High Court declares sodomy and unnatural sexual offences invalid

By Josia Shigwedha, via News on One

Members of the country’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Intersex and Other or LGBTQI+ community are celebrating.

This after the Windhoek High Court declared that the crimes of ‘sodomy’ and ‘unnatural sexual offences’ as unconstitutional and invalid.

LGBTQI+ activist Linda Baumann expressed happiness at the historic ruling.

She explained that while homosexuality itself has never been illegal, what was criminalised as per the Criminal Procedures Act were the crimes of ‘sodomy’ and ‘unnatural sexual offences’ which have now been declared invalid.

“I am gay. I am not criminalized, but what I do in my bedroom is initially what has been on the statutes that criminalizes it. So today in court, the verdict manifested that all the legislations that have been outlined, including the Criminal Procedures Act, clearly manifest that homosexuality in Namibia and the practice of sodomy is not criminalized, and that also the state has also to bear the legal costs of the litigant, and that is deep.

And this is a full judge, a bench of judges, that today got us to celebrate after so many years of struggling for Namibians to understand that the sodomy law does not make us illegal, but the sodomy law is an unjust law. So as we celebrate this through the years, the LGBTI community is now faced with greater struggles that would be coming as this law needs to be scrapped, said Baumann.

In addition, Amnesty International’s Deputy Regional Director for East and Southern Africa, Khanyo Farise, has stated that the Court’s decision to overturn the laws in question and decriminalise consensual same-sex sexual conduct is a victory for love, equality and human rights.

“This ruling is a step toward ending discrimination in equal access to health care and other social services and ensuring that all people in Namibia can choose their partners without fear of reprisal and live their lives in dignity, “says Farise.