MOZAMBIQUE - Mozambicans seek constitutional amendment to enshrine gay rights (2011, Alternate Link, Alternate Link): Mozambicans are hoping to remove the ambiguous "vices against nature" from the country's law books... An LGBT association in Mozambique has welcomed clarification of the law by the country’s justice minister at the UN, but has expressed concern that the constitution and penal code are still ambiguous on gay rights. The Republic of Mozambique has strong equality credentials compared with some African neighbours, but campaigners are pursuing absolute clarification of its stance on homosexuality. LAMBDA, an organisation which is not currently recognised by the state, welcomed a statement by Benvinda Levi at the UN in which she said that homosexuality was not illegal in Mozambique. But they expressed concern over Article 71 of the Penal Code, which orders “security measures” against those who habitually commit “vices against nature”. - Prostituição masculina - A turminha gay (Translation).

Mozambique Gay Rights Group Wants Explicit Constitutional Protections (2011). - Praise for Recognition That Gay Sex Not Illegal (2011): The Mozambican Association for the Defence of Sexual Minorities (LAMBDA), the only organisation in the country working for gay, lesbian and transsexual citizens, on Tuesday praised Justice Minister Benvinda Levi for her categorical statement that homosexuality is not illegal in Mozambique. - Mozambique LGBT group still unregistered (2011, Alternate Link, Alternate Link): Mozambique’s only LGBT group, Lambda, said March 1 that it has been waiting three years for the government to complete its official registration. - HRBA and the Rights Of LGBT Persons in Mozambique (2011): This brief aims at providing Sida country teams with brief information on the situation of LGBT persons in Mozambique as well as concrete advice on how LGBT issues can be included in dialogue and programming.

Mozambique: The Nation, Gays and UN Human Rights Bodies (2011, Alternate Link): So at Mozambican independence in 1975, the country did not inherit any specific ban on same sex relations - just the normal prohibitions on indecent exposure, and hopelessly vague mentions of "acts against nature". And who will dare argue in a courtroom in this century that gay people behave "unnaturally"? Since independence not a single person has been prosecuted for homosexual acts. The jurists whom AIM spoke to believe that, since there is no explicit reference to same sex relations in the Mozambican legislation, gay sex in private between consenting adults is perfectly legal..Yet one of the questions facing Justice Minister Benvinda Levy at the UN meeting in Geneva is the alleged ban on homosexuality. The matter was raised in advance questions by Holland and by Norway. The Mozambican documents presented for the meeting note that the Constitution of 2004 states that all citizens are equal before the law, have the same rights and are subject to the same duties. But, unlike the Labour Law, it does not specifically outlaw discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation. Should gay and lesbian organisations enjoy official recognition by the Ministry of Justice, like other NGOs? This question was also raised at the meeting - for the application for recognition by LAMBDA, the sole organisation in the country representing gays and other sexual minorities, has so far gone unanswered...

Mozambique: Rapper Takes a Stand on Homosexuality (2010):  In a post titled Gayism is sinful[pt], Mozambican rapper Azagaia takes a stand on homosexuality: he defends “equal rights and opportunities for all Men. (…) No matter which sexual orientation”. Though the subject is rarely discussed in the southern Africa region, there is a debate tonight about “Sexual Orientation and Sports” [pt] in Maputo... "O gayismo é pecado" (2010, Translation): So I advocate equal rights and opportunities for all men. Não importa a raça, origem ou orientação sexual. No matter the race, national origin or sexual orientation. Que a paz eo amor sejam em abundância para todos! May peace and love be in abundance for all!

Week 11: Mozambique and some very organized gay activists (2010): First thing on Wednesday morning, I called Danilo De Silva who runs Lambda (and was one of the founders) here in Maputo. We set a time to meet him at 4 that afternoon at their office... The offices of Lambda are in a house in residential area of Maputo. Except for seeing a number of "gay boys" hanging around in the yard area, you would not notice that it was any different than a regular house. Then you walk in the door and see the orderly desks, computer monitors and all the people working away. It felt almost "corporate" in efficiency. We were greeted at the door and asked to wait for Danilo who was still in a meeting. Everyone continued with their work... Our conversation with Danilo seemed to reinforce what Lonely Planet was saying. Lambda was founded in 2006 as an advocacy group for LGBT people in Mozambique. They have never been raided (like LGBT organizations in many other African countries), but then again, they have never been allowed to register as a legal entity in Mozambique. Danilo told us that they felt it best to not force things and they were making progress, both with their education for HIV/AIDS, counseling for LGBT people and making their presence known in government policy making... Mozambique is a former Portuguese colony and the language and somewhat the culture, reflect this. As the former "government administration" the Portuguese government does little to pressure the Mozambique government about "Gay" rights. Danilo told us one of the biggest changes regarding being gay, was from the soap operas from Brazil that are shown on Mozambique television... I asked Danilo what was possible and what he would like to see happen over the next few years in Mozambique. "In one year, I would like to see Lambda be registered. It has been pending for 3 years. In 2 years, we can be an established, powerful and key front face in the community. We have been successful in using our model to start groups in the other provinces. In five years I would like to be discussing civil unions and have our 1st Gay Pride."

African lesbians demand greater rights (2008, Alternate Link, Alternate Link): An African lesbian group on Tuesday called on governments in the largely conservative continent to stop treating homosexuals like criminals. The Coalition of African Lesbians is holding a conference attended by about 100 people in Mozambique to highlight discrimination against lesbians. "Our main goal is that lesbian and homosexuality can no longer be seen as a criminal offence," the group's director and conference spokeswoman, Fikile Vilakazi, told Reuters. "You should not be arrested and charged for how you use your own body." African gay activists accuse authorities in many countries of "state-sponsored" homophobia and tacitly condoning their persecution. In some cases, possible sentences against gays include eath by stoning. - African lesbian conference demands equal rights (2008). - Mozambique discovers its gay minority (2007): The city of Maputo, Mozambique's capital, is the place where the largest number of this minority is concentrated. This, according to the homosexual group's leaders, is because here, people are generally most open towards the issue. This month, as a first step, the group is to publish an "informative and educational" journal to enlighten Mozambicans.

First National Seminar On Gay Rights (2006, Alternate Link): The chairperson of the Mozambican Human Rights League (LDH), Alice Mabota, on Thursday urged the country's gay and lesbian citizen to organise and fight for their rights. She was speaking at the first ever seminar on gay rights in the country, organised by the LDH, with the sponsorship of the Dutch NGO Hivos. - Movement for Gay Rights to Be Announced Soon in Mozambique (2006, Alternate Link): At the end, on Friday night, of the first ever Mozambican seminar on gay rights, organised by the Human Rights League (LDH), gay activist Danilo de Sousa told AIM that the movement will probably be launched within the next couple of weeks. But as yet it has no name.

Mozambique: Gay Rights Raised in Mozambican Paper (2006): For the first time, a mainstream Mozambican paper has published an article by a prominent Mozambican journalist arguing in favour of gay rights. - Pour la première fois, un quotidien appelle au respect des homosexuels (2006, Translation): Un journaliste mozambicain a publié dans le quotidien Beira un article dans lequel il appelle au respect des homosexuels, signant ainsi le premier papier du genre dans un grand journal, annonce l'Agence d'information du Mozambique, reprise par le site Behind the Mask. "L'homosexualité, contrairement à ce que beaucoup de gens pensent, n'est pas une maladie, a commenté Emilio Manhique à l'occasion de sa chronique hebdomadaire.. 

Pequeno orgulho em Moçambique (2003, Translation): Depois de algumas tentativas de buscar informações sobre a existência de um movimento gay em Moçambique, muitos e-mails, poucas respostas e muito silêncio, resolvemos pegar a estrada para Maputo e tentar entender como a homossexualidade é vista naquele pais... Outro dado importante é o tabu em relação ao tema homossexualidade. Não é socialmente aceito que se fale neste assunto, mas é sabido que relações sexuais entre pessoas do mesmo sexo acontecem com naturalidade. O maior problema parece ser a abordagem do assunto. Sabemos que temos que respeitar as regras sociais de cada lugar. Mas não seria o momento de se colocar em duvida a proteção destas regras ? Principalmente em um pais pobre do continente africano, onde a epidemia da AIDS esta matando milhares de pessoas por dia ? Onde a unica forma de se lutar contra este problema é a prevenção e educação de maneira clara e simples? Desta maneira a homossexualide não é aceita, mas é praticada. Mascarada e escondida no que alguns moçambicanos dizem « aqui, todos somos meio bissexuais ». Seria realmente bissexualidade ? Sera que esta bissexualidade não tem origem na prostituição ? Num pais pobre com tantos problemas socias a prostituição é uma alternativa de sobrevivência, não importando o sexo, ou a orientação sexual de quem a pratique.

Quase metade população urbana diz "poder ser homossexual" -Estudo (2006, Translation): [The research, presented at the First National Seminar on Homosexuality in Mozambique, organized by LDH, also reports that 96 percent of respondents know at least one homosexual, 80 percent have a homosexual friend and 72 percent considered this trend a personal choice ]. - Manas: getting them talking (2003): There has been a buzz word in Maputo for the last few weeks - "Manas". It means sisters, but implies an especially close, special bond. It is the name of an exhibition of photographs by Ditte Haarlov-Johnson, which is on at a gallery on Av. Julius Nyerere, an exhibition of photographs of some of Maputo's gay men - they are the Manas. The gallery is prominently placed in the centre of town with an open glass front and the entrance is free, throughout the day and into the evening a constant stream of people file through seeing the photographs and reading about this formerly hidden facet of society.

da Silva et al. (2010). Study about vulnerability and risk to HIV infection among Men who have Sex with Men in Maputo City. Maputo, Mozambique: Lambda – Mozambican Association for Sexual Minority Rights, Population Services Mozambique (PSI), Pathfinder International, UNFPA. PDF Download. Download Page. - The data revealed that the population of MSM living in Maputo City have access to general information about HIV prevention that is disseminated through different channels including: radio, television, newspaper and health centers. However, it was noted that there was hardly any information designed specifically for MSM. MSM consider the public health services difficult to access. For one, there is lack of technically qualified staff to address specific needs of MSM. Secondly, MSM reported to be discriminated or treated with hostility by health service providers. This situation has caused many MSM to avoid public health services, even in situations where they feel it would be necessary to seek testing, treatment, counselling or HIV/ STI prevention of services... The study concluded that, in general, MSM in Maputo City live in a context of vulnerability which exposes them to HIV infection. The inefficiency of the current prevention and care programs to address specific needs of MSM and the social discrimination they face may place them at increased risk for HIV.

da Silva et al. (2010). Estudo sobre vulnerabilidade e risco de infecção pelo HIV entre os Homens que fazem sexo com Homens na Cidade de Maputo. Maputo, Moçambique: Lambda – Associação de Defesa das Minorias Sexuais (em formação), Population Services Mozambique (PSI), Pathfinder International,UNFPA. PDF Download. Download Page.

Herança colonial pesada para gays (2010, Translation): [In the same week that there were three marriages between same sex in Portugal, four more were killed in Brazil gay, gays are still not included in health plans to combat HIV in Mozambique and Angola in recent constitutional amendment deletes the right of non-discrimination according to sexual orientation... "We still have laws that date back to 1886 and punish homosexuals with fines," says Danilo da Silva, 30, who since 2006 gave the guy the Lambda, the only LGBT association in Mozambique, which tries to register with the Ministry of Justice without success. Segundo o activista, "os LGBT vivem no armário, adoptando uma vida dupla". According to the activist, "LGBT people living in the closet, taking a double life." "Há questões culturais e religiosas que impedem avanços legislativos. Um grande sector da população vê a homossexualidade como uma doença, importada das cidades europeias. Os jornais e televisões pouco tocam no assunto", acrescenta, salientando o avanço que foi a recente Lei do Trabalho. "There are cultural and religious issues that hinder legislative progress. A large sector of the population sees homosexuality as a disease imported from European cities. The newspapers and television just touch the issue," she adds, noting the progress that has been the recent Labour Law .

Homosexuality now debated all over Africa (Responses to the South African decision to legalise same-sex marriages): In Mozambique, homosexuality got a very positive debut in the national press, as the state-owned news agency AIM last month interviewed the country's principal human rights group on its new campaign to stop discrimination against gays and lesbians. The dominant independent weekly 'Savana' went further by interviewing several gay men from a newly started organisation, talking about their experiences of discrimination and presenting their lifestyle in a non-scandalising manner. The principal national media of Mozambique seemed promoting an improved rights situation for the country's sexual minorities, and government representatives promised to look at the situation. Influence from neighbouring South Africa surely had made a rapid impact on the social dialogue in Mozambique, where the issue of homosexuality has been a no-go debate until last month.  - Mozambique: Religious leaders on AIDS and gays (2004): The Agencia de Informacao de Mocambique in Maputo reported recently on the homophobic ranting of an Islamic cleric that formed part of a debate on Aids. Clearly disapproving of the cleric's views, the report also takes a side swipe at some Christian leaders too. - Arcebispo de Maputo critica legalização do casamento homossexual, e denuncia degradação dos valores morais na sociedade moçambicana [Maputo Archbishop criticizes legalization of homosexual marriage, and denounces erosion of moral values ​​in Mozambican society](2005, Translation).

Gangisa (2004): The practice of bukhontxana, or mine marriages, seems to have emerged amongst Mozambican workers in the early twentieth century... In Southern Mozambique, young adolescents often played together 'like husband and wife', a form of gender socialisation that sometimes included the practice of external coitus, or penetration between the thighs (inter-crural sex). Boys and girls lived in special huts at the entrance to the homestead, and it was easy for them to meet at night; the only proviso to gangisa was that it should conform to local rules of exogamy and that the young couple should not stay together until morning: full and uninhibited sexual relations were tied to marriage.  Thus sexuality bound boys and girls into gender roles that were distintly masculine and feminine and marked the passage from childhood to adulthood. Gangisa formed part of the primary sexual imagery of young men arriving on the mines. As they came from a society that placed great value on children, and discouraged sexual practices that did not lead to pregnancy, the only acceptable form of sexual release to which they could turn, within their cultural code, were variations of the intercrural sex practised during gangisa. - Homossexualidade em Moçambique [Homosexuality in Mozambique - History] (2010, Translation).

Forman, Ross G (2002). Randy on the Rand: Portuguese African Labor and the Discourse on "Unnatural Vice" in the Transvaal in the Early Twentieth Century. Journal of the History of Sexuality, 11(4): 570-609. PDF Download. Reference. Because the economic center of South Africa had shifted from the Cape Province to the Transvaal as a result of the development of the mines, the country was heavily indebted to these workers from Mozambique, who in 1907 comprised about 70 percent of the labor force officially hired by the Witwatersrand Native Labour Association (WNLA)and numbered more than seventy thousand... Their inquiry was prompted by and followed on the heels of an explosive 1906 investigation of "immorality" among the indentured Chinese laborers brought to the Transvaal after the conclusion of the Anglo- Boer War, for the earlier investigators had heard repeated testimony that the "Mozambique Natives" could teach the Chinese inore vice than the Chinese could teach them... For instance, although a number of "boys" - interviewed were named by other witnesses as being party to mine marriages, nearly all claimed linowledge of the practice but categorically denied their ou7n involvement in it...

‘African Homosexuality’ Imagined: Doing Sexuality in Contested Spaces: During her time in the northern region of Mozambique, one Danish anthropologist observed that unlike her own experiences learning about women’s sexuality in a European, Christian context, sexualities were openly discussed and expressed in Mozambique society. A woman’s sexuality was something of her own, part of her personality and identity as a woman, not defined in relation to, or ‘opened up’ by men. Although these women were bound by the heterosexual norms and cultural expectations of having a husband and children and playing the roles of wife and mother, she discovered that there was a space for women to have same-sex relationships where the lines between friendship and lover were blurred... The women in northern Mozambique and Lesotho are examples of same-sex relationships and sexualities located outside of the “heterosexual norms in Africa.” These relationships were socially and culturally accepted in Mozambique, and were celebrated by women and their husbands in the Lesotho context, maybe because they existed alongside women’s heterosexual relationships and were not disruptive to the gender power system. However, we must hesitate to label these relationships as homosexual relationships, especially in the Lesotho context where the women themselves did not identify themselves as lesbians or homosexual because “homosexuality is not a conceptual category everywhere… and the kinds of sexual acts it is thought possible to perform, and the social identities that come to be attached to those who perform them, vary from one society to another”...

Resources: - Behind the Mask - A Web Site on Gay and Lesbian Affairs in Africa. - Africa by Country: Mozambique.  Mozambique Archive. - African Veil: Countries Covered: Mozambique. - Queer afrol. - Afrol News; Gay/Lesbian Archives. - theGully.com news & Articles: Africa. - Lambda Moçambique (Translation): Documents/Studies (Translation) - Press Release (2011, Translation).

Global Gayz: Africa: Mozambique News Reports From 2006 to the Present. - ILGA: Africa: Mozambique. - LGBT rights in Mozambique. - Sodomy Laws. - Human Rights Watch: Use Search Function. - Amnesty International: Use Search Function. - Pink News: Europe's Largest Gay News Service: Africa. - AsylumLaw.Org: Sexual Minorities & HIV Status: Documents / Reports / Website Links / Organizations. Mozambique Documents. - Links to News Sources for GLBT World.

MSMGF News Articles & Documents Resources. By Region & Country:  - Sub-Saharan Africa:  - Mozambique. 

Gay Mozambique (Global Gayz) - News/Report. - ILGA Report. - The Eastgarden. - Behind the Mask - A Web Site on Gay and Lesbian Affairs in Africa. - Africa by Country News: Mozambique News. - African Veil: Countries Covered: Mozambique.