Why Africa’s Turning
Anti-Gay
Western activism
is causing more harm than good to a continent making LGBT people into
scapegoats for colonialism.
As an LGBT activist, I was always
happy to see my picture in the paper. It showed that I was doing my job,
getting attention for the cause I believed in—and, of course, getting some
attention myself.
But after a story about George
Freeman, director of the Sierra Leone LGBT organization Pride Equality, was
published in a local newspaper last year—with photos accompanying it—he was
dragged from his car and beaten by two men on motorcycles.
Freeman never consented to the
story; the newspaper culled its content from an MTV interview. His assailants
were never caught.
There are many stories like
Freeman’s, of course, and the situation is steadily getting worse, even as
LGBTs have made remarkable progress here—or perhaps because of it. In
fact, the rising tide of anti-gay sentiment in sub-Saharan Africa, as
elsewhere, is an ironic brew of anti-Westernism and Western influence.
And well-meaning American activists may be making it worse.
Homosexual acts are illegal in 78 countries. Of these,
21 are small island nations, 20 are in the Islamic world, and 33 are in
sub-Saharan Africa. In all three categories, almost all anti-gay laws are a
vestige of European colonialism, and date back approximately 150 years.
In several countries, the prohibition against “sodomy” is still known as
Section 377, the old British code provision.
Ironically, anti-gay
leaders—politicians, clergy, journalists—in Uganda, Kenya, Nigeria, Cameroon,
Ethiopia and Sierra Leone have all, within the last month, called gay rights,
and homosexuality itself, a “Western” innovation that must be resisted in order
to preserve “traditional African values.”
Last month, for example, Sierra
Leone’s President Ernest Koroma, said that “we have to take into consideration
our culture, tradition, religious beliefs and all that… I think the
country should be led by what it believes is right for the country and not what
is necessarily right for the international community because of the variations
in our traditions.’’
In fact, pre-colonial African
traditions varied widely. Over 20 cultural varieties of indigenous African
same-sex intimacy have been recorded by anthropologists. There are Bushmen
paintings of men having sex with one another. There are countless examples of
cross-dressing and cross-gender behavior. There are instances of female
warriors marrying other female warriors, such as in the kingdom of Dahomey, in
present-day Benin—unsurprisingly, the Europeans called them ‘Amazons.’ There
are even cases of male homosexuality being seen as possessing magical
properties, such as the transmission of wealth from one person to another.
And,
like the hijras of India, there are examples in several ethnic
groups of men who took on women’s roles and dress to have sex with men. These
people were not “gay” or “homosexual.” Those are Western terms, laden with
connotations of culture and medicalization. They had names of their own:
Chibadi (Southern Africa), Mukodo Dako (Uganda), and many others.
The irony would be funny if it
weren’t tragic: cultures with rich traditions of sexual diversity now asserting
that sexual diversity is Western, and that Western anti-gay bias is a
traditional cultural value.
Of course, pre-colonial Africa was
not some queer paradise. Many of the gender-variant male types were
stigmatized; being regarded as women was hardly an elevation in social status.
And some forms of African sexual diversity, such as pederasty, are hardly
models for contemporary morality.
By scolding countries
like Uganda and Nigeria for getting gay rights wrong, American liberals
reinforce the notion that LGBT equality is Western, and, even worse, the
patriarchal, colonialist attitude that we Westerners are advanced, and you
Africans are backward.
But if the notion that
homosexuality is un-African is not historically grounded, why is it gaining
such traction now? Because it is a political rhetoric of anti-Western
resistance —ironically, abetted by Westerners themselves.
For 300 years, Europeans and
Americans colonized much of Africa and enslaved millions of its people.
Colonial rhetoric was often virtuous: colonizers would bring civilization to
benighted Africans. Even the dismantling of colonialism fit this structure, as
now Africans would enjoy the fruits of democracy—conditioned, of course, upon
neo-liberal economic policies that continued to maximize wealth offshore.
Calling anti-colonialism ‘resentment’ understates its intensity and its moral
gravity.
Ironically, both the opponents and
proponents of LGBT equality are repeating the colonialist narrative.
First,
as extensively documented in the film God Loves Uganda and
a series of reports by Rev. Kapya Kaoma, a Zambian Episcopal priest (and, full
disclosure, a colleague of mine at the think tank Political Research
Associates), “African” ideas about homosexuality are often those spread by
American Evangelicals, out to colonize Africa spiritually rather than
politically. Lou Engle, Scott Lively, Human Life International—these are
not household names in the United States, and that’s precisely the point. Like
has-been basketball players dunking baskets in Europe, the leftovers of the
American Evangelical scene have found new life in Africa.
These Westerners bring (relative)
wads of cash and influence, and are gladly met by opportunistic African
leaders. Each group is using the other: Evangelicals shift policy and are able
to raise money back home, and their African collaborators can posture against
Western imperialism and get rich.
At the same time, the notion of
gay rights as Western is also reinforced by Western gay rights activists. Who
was it who said “fools rush in where angels fear to tread”? Indeed, the
pressure, petitions, and paroxysms of outrage from the West may be having the
opposite of their intended effect. By scolding countries like Uganda and
Nigeria for getting gay rights wrong—even as the United States itself has only
“gotten it right” for about three years—American liberals reinforce the notion
that LGBT equality is Western, and, even worse, remind many in Africa
of the patriarchal colonialist attitude that we Westerners are advanced, and
you Africans are backward.
I see this all the time on my
Facebook feed, but it also appears at the highest echelons of the LGBT
movement, in which celebrities castigate "backward" Africans for
their “homophobia” while billionaires who profited from colonialism now finance
campaigns to save African gays. Each time Americans and Europeans threaten to
cut off aid to an African country because of its anti-gay laws, another African
leader can “stand up to the West” and look powerful for resisting the pressure.
Meanwhile, LGBT people on the ground become victims of the backlash.
The notion that developing world
countries should leapfrog 40 years of social history, and the corresponding one
that Western sanctions should whip them if they don’t, only feeds the flames of
anti-Western sentiment and bolsters the political position of anti-Western
posturing.
There
are alternatives. Donor nations could support those countries who have passed
anti-discrimination laws (Botswana and Mozambique, for example), replacing the
Western stick with a carrot. NGOs could support African artists and writers,
such as Kenya’s Binyavanga Wainaina, who came out
as gay earlier this year. The prospect that Americans who cause hate crimes
overseas could be liable in U.S. federal court—as is the contention of Sexual Minorities Uganda v.
Lively—is an intriguing one. Most importantly, European and American
funders can support a fight for equality in Africa led by Africans themselves.
George Freeman fled Sierra Leone
in June, just a few weeks after his picture ran in the paper. With the help of a Spanish LGBT
organization, he and two associates made their way to Madrid, where they remain
today. The Sierra Leone government, which is reviewing its own anti-gay laws
and considering making them even worse, called his attack an “isolated case.”
Of course, it is anything but.
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