Global Development & Design

Southern African and generally underdeveloped countries in the world have generally religious and socially conservative political climates. However, in recent years laws protecting the rights of LGBTQ+ people have become more and more protected and have gone against the grain of the political climates in these countries. Specifically, countries like South Africa, Namibia, Zimbabwe, and Mozambique all of these countries have longstanding patriarchal traditions and a defined understanding of family in a very cisgender heterosexual context. This leads to an almost 80% resistance rate to liberal ideology and policy making in these countries yet there has been an unprecedented development in their LGBTQ+ rights protections. 

In the cases of these countries, the rights of the LGBTQ+ community were protected through the pressure of activists and the independence of judges. Many governments in Africa are set up similarly to the US in a federal system. This means that they divided power among multiple branches of government so that no one branch of the government is stronger than another. This also generally leads to their highest courts or supreme courts having the power of judicial review. First, however, the laws must be passed by the legislative branches of these countries’ respective governments. South Africa passed a bill protecting LGBTQ+ rights in 2006 with a public popularity rate of only 10% and this was due to pressure from domestic and international activists. In a federal system government officials need to maintain popularity and support from multiple sources. Activists can drum up support for nominees if they support the actions of those who are in power. Therefore, when the government passed a bill protecting LGBTQ+ rights the elected officials received support from these activist groups. Once the law was in effect the courts which generally rule independently of the people agreed that the bills were constitutional which then protected the laws from political scrutiny.