, we struggled for years against the evil system of apartheid that divided human beings, children of the same God, by racial classification and then denied many of them fundamental human rights. We knew this was wrong. Thankfully, the world supported us in our struggle for freedom and dignity.

It is time to stand up against another wrong.

Gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people are part of so many families. They are part of the human family. They are part of God's family. And of course they are part of the African family. But a wave of hate is spreading across my beloved continent. People are again being denied their fundamental rights and freedoms. Men have been falsely charged and imprisoned in Senegal, and health services for these men and their community have suffered. In Malawi, men have been jailed and humiliated for expressing their partnerships with other men. Just this month, mobs in Mtwapa Township, Kenya, attacked men they suspected of being gay. Kenyan religious leaders, I am ashamed to say, threatened an HIV clinic there for providing counseling services to all members of that community, because the clerics wanted gay men excluded.

Uganda's parliament is debating legislation that would make homosexuality punishable by life imprisonment, and more discriminatory legislation has been debated in Rwanda and Burundi.

These are terrible backward steps for human rights in Africa.

Our lesbian and gay brothers and sisters across Africa are living in fear.

And they are living in hiding -- away from care, away from the protection the state should offer to every citizen and away from health care in the AIDS era, when all of us, especially Africans, need access to essential HIV services. That this pandering to intolerance is being done by politicians looking for scapegoats for their failures is not surprising. But it is a great wrong. An even larger offense is that it is being done in the name of God. Show me where Christ said "Love thy fellow man, except for the gay ones." Gay people, too, are made in my God's image. I would never worship a homophobic God.

"But they are sinners," I can hear the preachers and politicians say. "They are choosing a life of sin for which they must be punished." My scientist and medical friends have shared with me a reality that so many gay people have confirmed, I now know it in my heart to be true. No one chooses to be gay. Sexual orientation, like skin color, is another feature of our diversity as a human family. Isn't it amazing that we are all made in God's image, and yet there is so much diversity among his people? Does God love his dark- or his light-skinned children less? The brave more than the timid? And does any of us know the mind of God so well that we can decide for him who is included, and who is excluded, from the circle of his love?

The wave of hate must stop. Politicians who profit from exploiting this hate, from fanning it, must not be tempted by this easy way to profit from fear and misunderstanding. And my fellow clerics, of all faiths, must stand up for the principles of universal dignity and fellowship. Exclusion is never the way forward on our shared paths to freedom and justice.

The writer is archbishop emeritus of Cape Town, South Africa. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984.

Behaviours and Attitude to sex

TfaC Forum - RAPE

GIRL 15 FORCED TO HAVE SEX

Yet another screaming and saddening headline in The Daily Times of 9 March 2006, are such headlines becoming ‘normal’ to us that we don’t spare a thought to really ‘digest’ what they mean, if I’m to borrow from my friend’s Robert’s vocabulary. A 15 year old girl was forced by her relatives and chief of her area to have sex with a man old enough to be her father so as to ‘confirm’ her that she is now a woman at the end of her initiation ceremony (kupfumbura ufa). The girl initially refused because she didn’t want to, she knew the dangers posed by such practises which include exposure to H.I. Virus amongst other sexually transmitted diseases. When she initially refused she was threatened with being chased away from her village. She also had no bus fare to take her to her father in Phalombe, thus she consented under ‘duress’. What could she have done?
The same girl reports that girls as young as 6 years old and pregnant women as well are being forced to sleep with these sold men in her village so as to initiate them in to womanhood, EXCUSE ME!
So what do we do about this and related practises?
• Isn’t this rape? What’s your definition of rape? Being forced /threatened to have sex with someone against your will?

• In Zimbabwe if you have sex with a minor, that is anyone below the age of 16 years its deemed as statutory rape regardless of whether the minor consented or not. It carries a minimum custodial sentence of 5 years if it was consensual.

• What about H.I.V/A.I.D.S? Are there any links between such cultural practices and the spread of the pandemic? Young kids as young as 6 years old sleeping with old men, pregnant women sleeping with other men not their husbands?

• How about poverty and the spread of H.I.V/A.I.D.S? IS there a link between the two? The focus girl didn’t have money to go to her father?

• Could the girl have asked/negotiated for condom use? What would the old men say? What would her community think of her? What about the 6 year olds, do they even know a condom?

• Are there any rights being violated, which ones? Whose rights?

• What then happens to the perpetrators of these acts? Can they be arrested, if yes, what crime have they committed?

Another issue that worries me the most is that the girl in question reported this issue at a local meeting between her community (chiefs, elders; everyone was there) and an International Non Governmental Organisation. What did the N.G.O do? It sought to dialogue this issue of ‘kupfumbura ufa’ with the village elders. The Group Village Head said that she was ‘surprised’ that this practise was still continuing since they had attended various workshops tackling this issue and it was resolved that it would be abolished. Maybe our representatives just go there for the money? Was her final remark.

• What could have the N.G.O. done?

• So do these rapists and paedophiles just go scot free?

• What can we do about it as individuals?

Article by RASHEED A.