The Struggle for Visibility: How Zimbabwean Journalists are Tackling LGBTQ+ Issues

Mutare, Zimbabwe – In Zimbabwe, a highly conservative country that has been under a repressive regime for years, LGBTQ+ issues have remained highly polarised – a legacy of the hard-line stance of the late Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe’s former president. 

A legacy that can be summed up in “worse than pigs and dogs,” a statement he once shockingly made about homosexuals, that still lingers among many people in the country, including journalists who have conveniently skirted around LGBTQ+ issues like a plague. So when a representative of the LGBTQ+ community, Agatha Marekera, recently told a public media workshop in Zimbabwe’s eastern border city of Mutare that the gay and lesbian population in the country is far higher than many people think, some journalists were both shocked and perplexed. 

“There are so many people who are members of the LGBTQ+ community, but many people in the country don’t understand LGBTQ+ issues,” Marekera revealed to incredulous gasps.

For some journalists, it was their first time sharing a conference room with individuals who openly identify as members of the LGBTQ+ community. This is because, in the past, LGBTQ+ members have largely taken the backseat for fear of backlash from both the conservative society and the government.

Marekera adds that people from the LGBTQ+ community should enjoy the same basic services and human rights enjoyed by everyone else in the country without having to exist in silence. 

“The approach we [Zimbabweans] have to the LGBTO+ community may not have been appropriate, and I think we should adopt a human rights approach.” Marekera believes members of the LGBTQ+ communities are people before they become the labels people assign to them. “They also have the same rights that every other person in this country has; they must be accepted for any services in the country.” 

Marekera’s view is shared by many other journalists across Zimbabwe, who are now hesitantly warming up to objectively writing about LGBTQ+ issues. Led by various nationwide engagements between members of the LGBTQ+ community and the media, the hard-line era of Mugabe towards gays and lesbians is slowly receding.

Some of these countrywide engagements are spearheaded by the Voluntary Media Council of Zimbabwe (VMCZ), a professional media self-regulatory body set up by journalists and other civil society stakeholders who subscribe to media freedom principles of accountability, independence, and ethical journalism.

Founded in 2007, VMCZ has organised various countrywide workshops on LGBTQ+ issues, which Caroline Kuhudzai, VMCZ’s senior programme officer, says have received mixed yet encouraging responses from journalists. “During the media’s public engagements with experts representing different minority groups, including the LGBTQ+ community, we observed that a great number of journalists, just like many citizens, are not really knowledgeable about the LGBTQ+ community,” she tells Minority Africa. 

According to Kuhudzai, there is a lot of hearsay, misinformation, and hate speech about the LGBTQ+ community. But VMCZ’s work is helping combat these through media engagements and radio programs aimed at journalists and the public. “Following the engagements,” she says, “we have since seen through our media monitoring an increase in the number of articles being published on LGBTQ+ issues, even in mainstream media. In four months, we saw eight to ten stories published by journalists we trained.” 

VMCZ has also commissioned and given grants to journalists to write in-depth investigative stories touching on sensitive minority rights, including children, women, and LGBTQ+ issues. “From our assessments, we observed that there is a lack of knowledge and understanding of this community, and this is a gap we hope to plug,” Kuhudzai says. She adds that there is a lack of incentives for journalists to invest their time and energy in learning more about this community, “also, journalists fear that they might be identified as such, thereby risking their integrity.”

This fear played out when some of the journalists approached for interviews for this story flatly refused to comment. Despite the current government not taking a hardline stance on the LGBTQ+ community, the stigma attached to that label can break the career of a journalist working in Zimbabwe.  

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“The law in Zimbabwe forbids homosexuality and same-sex marriage, and various government officials have denounced the LGBTQ+ community,” Kuhudzai says. “These make it difficult or confusing for journalists to report on this community, fearing to be on the wrong side of the law.” She adds that editors in Zimbabwe are also not trained or well-versed in the community and generally prefer any other story to publish than that of LGBTQ+ stories. 

But VMCZ say they will continue equipping journalists and the public with knowledge and skills to better cover and help integrate minority groups into the social sphere by focusing on conflict-sensitive reporting and unravelling the ills that affect minority groups, such as homophobia, child abuse, and violence against women while giving voices to the disadvantaged groups. 

“At VMCZ, it is our responsibility to ensure that journalists are ethical and professional as they do their work,” Kuhudzai says. “Therefore, we will keep capacitating the media to strengthen their watchdog role and ensure that they report on every societal group without fear or favour.” 

Edited by Samuel Banjoko and Uzoma Ihejirika