Rev. Dr. Japhet Ndhlovu tells the story of the quiet but deeply radical bravery of a LGBTQIA+ support organization in Southern Africa
I did not expect to be moved like this.
I came into a conversation, at the Faith Beyond Borders consultation in Maputo, Mozambique, expecting information. What I received instead was testimony—rearranges something inside you permanently. Sitting across from a quietly fierce activist from one of southern Africa's landlocked nations, I found myself listening to a story of survival, creativity, and radical love that most of the world will never hear. And because silence has done enough damage, I am writing it down.
This country—I will not name it, to not endanger the people who are doing extremely brave work—is a deeply religious, patriarchal place. It has laws that criminalize same-sex intimacy. It is a place where queer people routinely navigate double lives, where blackmail is a constant threat, where pastors preach from pulpits with a specific, targeted fury.
And yet.
In this same country, something extraordinary is happening. Something quiet and stubborn and full of life.
A Movement That Grew Under Trees
Long before offices or staff or funding, there was a handful of people who simply needed to find each other. They met under trees. They were hosted by organizations that could only spare them a corner. They had no resources and considerable risk. The first organization that tried to register formally received threats so severe that its founders had to flee the country.
Over the years, what emerged from those scattered gatherings is now a movement of more than a dozen organizations—some focused on intersex rights, some on media representation, some on legal support. They form a quiet but determined network, operating with extraordinary skill in extraordinarily hostile conditions.
At the heart of this constellation is a decade-old organization I will call Ofewa—a name in my mother tongue that means something tender and resilient, which feels exactly right. It functions as an anchor for the broader movement: older than most, connected to many, and deeply committed to the kind of work that does not make headlines but saves lives.
Work That Doesn't Make the News
What does queer activism look like in a country where you cannot be publicly visible?
It looks like training police officers and human rights commissioners and watching them, with astonished eyes, engage thoughtfully with a presentation about your community's violations. Five years ago, the activist telling me this story would have run from police. Now she sits with them and speaks without hiding who she is or what she represents. That is a revolution.
It looks like working with social media influencers to seed gentle, humanizing content across Facebook and TikTok, then carefully monitoring the shift in public attitude. There is measurable progress. And yes, there is also measurable backlash from those who feel the ground moving beneath their certainties. But the ground is moving.
It looks like making documentary films that show real violations, real faces, real consequences. Showing these films to potential allies, and watching lawyers weep and offer their services pro bono. Watching psychologists reach out to offer free trauma support. Watching people confront what happens to their queer neighbours in the dark.
Saving Lives, Keeping Families Whole
I had not fully understood the scale of what queer organizations in hostile contexts are quietly preventing. They are preventing suicides.
When someone has nowhere to go, when their family has rejected them, when their church has cast them out, when the law itself names them criminal, the temptation toward self-destruction is not metaphorical. It is immediate and specific. What Ofewa and other organizations offer is not just advocacy, but the knowledge that you are not alone.
I learned that much of this work is about families. Parents, siblings, and grandmothers can be confused and frightened and not know what to do with what their queer child has told them. Ofewa creates spaces for those conversations. Not all of them end in reconciliation.
Those that do produce something extraordinary: a parent who invites their queer child’s partner into the family photograph, or stops making homophobic comments on Facebook. A family that never has "the conversation" explicitly, but simply continues, together.
The Cost of Caring
I would be dishonest if I wrote only about the victories.
The activist described how people who have given years of themselves, who have gone to every committee, documented every violation, trained every volunteer, eventually reach a point of exhaustion and leave. Some leave the movement. Some leave the country entirely.
She described how the movement had, for years, been heavily reliant on international funding, particularly from the United States, and how the recent retraction of that funding has created a crisis. Not just financial, but existential.
There is also a mental health crisis within the movement itself. Alcohol, substance use, unprocessed grief and fear that accumulates when you spend years fighting a system that dehumanizes you. The helpers need healing too.
Refusing to Be Marginal
But queer life in this country does not mean only suffering. There are parties. There are community events. There are young people on TikTok, walking through the world visibly, fearlessly holding their partners' hands.
The activist I spoke with lives in a shared flat. Her neighbours know who she is. No one has ever harassed her. The community she grew up in knows her, and because they know her, they protect her. “In those spaces,” she told me, “if you're a stranger, it's a bit tricky. But if you've grown up there, they embrace you.”
Community is not the problem. Weaponized religion, cynical politics, and manufactured fear are the problem.
Bearing Witness
I walked out of this conversation knowing that the queer movement in this country is doing extraordinary work, despite enormous pressure.
People are alive who might not be, because Ofewa exists. Families are intact who might have fractured. A few police officers think differently than they did before. A parliamentary committee has a document in its files that it cannot claim it never received.
None of this is enough. All of it matters.
To the people doing this work, I want to say this: you are seen. What you are doing is extraordinary. The fact that you have to do it quietly does not make it less so.
And to those of us in places of relative safety, in countries where our children can hold hands with their partners without fear, where affirming churches are not so rare as to be miraculous, this is a moment to ask what our safety is for, and whether we are using it well.
—Rev. Dr. Japhet Ndhlovu is Executive Minister, Church in Mission, with The United Church of Canada
Read more from Rev. Japhet in Mozambique: Something Is Stirring in Maputo—and I Am a Witness
The views contained within these blogs are personal and do not necessarily reflect those of The United Church of Canada.