Queer Pride Botswana hosts the first Queer Women’s Market

On August 31 2019 Queer Pride Botswana will host a one day market in support of small and medium businesses owned by Lesbian, bisexual, pansexual, intersex, trans-identifying and queer identifying women. The market will be hosted at Culture Art Cafe in Molapo Crossing and all members of the public, regardless of gender identity or sexual orientation are encouraged to attend. The Queer Women’s Market will host small businesses across all sectors and service provisions including fashion, art, consulting and craft making, the businesses need not be officially registered companies. Women get to register their stalls for free, and the public will be given free entry to the market.

Queer Pride Botswana is a movement founded by Intellectual Property Lawyer and LGBTQ Activist Letlhogonolo Moremi, and Actor and Author Donald Molosi, who have partnered with Social Media consultant Mmathapelo Marumo to organise the Queer Women’s Market. Mr. Moremi said that the movement is founded on 3 pillars of Kitlano, Kgothatso and Kgololesego. “Queer Pride Botswana is about building a united community. It is about creating a space for LGBTQ persons build support networks among themselves and their allies, and it is about recognizing the right to freedom that is innate in all persons, those are our values.” Their mandate is to create a safe space for LGBTQ person and their allies to commune and celebrate diversity through shared stories and building support networks in a safe environment.

In June 2019, the movement held Botswana’s first LGBTQ Pride event after the High Court ruling decriminalizing same-sex sexual relations. The event, dubbed “Pride Night” was hosted in as a first step towards creating an environment where the LGBTQ community can commune to celebrate diversity in an effort unapologetic way. The movement is currently working on a bigger edition of the pride night to be hosted in the latter part of 2019. “This will be an annual event that will feature a pride march, panel discussions and other activities, in line with our mandate of taking queerness out of obscurity and helping Batswana realize that LGBTQ persons are simply normal everyday human beings. They are our mothers, fathers, brother, sisters. They are our children. They are us.”

For his part, co founder of Queer Pride Botswana and founder of the Upright African Movement Mr. Donald Molosi noted that “To decolonize knowledge is to also learn to accept our societies in their full diversity. We allies must stand up and be counted. Furthermore, any politician seeking to occupy office of leadership yet refusing to embrace sexual and gender diversity is on the wrong side of history, and history will remember them as such.” Further, Molosi says, “This market is a step towards strengthening business networks within the Queer community. That way, the Queer community can have stronger business muscle to uplift the Queer community. Allies are instrumental. Heterosexual people have a part to play in this vision. When did the upliftment of marginalized people ever rely on them alone?”

Mmathapelo “Thapes” Marumo, a co-organizer for the market remarked that creating the Queer Women's Market is important to because it's important to have spaces reserved for the Queer people in society. “People are yet to warm up to the repeal of section 164 and there's still a lot of hostility towards LGBT+ identifying persons. Some might say they feel excluded from these spaces, but that's only natural if you're accustomed to the rest of the world being your space. queer people, specifically queer women, need judgement free spaces we ca

n go where we'll feel free of the expectations and criticisms of society” she said.

The movement’s founders encouraged Women to use this opportunity to market their businesses and to take their products and services to the public. To register, they need only send their names, business name, product/service and contact details to quuerpridebw@gmail.com, 75307674 or inbox the Queer Pride Botswana social media pages. Further information can be found on the Queer Pride Botswana social media pages, as well as through the hashtag #QWMarket