(South Africa’s Constitutional Court decriminalized gay sex in 1998.) Legacy of colonial era?īotswana, like more than half of the 70-some countries that criminalize homosexuality worldwide, inherited its law from the British Empire. For only the second time in history, an African court had struck down a national law criminalizing homosexuality, cracking open a door for other countries to follow their lead. How pro-Ukraine alliance’s success explains why Biden is in AsiaĪnd for activists who gathered at the courthouse and those watching from around the continent, the moment was bigger still. “We have determined that it is not the business of the law to regulate private consensual sexual encounters” between adults. “A democratic nation is one that embraces tolerance, diversity, and open-mindedness,” said Judge Michael Leburu, reading from the court’s ruling Tuesday morning. “I did this so people like me don’t need to feel like who we are is a crime.”Īnd three years later, on a bright winter day in Botswana’s capital, a panel of three High Court judges unanimously affirmed that belief. “I’m just someone who takes pride in who he is,” he says.
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He had nothing behind him but the conviction that the law was wrong, and the way he wanted to live was right. He was a bookish literature student who dreamed of moving home after graduation to work as a primary school teacher. He’d never been to pride parades or even had a close gay friend. “I did this so people like me don’t need to feel like who we are is a crime.”Īt the time, he wasn’t an activist. “I was never taught to hate myself,” says Letsweletse Motshidiemang, who brought the lawsuit as a college student. Though their society contained elements who believed homosexuality was a sin, it also contained many people who – whether or not they’d heard of a thing called “gay rights” – had loved and accepted them as they were. Momentum has been building to repeal those laws, arguing that they were imposed on societies without consultation.įor many supporters of decriminalization, the idea that their culture was against homosexuality was always a simplistic one. Our reporter gives us a front-row seat to African history today, in a Botswana courtroom where justices overturned a colonial law against homosexuality – significant not only for cheering activists sitting beside her, but advocates across the continent.īotswana, like more than half of the countries that criminalize homosexuality, inherited its law from Victorian England.