Anti-gay former Zimbabwe president Robert Mugabe died September 6 in Singapore while receiving medical care. He was 95.
His successor, President Emmerson Mnangagwa, announced his death.
Mugabe grew up poor and was raised by a single mother but excelled in Catholic schools. He was considered an educated revolutionary, but his reign was defined by his tyrannical rallying against the West, LGBT people, and whites. He was forced to resign by his political party, ZANU-PF, following a military coup that made Mnangagwa Zimbabwe’s third president.
For 37 years, Mugabe was one of Africa’s notorious anti-gay leaders. He called LGBT people “worse than pigs and dogs” and threatened to behead them in 1995, reiterating his position in 2014.
It was one of his key battle cries as he rallied against his pro-gay rival, the late Nelson Mandela of South Africa, whom he saw as subservient to the Western world. He launched his campaign against gays in 1995, and it shaped international perception of his leadership.
In 2014, more than 30 people were injured when an LGBT rights organization’s end-of-the-year party was attacked by a group of men, reported the Washington Blade.
However, Mugabe reserved his massive human rights violations against the Ndebeles, in the southern Matabeleland provinces, where his army killed up to an estimated 10,000 in what became known as the Matabeleland Massacres in the 1980s. He tortured anyone who opposed him through his nearly four decades of rule. Human rights organizations estimate his militia killed up to 300 leaders of the opposition party and tortured many more.
In the new millennium, his rage became increasingly directed at white farmers through brutal land grabs. The action decimated Zimbabwe’s agricultural industry. The country, once known as Africa’s breadbasket, spiraled downward and never recovered, an Associated Press story noted.
According to Pink News, Zimbabwe has one of Africa’s worst LGBT rights records. Under Mugabe’s administration, diplomats weren’t allowed to discuss LGBT rights. The country suffers from one of the highest HIV rates in the world and LGBT Zimbabweans face 14-year jail sentences if convicted. Blackmail, arrests, and physical torture continue to happen.
Last year, Mnangagwa, leader of the Zimbabwe African National Union, began to show a change of heart, backing away from the party’s long-standing anti-gay stance by offering an olive branch and meeting with leaders of Gays and Lesbians of Zimbabwe.
Chester Samba, director of GALZ called the meeting positive and an “important shift.”
“This marked a departure from the previous leadership which did not engage with us,” he told Pink News.
Got international LGBT news tips? Call or send them to Heather Cassell at WhatsApp: 415-517-7239, or Skype: heather.cassell, or oitwnews@gmail.com
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