‘We Wondered what Human Rights He Was Talking About’ Human rights, homosexuality and the Zimbabwe

Abstract n This article addresses the recent debates on homosexuality and human rights in Zimbabwe, particularly as they relate to the controversy surrounding the Gays and Lesbians of Zimbabwe (GALZ) participating in the Zimbabwe Inter-national Book Fair. These debates highlight the problems inherent in talking about universal human rights when appeals to ‘cultural difference ’ are made. In Zimbabwe, for example, critics of GALZ and homosexuality have tried to argue that ‘homosex is not in African culture’. Drawing from recent scholarship on human rights in anthropology and elsewhere, as well as the work of the philoso-pher Richard Rorty, the author argues that appeals to human rights on behalf of GALZ in Zimbabwe must consider the moral sentiments involved in argu-ments over human rights more carefully if claims to those rights are to be real-ized. Keywords n cultural difference n homosexuality n human rights n moral sentiment n Zimbabwe In late July 1996, a German man was assaulted by a group of locals outside of Zimbabwe’s National Gallery in Harare, which is also part of the site for the annual Zimbabwe International Book Fair (ZIBF). The German man was in town for the book fair, which takes place each year in early August. He seems to have provoked his assailants by disrupting their demonstration against the Gays and Lesbians of Zimbabwe (GALZ), an organization that was determined to participate in the book fair despite claims from some quarters of Zimbabwean society that homosexuality was immoral, ‘un-African’, and, certainly, not a lifestyle choice that should be represented at the nation’s premier cultural event. The men who confronted the German visitor were part of an organization called the Artists Against AIDS Pro-gramme (AAAP), and they had been ‘singing songs denouncing homo-sexuality ’ outside the book fair when the scuffle broke out. According to Rodger Jeffrey, coordinator of the AAAP, members of the group con-fronted the German man after he claimed that their condemnations o