Namibia: Surrogacy dispute lifts lid on anti-gay issues
Published: 11/Nov/2021
Source: LegalBrief Africa
By Carmel Rickard
Twenty years is a lifetime in the law, especially when outdated laws and legal concepts have to be re-considered in the light of modern constitutional principles.
That’s one reason that a notice of appeal, filed by the Namibian Government last week, could prove so interesting to monitor.
The appeal is against an important decision delivered by High Court judge Thomas Masuku in October. The court found in favour of Phillip Luehl, a Namibian man who had asked that his child, born of a legal surrogacy arrangement with a South African woman, should be given Namibian citizenship.
What made the application something really out of the ordinary was that the father is married, in terms of SA law, to another man, who is a Mexican, and not a Namibian. This introduced the spectre of gay marriage, not to mention anti-gay discrimination, into the case, though whether it ought to have done so will be up to the Supreme Court to decide when it finally hears the appeal.
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