I N 1981, Zimbabwe passed a law which made it an offence to ridicule Canaan Sodindo Banana, then the president. It ended a rash of jokes, like the one about Queen Elizabeth asking him, as he arrived in London, if he was alone or in a bunch. The difficulties of being serious about him returned this week. President Robert Mugabe's notorious anti- homosexual rhetoric of the past two years has become more a national embarrassment than ever before.
Sodomy is illegal in Zimbabwe.
Homosexual rape carries a mandatory prison sentence. The second is the prospect of a full-scale inquiry into the conduct of some of the government's most senior officers, many still serving, who have been shown to have aided Banana. Former senior assistant police commissioner John Chademana, to whom Dube turned for help in 1986, was asked in court what he would have done if the report had concerned an ordinary person. Banana, a soccer devotee, first noticed Dube playing for the Black Mambas, the police professional team, in November 1983, and got his driver to summon him for an interview. In December 1983, in his first week in his new job, Banana asked him to dinner.