February 23, 2014
Recently, anti-gay bills
have passed through the governments in Nigeria and Uganda, sparking debate
across the continent. While African LGBT groups have held safety meetings,
President Jammeh of Gambia referred to
homosexuals in his country as ‘mosquitoes’ and ‘vermin.’ And in Nigeria men
merely suspected of being homosexual were marched through the streets of Abuja naked and beaten with wires, metal rods and clubs. Though
many deplored the direct violence in Abuja, a majority of opinions applaud the
incarceration of homosexuals.
Popular logic here often
decries homosexuality as a ‘western concept’ and just another import from
colonial days. Pressure from the West to give LGBT citizens equal rights is
often seen as further coercion from former colonialists, trying once again to
control the African agenda. Recently, Uganda’s President Museveni sharply
rebuffed Obama for his comment that Uganda’s anti-homosexuality bill could
“complicate” relations, asking for him to respect the differences in African culture.
This delighted numerous Ugandans, who saw their president as standing up for
the sovereign rights of an African state. Yet the history of homosexuality in
Africa is far more nuanced than the
current debate lets on,with numerous studies showing
homosexuality is, in fact, as African as the soil itself.
In the Buganda Kingdom of
Uganda, Mwanga II, the Kabaka (king) of the region was openly gay. Mwanga actually battled the attitudes of early missionaries towards
homosexuality, sometimes even killing Christians who dared question his
sexuality. And although Ugandan children are rarely taught this when they learn
the history of Buganda, it has been an open secret for years. In Northern
Uganda, Nilotico Lango tribes allowed men to shift their gender status,
rendering them free to marry other men.
In South Africa, the Lobedu
Kingdom had the Rain Queen Modjadji who took up to 15 young wives as she saw fit. Prominent
families would send their daughters to her to increase tribal loyalties and
ensure wealth through rainfall. She enjoyed such prominence that during a
meeting with Mandela, he was only allowed to speak to her when spoken to. In
fact, many healers throughout broader Southern Africa were thought to have been
comprised of homosexual or asexual women. Part of this reasoning involved the
healer being closer to women and therefore, closer to nature’s fundamental
source of sustenance.
In the book “Heterosexual
Africa?” By Marc Epprecht, he takes on the assumption that same-sex relations
were nonexistent in Africa prior to western influence. Epprecht cites evidence
to suggest that sexuality, in terms of how we think about it today as being an
identity, did not exist in pre-colonial classifications. Homosexuality didn’t
function as the antithesis to heterosexuality; rather sexuality was part of an
innate spectrum. Because of this, soldiers bedding and even living with male
companions were simply considered part of a natural sexual occurrence in
certain areas, notably in Southern Africa.
In the book “Boy-Wives and Female-Husbands” edited by Stephen Murray and Will Roscoe, a study of the Bafia
people in Cameroon, notes homosexuality being quite normal when women had
reached puberty. Out of fear of impregnating girls before full maturity could
take place, boys often took up boyfriends, and it was suspected the women did
likewise. Those that never married and stayed within their own sex were simply termed as those ‘without children.’
In Lesotho, lesbian
behavior was well known, yet existed without the social construction of what
‘lesbian’ means. Because traditionally, the African family always needed to
produce offspring, lesbian relationships rarely formed with the intention of a
permanent pairing. Rather, affections or sexuality existed side by side with
the concept of marriage to a man. This is later echoed in the Hausa tribes of
West Africa, where, “There was not a necessary connection between marriage and
heterosexual desire.”
It is worth noting that the
African continent is incredibly large and diverse, with thousands of languages
and cultures. So when we discuss homosexuality in pre-colonial Africa, we must
take into consideration oral histories and cultural concepts, which shift over
time. Yet there is a very clear divide between pre-colonial attitudes on
sexuality and post-colonial law.
Current popular opinion may
prefer the erasure of Africa’s homosexual past, deeming it a sin, an
abnormality, or simply unAfrican. But the reality is Africa has always had a
gay community, and regardless of current discriminatory measures, it always
will
