For the finale of Zimbabwe’s pride week, local gay men got all dressed up for a good old fashioned drag ball.
At a recent rally during his successful reelection campaign, Zimbabwe's president Robert Mugabe vowed to behead the nation's LGBT people. Critics have accused Mugabe of using anti-gay rhetoric to win support. In 1996 his supporters crashed a pride week event and Mugabe famously quipped that gays were "worse than pigs and dogs".
The country has harsh laws against sodomy — an ex-president was convicted of violating them in 1998 — but attacks on people in same-sex relationships are rare.
Zimbabwe recently celebrated its annual ZimPride week — a low-key version of gay pride week, complete with book readings and film screenings. But the week ended with a rowdy drag queen pageant held outside of an "isolated farmhouse on a forest-shrouded hilltop on the outskirts of Harare, the capital," according to the AP.
Although their country is generally uncomfortable with their sexuality, some gay men couldn't worry about all that — they had a crown to win.
They painted their nails.
AP Photo/Tsvangirayi Mukwazhi
Put on their flashiest outfits.
AP Photo/Tsvangirayi Mukwazhi
And picked out their hottest pairs of heels.
AP Photo/Tsvangirayi Mukwazhi
