Durban-based NGO the Lesbian and Gay Community and Health Centre has come out strong against any political parties who use their platforms to promote policies that violate the rights of people in same-sex relationships.
The move comes as a response to a new manifesto of the People’s Revolutionary Movement (PRM), launched over the weekend at uMlazi south of Durban, in which it calls for both same-sex marriages and abortion to be abolished because its values are “deeply entrenched in Christianity”.
This is not the first time the PRM has caused outrage. During the party’s launch in 2016, its national spokesperson Nhlanhla Mhlongo told Daily Sun that the issue of same-sex relationships was “a serious one” that needed careful consideration.
“As a movement, we are 100 percent against same-sex marriages. The movement stands for a normal society that consists of men and women,” Mhlongo was quoted as saying.
He also went on to salute all the church leaders who observed God’s commandments, adding that his party denounces “those leaders who promote Sodom and Gomorrah in the land of our kings and queens.”
Party leader Nhlanhla Buthelezi confirmed this in an interview with the SABC a few months later, explaining that when it comes to gays and lesbians, “we don’t recruit them and we request them not to join us and join other organisations.”
The PRM claims to have over 10 000 members. According to current spokesperson Thembelani Ngubane, they have also raised R605 000 so far to help contest the upcoming elections.
In addition to their homophobic views, Ngubane said his party also wanted the government to stop employing foreign nationals and to ban the import of foreign products such as cars, TVs and cellphones.
In response to the party’s manifesto launch this past weekend, the Lesbian and Gay Community and Health Centre said gays and lesbians’ rights were enshrined in the Constitution and would be defended.
“If they campaign against us, we will go out to campaign against them, since the Constitution does not allow for gender and race discrimination. We will use the Constitution to tell them that they cannot conduct campaigns by violating other people’s rights,” explains project coordinator Sibongile Khumalo.
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