When LGBT+ people took to the streets last year for the first ever Pride march in eSwatini, formerly known as Swaziland, some hardly believed they could celebrate the event in a country where stigma is rife and gay sex remains illegal. Now gay rights activist Melusi Simelane plans to go further by timing Pride events to coincide with independence anniversary celebrations in September to draw attention to the country’s colonial-era law against sodomy.

“We are looking at the history of colonization and the common-law offence, which is a hangover of colonization,” Simelane told the Thomson Reuters Foundation on the sidelines of the One Young World forum in Britain. “We want to celebrate our Pride in September to say, ‘While you guys are saying you are free to be who you are because you are now an independent country, we also want to be free and let go of all those colonial laws’,” he said.

A spokesman for the government of eSwatini could not be reached for comment on Friday.

The plan to move eSwatini’s Pride rally to September is a departure from tradition. Such events are usually held in June to honor the Stonewall riots in New York in June 1969 that are popularly hailed as the birth of the modern LGBT+ movement. Read more via Reuters

Simelane was a driving force of the country’s first Pride march two years ago and founded the new LGBT+ rights group eSwatini Sexual & Gender Minorities this year.