A landmark attempt to legalise same-sex marriage in Botswana has been met with opposition from prominent church and cultural organisations.
Bonolo Selelo and Tsholofelo Kumile appeared before Botswana’s High Court on 14 and 15 July, challenging the Government’s refusal to allow them to marry.
The couple argues that the country’s Marriage Act is unconstitutional because its language specifies that marriage takes place between a “bride” and a “bridegroom”.
Court documents seen by AFP show that Selelo and Kumile attempted to register their marriage in 2025. Their application was rejected, and officials reportedly suggested that they marry in neighbouring South Africa instead.
South Africa is currently the only country on the African continent where same-sex couples can legally marry. If Selelo and Kumile’s challenge succeeds, Botswana could become the second.
Religious and cultural groups oppose marriage equality
The couple’s case has attracted opposition from religious and traditional organisations seeking to preserve marriage as an exclusively heterosexual institution.
The Dingwetsi Association, a non-profit organisation that promotes traditional marriage and opposes divorce, said the case was “likely to have a cultural impact because the country’s customary law only recognises marriage between a man and a woman”.
The Evangelical Fellowship of Botswana, which represents 75 churches, has also opposed the challenge.
A lawyer for the organisation told the court that it believed same-sex marriage “goes against the beliefs of their members who are Christians”.
Botswana’s Government is also defending the existing restriction. The Attorney-General’s office has argued that references to a bride, bridegroom, husband and wife in the Marriage Act describe marriage as a union between a man and a woman.
Selelo and Kumile maintain that denying them access to marriage violates their constitutional rights and excludes them from the legal recognition and protections available to heterosexual couples.
Those protections can include inheritance rights, authority to make medical decisions for a spouse and formal recognition of a couple’s relationship by state institutions.
Same-sex relationships decriminalised in 2019
The marriage case follows major legal progress for LGBTQ+ people in Botswana over the past seven years.
In 2019, Botswana’s High Court ruled that colonial-era laws criminalising consensual same-sex intimacy were unconstitutional. Before the ruling, convictions under the provisions could carry prison sentences of up to seven years.
Justice Michael Leburu said at the time: “Human dignity is harmed when minority groups are marginalised.”
The Government appealed the decision, but Botswana’s Court of Appeal unanimously upheld the ruling in 2021, leaving the provisions unenforceable.
The discriminatory sections nevertheless remained written into the Penal Code for several more years.
On 26 March 2026, the Government published a notice formally deleting references to “Unnatural Offences” from the code. The amendment completed the removal of provisions criminalising consensual same-sex intimacy, more than six years after the High Court declared them unconstitutional.
LGBTQ+ advocacy organisation LEGABIBO welcomed the formal repeal, saying it sent “a clear message that LGBTIQ+ persons are not criminals, and that their lives and relationships deserve protection, not punishment”.
“For many, these provisions were not just words on paper – they were lived realities,” the organisation said. “They affected access to healthcare, safety, employment, and the freedom to love and exist openly.”
Marriage equality remains the next legal test
Although consensual same-sex relationships are now legal in Botswana, same-sex couples are still unable to marry or enter an equivalent legally recognised partnership.
The current challenge will test whether the constitutional principles of dignity, equality and freedom that supported decriminalisation also require the Government to recognise same-sex marriages.
The case has become a significant regional test for LGBTQ+ rights. While several southern African countries have decriminalised same-sex relationships, South Africa remains the continent’s only nation with full marriage equality.
For Selelo and Kumile, the case is also about the practical security that legal marriage would provide.
The court’s eventual ruling could determine whether Botswana takes its next major step towards equality — or continues to reserve marriage and its accompanying protections for heterosexual couples.
