For years, Tamiso Maye* had worked diligently at her job in Zimbabwe’s media and marketing industry. “My superiors were happy with my work”, she told me. But then a colleague discovered that she was attracted to other women, and decided to blackmail her, demanding a huge sum of money in exchange for her silence.
When Maye refused to pay this bribe, the colleague disclosed her sexuality to their employer. From that point, “people started treating me differently”, Maye said, recalling this time. “This was showing on their awkward expressions on their faces whenever they’d see me, with some disassociating themselves from me”.
She told me she lost her job not long after this, for reasons that she still believes were to do with her sexuality – even though she had denied being a lesbian, and has continued doing so since. Several years later, she says she’s still out of work.
