Zimbabwe’s first post-independence president, Canaan Banana, who was jailed for sodomy, died yesterday of an undisclosed illness.
Banana (67) a former Methodist minister, was found guilty in 1999 of 11 counts of sodomy and abusing his power to sexually assault and carry out ”unnatural acts” with men, most of whom were on his presidential staff.
Banana’s trial, which included testimony of sex with gardeners, cooks and bodyguards, overshadowed his positive role in ending the ethnic violence in Matabeleland.
President Robert Mugabe announced Banana’s death on state television, saying he felt ”deep sorrow and sadness”. But Banana’s trial was an embarrassment to Mugabe, when it became clear that he knew of Banana’s sexual misconduct and did nothing to stop it.
Born in 1936, Banana was chosen to serve as president in a largely ceremonial post when the British colony attained independence in 1980. He relinquished the post in 1987 when Mugabe, then prime minister, became executive president.
In May 2000 Zimbabwe’s supreme court upheld Banana’s conviction for sodomy and jailed him for a year. The trial included lurid testimony of how he drank, danced and played cards with his bodyguard before drugging and raping him on a carpet at State House in the 1980s.
Banana insisted that he was not a homosexual and said the accusations against him were part of a ”malicious vendetta”.
Banana and his wife, Janet, had five children and one of his sons stood trial for murder. After standing by her husband through his trial, Mrs Banana left Zimbabwe for Britain, where she sought asylum.
Banana’s trial and conviction damaged the statesman-like image of a man credited with brokering the Unity Accord of 1987 which brought an end to the country’s Matabeleland massacres in which Mugabe’s elite army unit is blamed by human rights groups for killing as many as 20 000 civilians. Banana mediated the talks which ended the violence by merging opposition leader Joshua Nkomo’s Zapu party into Mugabe’s Zanu-PF.
Shortly after Mugabe started his hateful anti-gay speeches in 1995, a former presidential bodyguard, Jefta Dube, shot dead a fellow policeman who taunted him as ”Banana’s wife”. Dube was found guilty of murder but he pleaded in mitigation that he had been repeatedly raped by Banana.
Banana was released from prison in 2001 after serving eight months. – Guardian Unlimited Â