I’m a lesbian from Zimbabwe – was I wrong to claim asylum, home secretary?

Homosexuality is illegal in my homeland — and, to ‘straighten’ me out, I was subject to ‘corrective’ rape. Now, Suella Braverman would deny me the sanctuary that saved my life, writes Moud Goba. How could she?

Home secretary Suella Braverman has said asylum claims are ‘incentivised’ (PA)

Growing up as a lesbian in Zimbabwe was never going to be easy. For starters, homosexuality was illegal, criminalised by the British in the 19th century. Things have only got worse since then.

I was born in the 1980s, when Robert Mugabe was in power, a man who described gay people as worse than pigs and dogs. His regime was so actively hostile towards us that he embellished the colonial laws to create a new crime of “sexual deviancy”.

By the time I was a teenager and realised I was lesbian, there was nowhere I could seek advice, let alone help to come to terms with my sexuality. And then I was the victim of corrective rape.