By Tshidi Leatswe
Yesterday, 25 November, was Madalitso* Zulu’s 36th birthday and his third one behind bars at a Zambian Prison.
Madalitso, a health professional, did nothing wrong, but is locked up. He is serving a 15-year prison sentence with hard labour simply because he identifies as gay in a country that wants to dictate his identity.
Madalitso was born in 1988. He studied medicine and graduated in 2014, and earned a Masters in Business Administration in 2015. He received a fellowship to help advance .sexual and reproductive health rights. Madalitso contributed immensely to healthcare in Zambia, during the Covid 19 pandemic when the profession carried much risk. He is well travelled and multilingual, fluent in French and most the local languages in Zambia.
To say he’s a high achiever is an understatement, but in my conversations with him, he’s the furthest from condescending. Madalitso is soft spoken and quick to laugh heartily—even during his imprisonment. One friend described him as “a wonderful man, incredibly intelligent, and fierce women’s reproductive rights advocate.”
Unfortunately, today few people get to experience Madalitso’s laugh, intelligence and passion for medicine and human rights. His medical expertise no longer serves Zambia, despite the country’s severe shortage of health workers. Instead, Madalitso is in a jail cell, a symbol of the unjust oppression facing LGBTI people in Zambia.
Zambian authorities should immediately release him and urgently repeal the colonial-era laws in its penal code criminalizing consensual same sex acts.
Blackmailed at a bar
Police first arrested Madalitso in 2021 in Mongu, the capital of Zambia’s Western Province. Madalitso had gone to a bar where he met another man and engaged in consensual sex. A stranger witnessed them, approached Madalitso and blackmailed him.
Blackmail is a common tactic against LGBTI people in Zambia: “give me money, or I’ll out you and call the cops.” Police officers sometimes blackmail LGBTI people, too.
Madalitso refused to pay. The blackmailer reported him to the police, who arrested and charged him with committing “unnatural offences.”
The blackmailer later apologized but never appeared at the trial. The state continued and pursued the matter.
On 24 May 2022, the court found Madalitso guilty of “carnal knowledge of any person against the order of nature” and handed down its harsh sentence in later that year in December.
Persecution of LGBTI people
While Madalitso’s case is one of the most extreme, LGBTI people in Zambia face regular threats.
Some people, like Madalitso, risk coming out. But many more suffer silently, hiding their identity even from loved ones. Others feel forced to leave the country for their own safety due to discrimination, harassment, threats and violence.
While heterosexual people can report such crimes to police in Zambia, LGBTI people have little recourse because police are often perpetrators.
In 2013, police arrested two men from Kapiri Mposhi for “having carnal knowledge of any person against the order of nature.”
Police relied on hearsay to make the arrests and then assaulted the two men with forced anal examinations under the ridiculous guise of “collecting evidence.” Such assaults have been proven to have no evidentiary value and amount to torture.
In 2018, two other men, also from Kapiri Mposhi, were found guilty of the same offence after people reportedly saw them in a private room in a lodge. Zambia’s then-President Edgar Lungu pardoned them, but they continued to face discrimination after release.
“For me, freedom is deathly,” one of the men told the African Human Rights Coalition. “I cannot go out the house because they know me as a gay everywhere in my country. I cannot leave my mother, and I cannot support my mother who is sickly. I cannot support myself. I am a grown man who once had a good career. My life is destroyed.”
Sadly, whenever Madalitso is released, he may suffer similarly due to public intolerance enflamed by divisive, stigmatizing and hateful laws.
Enablers of discrimination, stigma, hate and violence
Discrimination against LGBTI people by police and employers violates Zambia’s constitution and the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights.
However, human rights violations against LGBTI people in Zambia do not occur in a vacuum. Instead, many political, cultural and religious leaders have made Zambia unsafe for LGBTI people. Their dangerous and discriminatory words and actions have transformed colonial-era laws that should be in history’s dustbin into contemporary weapons against society’s most marginalized.
Zambian President Hakainde Hichilema and other state officials have made numerous statements against LGBTI people and consensual same-sex relations, yet this rhetoric is starkly hypocritical given their readiness to welcome high-paying foreign tourists regardless of their sexuality.. These anti-LGBTI remarks, however, have far-reaching ramifications, impacting access to health care, fair trials, and forcing individuals to live in fear simply because of who they love.
For people like Madalitso who dare to live as themselves rather than conforming to other people’s ideals, consequences are severe.
Madalitso does not belong in a jail. He should be with his friends and family, sharing his laughter and insights. He should be healing people in Zambia. He should be free to love and be loved.
Zambian authorities must stop persecuting LGBTI people and release Madalitso now.
*not their real name