As Jana Gonani hurried past security guards to meet her visitors, her chequered shirt was half open, showing off a multi-coloured necklace.
“I just like the necklace because the peace colours resemble rainbow colours, the colours that show who I am. I have no intention to hide my identity even whilst here in prison,” she said, in an interview with openDemocracy in November.
Imprisoned in December 2021, Gonani, a 29-year-old Malawian trans woman, is currently serving an eight-year sentence at Chichiri men’s prison in Blantyre City for two counts of “false pretence” – for presenting as a woman – and one count of “unnatural offence” – both crimes under the country’s colonial era penal law.
