Tanzania’s justice minister has announced controversial new plans to suspend the registration of any charity or non-governmental organisation that supports homosexuality.

Claiming that he was protecting the “culture of Tanzanians”, Harrison Mwakyembe’s announcement comes just days after the country’s health minister imposed a partial ban on the import and sale of lubricants to discourage gay men from having sex and “curb the spread of HIV”.

The sudden crackdown has come as a surprise in a country that has until recently been tolerant of its lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community. Unlike in neighbouring Uganda – where pride events were disrupted by the police last week – Kenya and Zimbabwe, gay Tanzanians have not experienced the same levels of violence and discrimination, and politicians have until now generally ignored the topic.

James Wandera Ouma, the founder and executive director of LGBT Voice Tanzania, one of the only registered organisations openly promoting LGBT rights, has said the plans are proof that “the environment for the LGBT community is very bad right now and it’s getting worse.”

Ouma said that the political mood shifted in early July, when Paul Makonda, the regional commissioner for Dar es Salaam, the country’s biggest city, told citizens during a religious rally that he had started a crackdown against gay people.

Makonda said he would use social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook to identify and arrest people suspected of being gay. “If there’s a homosexual who has a Facebook account, or with an Instagram account, all those who ‘follow’ him, it is very clear that they are just as guilty as the the homosexual,” he told a cheering crowd.

Ouma said since Makonda’s speech he knew of at least 20 men who had been arrested by police outside bars and clubs popular with the gay community. He said the men had now been released, but faced charges of prostitution and loitering.

Though sodomy is a criminal offence punishable by life imprisonment, there is no law prohibiting homosexuality in Tanzania. As a result, Ouma said that many LGBT people in Tanzania had been able to lead relatively normal lives free from harassment and violence until now.



“Makonda has made people believe that it is now OK to hate LGBT people, especially gay men. He has planted a hate that was not there before,” Ouma said.

The speech was followed by several homophobic editorials in popular newspapers and this month a local television station was forced to apologise by the government for running an interview with a gay man.

Human Rights Watch said it is monitoring the situation closely. “What people need is reassurance from the government that they are protected by law. Unfortunately, this commissioner is sending the opposite message,” said Neela Ghoshal, a researcher in the organisation’s LGBT rights division.

Ghoshal said she was worried that the comments would further marginalise the LGBT community. “There are already very few activists in Tanzania, and there are very few LGBT people who are out publicly. What this does is that people now feel the need to go extremely underground in order to feel safe.”

Ouma said that so far the government had not given any indication that they would shut down LGBT Voice, which fights for LGBT rights and provides temporary shelter, meals and access to educational opportunities for youth in Dar es Salaam.

However, Ouma said it had become increasingly difficult for the group to operate. “Recently we haven’t been able to organise meetings because everyone is afraid of what will happen. Like people think ‘if I go to this office, the police might come and arrest me’.”



Ouma said the group had hired a lawyer and was in the early stages of planning how to fight back against the new measures.

