Dar es Salaam governor Paul Makonda has announced a crackdown on LGBTQ people in the city.
The official has asked the city’s more than four million residents to report any individual they believe to be LGBTQ, before an official round-up by authorities will take place on 6 November.
“I have information about the presence of many homosexuals in our province,” he told reports, according to AFP.
“These homosexuals boast on social networks.”
He added: “Give me their names. My ad hoc team will begin to get their hands on them next Monday.”
Makonda also said that homosexual behaviour “tramples on the moral values of Tanzanians and our two Christian and Muslim religions”.
If a person is found guilty of homosexual activity in Tanzania, they currently face a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.
The LGBTQ community in Tanzania is forced to live in secrecy, facing both legal challenges and social discrimination.
The laws against homosexuality in place in Tanzania are a hangover from a colonial-era legal system forced upon them by the British Empire.
Makonda acknowledged that his hardline approach to stamping out homosexuality in Tanznia will draw criticism from the international community, but added: “I prefer to anger those countries than to anger God.”
Last year, Tanzania president John Magufuli made the ridiculous claim that even cows oppose homosexuality during one of his many homophobic rants.
“Those who teach such things do not like us, brothers,” Magufuli said of LGBTQ people and activists. “They brought us drugs and homosexual practices that even cows disapprove of.”
What’s more, there have been calls for newspapers to publish the names of gays and lesbians, while some officials have also recommended forced anal examinations of suspected homosexuals.
Back in 2017, the Health Ministry also closed a number of HIV/AIDS clinics in the country as they claimed they were being used to promote gay sex.
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