Gay Couple Convicted in Malawi

JOHANNESBURG — A gay couple in Malawi were found guilty on Tuesday of unnatural acts and gross indecency, the consequence of their holding an engagement ceremony in an insular nation where homosexuality is largely seen as nonexistent or something that must be suppressed.

Tiwonge Chimbalanga, 33, and Steven Monjeza, 26, face up to 14 years in prison. A magistrate said he would sentence the men on Thursday.

The case has drawn worldwide attention as another example of the broad anti-gay sentiment in Africa. A law recently proposed in Uganda calling for homosexuals to be executed in some cases stirred so much ire in the West that a presidential committee recommended withdrawing it from Parliament.

Malawi, a deeply impoverished, landlocked nation of 14 million, has also received international condemnation for prosecuting the two gay men. But most of its leaders — political and religious — have reacted with defiance. Last month, President Bingu wa Mutharika was quoted as calling homosexuality “evil and bad before the eyes of God” and an act “we Malawians just do not do.”

Magistrate Nyakwawa Usiwa Usiwa, in delivering Tuesday’s judgment in a small courtroom in Blantyre, the country’s commercial capital, was similarly stern. He referred to the crime as “buggery,” using language from when Malawi was a British colony and the current law was written.

He found both men guilty of “carnal knowledge” that was “against the order of nature.” He said the two had been “living together as husband and wife,” which “transgresses the Malawian recognized standards of propriety.”

As the judgment was translated for them from English into Chichewa, the defendants barely flinched. Then they were hastened out of a back door, escaping a taunting crowd that already was celebrating their conviction.

The couple have been in jail since Dec. 28, two days after they threw themselves an engagement party — a chinkhoswe in Chichewa — at the Blantyre lodge where Mr. Chimbalanga worked as a cook and housekeeper, referring to himself as “Auntie Tiwo” and insisting that he was a woman.

This public celebration drew dozens of uninvited guests. Some hooted and jeered, and at least one phoned a local newspaper, which published a front-page article about “gay lovebirds” partaking in “the first recorded public activity for homosexuals in the country.”

When arrested, both men gave statements to the police that were later deemed incriminating. Though a doctor testified he could find no evidence that the two had committed sodomy, the magistrate said he relied on the defendants’ own words “that they used to caress each other and had anal sex for five months before going public.”

The verdict was a disappointment to the few Malawians who had openly supported the accused. “As much as I expected a guilty verdict, I still hoped for a miracle,” said Dunker Kamba, the administrator for a group that provides counseling about AIDS.

Undule Mwakasungula, the head of a human rights group, called the verdict another sign of the country’s rejection of what is commonly called “gayism” in Malawi. He said, “We can’t keep denying that we have gay people in Malawi and that they deserve to be treated with understanding and justice.”

Mr. Monjeza grew up on the outskirts of Blantyre. His relatives repeatedly have said they feel disgraced and would never welcome him back.

Mr. Chimbalanga was raised in a small village beyond the huge tea plantations that dominate the Thyolo district, 40 miles from Blantyre. His uncle, the village headman, banished him in his teenage years, but his five siblings remained loyal, thinking their brother “bewitched.” At the end of the proceedings on Tuesday, Mauya Msuku, a lawyer for the defense, said the gay couple suffered from “gender disorientation” and would benefit far more from forgiveness and counseling than “placing them with hard-core criminals.”

Speaking for the prosecution, however, Barbara Mchenga urged the magistrate to “consider the scar this offense will leave on our morality. The two showed no remorse and were somehow proud of what they did.”

Caroline Somanje contributed reporting from Blantyre, Malawi.

In our continent homosexuality is unnatural and thus is treated as so.

Your country is taking steps towards acknowledging unnatural acts,

In South Africa, Zuma commends what happened in Malawi, but is South Africa tolerant and open about homosexuality?..Nigeria believes that the representative from the Czech Republic will find it not be the case.