AZANDE Press #20

Azande Press
Issue 20

Pxb
[Black and red graphic with African aesthetics.]

GAYTEREEPER
LGBTQ prisoners
Liberated Facts SIX

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Africa

If you say being gay
is not African,
you don't know your history

Bisi Alimi

The idea that homosexuality is
'western' is based on
another western import—
Christianity.
True African culture celebrates
diversity and promotes
acceptance

During his visit to Africa
this summer, the US president
Barack Obama addressed legal
discrimination against
LGBT individuals.

Meeting the Kenyan
president Uhuru Kenyatta,
Obama said:
"When you start treating people
differently not because of any
harm they are doing to anybody,
but because they are different,
that's the path whereby
freedoms begin to erode."

Unfortunately, the response
from Kenyatta was that
"There are some things that
we must admit we don't
share [with the US].
Our culture, our societies
don't accept."

As I dug deep,
I realised that African culture
is no stranger to homosexual
behaviors and acts

This is the same argument
that Robert Mugabe used to
suppress the human rights
of LGBT people in Zimbabwe;
that the former president of Nigeria
Goodluck Jonathan used when he
signed the most dangerous law
against LGBT people in the
modern world; and that
President Yoweri Museveni
used in a ceremonial signing
of the anti-gay bill in Uganda.
This year Gambia's president
Yahya Jammeh called for
gay people's starongth to ed tils

When I was appointed by
Berlin's Humboldt University
this year to teach the course
Pre and Post Colonial
Sexual Orientation and
Sexual Identity in Africa,
I knew I had a huge task before me.

I had to teach students about
a history that is mostly
unwritten.

In digging up facts I found that
while many Africans say
that homosexuality is
un-African, African culture is
no stranger to homosexual
behaviors and acts.

In the northern part of Nigeria,
yan daudu
a Hausa term to describe
effeminate men who are
considered to be wives to men.
While the Yoruba word might be
more about behavior than
identity, this Hausa term is more
about identity.
You have to look and act like
a yan daudu to be called one.
It is not an identity you
can just carry. These words
are neutral; they are not infused
with hate or disgust.

For example, in my local language
(Yoruba), the word for
homosexual is
adofuro,
a colloquialism for someone
who has anal sex. It might sound
insulting and derogatory, however,
the point is there is a word for
the behavior. Moreover, this
is not a new word;
it is as old as the Yoruba
culture itself.

Barack Obama tells African
states to abandon
anti-gay discrimination

In the Buganda Kingdom,
part of the modern-day Uganda,
King Mwanga II
was openly gay
and faced no hate from
his subjects until white men
brought the Christian church
and its condemnation.
Though King Mwanga is
the most prominent African
recorded as being openly gay,
he was not alone.

In Boy-Wives and
Female Husbands, a book
examining homosexuality
and feminism in Africa, the
researchers found "explicit"
Bushman artwork that depicts
men engaging in same-sex
sexual activity. There have been
other indicators that the
transition from boyhood to
adulthood within many African
ethnic groups involved same-sex
sexual activities.

So what accounts for the
current dismissal of
homosexuality on the continent?

One factor is the increased
popularity of fundamental
Christianity, by the way of
American televangelists,
since the 1980s. While Africans
argued that homosexuality
was a western import, they in turn
used a western religion as the
basis for their argument.

When I have challenged people
who are anti-gay, many have said
[redacted]

However, when you probe further,
they argue that homosexuality
is not in the Bible. But the Bible is
not our historical culture.
This shows there is real
confusion about Africa's past.

Reinforcing this is the fact
that populist homophobia has
kept many politicians in power.
Across Africa, if you
hate gay people,
you get votes.

As a Nigerian gay man,
these myths about homosexuality
create a dark cloud over my head.
They leave me trying to navigate
my way through self-denial,
rejection, love and
the burden of guilt.

While to many people
the assertion
"homosexuality is un-African"
might just be words, to all
African LGBT people, it puts
our lives in imminent danger.

It is used in South Africa to
rape lesbians. It is used to
pass laws and to jail,
threaten, or kill gay rights activists.
It is used to dehumanise
LGBT people across African
and to legitimise the hate that
we face. It is the reason I
receive death threats, which
ultimately drove me into exile
from my home in Nigeria.

As long as the notion that
homosexuality is un-African persists,
Kenyatta will receive applause,
Mugabe will win elections,
and parliaments across the
continent will reintroduce
harmful laws.

To stop all this,
we need to start by retelling
our history and remembering
our true African culture,
one that celebrates diversity,
promotes equality and
acceptance, and recognises
the contribution of everyone,
whatever their sexuality.

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Boy-Wives
and Female
Husbands

Studies in African
Homosexualities

Edited by
Stephen O. Murray and Will Roscoe

Family,
Find a kind soul to print out
this free download and send to you wherever you are,
and let us all study together.
-Parallaxboi

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[Rainbow outlined photo of the author]
Sound Mind Streamer
Incarcerated LGBTQIA+
Affirming Media Group

We now finally have our own safe place to land. Unbreakable also comes with being grateful for new opportunities.
-Parallaxboi