Robert Mugabe: ‘Same-sex marriage is not a human right’

Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe has spoken out in support of Uganda’s new anti-gay laws.

Last week (February 24 ) Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni signed off on legislation including life imprisonment for gay people who repeatedly break the laws and custodial sentences for those who reach out to the gay community.

Since Museveni signed the bill, The World Bank and countries such as Norway, the Netherlands and Denmark have suspended financial aid to Uganda.

“They (the West) want to tell us… that it’s a violation of human rights – that is what they are doing to Museveni right now,” Mugabe said at his daughter’s wedding reception over the weekend, the Associated Press reports.

“The human right you have as a man is to marry another woman,  not to get another man to marry, we refuse that.”

Mugabe also claimed to have only very recently become aware that there are gay people living in Zimbabwe. “I understand we have a group of homosexuals in this country. I didn’t know until I was told the day before yesterday. So we want to check on who is in that group,” the 90-year-old President said.

Meanwhile, the man behind Uganda’s new anti-gay laws, David Bahati, has claimed that the loss of Western aid is a small price to pay for protecting “moral values” – read the full story here.