OWN CORRESPONDENT, Lusaka | Friday 4.30pm.
ZAMBIAN Home Affairs Minister Peter Machungwa on Friday threatened to arrest the leaders of a newly formed movement of gays and lesbians should they try to register the association.
Homosexuality is a felony which carries a a minimum prison sentence of 14 years in Zambia and is, Machungwa explained, “unAfrican”.
“We cannot… tolerate illegal activities in Zambia,” he warned. Registrar of societies Herbert Nyendwa said he is not prepared even to look at the organisation’s proposed constitution: “The proposed gays’ association will not be registered… it is an illegal activity,” he said.
On Thursday Gershom Musonda, project manager of the Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals and Transgender Association (Legatra), claimed that there are some half a million homosexuals in Zambia’s population of nine million. The statistics were derived, he said, from a random survey Legatra recently conducted. “We took a sample and 500_,000 is an average figure we came up with. We should not pretend [homosexuals] are not there,” Musonda said.
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