PRIME Minister Morgan Tsvangirai’s call for legal reforms to support gay and lesbian marriages in a new constitution have no chance of success, according to Industry and Commerce Minister Welshman Ncube.
Ncube spoke as several African countries denounced new threats by British Prime Minister David Cameron to reduce budgetary support by up to seven percent for countries that refuse to reform their legal systems to protect gay rights – which include same sex marriages and child adoption by homosexuals.
Tsvangirai and Ncube, who lead rival factions of the Movement for Democratic Change, have differed sharply after the former’s call in London for Zimbabwe’s new constitution which is at the drafting stage to legalise homosexual acts.
Ncube said: “As a party, we support what the people of Zimbabwe want and they have said that they do not want gays.
“The people of Zimbabwe have spoken, we are privy to the data from COPAC (parliamentary select committee that gathered views on the new constitution) that indicates that it is almost unanimous that with our cultural background, this is something that we should not even be debating about.
“Zimbabweans just do not want gay rights recognised in the country.”
In a dig at Tsvangirai, who made his call in a BBC interview in London, Ncube said his rival “always wants to say things that he thinks his listeners want to hear”.
“Today he says this, tomorrow he says that, even contradicting what he said yesterday,” Ncube blasted, referring to Tsvangirai stance back in March 2010 that gay rights were not up for discussion in Zimbabwe.
David Cameron’s intervention, made following a Commonwealth summit in Australia, has been roundly denounced by African countries whose conservative populations consider homosexuality “evil”.
Zambia’s Information Minister Given Lubinda said: “Cameron must be reminded of what we agreed when we met in Paris for the Paris Declaration.
“When we met in Ghana, we came up with the Accra Agenda for Action and both those declarations are that no country will use its aid to influence the policies of an aid receiving country.
“It is wrong for Cameron to try and use aid as a way of influencing policies and laws of Zambia. Zambia will not be pressured to formulate laws or policies by any foreign government.”
Ghanaian President John Atta Mills, whose country received US$144 million in UK bilateral aid last year, said: "I, as president, will never initiate or support any attempt to legalise homosexuality in Ghana.”
John Nagenda, an adviser to Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni, lashed out at Cameron for treating African countries like his “children”, saying Ugandans were “tired of these lectures.”
"[T]his kind of ex-colonial mentality of saying: 'You do this or I withdraw my aid' will definitely make people extremely uncomfortable with being treated like children," Nagenda said.