African Homophobia Is A Western Import

Image: Mail & Guardian

In 140 characters, Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, encapsulated a broad sweep of history and geography and one of the central paradoxes of Africa’s new war on queer folks: “In name of Africa culture Uganda Pres will sign anti-gay law pushed by US evangelists toughening British colonial ban.”

Anti-LGBTQIAP+ sentiment in Africa is a crockpot of errant biblical fundamentalism, Western imperialism and opportunism, and confusion amid an entire country’s postcolonial circumnavigation of national identity. With centuries of unrepentant, sectarian fanaticism and cultural relativism as its justification, US Evangelicalism has made the brainwashed African conservative out to be a Renaissance man and an exemplary politician. Former Nigerian president Goodluck Jonathan signed into law a bill criminalizing same-sex “amorous relationships” and membership of LGBTQIAP+ groups. In 2014, Gambian president Yahya Jammeh, one of the world’s most chauvinistic and quixotic dictators, delivered a chilling and murderous admonishment to MSMs (men who have sex with men) during a rally in Farafeni: "If you do it [in Gambia] I will slit your throat.". In October of 2018, governor of Tanzania's largest city Dar-es-Salaam, Paul Makonda, announced that he formed an anti-gay unit to hunt down "suspected" homosexuals. Makonda is an ardent Christian and close ally of Tanzanian President John Magufuli, a traditionalist who believes "even cows disapprove of" homosexuality.

This is not, however, merely the hate-filled bile of totalitarians and vindictive assemblypeople. Goodluck and Yahya may be the pawns of WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant) ideologues, but they have Mephistophelian, incisive aplomb of their own; they make such denunciations because they know they will arouse the self-righteousness and innervation of droves of African nationalists, ultraconservatives, and paramilitaries. Newspapers, as well as TV and Radio stations, proliferate the pointed demonization of Africa’s queer minorities. The commercialization and propagandizing of African homophobia fuels the baleful political persuasions of the African public and its international representatives. Homosexuality is a vilified identity; the rancor and inflammation towards it was imported from Midwestern and Southern Christian conservatives — the official interest by Western countries in promoting human rights falling foul of decades-old religious right indoctrination — and has been made, by way of religion, populism, and disillusionment, a designator of “African-ness”. Seen through this prism, bellicosity towards queer folks is a mounted counteroffensive against neocolonialism and in favor of African nationalism, self-determination, and self-worth.

This anachronistic and clannish interpretation of “African-ness” is not remotely revolutionary nor a “progressive” caveat to Western social-reconditioning and epithets; prior to Western meddling, there are no records of any African laws against homosexuality. As a matter of fact, lax and fluid opinions towards divergent sexual orientations and gender identities existed in Africa as far back as 2400 BC. Tombs have been excavated in ancient Egypt with two men’s bodies, Niankhkhnum and Khnumhotep, embracing each other as lovers. In addition to their acceptance of same-sex relationships, Ancient Egyptians, similar to other civilizations at the time, not only acknowledged a third gender but venerated it. Many deities were portrayed androgynously, and goddesses such as Mut (the goddess of Motherhood) and Sekmeht (goddess of war) are often depicted as women with erect penises. The Igbo and Yoruba tribes, found mostly in present-day Nigeria, did not have a binary of genders and typically did not assign gender to babies at birth, and instead waited until later life. Similarly, the Dagaaba people (present-day Ghana) assigned gender not based on one’s anatomy, but rather the energy one presents. These customs were erased from the epistemological and anthropological literature and recordings of Africa’s sexual history in order to give 16th century-onward European missionaries and conquistadors a playground for them to test out and immortalize their revisionist reinterpretations of pre-colonial African society. Depicted as depraved and salacious barbarians in desperate need of Western European disciplinarians, many tribal African societies such as the Imbangala of Angola and the Pungwe of present-day Cameroon and Gabon practiced homosexual intercourse while Sudan’s Zande tribe practiced lesbianism in polygamous households. The potentiality for WSWs (women who have sex with women) in the ancient Ethiopian Australopithecines, given little more than anecdotal attention, demonstrates the elusive and non-encyclopedic nature of sexuality in African society. Unfortunately, scapegoating gay folks by speaking and legislating against them pays dividends at the ballot box and makes for expedience in electioneering, and life for LGBTIAP+ people in many parts of Africa has been going from bad to worse. The root cause? Quarrelsome Westerners whipping up homophobia with lurid stories about child molestation, bestiality, rape, and deadly diseases. ‘

Colonization and the spread of fundamentalist Christian attitudes from the British meant that much of Africa lost its previous cultural attitude towards sexual orientation and gender identity and were forced to adopt “new” values from British colonizers in the 19th and 20th centuries. Homophobia was legally enforced by colonial administrators and Christian missionaries. In 1910, Christians made up about 9 percent of the population of sub-Saharan Africa; by 2010, the figure had leaped to 63 percent. Anti-LGBTQIAP+ laws were not only written into constitutions, but also into the minds of many African people, and after the passing of several generations, external superstition became the embodiment of “African-ness” that, consequently, would prevent the indistinguishability of postcolonial Africa from its Western counterparts. Ebullient anti-Western sentiment converged with a hatred of homosexual concupiscence to create a sort of embourgeoisement. The superabundance of tribal African acceptance towards “unconventional” gender identities and sexual orientations was anomalistic to Western Europeans; as a result, they forced Africans to adopt “new” values that would lead them on the path to salvation. The institutional fermentation of European binarism and disdain for multiculturalism has turned modern-day Africa, a continent afflicted with extreme poverty, economic inequality, and hotly contested electoral spaces, into a cesspool of homophobia.

Religious leaders have used their influence over politicians to further their anti-LGBTI agendas and politicians have used anti-gay policies and discourses to hide their failings and make their oppressive and anti-democratic methods more palatable to their deeply religious constituents. By targeting LGBTIAP+ communities and infusing their sexuality with religious suggestions of grotesque madness and immorality, African leaders seek to deflect attention from their political failings and crimes. The parsimoniousness of the contemporary, failing African politician is only trumped by their perfidiousness, promoting pseudo-religious and nationalistic values that give African folks robbed of a decent livelihood the simulacrum of a proud identity and meaningful communal character. Communities deprived of a crucial say in important political matters by dubious and despotic governments can be tricked into a false sense of control and power when they are encouraged to name and supposedly shame individuals wrongfully adjudged to be different and immoral. It is an exploitative and diabolical political strategy, but it works. Such "us vs. them" narratives allow African politicians and religious leaders to perpetuate the vicious and exclusionary social dynamic that promotes homophobia as well as subdue the underprivileged masses.

Anti-gay witch hunts do not typify the “traditional family values” that many African conservatives portend are vanishing at an exponential rate. The entrenchment of patriarchal and heteronormative power structures has been constructed to be perceived as legitimate and fixed within African society. Unsubstantiated claims of an imposed homosexual identity, irreconcilable ideas on morality, and the lack of attenuation of ex-Commonwealth laws regarding sodomy prove to be monstrosities of Western invention. The legacy of the British Empire’s homophobia lives on in pervasive African Christian fundamentalism, only amplified by Western hypocrisy. If an African leader submits to international condemnation, supports homosexuality, or refuses to renounce it, it would prove that they are submissive to the West. Hence, a critique of homosexuality is also a critique of the imperial West, its flawed self-image, and its figureheads.

Western countries seem stuck in the 20th century, especially in relation to the “white man's burden”, a phrase popularised through Kipling's poem bearing the same name. African folks have been portrayed as backasswards, primitive, and abrasive whereas white folks are portrayed as modern, civilized and well-informed. The burden of the white man was that he should help the primitive black African to become like him. these notions still come into play, where Westerners themselves use hateful language against Africans framing them as savages when commenting on the issue of homosexuality and Africans. It is circular reasoning, offering nothing but self-confirmation and reaffirming a superiority complex. The West is depicted as gay-friendly and inherently gay-loving because of their level of maturity and intellect, whereas Africans as gay-hating because they are primitive.

African religious leaders airing homophobic rants, African politicians using marginalized demographics to cover their own incompetence and surreptitiousness, African propagandists calling for the lynching of transgender African folks...all of that injustice rings a cacophonic tune that is so irrefutably, embarrassingly, and amateurishly Western.