Queer African Reader (4487)

Queer
African
Reader
Edited by Sokari Ekine
and Hakima Abbas
Praise for Queer African Reader
The Queer African Reader serves as an amazing anthology documenting

the struggles faced by African LGBTI people both in Africa and in the diaspora.
From personal narratives written by individuals like the late human rights
defender David Kato to in-depth academic and feminist analysis of the
discourse concerning sexual orientation and gender identity in traditional
African contexts, this publication contains a wealth of knowledge that can act
as a starting point for various discussions concerning queer Africans around
the world. Hopefully this book will allow others from all walks of life to share
their unique African LGBTI experiences.
Victor Mukasa, Ugandan human rights defender and long-term LGBTI activist
The Queer African Reader is a revelatory, path-breaking collection of

writings drawn from across the continent and its diaspora. Ekine and Abbas
have achieved a huge task in compiling and editing so many contributors
who courageously share what it means to inhabit the precarious space that
opens up between the patriarchal heteronormative regimes of the past and
the radical possibilities heralded by so many personal-political struggles for
sexual freedom. The Queer African Reader offers timely testimonies, a bold
and defiant cacophony of voices that variously subvert the sexual-political
despotism that relies on normative fear and hatred to resist radical non-
conforming ways of being and enjoying sexuality and desire. The first of its
kind, the collection offers a rich festival of material including analytic and
expressive prose, theoretical discussions, erotic fiction, journals, documents
and representations from visual and performance artists, which work to
share the disquieting realities of LGBTQI experiences, contradictions and
political perspectives to life. The Queer African Reader is a rich resource – a
milestone in the self-narration of Africa by people who will be silent no more.
Essential reading for the 21st century!
Amina Mama, professor and director, Women and Gender Studies,
University of California, Davis
Long awaited and overdue, written amidst burn-out and premature death,
in the front lines of empire and gender violence, this first collection by queer
Africans is no quick or easy read. The Queer African Reader demonstrates
that urgency was never an excuse to leave anyone behind: unlike the
depressingly streamlined movements of the global/ising North, it has ample
space for impossible subjects that complicate the single story and expand
who belongs in the movement and what it demands, from transgender to
disability to healing. Written by and for Africans, this assembly of leading
and emerging activists, artists and academics from the continent and
its diasporas takes a leadership in sustainable, accountable community
building that non-Africans, too, should learn from – while hearing the signal
that queer and trans Africans have always been able to represent themselves.
Jin Haritaworn, PhD, trans/queer of colour activist, York University (Toronto), author of
The Biopolitics of Mixing and co-editor of Queer Necropolitics
A richness of voices, a multiplicity of discourses, a quiverful of arguments.

African queers writing for each other, theorising ourselves, making our
movements visible. This is a book we have hungered for.
Shailja Patel, award-winning Kenyan poet and activist, author of Migritude
All too often we read about African queers as monolithically victimised or

as passive recipients of modernity from the West. What a great antidote the
Queer African Reader provides to that narrative, with its diversity of styles,
stories, memoirs, scholarly theory, art, photography and deliciously combative
polemics and petitions as rich as the diversity of Africans themselves! Listen
to the poetry, feel the passion – love, rage, sadness, pride – admire the beauty,
grow from the insights of Africans speaking directly to us about their struggles
to be true to themselves, to their families, their lovers, their nations. This brave
volume should be essential reading for all human rights activists far and wide
in Africa and the diaspora.
Marc Epprecht, author of Hungochani, Heterosexual Africa? and Sexuality and Social
Justice in Africa
Queer African Reader
Through the voices of the peoples of Africa
and the global South, Pambazuka Press and
Pambazuka News disseminate analysis and debate
on the struggle for freedom and justice.
Pambazuka Press – www.pambazukapress.org

A Pan-African publisher of progressive books and DVDs on
Africa and the global South that aim to stimulate discussion,
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providing a platform for progressive Pan-African perspectives on
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660,000, Pambazuka News has become the indispensable source
of authentic voices of Africa’s social analysts and activists.
Pambazuka Press and Pambazuka News are published by Fahamu

(www.fahamu.org)
Queer African Reader
Edited by Sokari Ekine

and Hakima Abbas
An imprint of Fahamu
Published 2013 by Pambazuka Press, an imprint of Fahamu
Dakar, Nairobi and Oxford
www.pambazukapress.org www.fahamu.org www.pambazuka.org
Fahamu Kenya, PO Box 47158, 00100 GPO, Nairobi, Kenya

Fahamu Senegal, 9 Cité Sonatel 2, BP 13083 Dakar Grand-Yoff,
Dakar, Senegal
Fahamu UK, 2nd floor, 51 Cornmarket Street, Oxford OX1 3HA, UK
Copyright © Editors and contributors 2013
The right of the authors and contributors to be identified as

the authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with
the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form
or any manner, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording
or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written
permission from the publisher.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: 978-0-85749-099-5 paperback

ISBN: 978-0-85749-100-8 ebook – pdf
Cover photo: Thobe and Phila, Pietermaritzburg, KwaZulu Natal, 2012.

© Zanele Muholi
Contents
About the contributors viii
Introduction 1
Sokari Ekine and Hakima Abbas
1 An essay 6
David Kato Kisule
2 ‘In sisterhood and solidarity’: queering African feminist spaces 9
Awino Okech
3 Postcolonial discourses of queer activism and class
in Africa 32
Lyn Ossome
4 Disability and desire: journey of a film-maker – life story 48
Shelley Barry
5 African LGBTI manifesto/declaration 52
6 ‘Proudly African & Transgender’ – collaborative portraits
and stories with trans and intersex activists 54
Gabrielle Le Roux
7 The vampire bite that brought me to life – fiction 69
Nancy Lylac Warinda
8 Contesting narratives of queer Africa 78
Sokari Ekine
9 African statement in response to British
government on aid conditionality 92
10 Straight to the matter – fiction 95
Olumide Popoola
11 The face I love: Zanele Muholi’s ‘Faces and Phases’ 107
Raél Jero Salley
12 Caster runs for me 119
Ola Osaze
13 Transsexuals’ nightmare: activism or subjugation? 123
Audrey Mbugua
14 The media, the tabloid and the Uganda homophobia
spectacle 141
Kenne Mwikya
15 The single story of ‘African homophobia’ is dangerous
for LGBTI activism 155
Sibongile Ndashe
16 Telling stories – fiction 165
Happy Mwende Kinyili
17 ‘Faces and Phases’ 169
Zanele Muholi
18 Twice removed: African invisibility in Western queer theory 173
Douglas Clarke
19 NGOs and queer women’s activism in Nairobi 186
Kaitlin Dearham
20 The struggle for intersex rights in Africa 203
Julius Kaggwa
21 African statement on sexual orientation and
gender identify 209
22 Queerying borders: an Afrikan activist perspective 211
23 LGBTI-Queer struggles like other struggles in Africa 220

Gathoni Blessol
24 Small axe at the crossroads: a reflection on African
sexualities and human rights – life story 229
Kagendo Murungi
25 Nature ain’t rigid – poem 244
Mia Nikasimo
26 On the paradoxical logic of intersections: a mathematical
reading of the reality of homosexuality in Africa 246
Charles Gueboguo
27 Mounting homophobic violence in Senegal 262
Mouhamadou Tidiane Kassé
28 Queer Kenya in law and policy 273
Keguro Macharia
29 Nhorondo – mawazo yetu: tracing life back:
our reflections – life story 290
Zandile Makahamadze and Kagendo Murungi
30 Tell the sun not to shine – fiction 305
Diriye Osman
31 What’s in a letter? 309
Valerie Mason-John
32 Does the label fit? 316
Liesl Theron
33 Human Rights and Legal Implications of the Same Sex
Marriage Prohibition Bill, 2011 for Every Nigerian Citizen 328
34 Deconstructing violence towards black lesbians in
South Africa 343
Zethu Matebeni
35 Zanele Muholi’s intimate archive: photography and
post-apartheid lesbian lives 354
Kylie Thomas
36 The portrait – fiction 372
Pamella Dlungwana
37 Seeing beyond colonial binaries: unpacking Malawi’s
homosexuality discourse 376
Jessie Kabwila
38 The Movement Building Boot Camp for Queer East African
Activists: an experiment in revolutionary love 393
Jessica Horn
39 The most fabulous place on earth – poem 409
A poem in many voices
40 Crimson waves – fiction 417
Hakima Abbas
41 African conversatons on gender identity and ICD
classifications 431
42 Remember me when I’m gone 440
Busisiwe Sigasa
Index 445
About the contributors
Hakima Abbas has been active in struggles for social justice
around issues of self-determination, race, class, gender and sexu-
ality for over 15 years in Africa and the diaspora. She is a political
scientist by training and has worked as a researcher, trainer and
strategist. Hakima is the editor and author of various publica-
tions on aid and development, the African Union, peace and secu-
rity, gender and sexuality. She is a board member and advisor to
several global philanthropic and civil society initiatives.
Shelley Barry is a South African film-maker, writer and activist.
Gathoni Blessol is a queer social rights activist and human rights
defender whose main focus is the socio-economic struggles in
LGBTI-Q communities. She is currently working with people
living with disabilities and who have diverse sexualities. She
recently graduated from the Fahamu Pan-African Fellowship
Programme and is a member of the Anarchist Society, Pasha
AfriQ and MWITO, all in Kenya.
Douglas Clarke is a graduate student in the social justice and
equities programme at Brock University, Canada. He has a previ-
ous MA in philosophy and studies representations of the Black
body in popular culture. This includes theories of gender and
sexuality as well as racism and the mythologising of Blackness.
Kaitlin Dearham is a feminist researcher, anthropologist and
consultant based in Nairobi. She is the East Africa programme
manager of None on Record: Stories of Queer Africa.
Pamella Dlungwana is a television writer, researcher and pro-
ducer. She has collaborated with visual artists using the media
to educate, liberate and incite. Pamella has published in online
journals (Poetry Potion, Itch).
Sokari Ekine is a feminist writer, blogger and educator and is
founder and principal author of Black Looks. She has been active
in struggles for social justice for over 20 years and has written
for various online and print publications, including Pambazuka
News, Feminist Africa and New Internationalist on issues of
viii
gender, sexuality, organising and art and militarisation in Africa
and the diaspora.
Charles Gueboguo is the author of two books addressing the
issue of same-sex practices in Africa: La Question Homosexuelle en
Afrique (Paris, L’Harmattan, 2006) and Sida et Homosexualités en
Afrique (Paris, L’Harmattan, 2009). He has co-edited with Marc
Epprecht the special issue of the Canadian Journal of African Studies
on ‘New perspectives on sexualities in Africa’. He is currently
enrolled in a PhD programme in the Department of Comparative
Literature at the University of Michigan.
Jessica Horn is a feminist writer, poet and women’s rights activ-
ist whose work focuses on questions of sexuality, health, violence
and embodied liberations.
Jessie Kabwila is a Malawian feminist academic activist who
holds a comparative literature PhD from Binghamton University,
New York. She heads the department of English at Chancellor
College, University of Malawi, where she teaches various literary
courses. Jessie is editor for WAGADU and reviewer for Culture,
Health and Sexuality.
Julius Kaggwa is the programme director of SIPD Uganda, a
grassroots, not-for-profit human rights organisation in Uganda,
which through community outreach and engagement provides
reliable and objective information on atypical sex development
issues (also known as intersex conditions).
Mouhamadou Tidiane Kassé is a Senagalese journalist. He
teaches journalism and is editor for the Press Group Wal Fadjri
and of the French edition of Pambazuka News. He works as a
consultant on the training and networking of journalists. Tidiane
specialises in media and development, HIV/AIDS and sexual
reproductive health.
Happy Mwende Kinyili’s struggle is to identify, name and con-
front the evil that permeates our realities. Thus, her daily toil is to
build a world where the oppression of different evils is overcome
and an alternative community based on a revolutionary love,
effervescent hope and emancipatory truth is realised.
ix
David Kato Kisule (born 1964 – died 26 January 2011) was a
Ugandan teacher and LGBT rights activist, considered a father
of Uganda’s LGBTI movement. He served as advocacy officer for
Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG). David was murdered on 26
January 2011, shortly after winning a lawsuit against a magazine
which had published his name and photograph identifying him
as gay and calling for him to be executed.
Gabrielle Le Roux is a South African artist and activist for social
justice. Her current work with transgender activists focuses on
portraits and narrations of lived experiences. It is rooted in the
conviction that we change each other’s lives with our stories
and that people who speak first-hand about an issue do so with
authority and are the ones who should be listened to most closely.
Keguro Macharia teaches English at the University of Maryland,
College Park. His academic and popular work has appeared in
Wasafiri, Criticism, the East African and the Guardian. He blogs at
gukira.wordpress.com and is a member of the Concerned Kenyan
Writers collective (CKW).
Zandile Makahamadze is a writer and a human rights and social
justice activist. Zandile has represented the Africa region in the
International Lesbian and Gay Association and was a chairperson
of Gays and Lesbians of Zimbabwe. Zandile’s poetry and short
stories have been published by Zimbabwe Women Writers, and
aired by the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation.
Valerie Mason-John, aka Queenie, is the co-author and editor
of the only two books, Making Black Waves and Talking Black, to
document the lives of African and Asian lesbians in Britain. She
has published a collection of poetry, plays, poems, Brown Girl in
the Ring. Her first novel, Borrowed Body, won the MIND book of
the year award. Her plays Sin Dykes and Brown Girl in the Ring
received critical acclaim. She was named as one of Britain’s Black
Gay Icons, and was artistic director of the London Mardi Gras
Arts Festival for five years. She is an ordained Buddhist and
works as a meditation teacher and life coach.
x
Zethu Matebeni obtained a PhD at Wits University, Johannesburg.
She currently occupies a research position at the Institute for
Humanities in Africa (HUMA), University of Cape Town. She is
the co-director of the documentary film Breaking Out of the Box,
as well as the co-curator of the exhibition ‘TRACKS: Sexuality
in the City’, and is involved in ongoing projects addressing the
intersectionalities of race, class, sexuality, gender and politics in
South Africa.
Audrey Mbugua is project and monitoring and evaluation officer
of Transgender Education and Advocacy (TEA) Kenya, a human
rights organisation working towards defending the human rights
of transgender and transsexual people in Kenya.
Zanele Muholi has been engaged in creating a visual history of
black lesbian identity and politics in post-apartheid South Africa.
She is the recipient of a number of awards including, in 2009, the
FannyAnn Eddy award for outstanding contributions to the study
and advocacy of sexualities in Africa. Three books have been
published on Muholi’s work: Only Half the Picture (2006), Faces
and Phases (2010) and Zanele Muholi: African Women Photographers
#1 (2011). Muholi’s award-winning documentary Difficult Love
(2010) has been shown at various film festivals in South Africa
and abroad.
Kagendo Murungi is a Kenyan video producer, activist and
writer with a background in international sexual and gender
rights advocacy as well as community organising for political,
social and cultural empowerment with LGBTGNC Africans, and
for social and economic justice with working class and poor LGBT
communities in New York.
Bernedette Muthien is co-founder and director of Engender,
South Africa, which works in the intersectional areas of genders
and sexualities, human rights, justice and peace. She co-convenes
the Global Political Economy Commission of the International
Peace Research Association, is a member of Amanitare, and
serves on the advisory board of Human Security Studies journal.
Bernedette has recently published a collection of her poetry, Ova.
xi
Kenne Mwikya is a queer blogger and writer currently studying
law in Kenya.
Sibongile Ndashe is a feminist who works with the law but
believes in justice. She is currently employed as a lawyer at
Interights in the equality programme and writes here in her per-
sonal capacity.
Mia Nikasimo is a creative writer, essayist, poet and playwright.
She is currently working on a novella and other stories entitled
Trans.
Awino Okech is a researcher who has been involved in develop-
ment work for the past 12 years in eastern Africa, the Great Lakes
region and South Africa. Awino’s research interests lie in the areas
of gender and sexuality, culture and nationalisms. She holds a
PhD in critical gender studies from the University of Cape Town.
Ola Osaze is a Brooklyn-based Nigerian queer transfag activist,
feminist and gender liberationist of Edo and Yoruba descent. He
has organised with the Audre Lorde Project, Queers for Economic
Justice, the Sylvia Rivera Law Project and with Uhuru-Wazobia
and Liberation for All Africans. His articles have appeared in
blogs such as Black Public Media, the Trans Atlantic Times, and
anthologies such as Yellow Medicine Review: A Journal of Indigenous
Literature, Art and Thought.
Diriye Osman is a Somali-born British writer, visual artist and
editor. His collection of short stories Fairytales For Lost Children
will be published in September 2013. He is deputy editor of
SCARF magazine.
Lyn Ossome is based in the Political Studies Department at Wits
University, Johannesburg. A feminist researcher, she has contrib-
uted extensively to research and advocacy projects in eastern,
southern and Horn of Africa countries. She has also served in con-
sultative and advisory capacities within a number of civil society
organisations in eastern and southern Africa. Her scholarly work,
in the areas of feminist theory and politics, land and agrarian
studies, post-colonial theory, queer theory and African politics, is
widely published. She remains committed to struggles for social
justice across the Global South.
xii
Olumide Popoola is a Nigerian German writer who presents
internationally as author, guest lecturer, speaker and performer.
Her novella this is not about sadness was published in 2010 (Unrast
Verlag). She is currently a PhD candidate in creative writing at
the University of East London and a visiting lecturer in creative
writing. See www.olumidepopoola.com.
Raél Jero Salley PhD is an artist, cultural theorist and historian.
He is senior lecturer in painting and discourse at the University
of Cape Town. Salley’s work is focused on contemporary art and
visual production, primarily visual practices related to blackness,
Africa and the African diaspora.
Busisiwe Sigasa (23 December 1981–12 March 2007) was a young
lesbian-identified woman living in Soweto. In April 2006 Busisiwe
was raped and subsequently contracted the HIV virus. She was
already diabetic and, without sufficient funds to receive the full
medical care she needed, her life was always on the edge. On 12
March 2007, after falling into a diabetic coma, Busi passed away.
Liesl Theron is co-founder and director of Gender DynamiX.
Gender DynamiX published its first book, TRANS: Transgender
Life Stories from South Africa, in 2009. She is author of ‘[Un]acces-
sible shelters for LGT people in Cape Town’ in Tapestry of Human
Sexuality in Africa (2010). She also has a chapter, ‘Orientation quiz’,
in Reclaiming the L-Word – Sappho’s Daughters Out in Africa (2011).
Kylie Thomas is an ACLS African Humanities Program Fellow at
the Centre for Humanities Research at the University of the Western
Cape, South Africa. Her book about visuality and mourning post-
apartheid is published by Bucknell University Press in 2013.
Nancy Lylac Warinda has a BSc in biomedical science from
Egerton University, Kenya. Even with a geeky science background
and a budding busy career, she still has time to indulge her crea-
tivity. She has written and published several poems and stories,
including writing articles for the Guardian, Tanzania.
xiii
Introduction
Sokari Ekine and Hakima Abbas
The journey of this reader began in January 2010 at a criti-

cal moment in African queer history. A Malawian transgender
woman, Tiwonge Chimbalanga, 20, and her male partner, Steven
Monjeza, 26, were put on trial for the crime of gross indecency and
unnatural acts, punishable by up to 14 years’ imprisonment with
hard labour. The international media and international advocacy
groups went into a frenzy of activity reporting on the violation of
‘gay rights’ in Africa. The president of Malawi, the late Bingu wa
Mutharika, joined the chorus of rhetorical transphobic and homo-
phobic violence. Embassies and diplomats of the global North
were in turn stirred into action, fuelled by the advocacy of lesbian,
gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) organisations
in their countries, and demanded the release of the two ‘men’,
threatening the withdrawal of aid should their human rights not
be respected.
And, with this, all the topics of muted discussion among
a growing group of queer African activists, thinkers, artists
and communities came to the fore in a dazzling display of
the quagmire of LGBTI lives on the continent. There was
the obliteration of non-conforming gender identities, trans
lives and beings in the insistence on referring to Tiwonge as
gay even though she stated that she identified as woman.
There was the violent rhetoric of populist homophobia used
to silence dissent across a whole nation not only by a ruling
elite drawn from the political and economic gentry, but also
resting on the power of an imported religion. There was the
use of independence rhetoric, including the defining of what
is African and a rejection of Western imposition, to mete out
violence by African against African (those identifying with
dominant sexuality and gender proscriptions against those
embodying dissident gender and sexuality definitions) with
the intent of disappearing gender non-conformity and non-
heterosexual identities from the national project. There was the
‘gay international’ – the international lesbian and gay advocates
1
QUEER AFRICAN READER
and organisations – flying into the country with little or no

contextual understanding to frame the issues but with a firm
conviction that they were saving the persecuted victims of
Africa’s brutal barbarianism by (merely) consulting with ‘local
groups’ and reprimanding African leaders for their failure to
embrace liberal ideology complete with human rights siloes, and
their accompanying neoliberal economic strangleholds. There
were the Western governments and embassies, who flexed their
muscles to come to the rescue of the persecuted minority, while
emphasising the continent’s continued colonial dependence
and reinforcing the skewed power dynamic between the global
North and South. Using the withdrawal of aid as a lever
for saving LGBTI Africans, these ‘international development
partners’ created a wave of paradoxical dread at this threat
despite widespread recognition that aid has never served African
peoples’ interests. There was South Africa, who we turned to in
expectant anticipation, because of our clung-to memories of a
liberation party led by principle, waiting for the party to speak
out boldly, but whose long silence left us with heads hung in
shame. There was another of our ‘leaders’ cajoled to provide
a presidential pardon but still insisting on the denial of queer
belonging with a ‘we’ll get you next time’ attitude. There were
the brave Malawians from all spheres of life who stood either
in their homes or in front of the national media to denounce
the oppression meted out against us all and targeting the few;
Malawians who didn’t get international air time because their
message was too complex but who tried to warn their nation of
the impending stranglehold of a growing democratic regression;
the same Malawians who found themselves imprisoned or
driven into hiding only months later when the people’s dissent
finally hit the streets and the universities. There was the LGBTI
movement in Malawi, whose voices couldn’t rise above the
cacophony of interests speaking for, about and against them but
whose communities were driven deeper underground in fear.
There were the Africans around the world organising, looking to
each other for strategy and support and failing to make a dent in
the theatre of the absurd played around African lives. But, just
as the phenomenon of mediocre politicians looking for some
limelight and finding it in the presentation of fundamentalist
2
INTRODUCTION
persecution of an already fearful community seems to spread

across the continent, so has the African resistance, which grows,
learns and is strengthened by each battle.
Wanting to give voice to this resistance and carrying the
history of the multiple identities that we embody, we two
editors, Sokari Ekine, an African from Nigeria, and Hakima
Abbas, an African from Egypt, joined forces with a community
of Africans around the globe to pay testament to the unrelenting
power of queer communities across Africa and her diaspora.
The Queer African Reader brings together academic writings,
political analysis, life testimonies, conversations and artistic
works by Africans that engage with the struggle for LGBTIQ
liberation. The Queer African Reader breaks away from the
homogenisation of Africa as the homophobic continent to
highlight the complexities of LGBTIQ lives and experiences with
contributions that explore issues of identity, resistance, solidarity,
pinkwashing,1 global politics, intersections of struggle, religion
and culture, community, sex and love.
Understanding the magnitude of what we were proposing to
document in the Queer African Reader, we knew that we could
not attempt to do this alone. So, we took to the wires to elicit
discussion from our multiple communities and prospective
contributors on how to document not only the resistance in the
daily lives and struggles of Africa’s queer communities but to
valorise the complexity of how queer liberation is framed in
Africa and by Africans. We also hoped that the collectivising of
the reader would ensure that the publication was responsive to
the needs of the queer African movement in the discussions it
encompassed rather than being a voyeuristic insight for ‘other’
eyes. What we unearthed through this process, and at the root of
queer resistance in Africa, is a carrying forward of the struggle
for African liberation and self-determination from the body to
the collective.
We use the term ‘queer’ here and in the title to denote a
political frame rather than a gender identity or sexual behaviour.
We use queer to underscore a perspective that embraces gender
and sexual plurality and seeks to transform, overhaul and
revolutionise African order rather than seek to assimilate into
oppressive hetero-patriarchal-capitalist frameworks. Queer is
3
our dissident stance, but we use it here knowing the limitations

of the terminology in relation to our African neocolonial realities.
Contributors throughout this volume use an array of identifiers
to denote dissident genders and sexualities. As editors we
believe that this diversity provides the flavour with which this
reader is spiced. It is this very multiplicity that we embrace in
the perspectives, experiences, ideas and strategies put forward
in this book.
While we wanted to portray the full spectrum of the black
rainbow in this volume as well as to give voice to progressive pro-
queer and pro-feminist voices from an array of Africans identified
in different sexual and gender spheres, we recognise that there
are distinct gaps in the material that is collated here. For instance,
the absence of submissions from Africa’s North and the lack of
older-generation voices in the experiences documented produce
gaps in the tapestry that this reader seeks to document. For these
we take full responsibility and we hope that this will only spur
other Africans to take up the challenge. We hope that others will
produce more that affirms not only the existence of sexual and
gender political dissidence in Africa, but which also strengthens
reflection and highlights the important contribution of these
voices to the liberation of our continent.
In looking for the finances to make this reader a reality, we
were grateful that it was a feminist African funder, Urgent Action
Fund – Africa, that was the first to support this work. We would
therefore like to thank UAF-Africa for their generous support of
and belief in this project in its nascent stages. The Queer African
Reader was also made possible with the generous support of the
Arcus Foundation and we would especially like to offer gratitude
to their international programme officer, Carla Sutherland, for her
support of Fahamu’s ‘Reclaim’ initiative, from which the Queer
African Reader is born.
A few months after we began the process that has culminated,
three years later, in the Queer African Reader, David Kato,
a teacher and prominent LGBTI activist in Uganda, was
murdered. David, a few weeks before his murder, submitted an
article to us for consideration in this volume. We have included
David’s article as the first in the reader in memory of a fallen
soldier. We humbly dedicate the Queer African Reader to all
4
INTRODUCTION
the survivors and victims of multiple oppressions and to the

resisters who fight every day with body, spirit and mind to free
us all. We salute you.
Note
1 A deliberate obscuring of continued injustices, usually between the global
North and the global South, behind an image of liberalism identified
through a particular form of ‘tolerance’ of homosexuality and, to a lesser
extent, other gender and sexual identities.
5
1
An essay
David Kato Kisule
David Kato submitted this short essay to the editors of the Queer
African Reader just a month before he was murdered on 26 January
2011. David Kato was a teacher and prominent LGBTI activist in
Uganda who served as advocacy officer for Sexual Minorities Uganda
(SMUG). Just weeks before his death, David won a landmark case
against a Ugandan tabloid newspaper that published pictures of 100
people, including David, in an article calling for the hanging of lesbian
and gay Ugandans. This essay is published here, with very few edits,
in remembrance of David Kato and all those who have fallen in the
struggle for LGBTI equality.
In this country, it is absurd that as the LGBTI community strives

to liberate its community to attain not special rights but equal
rights like others, they are caught up in a dilemma. Having sod-
omy laws and oppressive laws (which have long been repealed
at their countries of origin!), the massive investment by foreign
religious groups in African communities, the recent spread of
homophobia promoting sustained hatred and the global repro-
duction of homophobia institutionally by American Evangelicals,
has made matters worse for the survival of the LGBTI community
in such countries.
In the name of protecting a traditional family, the Evangelicals
recently prompted the drafting of the anti-homosexuality bill in
the Ugandan parliament as a private member’s bill which affects
not only the LGBTI community but, if passed, will have global
repercussion to the entire community.
This is why there is need to approach and confront the bill as
a global problem with global repercussions. There is also need
to use vibrant and outspoken ways to speak about the bill not
6
1 AN ESSAY
simply as ‘expressing homophobia’ but as promoting sustained

hatred and violence. There is a great need to raise debate about
global systems that currently work to reproduce homophobic
authoritarianism throughout the world.
In Uganda, as the LGBTI community has become more
visible in regard to demand for inclusion in government health
strategies, in the fight to close all gaps of HIV spread, legislators
have come up with legislations of criminalising even consensual
same sex proposing a death penalty!
This has made many return to the closet and made more
vulnerable to the scourge. Some have been arrested, harassed,
detained and some have died in the process. Many thrown out of
homes, houses, schools and others humiliated (canned in public,
raped) like there is institutionalised homophobia since fueling
it is by policy makers and the perpetrators have gone on with
impunity! Lesbians raped by family members and others in the
name of curing them from lesbianism and in process catching HIV!
Such allegations have been made once at Mbale court where
Late Brian Pande and Wasukire Fred were charged with carnal
knowledge against the order of nature and the police surgeon had
this to tell court:
He found one of them with no STD but on second test he found
both with STDs.
He found one with a wound at his anus
He found one bleaching his face
So with this concluding that the two guys had had sex together.
In response as the magistrate asked for sureties to give the two
court bail, one prominent advocate in court asked the magistrate
not to bail the two since within a week the whole town of Mbale
was to be full of homosexuals and so the two should die in
prison! No wonder Pande died weeks after getting out of Maluku
prisons where we had been refused to see them when we visited.
Contradicting reports from hospital, his death certificate saying
he died of meningitis, which they had not checked for yet, and
police surgeon saying that, with a well nourished body, he died
of anemia!
It is strange that as we followed up the Mbale case and had
not known who Fred was, as we asked for Fred as we had seen
in the media, we were told that the person we wanted was a man
7
but has always lived looking like a woman! One wonders if he

had lived in the same community up to more than 30 years, what
harm had he done! Only fuelling of hate in public by religious
fundamentalists and policy makers have sparked off such hate!
Legislation created without the inclusion of the marginalised
community is undemocratic, the bill itself is unconstitutional
since advocates for discrimination, has not followed or respected
the international principles and not followed Ugandan law.
Generally the state and situation is alarming and much there
is a great need to fight to deter the bill which is complicated since
any civil society to lay a hand in this fight is taken to be promoting
homosexuality which is to be criminalised according to the last
communication by the minister of foreign affairs!
Thanks to the efforts, courage and struggle of the LGBTI
community in Uganda, activists, artists, religious leaders, allies
and policy makers across Uganda, Africa and the world, the
anti-homosexuality bill in Uganda has not been passed at the
time of writing. However, the danger and threat still looms
as more and more countries across the continent continue to
threaten similar legislation and incite violence and persecution
of those perceived to be of non-heteronormative sexualities and
transgressing gender identities.
8
2
‘In sisterhood and solidarity’:

queering African feminist spaces
Awino Okech
This chapter seeks to examine the space for and place of queer
organising within ‘mainstream African feminist spaces’. This is an
ambitious task, given the multiplicity of spaces, actors and agen-
das. The possibilities of ‘mainstream feminist spaces’ suggest a
multiplicity of vanguard or other sites operating in the periphery
of the main. This in itself is a position worth interrogating but does
not fall within the purview of this chapter. My objective is not to
critique specific feminist movement building sites but rather to
offer a theoretical through-line, trace disjunctures and reflect on
possibilities. This chapter begins a theoretical conversation that is
in no way designed to be comprehensive or representative of the
wealth of experiences and literature available.
For my analysis in this chapter, I draw on personal experience
– read here as my participation in diverse spaces, some named
as feminist activist spaces, others as feminist academic sites,
conversations with diverse actors with histories in different forms
of organising, some feminist, some explicitly named as Lesbian,
Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Intersex (LGBTI). I draw on these
conversations as sites within which various individuals identified
as women, feminist, lesbian, researchers have grappled with the
meaning of finding a theoretical space, within activist sites to make
meaning of the struggle1 of living and occupying one of many
identities that renders them vulnerable not only to specific attacks
by the state but also to a particular isolation amongst ‘sisters’ where
‘safety’ is constructed as a core component of the space.
The charge of homophobia2 within the women’s movement3
or latter-day autonomous feminist spaces in various parts of
9
Africa is not new. These charges were evident in the aftermath

of the UN Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in
1995, with many an African woman activist flagging that matters
‘sexual’ were not the priority of African women (Jolly 2000). Sex
and sexuality only became a priority in as far as they impacted
health, mobility, employment and inheritance (read reproductive
rights and violence against women). Debates around bodily
autonomy and sexual integrity continue to remain tenuous sites
of legislation and activism in many African countries.4 This can
be seen in the development of public discourse and/or legislation
on abortion, which continues to draw angry sentiments from
both policymaking bodies and the public alike (Klugman and
Budlender 2001, Center for Reproductive Rights 2010). In addition,
the onslaught of violence against women and men who perform
their sexuality differently – against normative heterosexuality –
has also recrafted discourses on autonomy. Sexual orientation as
an ‘advocacy’ subject has been cited as holding the potential to
hijack the struggle, as has been evident when choices are made
over which issues to foreground publicly as political and, I add,
ideological within women’s rights lobbies.5
The distinct organising that occurs across most of Africa between
LGBTI work and feminist/women’s rights lobbies is equally telling
given that LGBTI work has historically drawn on the large body of
work I will call, for the purposes of this chapter, feminist theory.
Jackson makes a useful distinction below in noting that:
Queer and feminism converge insofar as both question the

inevitability and naturalness of heterosexuality and both, to
some extent at least, link the binary divide of gender with that
between heterosexuality and homosexuality. Beyond this they
differ in emphasis. Queer theorists seek to unsettle heteronor-
mativity, but are relatively unconcerned with what goes on
within heterosexual relations. Feminists, because they are con-
cerned with the ways in which heterosexuality depends upon
and guarantees gender division, are far more interested in the
institutionalisation and everyday practice of heterosexual rela-
tions (Jackson 2005: 2).
As a result, choices have been made6 by individuals and organi-

sations around which political identity to foreground, with some
10
2 ‘IN SISTERHOOD AND SOLIDARITY’
arguing that while they retain a strong connection to feminist

theory, ideology and spaces as core to the impetus of their activ-
ist work, their lesbian political identity is centred because of the
‘silence’, lack of ‘solidarity’ and sometimes overt ‘homophobia’
within the spaces where it should not be the norm – feminist
spaces and/or the women’s movement (Hames 2003, Kraak 2002).
In this chapter, I assess whether the conceptual and ideological
tools that feminism offers have been used in ways that are neither
homogenising nor essentialising within movement building
processes. I examine the conceptual approaches that have been
deployed in building movements within autonomous feminist
spaces. In doing so, I interrogate how ready they are to respond
to a growing queer7 movement.
This is important for three reasons. The first is grounded in
the history and uptake of feminism on the one hand and the
cause of women on the other. Where feminists and feminism
have been ghettoised and labelled in various ways is noted by
Adeleye-Fayemi:
It is very difficult to create and sustain feminist space in many

African countries, for several reasons. Feminism is still very
unpopular and threatening. The word still conjures up bogeys
of wild, naked white women burning their bras, imperialism,
domination, an undermining of African culture, etc. Feminists
are subjected to ridicule and insults, and in some cases, receive
threats to their lives. They are called ‘frustrated’, ‘miserable
spinsters’, ‘castrators’, ‘home wreckers’ and many other undig-
nifying epithets (Adeleye-Fayemi 2000: 8).
Some of the responses to challenging these labels were admit-

tedly reactionary rather than proactive. While they were useful
in troubling a Western epistemological hegemony, the emergent
discourse instead re-embedded patriarchy and specifically its
heteronormative8 roots (Mikell 1997, Oyewumi 1997, Steady
1981). It also produced a discourse on African feminism that was
constructed in opposition to what Western feminism was seen to
represent. It did not necessarily evolve new discourses that mean-
ingfully engaged with the contextual realities of Africa. Rather,
it became culturally relative. The result was a slew of projects
11
designed to excavate narratives and histories to counter dominant

constructions of Africa and ‘African women’. African feminism
defined in this way remains oppositional and, shaped by imperial
constructions and admittedly re-definitions of Africa, it does not
evolve organically.9
The second recognises that African feminist scholarship in
particular and feminist scholarship in general have been largely
unavailable to the majority of African students and citizenry
interested in engaging in gender analysis beyond the gender and
development bytes made popular by the development enterprise.
Consequently, some of the epistemological imperatives that
I will locate here in terms of their centrality to challenging
heteronormativity remain under-utilised in movement building
spaces. The mantra of needing to respond to real problems and
being relevant to the lived realities of women ‘on the ground’ has
resulted in the construction of a feminist epistemology, which is
inaccessible and irrelevant to understanding and responding to
women’s lived realities. This is a tension that, while consistently
recognised, is hardly ever resolved in praxis.
The third considers the current context, which is characterised
by massive reversals of both the conceptual and activist gains that
feminism offered to understanding socio-economic and political
injustices. The developmental and depoliticised manipulation of
gender as the conceptual framework that should shape interventions
that seek the transformation of gendered norms is often based on
principles of equality that seek inclusion rather than transformation.10
This has contributed in part to energies directed towards remobilising
a political stand that centres dismantling patriarchy and associated
power both theoretically and in praxis. The reclamation of
autonomous spaces where such reflection can occur is a factor of
this larger political context. How, therefore, have these latter-day
reclamations led to an effective and renewed understanding of
patriarchy and a destabilisation of heteronormativity in order to
respond to diversity11 and the transformation of hierarchies of power
within the movement and outside?
12
Thinking movements
The term ‘movement’ has become so au courant and loosely
used in current discourse as to become almost devoid of mean-
clear about what is and is not a movement. For, it is somewhat

troubling how many different phenomena are described as
movements (Batliwala 2002: 398).
Batliwala’s concerns above reflect not only the imposition of the

term movement on any activity that brings together a coalition
of organisations but is also indicative of a growing preoccupation
with the idea of building people’s movements through program-
matic interventions by international development organisations.
The ‘developmentalisation’ of movement building is a growing
trend that warrants some conceptual interrogation, particularly
in as far as these Africa-wide processes actively think through the
notion of organising, what models of organising are critical to their
social justice objectives and the place of ideology in these agendas.12
Social movements emerge as popular contestations of the
legality of participation. They therefore aspire to redefine and
extend the space and limits of ‘acceptable’ forms of political, social
and economic engagement within society. There is a constant
tension between ‘the legality of participation’ as defined and
regulated by powerful institutions and individuals, and popular
wishes of the majority of people whose involvement in the
governance of their societies is limited by rules of participation.
In the last decade, this tension has been heightened by the
decreasing space for citizen participation by governments and
supra-state institutions and has presented major threats to the
space that citizens have for autonomous action.
There are a number of theories that have informed analysis
around the development of social movements. Resource
mobilisation theorists, for instance, explain collective action in
terms of structural opportunities, leadership, ideological and
organisational networks (McClurg Mueller and Aldon 1992:
12–16). New social movement theorists offer ‘collective identities’
as a way of examining how people act in concert, often with the
object of achieving a new, distinct or semi-autonomous kind of
presence and cultural recognition.
13
Scholars writing from the perspective of ‘new social movements’

are interested in the construction, contestation and negotiation of
collective identities in the process of political activity. Collective
identity refers to ‘the (often implicitly) agreed upon definition of
membership, boundaries, and activities for the group’ (Laraña et
al 1994: 15). The existence of collective identity, just like the notion
of ‘collective consciousness’ or ‘false consciousness’, is difficult to
substantiate. The very nature of social movements means that
collective identity is a ‘moving target’, with different definitions
dominating at different points in a movement’s trajectory.
The 1990s13 in particular saw an evolution of movements,
especially in countries facing transition or going through
democratic consolidation processes that led to a change in their
logic, dynamic and emphases. According to Alvarez (1998), one of
the significant changes has been the modification of an anti-statist
posture toward a critical negotiating posture in relation to the
state and formal international arenas. This has also meant a shift
from a defensive sort of autonomy and a confrontational dynamic
toward a logic of negotiation (Alvarez 1998).
Non-governmental organisations have consequently come to be
regarded as the vehicle of choice – the magic bullet – for fostering
development strategies (Gruhn 1997: 325). The gradual liberalisation
of the political environment in which social movements operated
and the introduction of gender to the state, prompted in part by
some opposition-controlled state governments in the early to mid-
1990s, resulted in the need for growing numbers of feminists to
formalise their organisations and develop greater policy expertise
(Hassim 2004, Salo 2005). The terms of this incorporation was often
not feminist-inspired and contributed to a deviation into a discourse
on ‘gender’. Hassim notes that the impact of institutionalisation of
interests led to the creation of a set of specialised institutions that
led to ‘the consideration of gender out of the realm of politics
and into the technical realm of policymaking challenges’ (Hassim
2004: 18). This raised a peculiar set of challenges, key among them
being that the women’s movement does not constitute self-evident
subjects, interests and ideological forms. Hassim notes that ‘women
do not mobilise as women or simply because they are women’;
in other words, woman is not a stable subject for mobilisation
(Hassim 2004: 5).
14
Several theorists have pointed out that attempts to disaggregate

gender identity are futile, as the cultural meanings of ‘woman’
shift in relation to the numerous other markers of identity and in
different contexts (Butler 1990, Rubin 1975).
The combination of theoretical and practical difficulties of

defining the movement’s interests and political identity on the
one hand, and the suspicion with which feminism was treated
… affected the women’s movement’s ability to develop politi-
cal identity relatively autonomous of the ideological power of
nationalism (Hassim 2004: 7).
Hassim, while speaking specifically to the South African con-

text, raises a set of conceptual and practical concerns that frame
approaches to the development of ‘women’s movements’. These
concerns are encapsulated in the distinction she makes between
inclusionary and transformative goals of movements. The former
are concerned with:
inclusion in the state in a piecemeal and often de-politicised

fashion, seeking to include women into existing policy frame-
works without questioning whether the overall policy direc-
tions are appropriate for women, or how new areas of policy
or lawmaking should be placed on the agenda (Hassim 2005).
Underpinning the inclusionary approach, according to Hassim, is

the desire to maintain some minimal conditions for unity among
women through a reluctance to tamper with the structural roots
of gender inequality. In addition, the influence of liberal ideolo-
gies within this project contributes to fostering the perception that
the market and the family lie outside the realm of state interven-
tion (Hassim 2004: 12).
The transformatory approach, on the other hand, pays attention
to the ways in which power operates within and between the
political, social and economic spheres of specific societies. In
effect, it is a political project of transformation (Hassim 2005).
Salo (2005) challenges Hassim’s approach as being reliant
on distinct binaries (reformist or transformatory) and therefore
fails to consider the multiplicity of spaces and challenges that
emerging and existing women’s movements encounter. Salo
15
argues, therefore, that the reformist and transformatory goals are

not mutually exclusive. Both Hassim’s (2004) and Salo’s (2005)
arguments point to the complexity inherent in mobilisation of
any kind let alone that named as feminist. Salo (2005) and Hassim
(2004) allude to the importance of examining how people come
to occupy movements and the meanings attached to particular
spaces. It is the tension between mobilisation and the value
attached to how spaces are occupied that I am interested in,
particularly the ways in which feminist spaces in Africa have
sought to cohere ideologically around queer politics generally
and movements specifically.
Building feminist spaces

This space [the feminist movement] is made up of our friend-
ships, networks, our bonds, organisations and our individual
and collective feminist energies. This is the space we use to
mobilise around our feminist principles, where we hone our
analytical skills and where we seek (and sometimes find)
answers to our many questions. The belief that this space is
needed to make our lives better and easier. This is manifested
in our processes of self-discovery, our hopes, our dreams, our
aspirations, our yearning for more knowledge and revelations
(Adeleye–Fayemi 2000: 6).
The AFF [African Feminist Forum] was designed as a medium
for sharing African feminist thought and practice, providing
‘safe spaces’ for critical reflection on personal and collective
progress, and a springboard for action. People participate in
the regional forum and its sister initiatives in their personal
capacity. This was an intentional strategy to enable individu-
als to share and grow their activist beliefs and commitments
beyond the limitations of their institutional positions or roles
(Horn 2008: 122).
The 1 in 9 campaign’s ideological stance reflects the basic tenet
of feminism that the personal is political. Recognising that
fundamental truth, the campaign acknowledges that in order
to eradicate sexual violence against women, it must actively
combat all forms of oppression, including, but not limited to
racism and classism as all of these impact women’s access to
equality and justice. The campaign recognises that manifold
forms of oppression, including but not limited to, sexism,
16
racism, classism and homophobia, converge to deny women

access to equality and justice. The campaign will incorporate
this consciousness into its policy and practice such that it will
shape the manner in which we understand and respond to
sexual violence against women (1 in 9 Campaign n.d.).
The excerpts above are drawn from three pieces that reflect
broadly on the trajectory of different movement building pro-
cesses. All of them do so from a conceptual/theoretical basis by
thinking through the contexts and triggers that led to particular
decisions around how feminist spaces would be constructed.
Adeleye-Fayemi (2000) discusses the meaning of building a femi-
nist movement in Africa and the priorities of such a space. In her
paper, she reviews the broad spectrum of challenges, both epis-
temological and methodological, and seeks to bring together the
diverse energies, primarily organisational, that have contributed
to building a women’s movement across Africa. She emphasises
the lobbying and advocacy work conducted by women’s rights
organisations and the gains therein. She also takes a critical stance
on transnational feminisms conceptualised through an examina-
tion of the notion of global ‘sisterhood’. Adeleye-Fayemi (2000)
considers the Western intellectual and financial hegemonies and
infers how these have in turn led to the need to evolve ‘local femi-
nisms’. The questions of class, ethnicity, race and gendered iden-
tities do not emerge as core challenges in sustaining an African
feminist movement.
Horn in her piece eight years later reflects on the creation of
and deliberations within the second African Feminist Forum
(the AFF is an autonomous feminist space for individuals self-
identified as feminists).14 She examines the ethos as well as the
guiding principles for inclusion in this space. She also highlights,
albeit briefly, the discursive tensions that emerge in a space of
this nature which brings together diverse groups of women; these
largely revolve around sexuality, from the questions of abortion to
those of sexual orientation.
The third excerpt, derived from the 1 in 9 Campaign, is
representative of a bold attempt to defy the (South African) state
through a deliberate grouping of organisations (even though
individuals may have spearheaded the work) to offer solidarity
17
to the plaintiff (Kwezi) during the Jacob Zuma rape trial.15 The
ideological basis of the campaign’s work, its interpretation as
well as in its broader terms of reference, is evident in the excerpt.
The 1 in 9 Campaign also sets itself apart – given the ‘sporadic’
nature of its evolution necessitated by the case and the fact that
it brought together organisations and individuals while creating
space for working with allies – by maintaining clarity on the place
of women’s leadership and voice in the campaign (see www.
oneinnine.org.za). I suggest that the 1 in 9 Campaign represents,
to the extent that is possible, a departure from the inclusion and
transformation binary by on the one hand seeking to consciously
engage with the spuriousness of gender as a fixed identity from
which organising can spring and, on the other hand, overtly
acknowledging the reality of homophobia as a form of violence
against women and confronting it as one of the intersecting
oppressions.
I have selected these three excerpts not because they are
representative of a trend but because they offer for the purposes
of this chapter a narrative that defines both the evolution of and
the continuity in approaches to building and sustaining feminist
movements. Two are pan-African in orientation and one national
with sub-regional aspirations. All of the pieces, when read in
full, allude to the theoretical imperatives that have shaped the
evolution of each space or where the ideas that shaped spaces
such as the AFF were developed.16 I draw specifically on the
concepts of friendship, sisterhood and solidarity to analyse the
ways in which they have been conceptually deployed in the
organisation of feminist spaces and/or the mobilisation of diverse
actors. I rely on European and American feminist scholarship in
the rest of this chapter for two main reasons. The first is informed
by the long history of queer organising and subsequent theorising
in these contexts. Secondly, while contexts may differ, these
scholars at different moments have been embroiled in the same
set of political issues that this chapter addresses in addition to
being relevant to the current moment in Africa.
18
Theorising friendships
Friendship was/is seen as political solidarity; as constitutive
of feminist movements and the basis of collective identity. It is
seen as a mode of personal support, intimacy and care as such
productive of self-identity (Roseneil 2006: 324).
Core to the theory of second wave feminism was a belief that soli-
darity amongst women was vital. Contrary to Beauvoir’s (1968)
position around the inherent difficulties of women transcend-
ing to true friendships, the emphasis on women’s friendships as
based on principles of equality rather than inequality, as evident
in patriarchal heteronormative structures, was emphasised by
Adrienne Rich (1980) and Mary Daly (1978). ‘Friendship was
argued to offer feminism a focus on the agentic, non-institutional,
emotional and pleasurable aspects of social life’ (Roseneil 2006:
323).17 It suggested a different theoretical worldview from one
which attended primarily to the structures of gender oppression,
to the institutional arenas through which domination and subor-
dination are reproduced:
Men’s homorelational affiliation and preference have histori-

cally grounded nation-states, but friendship is characteristically
and distinctively interstile, unregulated, voluntary and driven
by the pursuit of pleasure. It contrasts with formal, legally
regulated and institutionalised personal relations between
husband and wife, parent and child and the state (Roseneil
2006: 323).
Importance was placed on friendship by earlier generations

of feminists and it became the root or base of feminism as an
inherent and fundamental part of feminist movement building
(Roseneil 2006: 323). The lens of friendship enabled a challenge
to heteronormativity and required that attention was paid to
the radical transformation of the organisation of intimate life
(Roseneil 2006: 323).
Scholars in analysing the importance of friendships to the
suffrage movement argue that friendships became an important
part of the suffrage discourse because they differed from the notion
of comradeships, which served as the mobilising discourse in the
19
male-dominated socialist movement (Roseneil 2002, Roseneil

2006: 327). The positive attributes of women’s friendships had
been pathologised, where a passionate love for one’s friend
came to signal deviant sexual identity. This descriptive deviancy
could be associated with the possibility of increased economic
independence from men and the identification of patriarchy as an
attempt to reign in heterosexual bonds (Roseneil 2006: 327).
The emergence of strong lesbian feminisms led to the
interrogation of women’s same-sex friendships and whether they
could be read as erotic. Smith-Rosenberg (1975) suggests that
some of these love relationships were in every sense that except
the genital. She argues:
The essential question is not whether these women had genital

contact and can therefore be defined as heterosexual or homo-
sexual. The twentieth-century tendency to view human love
and sexuality within a dichotomised universe of deviance and
normality, genitality and platonic love, is alien to the emotions
and attitudes of the nineteenth century and fundamentally
distorts the nature of [these] women’s emotional interaction.
These letters are significant because they force us to place such
female love in a particular historical context. There is every
indication that these four women, their husbands and families
– all eminently respectable and socially conservative – consid-
ered such love both socially acceptable and fully compatible
with heterosexual marriage. Emotionally and cognitively, their
heterosocial and their homosocial worlds were complementary
(Smith-Rosenberg 1975: 8).
Rich (1980) develops this analysis through her work on lesbian his-
tories through her proposal on a lesbian continuum. Rich argued
for a view of women’s same-sex friendships as falling within this
continuum and therefore evidence of same-sex ‘loverships’. She
challenged clinical definitions of lesbians, arguing for a move
beyond the actual sexual genital experience (Rich 1980: 51–3).
I suggest that the analytical approach taken by both Rich (1980)
and Smith-Rosenberg (1975), albeit differently, plays into dominant
constructions of women as passionless in the emphasis of these
relationships or loverships as asexual. The erasure of sexuality
as key to lesbian identity as well as the denial of the specificity
20
of lesbian lives and history have been raised in several critiques

of her work (Roseneil 2006: 330). I argue that the continuum
that both Rich (1980) and Smith-Rosenberg (1975) suggest is one
that pervades current activist discourse and is manifest in the
construction of women’s friendships – the fundaments of ‘sister’
comrade – as central to mainstream feminist autonomous spaces.
The emphasis on the individual, safety and rejuvenation as critical
elements for creating and fostering autonomous spaces is critical
in this regard. Consequently, same-sex relationships among
women are situated as part of a heteronormative continuum and
not as distinct performances of ‘other’ sexualities. The erasure of
sexuality as part of women’s friendships on the one hand and the
conflation of women’s friendships with lesbian sexualities on the
other raises a set of challenges in the conceptualisation of queer
identities and how solidarity across movements is in turn offered.
Building solidarity
The evolution towards adopting solidarity as opposed to ‘sister-
hood’ was based on a critique that surfaced the absence of race
and class as analytical through lines in building movements
(hooks 1984, Mohanty 2003). The concept of ‘solidarity’ was
argued to be strategically more powerful. Scholars such as hooks
(1984) and Mohanty (2003) argued that solidarity rested not on
the assumption of sameness of oppression and allowed for a
greater differentiation (for instance, as far as class and ethnic-
ity were concerned) of the roots of oppression. The inner bond
that would naturally lead to solidarity was not a pregiven, stable
phenomenon, so they maintained, but should be constructed in
practical political struggles.
However, ‘solidarity’, as it is used today, claims to rest on
unconditioned foundations. An essentialist approach to solidarity
suggests that relationships are a manifestation of something
authentic; a foundationalist perspective holds that women should
feel solidarity because of the inner bond between women (hooks
1984: 59). Understood as such, solidarity creates a pre-discursive
subject, but most importantly, it stands as a precondition for
action. In other words, a group has to feel solidarity before it
can successfully act. I argue that, while useful, the way in which
21
solidarity and sisterhood are deployed is limiting in fostering a

politic that challenges patriarchy in meaningful ways.
There are two distinct ways in which solidarity offered
around the crisis of violence directed towards people identified
as gay and lesbian is constructed. The first is conducted within
a human rights framework that deals with it purely on the basis
of a broad spectrum of rights, which if revoked by a rogue state
renders the claimants powerless. The second set of responses
are those that are willing to confront the possibilities of these
relationships as part of a heterosexual continuum, as an area
where historically women’s friendships have always ‘strayed’ but
not stayed, where the erotic acts as a mechanism for dealing with
the ‘limitations’ of the primary heterosexual relationship bonds
of marriage and family, thereby simultaneously invisibilising
and/or ‘understanding’ lesbian relationships as extensions of
heterosexual female bonds.
Women’s friendships are recognised for their ability to challenge
heteroreality – a reality not dependent on men. This draws on
the discourse of sisterhood of the 1970s where elective bonds of
friendship between women proved vital in sustaining feminist
communities. The destabilisation that these friendships caused
in terms of discourse was to move away from a heterorelational
frame. As opposed to devaluing them it gave those bonds
primacy, they were not seen as frivolous and that in itself was
transgressive and radical. It showed that care and support could
occur outside the family, within the spaces where friendships and
solidarities are forged (Roseneil 2006: 331). It nonetheless resulted
in the conflation of that discourse with lesbian sexuality and
related political organising.
The homorelational friendships (among women) that have
progressively been perceived as an imperative to building and
sustaining feminist movements occur within the confines of a
heteronormative framework, where feminist spaces provide a
reprieve from the constraints of marriage and heterorelational
structures such as the state, university and religion, which activists
encounter on a daily basis. Heteronormativity remains under-
problematised and the homorelational friendships developed in
these spaces as part of solidarity remain at the level of support
and do not move towards destabilising the heteronormativity
22
from which reprieve is sought. The binaries of man–woman,

heterosexuality as sexual orientation and not as an organisational
principle for labour, economics and power, shape the analysis of
the state, the economy and the transformation envisioned.
This approach, like Adrienne Rich’s (1980) lesbian continuum,
decentres sexual identity and undervalues the centrality of
sexuality as a core part of lesbian relationships, thereby leaving
heterosexuality and heteronormativity as intact analytical and
organising frameworks. A cursory examination of feminist
responses aimed at countering and/or interrogating state tyranny
against ‘deviant sexualities’ views state responses as diversionary
tactics that are geared towards moving us away from pressing
democratisation concerns by recalcitrant and autocratic states on the
one hand or as private affairs that should not be ‘regulated’ on the
other (Tamale 2010, Nakaweesi and Mugisha 2009). The efficacy of
such an argument in silencing detractors cannot be underestimated
but its limitations are glaring for three main reasons.
The first is that it dismantles the feminist dictum of the
personal is political as well as analyses that have sought to
dismantle the public/private dichotomy. It does this by situating
same-sex relationships within the private domain and as a space
that should not be ‘regulated’. This flies in the face of the theories
and experiences of domestic violence, one of the most successful
sites of feminist activism across the globe. Secondly, it limits
the ‘performance’ of these relationships to the ‘private’ and not
the ‘public’ domain through a ‘don’t ask don’t tell’ approach.
Finally, these analyses underproblematise heterosexuality – its
role in organising family, labour and the economy, its function in
institutionalising heteronormativity and through this ‘arranging’
an ‘acceptable secular’ state. The destablisation that same-sex
sexualities portend – in a context where the state, the church
and governance rely on male homorelational friendships as
the basis for nation-state social contracts – demands a violent
counter response, which is what state-instigated violence is
about. Heterosexuality therefore acts as a means for maintaining
oppressive patriarchal societal order via the family, the church
and ‘culture’ (McClintock 1995, Burton 1999, Stoler 2002).
Heternormativity also becomes the means to reinforce
particular hierarchies within heterosexualities. Seidman (2005: 40)
23
notes that heteronormativity ‘not only establishes a heterosexual/

homosexual hierarchy but also creates hierarchies among
heterosexualities’, resulting in ‘hegemonic and subordinate forms
of heterosexuality’.
These distinctions ignore the refusal to collaborate with
heteronormativity, as Rich notes:
The history of women who – as witches, femmes seules, mar-

riage resisters, spinsters, autonomous widows, and/or lesbians
– have managed on varying levels not to collaborate [with
heterosexual norms]. It is this history, precisely, from which
feminists have so much to learn and on which there is overall
such blanketing silence (Rich 1994 [1980]: 50).
Queering18 feminist spaces

Feminist movements have had a long history of attempts to
overcome the exclusions of women in mainstream feminism –
women of colour, lesbians, bisexuals and transgender, indigenous
women, non-English-speaking women, women of the global South
(Johnson 2005: 21–37). According to Harcourt (2009), dealing with
exclusion can only be possible through an acknowledgement that
feminism is built on the ‘politics of difference’ that can exist along-
side the ‘politics of friendship’. However, there are multiple, even
conflicting, identities among feminist movements (Harcourt 2009:
73). This approach takes seriously the theory of intersectionality
that looks at how different socially and culturally constructed cat-
egories interact, causing the complex levels of inequalities.
Intersectionality is an ‘analysis claiming that systems of race,
social class, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, nation, and age form
mutually constructing features of social organisation, which
shape Black women’s experiences and, in turn, are shaped by
Black women’ (Collins 2000: 299).
Intersectionality draws on postmodern theoretical discourse,
in particular its critique of essentialism and the deconstruction
of stable subjects, including a feminist subject (‘women’). It
therefore poses a challenge to essentialist feminist theory and
politics: if ‘there is nothing about being “female” that naturally
binds women’ (Haraway 1991: 155), then who should feminist
movements represent? hooks argues that solidarity cannot grow
24
of itself but needs a sustained, ongoing commitment. Mohanty,

writing on transnational feminism, adds that solidarity should
not be seen as a pregiven phenomenon but should be constituted
in practice, through the process of working together. Thus the
challenge is ‘to construct the universal on the basis of particulars/
differences’ (Mohanty 2003: 7). Haraway (1991), hooks (1984) and
Mohanty (2003) move away from a politics of essentialism to
propose a politics of coalition building and affinity.
The idea of affinity groups comes from the anarchist and work-
ers movements of late 19th century Spain, who later fought
against fascism during the Spanish Civil War. At the same
time that the affinity group model was being adopted by the
Anti-war movement in the 1960s, small ‘consciousness raising’
groups of women were forming. From the late 1960s onwards
there was a ‘transformation of feminist notions of political
intervention’. Feminists were breaking with ‘both traditional
lobbying tactics and to some extent (…) left-wing opposi-
tional politics’, which were dominated by men and offered no
space for women’s agendas. This was recognised as the sort of
political practice and organising that would make the women’s
liberation movement ‘self-starting, self-regulating and self-
directing’ (Whelehan 1995: 8).
Affinity groups have most recently been associated with the anti-
globalisation movement and the ways in which young people
get involved in social movements. The movements’ direction
and momentum would not come from following trusted leaders
or experts, but rather from getting people to interact and ana-
lyse their situation themselves (Coote and Campbell 1982: 23).
Contrary to the identity based on solidarity, affinity does not have
to be founded on an underlying consensus among members of the
group, but political identities are formed in an act of negating the
constructed ‘them’19 (Lloyd 2005: 163). To negate the constructed
‘them’ means drawing a political frontier between ‘we’ and ‘them’
through the act of articulation. New subject positions are named
and accounted for through the negation of certain ‘them’, for
example, as anti-racism, anti-sexism, anti-capitalism.
Postmodern feminism that challenges the validity of organising
primarily on the basis of gender identity has been perceived as a
25
dead end for political feminism as a movement. Gender is seen as

a construction and therefore challenges the existence of ‘woman’
as a category. According to this argument, due to the lack of ‘a
shared experience of oppression – an identity – political demands
cannot be articulated’ (Lloyd 2005: 55). However, if affinity
groups are a model that can be effectively deployed to destabilise
heteronormativity and gender as organising principles, what
kind of political identities are we speaking about? Wieringa (2009:
36) asks: ‘Do resistance or oppositional identities form a better
vantage point from which to organise feminist politics? This
seems indeed most likely, but then the next question is how to
move from opposition, resistance, negation, to positive demands,
to an agenda for change?’
The challenge remains how to create an affinity group model
that is sustainable and is able to deal with the inevitable hierarchy
of professionalisation that funders require, yet remains flexible
and transparent and able to mobilise the enthusiasm of diverse
groups. This not only requires theorising political mobilisation
that the affinity model allows for, but also a new feminist politics:
idealist yet pragmatic, professional, transparent, able to build
alliances with diverse groups as well as established interests.
The potential for effective solidarity20 between an emerging
queer movement and mainstream autonomous feminist spaces
can only occur if the fundamental theories that structure the
spaces shift. These theories have to be able to reconceptualise the
meaning of homosocial friendships and the tenuous relationship
with queer identities and sexualities. The ‘solidarity’ offered
towards the growing queer movement in Africa cannot be seen
as one that is simply key to building bridges across movements
but as one that destabilises heteronormativity by dismantling
how the family, the state, the economy reproduce normative
heterosexuality. This approach begins to separate same-sex
friendships/‘experiments’ and same-sex desires, thereby giving
credence to the sexual and political identity ascribed to being
queer and separating it from one that co-exists neatly within a
heteronormative paradigm. Rather, it has to be one that troubles
the primary theorising within feminist activist spaces, which
takes as given gender identity (man/woman) as a framework from
which to understand, confront and dismantle patriarchy.
26
Notes
1 Struggle is used to refer to the tensions manifest in navigating multiple
identifies, some political, some viewed as personal, some labelled as
risky and in conflict. For instance, where a gay woman holds public
office but her gayness is not a political issue, the result is often a muting
of her sexual identity or making it public and turning that into a political
issue. In most African contexts the two do not neatly co-exist.
2 This could mean anything from a ‘silence’ on sexual orientation and
heteronormativity within feminist activist discourse to overt references to
an othering – ‘they’ – or the reticence in overtly identifying and engaging
with LGBTI political struggles when called upon. In Kenya, for instance,
the most vocal pro-choice lobbies have been gynaecologists rather than
women’s rights activists.
3 I do not delve into a discussion on the existence and viability of a
women’s movement. This has been ably discussed most recently by
AWID through their movement building research project (see www.awid.
org). I make the distinction between a women’s movement and feminist
spaces based on further analysis in this chapter, which traces the division
between a women’s movement that draws on feminism as its organising
ideology and those who distance themselves from it.
4 Women’s rights activists have been latecomers in pro-choice debates and,
in negotiating with the state and other sites of power such as the church,
choice has effectively been erased.
5 I draw here from conversations with queer women who have had to
negotiate for mention of sexual rights and choice in meaningful ways
within conference statements and declarations. The candidness about
the distraction that sexual orientation portends was offered because their
queer identity was not foregrounded as being political.
6 I draw here from conversations with activists in sub-Saharan Africa who
work with LGBTI organisations or are self-identified LGBTI activists as
opposed to being women who are lesbians.
7 The word queer here is similar to Jolly’s interpretation of it as
constituting a rejection of the binary distinction between homo and
heterosexual, and therefore a conceptualisation of sexualities as non-
essential and transitional (Jolly 2000: 84).
8 ‘Heteronormative’ is used here to refer to institutions, structures of
understanding and practical orientations that make heterosexuality seem
not only coherent, i.e. organised as sexuality, but also privileged.
9 More recent scholarly work in this arena has produced more nuanced
analysis (see among others Bennett 2008, Lewis 2003, Mekgwe 2008,
Mupotsa 2008, Pereira 2009, Salo 2005).
10 See a fuller discussion on this by Hassim (2004).
11 I use diversity here to highlight existing binaries that ascribe otherness to
homoerotic desires, for instance.
12 For a fuller discussion on this, see Batliwala (2002) and AWID’s
movement building research project and extensive resources on the
subject at www.awid.org.
27
13 A factor of the end of the cold war.

14 While Horn in her piece is careful in her use of non-gender-specific
language through the word ‘people’, the space targets people who
are self-identified as women, both biologically and in performance, in
the sense that even if they were lesbian they would identify as lesbian
women rather than lesbian men.
15 In 2005, the then South African deputy president, Jacob Zuma, was
charged with the rape of Kwezi. He was later acquitted of all charges.
The formation of the 1 in 9 Campaign was spurred by this case.
16 Adeleye-Fayemi’s contribution to a number of African feminist
movement building initiatives can be gleaned from her piece.
17 Roseneil is privileged here for the extensive analysis she offers on
the theories of friendship based on a history of feminist analysis
around the British suffrage movement among others. The theoretical
literature on women and friendships unfortunately remains limited
to a Northern context (see also Roseneil 1995, Roseneil 2000, Roseneil
2002).
18 Queer is used here to mean impact on/affect.
19 See Honor Ford-Smith’s (1997) candid account of the meaning of building
a movement through the praxis of an organisation. Her experiences as a
founder member of Sistren – a Jamaican women’s theatre collective – are
useful in thinking through the meaning of negotiating power, class and
funding.
20 Solidarity is used here to refer to the possibilities of a merger of
ideological and political interests in the pursuit of equity and non-
discrimination on the basis of sex, gender, sexual orientation, creed, race
or ethnicity as outlined in a multitude of rights-based frameworks.
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3
Postcolonial discourses of queer

activism and class in Africa
Lyn Ossome
Introduction
Africa is at present confronted with neo-colonial phenomena of
globalised capitalism and globalised racism (Schuhmann 2007:
122), a fact that more than ever suggests the need for ingen-
ious strengthening of movements around a politics backed by
a conscious engagement with diverse locations and histories of
suffering. The shift by African states towards democratisation,
beginning in the structural adjustment period of the late 1980s, is
historically important for, among other factors, the impact it had
in creating visibility around queer activism and class struggles.
The democratic period was underlined by an intensified demand
for liberties, which on the one hand facilitated a ‘coming out’ of
lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) rights,1
and on the other unleashed a wave of competing fundamentalist
and moralistic claims that are still facilitating a veiled backlash.2
On this Neville Hoad writes:
In interesting relation to their transnational circulation, lesbian

and gay human rights have emerged as a new but vulner-
able factor in the postapartheid national hegemony of South
Africa, where their provisionally successful institution can
be accounted for by activists’ insistence on their national
character against their transnational form. Their temporal-
ity is equally baffling. They have surfaced at the moment of
transnationalism, although in southern Africa this moment is
also the delayed moment of postcoloniality. Zimbabwe became
independent in 1981 and Namibia in 1991; South Africa held
32
3 POSTCOLONIAL DISCOURSES OF QUEER ACTIVISM AND CLASS
its first democratic elections in 1994. These rights have been

committedly staged as a legacy of colonialism and as a means
of facilitating a new identity form that threatens national val-
ues. They have become a relic of the colonial past that must be
transcended and/or a sign of the transnational future that must
be feared (1999: 561–2).
One unfortunate casualty of this opening up of political spaces

has been the diminishing engagement with class analysis by
social justice activists. While religious fundamentalists have
aligned with state power, LGBTI groups have been left out in the
cold: the intensification of homophobia, largely existing in the
context of economic liberalism and religious fundamentalism in
Africa, speaks to this state of affairs. Many oppressive social rela-
tions such as those of racism and homophobia involve systematic
misrecognition. While this shift from distribution to recognition
has been progressive in highlighting hitherto ignored forms of
oppression, some observers have regretted the fact that it seems
to have been coupled with an abandonment of concern for class
politics, which has been associated with the politics of distribu-
tion (Phillips 1999). The retreat from class was not merely illogical
but decidedly untimely, for it coincided with the rise of attempts
by neoliberals to legitimise class inequalities.
Among many discourses framing the renewed wave of
homophobia across Africa at present is one which locates itself
broadly within two conservative strands of thinking. One strand
is a civil conversation engaging with questions of the very right of
existence of queer people, and is primarily political in context. The
other, while tacitly recognising this right, additionally constructs
same-sex relations around its materiality and ties freedom and
choice to issues of accessibility: this thinking implicitly speaks to
social and economic rights as the emergent frontier of struggle
for LGBTI groups. I seek in this chapter to demonstrate the
urgent necessity to foreground this latter strand, and illustrate
the ways in which the political, albeit important, is being used by
queer activists in Africa to submerge an all-encompassing socio-
economic rights struggle.
We can observe in many countries that in times of socio-
economic tension, citizens’ rights and specifically the protection
33
of groups thought to be more vulnerable, such as women,

immigrants and other minorities, become scapegoats in the name
of patriotism, which often includes references to an assumedly
shared homogenous tradition. It is the abject ‘other’ (immigrants,
perverts, criminals, HIV/AIDS positives, prostitutes, homeless –
the dangerous classes) that is made responsible for threatening
the inner peace rather than, for instance, hegemonic notions
of violent masculinity or specific class interests (Schuhmann
2010: 100). Although there is a tendency to lay the blame on
states alone, nationalist and ethnic processes too, depending on
their objectives, might project forces that are hegemonic within
society, and in so doing disrupt the state’s own power to protect
minorities. Nationalist, ethnic and morally bound hegemonies
(espousing fundamentalist religious and puritan ideological
notions of decolonisation) employ a variety of tactics aimed
at displacing and rendering invisible the active voices of non-
conforming groups. The effect of this is to eschew them from class
struggles and, effectively, from political participation.3
In Africa, such tactics have included the widespread use of
alienating myths, violence and outright discrimination in ways that
directly destabilise and undermine participation of those members
of LGBTI communities who are also members of oppressed and
disadvantaged classes. In addition, heterosexist solidarity has
been used to obscure class differences, much to the detriment of
poor people of all cultural identities. These tactics also severely
circumscribe the ability to access and legitimately establish rights
claims even in countries that have achieved nominal success with
legislation that prohibits discrimination, such as South Africa. I
shall illustrate all three points, drawing examples from ongoing
conversations and contestations on the continent.
Destabilising myths, queer activism and erasure

from memory
A growing body of research, activism and art has comprehen-
sively demonstrated the falseness of the ‘fact’ of Africans’ exclu-
sive heterosexuality.4 Worth interrogating, therefore, are the ways
in which ‘elitist’ and ‘westocentric’ labelling is being directed
towards queer activism and activists. Highlighting this strand
34
of thinking in scholarship, Amory (1997) observes that the stud-

ied avoidance of research on homosexuality and the downright
heterosexual panic concerning the issue are best captured by the
recurring and insistent refrain, ‘There is no homosexuality in
Africa!’, often accompanied by the similarly insidious accusation
that homosexuality is a ‘western perversion’ imposed upon or
adopted by African populations. This view of queerness partly
stems from an exclusionary heterosexual citizenship that ignores
the fact that queer represents a resistance to anything that is
socially defined as normal, and in that sense queer may exclude
some gay and lesbian practices that have a ‘normative perspec-
tive’ or may include other experiences that are not explicitly
sexual (Jagose 1996: 98). It is a highly prejudicial view that alien-
ates from the mainstream and invisibilises legitimate claims of
economic and political inclusion and diversity by queer groups.
There is a dialectical process in the seeming hegemonic
economic location of sexual minority groups within states.
Evans observes that there are legal and moral constraints which
prevent a variety of marginal or minority groups from pursuing
their religious and cultural beliefs or economic needs in equal
measures. The state’s management of these ‘moral aliens’, who
are to be found in the marginal matrix of citizenship, is exercised
in social, political and economic arenas and results in both formal
and informal discrimination. This is the twilight zone between
the liberal and republican constructions of citizenship, where
religious, ethnic and sexual minorities are located – outside the
national ‘moral community’ but inside the civic nation. To those
who can afford it, this is not a completely closed-off system
(1993: 6). Sexual minority groups developed, as a result, socio-
economic ‘community’ infrastructures of varying degrees of
complexity around their identities. They organised to obtain
further housing, insurance, medical, parenting, marital rights
and so on, and spent a significant proportion of their income
on, for example, gay commodities and distinctive lifestyles in
segregated or specifically gay social and sexual territories (1993:
8). Among African LGBTI activists, retreat into similar enclaves5
has been enforced largely by high insecurity in the form of sexual,
physical, emotional and psychological brutalisation. At the heart
of this retreat is the imperative to survive economically as well
35
as socially and culturally. Strict moral boundaries in society

generate communities bounded by immorality and illegality, and
which in negotiating their citizenship claims adopt economic
mechanisms which appear paradoxically to eschew active
participation within broader political and social rights paradigms
that most legitimately represent their claims as citizens. Popular
movements are particularly vulnerable to reductionist tendencies,
the result of ‘identity politics’. The problem with those who
pursue identity politics is that they end up obscuring class issues
and in the process lose strategic focus and potential for broader
alliances. As Yuval-Davis notes, identity politics tend not only to
homogenise and naturalise social categories and groupings, but
also deny shifting boundaries of identities and internal power
differences and conflicts of interest (1997: 119).
Destabilising myths
Class struggles represent one site within which myths regarding
homosexuality are reproduced and retrenched. The perpetuation
of homogenising notions that subsume all queer people under
an alienating and contentious category is, to this extent, curious.
The myth of homosexuality as being elitist, itself a prejudicial and
racially manipulated classification, seeks to strip sexual identity
of its intersections with gender, racial or ethnic subjectivities, and
in so doing essentially diminishes the range of issues upon which
sexual minority groups might ground their struggles. The effect is
to deny LGBTIs who are poor the support and solidarity of other
constituencies that are similarly economically marginalised – for
instance the extent of lesbians’ specific vulnerabilities as women,
or as wage labourers, or as ethnic minorities, may be concealed
under such homogenising discourses of elitism. The resulting
distortion is the appearance of an independent history of cultures
that inform institutions, systems and ideological conceptions of
the nature and location of our oppression as African people on the
continent and in the diaspora.
It is important to ask who benefits from the production of
these myths and distortions.6 It may be argued that the ruling
elites with the support of state power seek through this divisive
discourse to isolate a minority elite class, identified by sexual
36
orientation, which they falsely identify with global forces of

oppression. The majority marginalised groups whom they target
though this type of moralising are sold into the belief of fighting,
together with the state, a common enemy – an oppressive global
force. Queer people are targeted not so much because of their
identity, as to deliberately continue the ideological conscription
of subjects, subvert the reality of shared struggles, and sustain
the class oppression of the majority. There are many tactics at
the disposal of the state and ruling classes to achieve this end, of
which the most dramatic being witnessed at present is physical
and institutionalised violence.7
Violence
Sexualised forms of violence that penetrate societies derive from
a structural base that profiles those it targets along lines of class,
gender, race and ethnicity. Sexual violence directed towards queer
individuals may be understood in one sense as a political weapon
in the hands of disenfranchised groups that are themselves vic-
tims of the structural violence in an unequal economic system
which induces violence among the excluded or economically
marginalised. However, the effectiveness of this violence in real-
ity functions within a system that sub-profiles individuals within
these categories: thus, heteronormative identification of individu-
als within racial, ethnic and class categories places self-identifying
queer people outside of the matrices within which structural vio-
lence is understood and addressed.
Marxist feminists have critiqued violence against women
in relation to capitalist production and reproduction, and its
capacity to disrupt the reproduction of labour power. Though
this reproduction is predominantly pegged on wages, it has also
been shown to rely on the attainment and enjoyment of certain
fundamental rights and freedoms. This type of understanding
has enabled the emergence of a holistic response towards the
economic oppression of women that spans micro/macroeconomic
policy, political representation and legal encoding in national,
regional and international statutes and conventions. Yet the sub-
profiling mentioned above, and the heteronormative ideological
reproduction of labour, mean that lesbian and bisexual women,
37
for instance, remain circumscribed from claiming similar victories

by the deliberate segregation or failure to link homophobic
violence to overall patterns of economic violence in society.
One clear demonstration of this point is the recent denial of
observer status to the Coalition of African Lesbians (CAL) in the
African Commission on Human and People’s Rights (ACHPR).
The commission declined the application without giving any
reasons. By ignoring CAL’s stated objectives, which are rooted
in the advancement of gender equality, social justice and the
protection of the rights of particularly vulnerable individuals
(CHR 2010), this ruling illustrates one of the ways in which the
pursuance of convenient, conservative political aims can serve
to deepen economic discrimination against all women, and not
just those ostensibly targeted by it, for in this case how does
the law calibrate the claim to rights other than through its non-
discriminatory application on the basis of gender? The precise
definition of the term ‘gender’ itself remains unspecified within
the statute books of the ACHPR.
Erasure
Another illustration that should be related to economic violence is
the vote in 2010 at the United Nations General Assembly in favour
of an amendment which removes sexual orientation from an anti-
execution resolution. Morocco and Mali, two socially conservative
Muslim African countries, introduced in the General Assembly’s
human rights committee an amendment to the resolution, which
comes up every two years, to condemn extrajudicial, summary
and arbitrary executions and other killings. This vote is signifi-
cant if understood within the context of economic scarcity and
violence. Even though the net number of new conflicts arising out
of Africa has significantly decreased over the last two decades,
the threat of civil wars looms large in our shaky democracies
and struggling economies, from Sudan to Ivory Coast, Kenya to
Zimbabwe. Recent popular movements against unemployment,
poverty and corruption of the ruling elite in North Africa paint
an even more profound picture of the class struggles gaining
momentum on the continent. Within the economic contexts of
conflicts, many observers have noted that poverty and violence
38
go hand in hand, and that there is a strong negative relationship

between economic growth and crime across countries. Sexual
minority groups become particularly vulnerable to scapegoating
and witch-hunting during times of economic hardship.8 Their
explicit exclusion from the General Assembly resolution, which
specifies violence as being a function of race, nationality, ethnicity,
religion, language, refugee/indigenous status, denies structure to
the broad nature of homophobic violence. In addition, replacing
the specification of discrimination on the basis of ‘sexual orienta-
tion’ with the more generalising phrase ‘discriminatory reasons
on any basis’ is demonstrative of a deliberate erasure and obscur-
ing of the nexus that exists between violence, sexual identity and
class. In the event of economic shocks such as highlighted above,
it can also strip homophobic violence of its economic and social
contexts, restricting resistance to a political battleground (of
rights) and isolating it from its economic roots and validity as a
class issue.
Economic liberalism and fundamentalisms

Today more than ever, the reality that individuals occupy mul-
tiple identities that can shift, merge or emerge is acknowledged,
as is the need to map class struggles within this complex reality.
Arguably most contentious among these is sexuality, at the heart
of which lies the principle of choice, which is in turn based upon
the principle of freedom. As such, any limitation on choice is an
assault on the idea of freedom. At the nexus between freedom and
choice is presumed the ability of individuals to access, express
and enjoy rights, the most basic ones relating to issues of survival.
This ability is at present circumscribed for many working class
populations in Africa, disenfranchised by neoliberal economic
policies. One outcome of this state of affairs is increasing cultural
and religious fundamentalisms that manifest in exclusion, false
compartmentalisation, separation and silencing of oppressions.
For LGBTI groups this silencing has been subsumed within
the classical struggle between progressive social movements
and nationalist hegemonies, especially conservative political
parties and ruling elites, to control popular support and retain
power in the face of global economic and social challenges. Social
39
movements exist primarily as a counterweight to bureaucratic

excesses: as an alternative voice they appeal to a conscious
majority that is marginalised economically, politically, socially
and culturally by dominant individuals, institutions and
processes within society. Yet at the same time social movements
respond to and articulate their demands through means that are
(necessarily) tactical and may be exclusionary if expedient. As
groups constantly vigilant of shifts in global priorities, in ceaseless
conversation with and interrogation of national prerogatives for
development, and in perpetual search for mass appeal, social
movements are bound to eschew, albeit tacitly, themes and
contestations that might compromise their critical broad reach
and dilute their effectiveness. Inevitably too, the thematic issues
defining struggles are bound to be swayed by hegemonic notions
of ‘good’ or ‘bad’ as they instinctively react in opposition to the
mainstream.
It is therefore not surprising that at a time when Africa and
Africans are assailed from scores of media outlets with the
‘un-Africanness’ of homosexuality, a highly politicised claim
sanctioned and agitated through apathetic states, the most visible
reaction from social movements has been weak rejoinders in
the same politicised breath, and in the process submerging core
issues of economic hardship, livelihoods and survival around
which these polarising discourses are structured. Simply put,
states and societies need social movements to self-identify from
among themselves diversionary sacrificial lambs, and Africa has
witnessed a number in the past: Asians in Idi Amin’s Uganda,
foreigners in South Africa, albinos in Tanzania, witches in Kenya,
Mozambique, Tanzania and Uganda.
Difference has always been deployed to divert society’s anger
when economies did not favour the majority, and as African
governments lean increasingly towards the same market-based
economic policies that have disenfranchised large populations in
the past, the manufacturing of ‘difference’ and the perpetuation
of fundamentalism are bound to go on, with social movements
– unless willing to change tactics – remaining at the centre of
this balancing act (Jagose 1996: 94–5). Paradoxically, despite the
seeming appearance of a backlash, queer activism is at present
experiencing a resurgent push on the continent: the visibility
40
created by public awareness and discussions carried in the media,

debates within academia and, for the general public, curiosity
around the subject are resources that can once again be harnessed
towards pursuing the aims of social and economic justice.
Transcending difference; refocusing class

struggles
What is the importance of sustaining this conversation? What is
at stake? From a political perspective the impact of queer activ-
ism on post-liberation evolution in Africa and the diaspora is an
area that has received scant attention in post-colonial discourses.
Its contribution to studies related to gender and sexuality, as well
as violence and representation, remains under-theorised or alto-
gether ignored on the continent.
One significant contribution relates to the rise of HIV/AIDS
and its links to Haiti and Africa. In the early discovery of the
epidemic, the scapegoating of Haitians and then later Africans
brought a certain diaspora consciousness and sensibility into at
least one encounter with the disease – the twinning occurred of
anti-racist and queer activism (Walcott 2007: 30). From the early
1990s, the multidirectional pressures which the AIDS epidemic
placed on categories of identification, power and knowledge
necessitated and nurtured new forms of political organisation,
education and theorising, which were largely produced under
the rubric of queer theory. Notably, this contribution spanned the
coalition politics of much AIDS activism that rethought identity
in terms of affinity rather than essence (Saalfield and Navarro
1991) and therefore included not only lesbians and gay men
but also bisexuals, transsexuals, sex workers, people with AIDS
(PWAs), health workers, and parents and friends of gays. The
AIDS epidemic also necessitated the rethinking of traditional
understandings of the workings of power in cross-hatched
struggles over epidemiology, scientific research, public health and
immigration policy (Halperin 1995: 28).
In Africa, as in many poor countries in other continents, the
impact of the AIDs pandemic has been most profoundly felt at
the point at which it ruptures the economic bases of families
and communities, but also in the ways that it disrupts dominant
41
social and scientific responses to treatment. The reality of men

who have sex with men (MSM) has gained firm recognition as
being crucial to HIV/AIDS treatment campaigns in many African
countries. The currency of the MSM phenomenon lies in the fact
of the largely middle-class demographic it affects, along with the
potentially devastating impacts on the developing economy’s
labour force. As such, important, positive shifts in employment
policies that now recognise HIV as a basis of discrimination
have occurred, despite attempts at separatism and erasure.
Marc Epprecht (2006) urges us to consider whether, even if
homosexual practice is not commonplace, or recognised as such,
homophobia, transphobia, heterosexism and other ‘invisibilising’
discourses could be significant cultural influences on the majority
population. If so, interventions aimed at the majority population
today (for women’s empowerment and for sexual health, notably)
cannot, he argues, afford blithely to ignore insights coming out of
queer scholarship and activism.
A highly moralised African past, a society not marked by
decadence, is imagined, and set as a stage for decolonising
projects that are invested in movements such as Pan-Africanism
and African feminism, both of which are guilty of a particular
identity politics that, in normalising heterosexuality, excludes
certain subjects in the name of representation. There is a need to
restart a more honest conversation within movements and among
activists, and in particular to transcend differences that polarise,
weaken and compromise activism aimed at creating a more just
society. Carrying the voices of LGBTI groups effectively in class
struggles demands that their activism be seen as rooted in different
sites of struggle that should not be seen as being contradictory
to one another and, as Judith Butler (1993) argues, do not need
to be reconciled with one another. This, for example, means
engaging with the positions taken by queer activists participating
in women’s movements (as feminists), as workers within labour
unions and on other social and economic justice platforms, all of
which can be engaged with at the same time, as intersecting and
at times confluent. This is not to wish away difference, but rather
to acknowledge and build on diversity. Nira Yuval-Davis (1997:
131) urges us towards ‘transversal politics’, in which perceived
unity and homogeneity are replaced by dialogues which give
42
recognition to the specific positioning of those who participate

in them as well as to the ‘unfinished knowledge’ that each such
situated positioning can offer. Transversal politics, nevertheless,
does not assume that the dialogue is boundary free, and that
each conflict of interest is reconcilable. The boundaries of a
transversal dialogue are determined by the message, rather than
the messenger.
Whereas the political stage remains abstracted (by structures of
power) for the majority of Africans, the ‘bread-and-butter’, socio-
economic stage is one that is immediately accessible to most,
on which daily lives and struggles for survival are mapped and
dramatised in remarkably similar ways across ethnic, sexualised
or racialised boundaries. There is a higher likelihood of achieving
unity on this latter stage so, not surprisingly, it is more crucial
for hegemonic powers to seek to eliminate this stage as a basis
for unitary campaigning, as is already being witnessed by the
attempts to wipe out LGBTI rights and our participation in supra-
bodies such as the African Union and UN and at national levels
through legislative processes such as the attempts in Uganda
since 2009 to legislate in extreme ways against homosexuality. It
is equally crucial, then, for activists to recognise the currency of
this socio-economic stage and work towards consolidating it as a
core base for class struggles.
Conclusion
Amory (1997) observes that our analyses need to be informed by
an awareness of the multiple and intersecting causes of political
persecution and oppression: gender, race, ethnicity, class, religion,
as well as sexuality. We need to work to form alliances with other
scholars and groups who share these goals. It is also important
to remember that historically the failure to link struggle issues as
a continuum has weakened solidarity and delayed progression
and is a fertile source of internal divisions. Making choices about
sexualities transcends class, race and geography, and ought not
to form the basis upon which continental struggles for equality
continue to suffer setbacks. Any resurgence in homophobia is
bound to refocus queer activism on the personal and political,
which, albeit important, might also be self-defeating in as far as
43
this might prevent the necessary engagement of queer activism

with intersecting class issues and, further, would prevent queer
activism from gaining firm voice to challenge patriarchal, sexist
and heteronormative discourses in society. The dangers of retract-
ing into identity politics at a time when a deepening of social and
economic problems on the continent compels strong alliances for
social justice cannot be ignored. It is not ironic that the current
politics of otherness in post-colonial Africa is so deeply embed-
ded within a discourse of class and sexuality: many aspects of
daily life in Africa retain the connection of sexuality to questions
of political economy. In the end, the idea that queer activism might
actually recuperate class analysis in Africa is not too farfetched.
Notes
1 Democratisation processes in different African countries provided the
context within which gay rights formally emerged. For instance, South
Africa’s democratic transition provided a political opportunity and
structure amenable to gay mobilisation (Cock 2003; Croucher 2002).
This emergence, however, was not marked by purely positive processes:
Zimbabwe’s ‘Stonewall’ moment happened in the aftermath of Robert
Mugabe’s banning of Gays and Lesbians of Zimbabwe (GALZ) from
the Zimbabwe International Book Fair in Harare in July 1995; and at the
Second SWAPO Women’s Congress on 6 December 1996 President Sam
Nujoma reaffirmed this stand when he vowed to ‘uproot’ homosexuality
from Namibian society.
2 As Mukhopadhyay notes, the universalistic promise of liberalism, while
fuelling struggles for equal rights, has also been the reason for limiting
rights to formal guarantees, because liberalism does not recognise
difference and inequalities (in terms of resources and power) between
people arising from these differences. Within the liberal framework, an
individual is conceived of as the human subject who does not have a
gender, class, caste, race, ethnic or community status (2007: 270). Even
when this notion is extended to include identities, liberal discourses are
easily manipulated by those hegemonic groups in society that have real
access to resources and power. This is seen in practical terms in African
countries where sexual identity is sacrificed at the altar of conservative
religious or ethnic identities that are being positively manipulated for
political and economic mileage.
3 From the perspective of political diversity and representative democracy,
the invisibility of LGBTI groups in formal sites of class struggles
delegitimises their claims for substantive equality.
4 As noted in Epprecht (2006: 188), Moodie (1994), Harries (1994), Gevisser
and Cameron (1994), Murray and Roscoe (1998), Kendall (1999), Lockhart
(2002), Njinje and Alberton (2002), Epprecht (2004), GALZ (2002) and
44
Morgan and Wieringa (2005), for example, thoroughly document the

presence of diverse expressions of same-sex sexuality in Africa – in
traditional societies, in colonial institutions and in present-day settings.
A growing, pan-African network of LGBTI associations also attests to
diverse, indigenous, same-sex and bisexual cultures and practices in
Africa. A range of images written or produced by Africans in fiction,
theatre and film further destabilises the stereotype of the ‘pure’ African
heterosexual.
5 This retreat has included prolonged periods of exile of activists from
their countries of origin, residence in secluded safe houses, and the
need to secure compounds of residence. Many are robbed of day-to-day
means of economic survival and as a result depend entirely on donations
and goodwill. This enforced removal of an active workforce from wage
labour may distort unemployment figures and weaken class struggles.
6 Alluding to this question, Mark Gevisser (2011) contends that ‘as many
Africans become increasingly uncomfortable with their countries’
dependence on the West, they look to find a place to put their pride:
they might be poor, but at least they have values! In all the world’s
global indicators of wellbeing, they can at least lead one: morality. With
ineffective states and moribund economies, what better way to maintain
popular support than through the scapegoating of an unpopular
minority in the name of a battle against western decadence?’
7 Violence should be understood here along a continuum that begins
with the isolation, stigmatisation and overt discrimination against
homosexuals, usually in the end manifesting in physical brutality and
even murder.
8 Miguel (2005) in his study of witch killings in Tanzania, Oster (2004)
analysing witchcraft trials in Europe, and Berman’s 2003 study of radical
religious militias all use empirical findings to demonstrate the power
of economics to rationalise phenomena that have previously been
understood almost solely through a sociocultural lens.
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47
4
Disability and desire: journey of

a film-maker – life story
Shelley Barry
In 1996, at the age of 24, I found myself in hospital, with empty

walls and broken dreams colouring my days. My partner at the
time, Janine Clayton, and I were caught up in local taxi violence
in Cape Town, South Africa, with members of rival taxi organisa-
tions firing at each other. The driver of the taxi we were in died,
and my spine was severed by a bullet. My body told me long
before doctors had the courage to admit it. I was paralysed from
the chest down. During those endless afternoons with little else
than my mind to entertain me, I contemplated the extent of my
loss. Perhaps what struck me deepest at the time was my convic-
tion that I would never be desired or loved again. I felt that my
body had become damaged goods, my sexuality erased.
As time went by, I began to dismantle my perceptions by
analsying their origins. I recognised that my mental picture of
a person with a disability was that of someone in need of care,
someone to be pitied, someone who certainly had no real claim
to love or any kind of fulfilling life. The basis of my beliefs was
largely informed by society’s consensus on people with disabilities
… these were people who were mostly invisible, unless as
beggars on the street or patients in hospital. This invisibility was
entrenched by the media.
My political consciousness grew within the disability rights
movement. I began to acknowledge that it was society that had
placed my body in a box with a label and stuck it away on a
dusty shelf. I had a different body, yes, not a damaged one. The
process of reclaiming my body was an exceptionally powerful
and liberating experience. I understood desire and sensuality
48
4 DISABILITY AND DESIRE: JOURNEY OF A FILM-MAKER
from a completely different perspective. I realised that passion

is something that everyone can access (it is not reserved for the
young and the able-bodied), and it can suffuse every aspect of
our lives. I recognised the importance of self-love as opposed to
requiring affirmation from others in order to love myself.
I felt pride. I even dared to feel beautiful. I cruised around on
my wheels feeling that I had every right to be in the world, as
much as anyone else did. And I began to live with a passion and
fervour that fundamentally changed the course of my life.
My spiritual explorations into Eastern philosophy also came
back to me with more force and power. I had always made a
distinction between the body and the spirit, and this period gave
that belief more clarity. For me, the body houses the spirit and is
merely a vehicle. This does not mean that one does not honour the
body – quite the opposite!
I truly believe in the power of a positive mind – something we
can all access, and which begins with awareness of your thoughts.
Our thoughts are energy, and energy manifests itself. It is amazing
how much thought dictates outcome! Last year, I finally took the
plunge and became a committed Buddhist.
After years in the disability rights movement, I returned to
my dreams of becoming a film-maker. I was fortunate enough to
receive a scholarship to film school from the Ford Foundation. At
32, I became a full-time student again. In my first writing class at
Temple University in Philadelphia, my professor told us, ‘Write
about something because you have to write about it. Write from your
soul.’ My first film birthed itself with this honesty. Whole – A Trinity
of Being, a visual doc-poem of three short films, explores my spiritual
journey of embracing and celebrating my body. The first segment,
‘Pin Pricks’, tells the tale of how the fabric of my life was torn apart
and the revelations that took me beyond this loss: ‘I chose not to wear
that garment of bitterness so easily fitted to the wounded body.’
The next segment deals with my second disability – my
dependency on a tube that fits into a hole in my throat, allowing
me to breathe and speak. In the film, I declare: ‘I celebrate this
hole. The breath and speech it gives is my life force. So, I decorate
it with jewellery, different handmade beads and trinkets because
scars should also be crowned. Even if they’re not neat or pretty or
hard to look at sometimes.’
49
For me, the power of this film came from the vulnerability
involved in openly showing, on screen, the gaping wound in my
throat. It had always been very difficult for me to look at it. By
making a film about it, I hoped to encourage other women to feel
beautiful, scars and all. Our scars are often imposed on us, yet
we carry their shame. We are warriors because we have survived
those scars, and live to tell their and our tales. I adorn my scar
not to hide it, but to protect it and to celebrate it. This holds vital
lessons for so-called able-bodied women as well – many have
C-section scars, mastectomy scars and other injuries, but are
taught to be ashamed of these and to hide them.
The last film of the trilogy is a sequence of images, snapshots
of life in a wheelchair – not traditional snapshots, but those that
dare to claim a strong sense of sexuality and desire. One of the
hardest scenes I did was a shot of my wheelchair next to me
in the bath, cutting to a shot of my hands travelling over my
body, in a gesture of masturbation. Doing this scene was not at
all gratuitous. I made a political decision to present a picture of
a disabled woman who has an active sexual relationship with
herself. This was because the notion that women with disabilities
might claim their sexuality or be sexually active is mostly absent,
if not downright taboo, in all spheres of art, media and society
in general. Black disabled women are the most invisible of all
in this respect. Our cultures teach us to hide our sexuality, to
not lay claim to our bodies, to wait demurely for a man to want
us enough. Unless we begin to challenge those perceptions by
inserting ourselves in this absence, this blank space, the status
quo will continue.
In another scene, I depict my partner and myself in a loving
embrace. This was difficult to do, because it meant exposing
my personal life and relationships on screen, to an audience of
strangers. Yet the necessity far outweighed the difficulty. I felt it
was important to show that we should not only openly lay claim
to loving ourselves, but claim the pleasure of being loved and
loving others – in ways that are sensual, intimate and playful.
The film ends with a declaration of discovery: ‘I know about
this dance of living. This dance is not with the feet. This dance is
with the heart. And when I dance with the heart, music comes
through me. Music is me. And then all that I am, is the dance.’
50
4 DISABILITY AND DESIRE: JOURNEY OF A FILM-MAKER
It has been two years since making that first film. To date, it
has won four international film awards, much to my surprise! My
work has continued to focus on re-envisaging a media that makes
people with disabilities visible, not only as sexual beings, but as
people in the fullness of human experience. I am juggling various
stages of post-production on other films and hope to send them
off into the world within the next few months. I am also working
on the cinematic aesthetics of shooting films from a wheelchair.
Unless we as people with disabilities, as women, as black people,
as lesbians, become the makers of our own images, our lives will
constantly be depicted on the basis of assumptions that others
hold about who we are, how we live, and how we love.
This article was first published in Feminist Africa (2006, 6).
51
5
African LGBTI manifesto/

declaration
April 18, 2010, Nairobi, Kenya
As Africans, we all have infinite potential. We stand for an African

revolution which encompasses the demand for a re-imagination
of our lives outside neo-colonial categories of identity and power.
For centuries, we have faced control through structures, systems
and individuals who disappear our existence as people with
agency, courage, creativity, and economic and political authority.
As Africans, we stand for the celebration of our complexities
and we are committed to ways of being which allow for self-
determination at all levels of our sexual, social, political and
economic lives. The possibilities are endless. We need economic
justice; we need to claim and redistribute power; we need to
eradicate violence; we need to redistribute land; we need gender
justice; we need environmental justice; we need erotic justice; we
need racial and ethnic justice; we need rightful access to affirming
and responsive institutions, services and spaces; overall we need
total liberation.
We are specifically committed to the transformation of the
politics of sexuality in our contexts. As long as African LGBTI
people are oppressed, the whole of Africa is oppressed.
This vision demands that we commit ourselves to:
Reclaiming and sharing our stories (past and present), our

lived realities, our contributions to society and our hopes for
the future.
Strengthening ourselves and our organizations, deepening
our links and understanding of our communities, building
principled alliances, and actively contributing towards the
revolution.
52
5 AFRICAN LGBTI MANIFESTO/DECLARATION
Challenging all legal systems and practices which either cur-

rently criminalize or seek to reinforce the criminalization of
LGBTI people, organizations, knowledge creation, sexual self
expression, and movement building.
Challenging state support for oppressive sexual, gendered, dis-
criminatory norms, legal and political structures and cultural
systems.
Strengthening the bonds of respect, cooperation, passion, and
solidarity between LGBTI people, in our complexities, dif-
ferences and diverse contexts. This includes respecting and
celebrating our multiple ways of being, self expression, and
languages.
Contributing to the social and political recognition that sexual-
ity, pleasure, and the erotic are part of our common humanity.
Placing ourselves proactively within all movement building
supportive of our vision.
http://www.blacklooks.org/2011/05/
african-lgbti-manifestodaclaration
53
6
‘Proudly African & Transgender’

– collaborative portraits and
stories with trans and intersex
activists
Gabrielle Le Roux
The exhibition ‘Proudly African & Transgender’ is a creative inter-

vention for social justice in the form of portraits and stories of ten
transgender African activists who collaborated to be portrayed in
this way because they want their faces to be seen and their voices
heard around the world.
Transgender Africans have been silenced for a long time. We

have been invisible as though we did not exist. Today, many
of us speak, we show our faces, we write and we express our-
selves openly.
This exhibition is an extension of that. The portraits are our
images and they speak our words, they tell our stories, they
express our feelings, they exhibit our pride, even our fears, they
are our history, they are us today and the history of the African
transgender struggle in future. They are strength, hope and
pride to generations after us.
I felt lost for a long time. I thought that there was no other
like me. I thought I was abnormal, strange and this made me
powerless. My transgender niece or nephew, grandchild or
friend’s child will not feel lost. They will look at my portrait
and they will gain power, hope, peace of mind and pride. They
will know that another transgender existed before and that it is
okay to be gender non-conforming.
When the world sees our portraits, they will know that
Africa has transgender people and that there is a struggle
against injustices on our continent.
54
6 ‘PROUDLY AFRICAN & TRANSGENDER’
Thus writes Victor Mukasa, expressing the vision and intention

of the exhibition, both as the person with whom I envisioned
this project for a number of years, and also as one of the peo-
ple portrayed. Victor is an internationally respected Ugandan
LGBTI human rights defender, whose position in 2008 with
the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission
(IGLHRC) made this project possible. He now works as an inde-
pendent consultant.
In December 2008 the first ever gathering of exclusively African
transgender people took place in Cape Town, organised by the
IGLHRC and Gender Dynamix, initiated by Victor Mukasa. It
was an historic and very significant event, providing space for
people to share their specific experiences and language about the
meaning and consequences of being gender non-conforming in
their countries. As part of the gender identity workshop, Victor
and I introduced the possibility of the exhibition and invited
participants to take part. Each of the people who wanted to share
their experience in this way sat for me to draw them from life, and
collaborated by writing whatever they wanted to say about them-
selves directly onto their portraits. Later they wrote texts about
themselves, and the exhibition remains a work in progress in that
these texts change periodically. Participants came from Zimbabwe,
Uganda, Kenya, South Africa, Namibia, Burundi and Botswana.
In the absence of institutional support the portraits and stories
were not exhibited for a year, but all the collaborators felt strongly
that they should be, and one by one the doors started to open for
the work to be seen. The interest internationally is considerable.
There are plans afoot to show it more broadly on the continent.
55
Flavrina, Burundi
I am 30, born on the 7 April 1982.
I had three brothers and one sister. My father was a politician.
My mother was not rich but the little she had she liked to see
everyone enjoy. She taught me to share everything.
She would say, ‘I don’t know if you are my daughter or my
son but I love you.’ I was always together with my mum. When
I made a mistake she wanted to protect me and didn’t believe in
beating me. She died when I was 7 and my father when I was 12.
Life is hard for me as a transgender refugee in South Africa. I
have lived here for four years and been through a lot. I came to
South Africa for the Gender Identity Strategic Workshop in 2008,
the first meeting ever of African trans activists. While I was here I
received a message that it was not safe for me to go home.
I want to return to Burundi and continue my LGBTI activist
work, there are no other transgender activists that I know of there,
but I can’t travel until my papers are sorted out.
Right now I’m working hard at my English. I am involved here
as an activist for the rights of trans people, refugees, sex workers
and HIV positive people. I am part of the organisations SWEAT
and PASSOP. I am working part time as a street sweeper and part
time as a sex worker. I have dreams for my future and the contri-
bution I can make.
‘I am a child of God. Dieu est grand et il m’aime comme je suis.

God is great and he loves me as I am. J’aime les trans comme
moi. Je les sens dans mon corp et mon coeur. I love the trans
like me, I feel them in my body and heart. Imana ninkuru kandi
irankunda kandi ndumwana wimana.’
Text from portrait
56
Portrait by Gabrielle Le Roux, text by Flavrina. Cape Town, 2008
57
Portrait by Gabrielle Le Roux, text by Julius Kaggwa. Cape Town, 2008
58
Julius Kaggwa, Uganda

I am the founder and director of the Support Initiative for People
with Atypical Sex Development, SIPD, which is a grassroots not
for profit human rights organisation in Uganda. Through com-
munity outreach and engagement we provide support for inter-
sex Ugandans. We also provide reliable and objective information
on the plight of persons with intersex conditions and gender
non-conforming characteristics in Uganda. SIPD particularly
addresses the human rights, sexual health and social support of
intersex children and people. Our website is www.sipd.webs.com.
My decision to actively be involved in activism has brought
me face to face with some extremely painful experiences – right
within the LGBT community. I went through a very difficult time
and had to take some time off the public scene and recover.
From the struggles of my life I have never forgotten the love of
God and my parents who brought me into this world.
I believe in rights for all. I identify myself as a man but I’m not
a threat to women and my respect will always be there because
every human being has equal rights. I would never be in this
world if it wasn’t for a woman who chose to have me.
I am struggling and suffering because my culture expects the
opposite of me, but that doesn’t mean I will stop being an African.
I’m still black with black ancestors and I’m proud to be African.
Julius Kaggwa won the Human Rights First Award in 2010 for his work
against the Anti Homosexuality Bill in Uganda.
‘I’m intersex. I’m transsexual. I’m a man. I’m Ugandan and

proud of who I am. It has been a difficult journey but one I don’t
regret taking because I can only be who I am. A unique creation.’
Text from portrait
59
Madam Jholerina Brina Timbo, Namibia

I am a trans woman from Windhoek, Namibia. I am 23.
A long way I have come from a young tender age of 12. Trans-
phobia, verbal abuse and assault I have endured because of who I
am. Many believe and think being transgender is an abomination
and a disgrace to the nation.
Finding my true self and understanding myself was a battle I
thought would never end. With the help of Rainbow Project when
I was down, stressed and struggling with my physical appear-
ance and the whole thing, I could go about accepting myself as a
trans woman. Many friends I have lost when I reached that point.
Always trying to fit in but I never fitted in any group or people.
Clearly when we lose the right to be different we lose the privi-
lege to be free.
I would like us to be united as one in the fight against human
rights violations taking place in this world. Discrimination, stigma
and abuse are not only in Africa but the developed world as well.
In my country Namibia being LGBTI is a crime if you are
caught in the act. I hate the way people look at me and laugh. It’s
because there are no laws to protect me to be who and what I am…
I believe that as Human beings we must speak out for the greater
good of the world. But for me as a trans woman in Namibia, and
not having all the rights like everyone else, it’s not easy.
Long live the movements.
‘I’m an African woman. To understand me, get to know me. This

is who I am and what I am. I am the modern day Cleopatra.
Courage is not the absence of fear but rather the judgment that
something else is more important than fear. African beauty that
I am.’
Text from portrait
60
Portrait by Gabrielle Le Roux, text by Madam Jholerina Brina Timbo.

Cape Town, 2008
61
62
Silva Skinny Dux Eiseb, Namibia

I love my name.
I have lived in Namibia since birth. I see myself as a Trans
man. I am the founding Father of the Transgender movement in
Namibia, TAMON, Trans Activist Movement Of Namibia. I live
in one of the townships called Dolam in Windhoek. I have been
an activist for more than ten years in the LGBTI movement, and
I am a feminist.
Being a Trans person in Namibia is not an easy thing. You
need to have a brave heart to go out there in the streets, you are
exposed to lots of attacks physically and verbally if you are not
strong enough to defend yourself. It’s wrong to be different in
these people’s eyes than the usual: a man has to look like this and
a woman like that. That is why some Trans people are the victims
of corrective rape because they want to see if you are a real man,
you have to fight to prove that you are man enough. Trans women
are beaten up because a ‘man’ is not to behave in that way.
Letting my portrait be drawn is to let the world out there know
that we are there and we exist and that I am proud of who I am.
The exhibition will not only benefit me as a person but the whole
Trans community, I see it as a way of highlighting issues that nor-
mally stand in the background when people talk about human
rights. If the portrait of my reality and others in my situation is
spread around the world it might create a common ground for a
common struggle.
‘I’m special cos I’m two in 1. I don’t want or need to be boxed cos
Silva is precious in his own way. It has been a battle for me to
accept who I am but I’m past that space and have accepted who
I am. Silva. Special. I love who I am cos I’m unique.’
Text from portrait
Portrait by Gabrielle Le Roux, text by Silva Skinny Dux Eiseb. Cape Town, 2008
63
Skipper Mogapi, Botswana

I am an activist from Botswana, who has been in the fight for gay
rights since 2004. I identify as Trans man and worked as coordi-
nator of Lesbians, Gays and Bisexuals of Botswana [LeGaBiBo]
since 2006.
I hold two positions at the moment, the coordinator of LGBTI
movement, and as the Prevention and Research Initiatives for
Sexual Minorities [PRISM] assistant program coordinator, from
2007 to date.
My interest in LGBT rights started in 2004 when Behind the
Mask was doing research in LGBTI rights and movements and I
had been a media victim – my sexual orientation was disclosed in
the newspapers.
There are so many challenges I face as trans person in Bot-
swana, like having to be stared at all the time and asked to iden-
tify yourself everywhere you go, for example using the public
toilets or getting into a night club. At school I had a problem with
dress: I identified as a man and was expected to wear a dress all
the time.
It’s also hard to get a job. Although my papers show that I am
female, my physical appearance shows that I am a man. The hard-
est thing is, since I started taking testosterone in 2009, whenever
I travel the police and immigration officers have to question my
passport or identity card.
‘Black African man is who I am … the man no-one sees. Rejoicing

was my mother day I was born, happy to have given birth to a
baby girl. Little did she know I am trans.’
Text from portrait
64
Portrait by Gabrielle Le Roux, text by Skipper Mogape. Cape Town, 2008
65
Portrait by Gabrielle Le Roux, text by Victor Mukasa. Cape Town, 2008
66
Victor Mukasa, Uganda

I am a transgender person. Yes, PERSON! I transgress traditional
gender norms. Not to be stubborn, but that is me. It is not of my
own making. I was born that way. My childhood, as my parents
told it to me, and as far as I remember, was as such. People every-
where I went said that I look like a boy. In fact many addressed
me as a boy. Even to date, I am still the same. I dress just as boys
and or men traditionally dress. It is in my expression too. That is
me. I am a proud transgender person.
My experience as a transgender person in Uganda is not a
sweet story. In short, a transgender person in Uganda is con-
stantly surrounded with ridicule, mockery and abuse. For most
Ugandans, any person that expresses ‘him/herself’ as the opposite
sex is a homosexual and so this exposes transgender people to all
the mistreatment. All transgender people are seen as the obvious
homosexuals. Therefore, on top of all the transphobia, there is
homophobia, even if you are not gay.
The showing of Transgender Africans’ portraits is signifying
the need to protect, respect and promote the human rights of
transgender people, not only in Africa, but in every corner of the
world.
‘Victor the victor. I’m the Victor. Proud of who I am. A creation of
God. God created me with a clear purpose and I fulfil that every
day. My trans identity is my pride. A portrait of a trans African
has been a dream. Trans Africa here we come. I represent
diversity. God has given me 2 sets of eyes through this ID. My
dream of a proud trans movement has come true. This is for my
children and their children generation after generation. I was
never a myth.’
Text from portrait
67
Where the exhibition has been seen

The exhibition was first seen on the walls of the workshop in Cape Town
when it was being created in December 2008. Since then, ‘Proudly
African & Transgender’ has been publicly shown (in the form of prints) at:
Amnesty International in Amsterdam, February 2010.

International Congress on Gender Identity and Human Rights in
Barcelona, where six of the ten people in the portraits were
present. The exhibition provided a special platform for African
activists at that historic global gathering of trans activists.
Istanbul Pride 2010, at the invitation of Amnesty Turkey.
Joint exhibition with South African photographer Zanele Muholi’s
‘Faces and Phases’, IHLIA, International Gay and Lesbian Archive, at
de Oba, Amsterdam’s central library, July–October 2010.
Transgender Europe, 3rd Council, in Malmo, Sweden, October 2010.
Madrid during the Stop Trans Pathologisation March, October 2010.
Pembe Hayat Trans Remembrance Week conference in Ankara,
Turkey, November 2010.
African Same Sex Sexualities and Gender Diversity Conference,
Pretoria, South Africa, February 2011.
Athens Pride, Athens, Greece, July 2011.
TRIQ Trans Inter Queer Association, Berlin, Germany, September
2011.
This Human World Film Festival, Schikaneder, Vienna, November–
December 2011.
Café Munck, Hamburg, February 2012.
To see the exhibition online, visit: http://www.blacklooks.

org/2010/02/proudly-african-transgender/
68
7
The vampire bite that brought

me to life – fiction
Nancy Lylac Warinda
We like to think that vampires don’t exist and if they do in some

form they should be vanquished, pierced in the heart with a blunt
wooden stake. Well, I like vampires. I like their stealth, dark, mys-
terious countenance. To me they hold a promise of unfathomable
adventure and who doesn’t like adventure? I am obsessed with
the search for thrill. Blame it on daddy issues or unmanned hours
in front of the TV. Whatever, it’s just me.
I had had one of those long dull weeks and the much-anticipated
weekend was finally here. My girl Debby invited me to a wedding-
after party in one of the hottest clubs along Lang’ata road. Naturally,
I much obliged, determined to have a very wild night.
Heck, I deserved it. It had been months since I broke up
with my boyfriend Fred. Lush, handsome, proud Jaluo man
from Rapogi, he was a little rough on the edges because of his
impoverished background but had Einstein’s brain and fierce
ambition that saw him quickly rise up the corporate ladder in the
year we dated.
We dated for a whole fucking year. That was the longest I have
ever been in a relationship. He developed exquisite tastes which
I didn’t mind. Until those colossally annoying opportunistic
Nairobi gold-digging girls started circling around him like
hungry malnourished hyenas.
Whenever he took me out he insisted on having his sautéed
beef with red Bordeaux Medoc and his chicken with Italian non-
riserva Chianti or Côtes du Rhône. He loved his classic fondue
with New Zealand’s Sauvignon Blanc. He was getting too much
loving and he let it get to his head.
69
I opted to bow out of the relationship. I just couldn’t see myself

clamouring and competing for his attention.
Ahh! But he was lush, a treat to many a woman’s eye.
I could never date a guy who wasn’t lush. In fact my girl
always teased me that I only date beautiful men. Even then, I
was never truly happy. They ended quickly with me bored to
death with the relationship. I always felt like there was something
missing, something I could never seem to grasp at.
I was meeting Debby at the club. I put on my little white-
buckled, v-necked dress and a pair of suede ankle boots. Threw
on a black trench coat, wore my hair down and sprayed on Chloe
to keep fresh, I was hot and ready to have a ball.
Awesome DJ mixes thronged the air, the kind that just drive
you to shake your booty. The after-party crowd was alive and
ecstatic. Everybody was as high as a kite. ‘Makaratasi vinoma the
end!’1 as my good friend Debby puts it.
We danced like there was no tomorrow until I had had enough.
I slid past the revellers to my seat to take a breather and to reload
on the booze. I had sat for a few minutes when a lady came over
to my table. She introduced herself as Veronica. It immediately
rang a bell.
Once, Debby had described a girl she worked with who fit her
description like a glove. She had long beautiful locks that could
reach the middle of her back and which she neatly held up. Her
eyes were sexily small and smoky. She wore a classic cool CK
cologne, a plaid shirt, a black cropped jacket and khaki pants. She
looked as cool as that Smirnoff vodka commercial with water and
ice all over.
She sparked an interesting array of thoughts in my head. My
wildness radar went scarlet red. She was tall, slim with an athletic
build that I, surprisingly, found to be absolutely sexy. She had a
striking alpha masculine demeanour. I had to keep reminding
myself that she was a girl.
I have always been attracted to men yet I was fixated on her,
on the prospect of capturing her attention even if for the night
alone. She asked me to go get tequila shots with her and I was
immensely thrilled.
Something about her was incalculably intriguing. I don’t
know if it is the mystery that surrounds such arrangements that
70
7 THE VAMPIRE BITE THAT BROUGHT ME TO LIFE
drew me, or just my determination to party wild. I found myself

staring at her as she took her shots of tequila. There was a glint of
mischief in her eyes and I was damn sure it reflected in mine. We
went back to our seats and found our friends had finally quit the
dance floor. Everyone was talking too loudly as if the heightened
alcohol levels in their system had suddenly made them deaf.
Debby was on her usual inciter horse, urging people to drink a
little more. Debby and I had been friends for many years. She was
great to be around. A smart, beautiful, witty, funny, loving, happy
person. She had a kind soul and fabulously free spirit.
On this night she wore a flowery, flowing satin white and
pink dress that revealed her generous curves and emphasised
her hourglass African shape. She wore it with matching huge
dangling earrings and a pink scarf that stretched over her
shoulder to partly cover her exposed upper back, finally resting
on her voluptuous buttocks.
She made one of her colleagues, who apparently had some
interest in me, sit next to me. She was obviously oblivious to
the sexy undercurrents between me and Veronica. Everybody
who worked with her knew she was gay and of course I wasn’t.
I made small talk with the guy, which seemed to be such an
arduous experience because I kept thinking of Veronica. The guy
tried hard to capture my attention, with no fruit. Not even a tiny
grape.
What was she thinking? What was she making me think? Who
was she going home with? What was she going to do to her? I
excused myself and in unsteady steps headed for the ladies.
I didn’t know the location so I had to ask for directions from
a waiter – up some stairs and around some dark-lit corners. I
was surprised I found it in the hazy maze, with alcohol swirling
around in my brain.
When I got out of the ladies, I couldn’t remember from whence
I had come but I walked on trying to act more sober than I was.
I found myself out on the balcony and – alas! – there she was,
smoking her SM cigarette. It was almost as if some unseen force
was driving me towards her. She looked hot, feral and seditious.
And the look she gave me made my insides melt. My knees
went proverbially wobbly or was it that I was staggering drunk?
Anyway, I managed a, ‘I think I am lost.’
71
To which she whipped, ‘Are you sure you weren’t looking for
me?’ And indeed I wasn’t sure.
‘May I join you?’ I ignored her query.
‘Do you smoke?’
‘Sometimes.’
‘Enjoying yourself?’
‘Not with that guy I am not.’
‘Stick with me girl and I’ll show you a good time.’
She took my hand and led me to the dancing floor. We danced
in a subtle, sexy manner, careful not to arouse the undue interest
of ogling lustful men chancing for a threesome. We took a few
more shots of tequila and it was time to head home.
Debby had conveniently disappeared with her date.
Out on the parking lot, Veronica put her arm around me since
I was giving indications of feeling cold. Then she stopped me in
my tracks and squeezed me into a warm hug. She stared into my
face for like ten seconds and raised my chin into a kiss. First soft
and sweet, then deep with raging desire.
I wanted her and she wanted me just as bad.
‘Are you coming home with me?’ she whispered into my ear.
‘Uh, uh, I don’t…,’ came the weak reply.
I was looking over at Debby, who seemed pretty busy with
her date.
‘We are adults, we can do what we want.’ It’s like she had read
my mind and sensed my worry. ‘I will take care of you girl, you
won’t regret this.’
I didn’t need more urging, I needed her and I needed to see
how this shit would go down.
We got into a cab and conveniently sat in the back. She gave the
driver directions as she snuggled next to me. We couldn’t wait to
get to a more private place. We tried to be discreet but I bet the cab
driver knew the silence at the back meant we were getting busy.
He would shift nervously in the driver seat and cough
unnecessarily to cover his embarrassment. He made click sounds
and covered it up with a little whistling of an awkward tune. At
one point I thought he would drive the car to a screeching halt
and command us to get out.
He didn’t. I guess his homophobia ended where money was
concerned. We didn’t give a damn. What crime were we committing?
72
Veronica put her hand under my head and let her lips teasingly
brush over mine. She kissed my left cheek, bit my earlobe then
gently blew over it.
Frantically back to my mouth, like a love-starved lunge.
She dove in to kiss my collar bone with wet kisses as her other
hand searched for me, moving down under my dress to roughly
cap my breast, filling her palm with it.
I almost screamed when her cool finger found its way inside
me. Instead, what came out was a muffled awkward gulp. I put
my arms around her neck and drowned her in long desperate
kisses as one ending an era of deprivation.
‘Babe, we have to stop,’ she whispered, pulling away from my
embrace. ‘Otherwise, otherwise we won’t make it home.’
‘Yeah ... right!’ I relented and gently stroked the inside of her
arm in a bid to lengthen the moment. ‘How long till we get there?’
‘Not long darling … not long.’
It was only a few minutes later when we got to her place. She
hurriedly paid the cab driver and we practically ran through her
gate, past her front porch to her door. She fumbled with her bag
to look for her keys as I nervously looked on.
We briskly walked up the stairs and into her bedroom.
‘Welcome to my humble abode.’
‘Why, thank you.’
And that was more than we ever said that night.
She banged the door behind me and crushed her mouth into mine.
Her tongue, swift and sleek in my mouth, opening it, invading
it and spreading the flavour of desire.
When she moved to my throat I was gulping for air. I felt
lightheaded, enchanted, like my body was being transported into
a parallel universe.
I ran my fingers through her neatly locked hair and moved
her head back so I could reach for her lips. My tongue played
with hers, darting, folding, shifting and licking, demanding a
fulfilment of which I never knew existed in me.
She pressed herself against me, ran her fingers down my
back and grabbed my ass, pulling it upwards, smacking it to
leave a wicked ache between my thighs. I instinctively started
to unbutton her shirt and slipped my hand under to caress her
lovely breasts.
73
They were small, pear-shaped and firm. Her nipples erect,

exposing her desire.
She shoved me onto her bed and pounced on me like a hungry
lion. She yanked off my trench coat and threw it on the bed.
She undid the straps of my dress and let it slip to the floor. I
removed her shirt. She wasn’t wearing a bra.
The sight before me was surprisingly breathtaking.
She undid my bra strap and gently caressed my breasts. Our
eyes locked in a trance, drawing us to each other.
Her mouth was on me again, frantic, seeking, finding. Our
bodies glued to each other, imbibing each other as though we
intended entering each other. Locked in the pursuit of pleasure,
tongue meeting tongue, breasts pressing on breasts, belly on
belly. Rising and falling from grace together. I lifted my knees to
welcome her thigh that pressed upon my clit.
She moved mercilessly, eliciting a savage response. I felt like I
was floating on the ocean or dancing on a meadow with a sweet
summer breeze brushing against my cheeks.
Throaty murmurs escaped from somewhere in me as I fervidly
jerked up on her thigh. My hands moved up and down her
slender frame. Clutching a breast here, stroking a thigh there,
caressing her back, belly, ass, groin, finally sneaking a plunge into
her. She released an ‘Oh, God!’ as she jerked on my hand.
We moved in learned rhythm.
Heat swamped my entire bodice, coating my skin in sweat. She
sensed I was nearing the cliff as my breathing had become moist,
quick and intense.
A surprise huge bite on my neck that mimicked a vampire’s
bite shot a multiplicity of pain and pleasure, bombarding in an
atrocious attack to my system, leaving me in an oasis of pure bliss.
My emancipation only excited her more and she was
determined to lengthen my bliss.
She moved down, her mouth and teeth taking me to a zone
where normal things don’t happen very often. She was driving
me absolutely crazy and I didn’t even know how I could possibly
return the favour.
I slid more of my fingers deep inside her and paced her rhythm
with my play, intermittently stroking her clit with my other hand.
Her movements increased in tempo.
74
I could smell her primal pungent scent as her temperature

went a notch higher. Her breathing became quick and her heart
began to race. Finally, I heard her cry out a laboured cry to her
God again.
We lay on the bed, spent, exhausted, grateful to one another for
the magical moments.
Veronica was the first to speak.
‘Damn, girl! That was awesome!’ she said in a hoarse sexy voice
that made me want to kiss her again and again.
‘It really was … so … do you do this often?’
‘Do what?’
‘Meet up chicks in bars. Take ‘em home and fuck ‘em rancid?’
‘That is so crude and grossly inaccurate. I do not. Honestly,
you are the first girl I have been with in a long, long time.’ She
divulged, ‘I lost my girl friend in a car accident about this time
last year.’
‘Am so sorry, dear. Must have been a nightmare.’
‘It is still surreal to me. It took me a very long time to accept
her sudden death. She was my everything, my best friend, my
confidant, my lover, my soul mate. The woman who was going to
be my wife, my forever. I had even introduced her to my mother.’
‘Really, how did that go?’
‘My mom was in shock. Even though I had told her I like girls.
She never accepted it. She devised a plan to make me change my
mind. First, I had to be prayed for by her pastor, to remove the
demons in my head that were lying to me, convincing me that I
was a boy. Then I was to see a psychologist to help me deal with
the change. If that didn’t work, she would enlist the help of a
powerful witchdoctor. Brew a love potion that will make me fall
in love with her choice of man. I don’t blame her. She tried her
best in raising me all alone. She didn’t understand how I became
a lesbian under her careful watch.’
‘You must have loved her to bits, this girl.’
‘Yes, I did. Sometimes I think I still feel her, smell her perfume
and the pain starts all over again. I want to be honest with you.
You are a great girl but I hope you understand that I can’t really
rush into anything serious, not right now.’
Her words tore me up inside. I felt a sharp stab rush through
my entire body in a split second.
75
I needed more of her. She needed me less.

‘You need time, I know,’ I said, almost in a whisper. She heard
me and held me close.
‘That’s all I ask. You are the type I would love to bits.’
We cuddled up. I lay my head between her breasts and slowly
drifted to my own thoughts.
What did all this mean for me? I mean, what the heck did all
this mean? The experience I had with this girl was like nirvana.
Not just in the physical sense but on a deep emotional level. The
yearning I felt for her while we were at it was unlike anything I
had ever experienced.
She was gorgeous, lovely, a sight to behold. Soft, yet rough. I
could tell from her love-making that she was an incredible person.
I had just met her but I wanted to know her more. This wasn’t
going to be one of my little experiments. You know the ones, the
list of things to do before I die. I needed more of this shit. I needed
it bad and she was indeed beautiful.
But what did that make me? A lesbian? A bisexual? I never liked
those terms. They didn’t sound nice. To me they have always been
used in a bad light, always derogatory. Godless, perverse people
with no proper upbringing. Woman was meant for man. So how
can this exist? What did this mean? What was I? All the men I ever
went out with had to be extremely handsome, almost beautiful,
beautiful like a woman. It was always important for me to like
what I see. Here I was liking what I saw in someone like me.
Still, I didn’t think I would have liked to be called those names.
What business did anyone have defining who I was by someone
I sleep with? Who the hell made it so important to define people?
This defining who I was, did it have to be linked to my sex life?
Wasn’t it rather irrelevant to my personality, the thing that made
me me?
To me, sexuality was personal, not a personality. Sexuality is
fluid and flexible but as it is, a great conduit of power used to
manipulate and control people.
Nobody likes being controlled.
I knew I was so much more, much more than the box used to
define gays, bisexuals and lesbians in our society. When it came
to it, I wasn’t going to let anyone put me down.
I felt like a new dawn had begun in my life, a dawn of limitless
76
possibilities and adventure. I was determined to explore this

era to the fullest. Driven to be all I can be, all because of her,
stunningly gorgeous Veronica.
When she dropped me off at home, I wondered if I would see
her again, feel her and hold her close.
My heart sank when she didn’t ask for my number and just
bade me farewell.
Note
1 ‘Makaratasi vinoma the end!’ – Nairobi slang-phrase used to emphasise
inebriation.
77
8
Contesting narratives of queer

Africa
Sokari Ekine
Two distinct, yet interlinked, narratives dominate discussions of

queer African sexualities: one claims that queer sexualities are
‘un-African’ and the other treats Africa as a site of obsessive homo-
phobia. The first stems from a mix of religious fundamentalisms,
which insist on strict literal interpretations of religious texts, and a
culturally essentialist position which pathologises and denies the
existence of queerness on the continent. These fundamentalists
argue that queer sexualities threaten African social and cultural
norms and claim that pro-queer initiatives in Africa by Western
countries and NGOs are imperialist. The second narrative on
‘African homophobia’ is rooted in colonial discourses of deviant
and peculiar African sexuality and in a contemporary neoliberal,
global ‘LGBT’1 agenda which seeks to universalise white Euro-
American sexual norms and gender expressions (Hoad 2007:
xii, Massad 2007, Atluri 2009). The tensions posed by these two
narratives present a serious strategic challenge for African queer
anti-colonialist politics caught at various points between the
meta-narratives of LGBT imperialism and homophobic religious
fundamentalism on the one hand and indigenous contemporary
constructions of sexuality and gender on the other.
The moral panic against homosexuality across the continent
is systemic and indicative of an instrumentalised, well-organised
campaign which exposes the cosy relationship between reli-
gious and cultural fundamentalisms asserted through vigorous
nationalist political agendas. Nigeria, Uganda and, to a lesser
extent, Malawi have been at the centre of this anti-queer move-
ment, repeatedly driving state homophobia through reoccurring
78
8 CONTESTING NARRATIVES OF QUEER AFRICA
legislations. In Uganda, an anti-homosexuality bill was first

tabled in 2009 and since then it has been repeatedly reintroduced,
the latest reincarnation being on 7 February 2012. West African
politicians must have been on a ‘Uganda anti-gay’ watch as,
within days, politicians from two other countries had released
statements against same-sex marriage. The first was made by
President Yahya Jammeh of the Gambia during the swearing in
of a cabinet minister. It is hard to see this as coincidence as there
does not appear to be any other contextual reason why the well-
rehearsed statement was made at this time:
It’s not in the Bible or Qur’an. It’s an abomination. I am telling

you this because the new wave of evil that they want to impose
on us will not be accepted in this country…
As long as I am the president, I am not going to accept it
in my government and in this country. We know what human
rights are. Human beings of the same sex cannot marry or
date – we are not from evolution but we are from creation and
we know the beginning of creation – that was Adam and Eve
(Jollof News, 2012).
The second came from Liberia when in early February 2012, Rep.
Clarence K. Massaquoi introduced a draft bill that would crimi-
nalise same-sex marriage (Liberia Times 2012). This was followed
by an amendment prepared by Senator Jewel Taylor, former
first lady and ex-wife of Charles Taylor. The amendment to the
Domestic Relations Law would make same-sex marriage a felony.
Nigeria has also introduced a series of bills on same-sex/same-
gender marriage (2006, 2009) and in November 2011 the Same Sex
Marriage Prohibition Bill was passed by the Senate. At the time of
writing the bill has yet to be signed by the president.
But not everyone has chosen such unambiguous assaults on
LGBTI people. The valorisation and affirmation of heterosexual
marriage and ‘the family’ in the national project (as well as the
continental one, as can be seen from African Union instruments)
are pervasive in countries throughout the continent.
All three countries, Nigeria, Uganda and Liberia, have exist-
ing laws criminalising homosexuality that date back to Brit-
ish colonial rule. So the questions are not just why these laws
79
remain, but why are they being expanded and why now? The
refusal of the Nigerian and Ugandan bills to die, the potential
for copycat legislation in other countries, the international furore
around them, and differing queer responses present an opportu-
nity to examine these national and international paradoxes and
relationships of power.
The rhetoric around homosexuality being ‘un-African’ relies
on the essentialist notion of an ‘authentic Africanness’, based on
the belief that there is something intrinsic to Africa called ‘African
culture and African traditions’. But it is more than just a defining
of the authentic; it is the power to determine who counts as human
and what lives count as lives (Macharia 2010). This essentialist
position is problematic for many reasons. As Dosekun argues:
…an anti-essentialist position maintains that Africa and thus

African-ness or Africanicity are historical and therefore contin-
gent constructs. This means that we cannot meaningfully speak
of an essential Africa or of essentially African or un-African
things, in which case a consciousness and practice such as
feminism cannot be dismissed as un-African in these terms.
This anti-essentialist argument does not imply that there is no
such thing as Africa. It does not deny the many shared histori-
cal, material and cultural conditions across Africa, which are in
many ways unique to the continent and which in many ways
shape our identities as African. It denies rather that these condi-
tions are inherent, natural or fixed (Dosekun 2007).
Dosekun usefully reminds us of the linkage between the naming

and claiming of culture and traditions within kyriarchal2 struc-
tures of power and inequality. Rather than patriarchy, which is
concerned with the domination of men over women, kyriarchy
allows for a more complicated relationship of power based on
multiple intersecting structures of domination such as race, eth-
nicity, class, sexual orientation and gender (Fernandez Factora-
Borchers 2008).
The invocation of a nostalgic African culture as the basis for
the ‘homosexuality is un-African’ position is often countered by
the argument that this narrative originated with the imposition of
colonial penal codes, namely by the British. However, this does
not account for similar legislation in francophone and lusophone
80
countries. It is not my intention in this collection to focus on the

past, but as Clarke, Muthien and Ndashe point out later in this
book, the reference to the historical origins of homophobia in
Africa has limited usefulness as an argument for changing laws
and effecting social change.
A further analysis can be found in a reading of what Jacqui
Alexander calls ‘heteropatriarchal recolonisation’ (Alexander
1997: 66), the continuity between the ‘white heterosexual inher-
itance and Black heteropatriarchy’. Alexander’s focus is the
Bahamas and the states of the wider Caribbean; nonetheless,
she provides an excellent framework from which to locate con-
temporary homophobia in African states. The struggle to break
free of colonialism was largely a political project, which involved
minimal disturbance to Western economic interests or hetero-
patriarchal structures. Indeed, nationalist movements used the
same colonial, militarised masculinities as a foundation for liber-
ation and post-colonialism, thereby maintaining the non-status of
African women.
The heterosexualisation project of nation building is further
facilitated through legislation or re-legislation (Nigeria – same-
sex marriage bill, Uganda – anti-homosexuality bill). Heterosexu-
ality is consolidated as the only acceptable basis for citizenship
and the establishing/re-establishing of order and preventing/
ending the chaos brought about by sexual/social deviancy of the
queer imposition. Thus the renewed legislation builds on the ‘civ-
ilising mission’ of colonialism by reinforcing heterosexuality as
the natural order, existing without complication or contradiction
(Alexander 1997, Hoad 2007, Atluri 2009). To quote Alexander:
The law has now presumably emptied society, emptied hetero-

sexuality of the chaotic, the disorderly, the criminal. Both the
law and heterosexuality have now been sanitised to function
as the repository of order, returning each to an ordinary moral
position. Thus articulated, the law would have presumably sat-
isfied its civilising mission, functioning silently, as early British
mandates had commissioned it to do, while constructing and
defending its own hierarchies (Alexander 1997: 82).
81
The language chosen by African religious and political leaders

to justify heterosexuality as the only acceptable order is similar to
that used in other parts of the world: family, cultural and tradi-
tional values, sex based solely on procreation within the sanctity
of marriage and endless references from religious texts. For exam-
ple, as the Hon. Samson Osagie, Nigerian senator, stated:
It is only appropriate that as Africans we uphold our cherished

traditional values. It is scriptural that marriages are recognised
between a man and a woman. It debases our value when you
begin to tolerate marriage between people of same sex. For me, I
believe this is one bill that is popular and will enjoy the support
of majority of members of the House (Vanguard Nigeria 2011).
Following the passing of the Nigerian same-sex marriage pro-

hibition bill by the Senate in November 2011, there has been a
shift in language from morality to include sovereign national
rights and laws, possibly as a response to statements by the
British Prime Minister, David Cameron, tying development aid
to ‘LGBT’ rights (BBC, Andrew Marr Show, 2011) (Dowden 2011)
and the copycat statement by Hillary Clinton on enforcing ‘gay
rights’ globally (Clinton 2011).3 Both Cameron and Clinton hinted
that in countries that persecuted LGBTI people, monies would
be given directly to chosen NGOs – presumably those promis-
ing to become LGBTI-friendly. In response to aid conditionality,
Nigerian Senate President, David Mark, stated:
If there is any country that wants to stop giving aid because

we won’t pass the bill on same sex marriage; that country can
go ahead.
We are a sovereign nation and we have the right to decide
for ourselves because no country can interfere in the way we
run our country (AllAfrica.com 2011).
Nigerian civil society and human rights activists responded to the

bill in a statement addressed to the president and the house by
presenting an analysis of the ‘grave implications’ for all Nigerians
irrespective of their sexual orientation and gender identity:
82
It is worth noting for all Nigerian citizens that the proposed

bill aims at:
a) prohibiting any form of de facto cohabitation between
two individuals of the same sex or gestures that connote same
sex relationship directly or indirectly. If this bill becomes law
male–male or female–female holding of hands, touching each
other, making eye gestures, hugging or any display of affection
will be evidence for conviction and 10 years imprisonment.
The bill also aims to:
b) restrict the right to freedom of expression;
c) restrict the right to freedom of association;
d) restrict the right to freedom of thought, including the
freedom of conscience and religion (NSSMB 2006).
On the face of it, both the US and to a lesser extent the British
statements have substantial support from among British, US
and African activists. Similarly, statements by African countries
on sovereignty and the right to determine their own laws carry
some weight from an imperialistic point of view. However, below
the surface of the rhetoric of Western and African leaders lies an
unequal and sometimes precarious relationship. It is one that
is grounded in both colonialism, racism, economic exploitation
and debt dependency and a neoliberal consensus based on eco-
nomic imperatives, neither of which allows for any normative
contradictions. This consensus is riddled with assumptions that
LGBTI Africans live in silos, not as complete Africans, but outside
national and international political and economic realities. The
implication here is that as incomplete Africans, LGBTI people are
not affected by free market structural adjustment policies. Nor are
they impacted on by the increasing militarisation driven by the
US ‘war on terror’, which is exemplified by the US military pres-
ence, particularly through Africom, or by the actions of terrorist
organisations such as the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda or
Boko Haram in Nigeria.
The similarities between the impacts of the US Patriot Act, for
American Muslims in particular and people of colour in general,
and the Nigerian same-sex marriage bill on personal liberties,
censorship and freedom of speech are greater than most people
would care to contemplate. For example, both require increased
state surveillance supported by citizen vigilantism in order to
83
achieve the intended results. Both Muslims and queers are seen to
threaten the perceived religious and cultural values of an agreed
Judaeo-Christian heteronormative, implicitly white, imperative.
Yet, just as the US manages a materially productive relationship
with, for example, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain while at the same
time facilitating a growing internal Islamophobia, and certainly
not daring to challenge either of these countries on their human
rights (and particularly LGBTI rights) record, so too African
countries may continue similar relationships with the West while
curbing citizens’ rights when both are compelled by economic
imperatives. Interestingly, the statement by Nigerian civil society
criticising the Nigerian bill made reference to the potential nega-
tive impact it would have on Nigeria’s economy:
With this bill Nigeria and Nigerians will be shown to be

untrustworthy and incapable of upholding and domesticating
international treaties and conventions which they have signed
and ratified. From the perspective of foreign investors, the
inability to uphold international agreements raises the question
of whether their investment and personnel can be safe in the
hands of such an untrustworthy partner. At a time when the
country is on a drive to attract direct foreign investment, this
bill also stands as a threat to the economy (Nigerian Human
Rights Defenders 2011).
A common argument used to explain the introduction of anti-

homosexuality bills is that they are diversionary, a way of distract-
ing the populace from more urgent needs such as the removal of
fuel subsidies, high unemployment, corruption or fighting terror-
ism. While it is true that in many African countries anti-LGBTI
religious fervour and state homophobia have been a unifying
force, it is hard to imagine that whipping up hatred of queer folk
will in the long term distract people from these kinds of issues.
For example, the Nigeria Occupy Movement of January 2012,
which was focused on the removal of fuel subsidies and political
corruption, came about despite these distractions. Further, there
has been considerable criticism in the mainstream media and
social media in Nigeria following the passage of the bill in the
Senate. These remain minority voices but the voices are increasing
in number and becoming louder.
84
At this juncture, the transformation of LGBTI Africans from

un-African deviants to a legitimate minority remains elusive. In
South Africa the hard work of LGBTI activists like Simon Nkoli,
Bev Ditsie, Edwin Cameron and Zackie Achmat, to name a few,
ensured that the 1994 constitution gave full protection to LGBTI
people. Despite this there remains a high level of homophobia
and associated hate crimes, particularly against working class
black lesbians and transgender people, highlighting the inter-
connectivity of oppressions. Over the past 10 years many other
African countries have witnessed the transformation of LGBTI
Africans out of unseen closets into visible broken glass cabi-
nets, and the replacement of silences by an active and assertive
engagement with the state, civil society, queer communities and
international NGOs. Alongside the increasing visibility, and the
accompanying activism, there has been a growing presence and
intervention by what Massad calls the ‘Gay International’ (2007)
– ‘LGBT’, white, Northern-based NGOs and activists with an
almost obsessive interest in searching for homophobia across the
global South. The notion of a ‘shared gayness’ (Hoad 2007, Mas-
sad 2007) is established by these groups while at the same time
spectacularising African homophobia as a unique geographical
phenomenon, unconnected to local and global histories, and
essentially inherent.
Some sections of the Gay International take a different view
and seek to provide a historical account of ‘homosexuality’ or
same-sex intimacies. The stated aim is to counter the competing
narrative of ‘homosexuality as un-African’, placing the blame for
homophobia, at least in some countries, on colonial laws which
criminalised male homosexuality. It is not always clear whether
this search for ‘anthropological proof’ of pre-colonial sexual uto-
pias is for the benefit of us Africans or a justification for their own
involvement in saving Africa from its colonial legacies (Tatchell
2010). Either way, both these narratives obscure the diversity
and contextual specificity of queer African formations, past and
present, which are shaped by multiple factors – religion, ethnic-
ity, nationalism, globalised and indigenous popular cultures and
diaspora connections (Macharia 2010).
Responding to these anti-queer legislative efforts, Western
NGOs and governments have taken a strong interventionist
85
approach. This has culminated in statements by the British and

US governments on withdrawing aid to those countries in the
global South that continue to persecute LGBTI people. Follow-
ing the announcement by British Prime Minister David Cameron
referred to earlier, over 100 African social justice organisations
and activists issued a public statement expressing their ‘concern
about the use of aid conditionality as an incentive for increasing
the protection of the rights of LGBTI people on the continent’.
In particular the activists called for a complete rethinking of the
present methods of engaging with Africa, including the primacy
of consultation with those affected:
The imposition of donor sanctions may be one way of seeking

to improve the human rights situation in a country but does
not, in and of itself, result in the improved protection of the
rights of LGBTI people. Donor sanctions are by their nature
coercive and reinforce the disproportionate power dynamics
between donor countries and recipients. They are often based
on assumptions about African sexualities and the needs of
African LGBTI people. They disregard the agency of African
civil society movements and political leadership. They also
tend, as has been evidenced in Malawi, to exacerbate the envi-
ronment of intolerance in which political leadership scapegoat
LGBTI people for donor sanctions in an attempt to retain and
reinforce national state sovereignty (African Social Justice
Activists 2011).
The statement also pointed out that the legal foundation for per-
secuting LGBTI people throughout the Commonwealth was laid
down by the British Empire, and old ways of engaging with the
continent must be addressed by the affected, not simply imposed
by interventions of the same powers. However, not everyone is in
agreement on aid conditionality and a small number of organisa-
tions and activists were not supportive of the statement. Ugandan
activists from Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG) and Icebreakers,
who have been at the forefront of challenging state-sponsored
homophobia in their homeland, chose not to sign. Even among
those who argue in favour of aid conditionality there is an insistence
on consultation and a country-specific approach, as explained by
David Kuria of Gay Kenya (one of the signatories to the statement):
86
Instead of assuming that we can have a ‘pan-africanist’

approach, we should instead query what challenges and oppor-
tunities it presents to us as a country. Gay Kenya’s statement on
aid noted that each country has had a different aid narrative,
and could thus not talk of an ‘African’ but a contextualised
Kenyan response (Kuria 2011).
The dangers of the aid conditionality approach became clear with

the backlash surrounding the 2010 arrest of Malawian couple
Tiwonge Chimbalanga and Steven Monjeza. The couple were
sentenced to 14 years for ‘unnatural acts and gross indecency’
(Mapondera and Smith 2010) but later given a presidential
pardon. The high-profile nature of the case has led to a consid-
erable backlash against the Malawi LGBTI community. In an
interview, Malawian LGBTI activists commented that prior to the
Chimbalanga/Monjeza case, life was easier:
‘It was easier [before],’ says Thandeka. ‘Things are tough right
now.’
‘Some time back, you could dance, you could maybe kiss,
but not now,’ says Amanda. The men all have girlfriends or
wives to cover the fact that they are gay (IN Toronto 2012).
Reservation about international interventions remains strong,

particularly in view of the lack of consultation and the actions
which result in undermining and even endangering local activ-
ists and conditions. Even the space to write about and publicly
critique unilateral interventions from powerful Western activists
comes at the risk of libel cases and withdrawal of publications.
Dealing with unassailable personalities whose celebrity rests on
a history of struggle that sometimes has consequences more dire
for the ‘helped’ than the ‘helper’ remains a battle. The white sav-
iour complex is alive and well and thrives on appropriating other
people’s struggles.
Western interventions which seek to impose a Western narra-
tive on the queer African struggle are part of an uninterrupted
history of suppressing the needs and experiences of Africans dat-
ing back to colonisation. The African struggle is not only directed
at changing existing legislation; it is a struggle in which we seek
to reassert our own narrative and reclaim our humanity. The
87
Gay International, as part of an overall neoliberal agenda, is an

obstacle to defining and controlling the strategies and outcomes
of a queer African struggle based on intersecting struggles and
movement building. It also seeks to place itself at the centre of our
struggle, ignoring local resistance and the overall movement for
liberation and commitment to justice.
The universalisation of ‘gay rights’ was officially formalised by
Hillary Clinton in her 2011 Human Rights Day speech in which
she vowed that the US would actively seek to ensure that LGBT
rights existed throughout the world (Clinton 2011). Note that
she uses the acronym LGBT and the word ‘gay’ rather than the
more inclusive LGBTI or LGBTIQ used by most Africans. She
appears not to have heard of intersex people and their rights in
this struggle.
Although Clinton did acknowledge that the US record on
‘LGBT’ rights was far from perfect, her statement contained a
number of glaring omissions, not least how the US intended to
enforce global ‘LGBT’ rights. Would there be sanctions, with-
drawal of aid, refusal to sell military equipment or targeted
assassinations? The lack of clarity reduces Clinton’s position to
the murky waters of international diplomacy and double speak.
Take this statement from the outgoing US ambassador to Liberia,
which was made after the introduction of two anti-homosexuality
bills in the country:
She stated, however, that the issue of gay rights in Liberia was
being surrounded by what she referred to as ‘misconceptions’.
‘Our policies on gay rights are in the public domain,’ she
said. ‘I think the issue that has appeared in Liberia is the issue
of misconception that United States aid is tied to Liberia’s
actions in these areas, and this is not the case,’ she said.
She told the Daily Observer that she was surprised to learn
that gay rights in Liberia were an issue.
‘I don’t know that this is an issue here in Liberia; although
I read about it in the press all the time, I was surprised to hear
that this is an issue in Liberia’ (Binda 2012).
Considering that most African countries are US allies and are of

strategic military importance, it is hard to imagine that policing
and enforcement would be anything other than selective. As is
88
usual for US diplomats, Clinton did not appear to see the irony in
the declaration that the US would now be policing the world on
one set of rights while itself engaging in numerous human rights
violations at home and abroad.
Clinton also conveniently ignored the growing anti-gay evan-
gelical movement in the US and its ties with similar movements
in Africa. However, the real concern for African LGBTI people
engaged in building progressive social movements is what kind
of world Clinton’s ‘LGBT’ rights invoke. How much will it com-
promise social and economic justice and grassroots democracy in
our respective countries? Framing the narrative in terms of rights
creates tensions with other civil society and social movements.
Queer Africans are not just queers, they are people who live their
lives in the same way as everyone else and as such our struggle
needs to align itself with other social justice movements such as
those of and for rural women, shack dwellers, climate change,
land rights and so on.
These pronouncements conveniently ignore the Western history
of racism, colonialism and homophobia and even those that recog-
nise colonial culpability in homophobic laws do so with the idea that
European and American versions of sexual narratives and activism
are the standard which we should all follow (El-Tayeb 2011).
Those of us living in the diaspora are well aware that Cam-
eron’s and Clinton’s statements are contradictory to the racial
configurations of citizenship as experienced in Europe and
America, where even birth is insufficient as a marker of belong-
ing. The only way African queers are meaningful activists in
the diaspora is if they are working as certified internationalist
advocates. At the point when one is unwilling to become a ‘col-
laborator’ in the internationalist agenda, thereby challenging the
West’s legitimacy as saviours, our voices are silenced by casting
us as inauthentic Africans. To be authentic one has to be living
on the continent and be framed as a victim. Kagendo Murungi’s
experience, narrated in this volume (see Chapter 21), of working
with the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commis-
sion (IGLHRC) in New York provides some excellent examples of
how the voices of Africans in the diaspora are dismissed.
African states claim sovereignty but at the same time
employ a heightened cultural and religious fascism to fuel state
89
homophobia. Even here, there is a complexity in the relationship

between some African states and religious institutions as to where
power lies in determining the moral agenda and who is accepted
as a citizen. Another tension derives from LGBT imperialism that
by now has fledged into a profitable NGO/donor industrial com-
plex built on the premise of saving Africans from Africa. As these
conflicting tensions push against each other, they have become
internally divisive as the various activists struggle to be heard.
Even as African LGBTI people have become the site of struggle
between competing but related narratives and as the associated
tensions push against each other in internally divisive ways, it
is essential they engage on their own terms, with the national
and the international, and continue to explore the challenges of a
transformative politic.
Notes
1 Note on terminology: the term LGBTI (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender
and intersex) is the acronym in general use by Africans. I use ‘queer’ as
a broader, more inclusive terminology. Other terms – LGBT (lesbian, gay,
bisexual, transgender), ‘homosexuality’, ‘gay’ – are used only in reference
to direct speech.
2 From the Greek word kyrios, meaning ‘lord’ or ‘master’.
3 In this speech on Human Rights Day 2011, US Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton called for a worldwide end to criminalisation of LGBT people.
References
African Social Justice Activists (2011) ‘Statement of African social justice
activists on the decision of the British government to “cut aid” to African
countries that violate the rights of LGBTI people in Africa’, http://bit.ly/
SVB0rr, accessed 19 December 2012
Alexander, M. Jacqui (1997) ‘Erotic autonomy as a politics of decolonisation:
an anatomy of feminist and state practice in the Bahamas tourist
economy’, in Alexander, M.J. and Mohanty, C.T. (eds) Feminist Genealogies,
Colonial Legacies, Democratic Futures, London and New York, Routledge
AllAfrica.com (2011) ‘Nigeria: Christians laud passage of same sex marriage
bill’, 1 December, http://bit.ly/uy0nnc, accessed 28 January 2012
Atluri, Tara (2009) ‘Putting the “cool” in coolie: Disidentification, desire and
dissent in the work of filmmaker, Michelle Mohabeer’, Caribbean Review of
Gender Studies, 3
BBC, Andrew Marr Show (2011) ‘David Cameron moralises on foreign aid’,
30 October, YouTube, http://bit.ly/wbMmkO, accessed 4 February 2012
Binda, S. (2012) ‘US aid not tied to gay rights, says outgoing US
ambassador’, Daily Observer, http://bit.ly/zNBFJn, accessed 3 March 2012
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Clinton, Hillary (2011) ‘Secretary Clinton’s Historic Speech on LGBT Human

Rights – “Gay rights are human rights”’ , 6 December, YouTube, http://
www.youtube.com/watch?v=MudnsExyV78, accessed 4 February 2012
Dosekun, Simidele (2007) ‘Defending feminism in Africa’, Center for African
Studies, Cape Town, http://www.africanstudies.uct.ac.za/postamble/
vol3-1/defending.pdf, accessed 6 November 2012
Dowden, Richard (2011) ‘Getting gay rights wrong in Africa’, Royal Africa
Society, http://bit.ly/wqpLab, accessed 4 February 2012
El-Tayeb, Fatima (2011) ‘European others: queering ethnicity in postnational
Europe’, University of Minnesota Press
Fernandez Factora-Borchers, Ana Lisa (2008) ‘Accepting kyriarchy, not
apologies’, My Ecdysis blog, http://bit.ly/4vhZOS, accessed 28 January
2012
Hoad, Neville (2007) African Intimacies: Race, Homosexuality and Globalisation,
Minneapolis, MN, University of Minnesota Press
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insight/item/212-cruel-to-be-kind, accessed 3 March 2012
Jollof News (2012) ‘Gambian president renews attacks on homosexuals’,
http://bit.ly/ADaLEO, accessed 20 February 2012
Kuria, David (2011) ‘Aid conditionality – blessing or curse’, Gay Kenya blog,
http://bit.ly/tsujVa, accessed 28 January 2012
Liberia Times (2012) ‘Outlaw gays’ right’, http://theliberiantimes.com/?p=5662,
accessed 20 February 2012
Macharia, Keguro (2010) ‘Homophobia in Africa is not a single story’, The
Guardian, 26 May, http://bit.ly/yifxG3, accessed 28 January 2012
Mapondera, G. and Smith, D. (2010) ‘Malawian gay couple jailed for 14
years’, The Guardian, 20 May, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/
may/20/malawian-gay-couple-jailed-14-years?INTCMP=SRCH, accessed 6
November 2012
Massad, Joseph (2007) Desiring Arabs, Chicago and London, University of
Chicago Press
Nigerian Human Rights Defenders (2011) ‘Human rights and legal
implications of the Same Sex Marriage Prohibition Bill, 2011 for every
Nigerian citizen’, http://bit.ly/U8xQQB, accessed 19 December 2012
Nigerian Same Sex Marriage Bill (NSSMB) (2006) http://bit.ly/ZOKclb,
accessed 19 December 2012
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Independent, http://ind.pn/KbeciP, 9 May, accessed 23 February 2012
Tatchell, Peter (2011) ‘Don’t cut aid over human rights abuses, switch it’, 1
November, http://bit.ly/A0M9Sf, accessed 20 February 2012
Vanguard Nigeria (2011) ‘Same sex marriage: FG, N/Assembly damn US’,
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91
9
African statement to
British government on aid
conditionality
We, the undersigned African social justice activists, working to

advance societies that affirm peoples’ differences, choice and
agency throughout Africa, express the following concerns about
the use of aid conditionality as an incentive for increasing the
protection of the rights of LGBTI people on the continent.
It was widely reported, earlier this month, that the British Gov-
ernment has threatened to cut aid to governments of ‘countries
that persecute homosexuals’ unless they stop punishing people in
same-sex relationships. These threats follow similar decisions that
have been taken by a number of other donor countries against
countries such as Uganda and Malawi. While the intention may
well be to protect the rights of LGBTI people on the continent, the
decision to cut aid disregards the role of the LGBTI and broader
social justice movement on the continent and creates the real risk
of a serious backlash against LGBTI people.
A vibrant social justice movement within African civil society
is working to ensure the visibility of – and enjoyment of rights
by – LGBTI people. This movement is made up of people from
all walks of life, both identifying and non-identifying as part of
the LGBTI community. It has been working through a number
of strategies to entrench LGBTI issues into broader civil society
issues, to shift the same-sex sexuality discourse from the moral-
ity debate to a human rights debate, and to build relationships
with governments for greater protection of LGBTI people. These
objectives cannot be met when donor countries threaten to with-
hold aid.
92
9 AFRICAN STATEMENT ON AID CONDITIONALITY
The imposition of donor sanctions may be one way of seeking

to improve the human rights situation in a country but does not,
in and of itself, result in the improved protection of the rights of
LGBTI people. Donor sanctions are by their nature coercive and
reinforce the disproportionate power dynamics between donor
countries and recipients. They are often based on assumptions
about African sexualities and the needs of African LGBTI people.
They disregard the agency of African civil society movements
and political leadership. They also tend, as has been evidenced
in Malawi, to exacerbate the environment of intolerance in which
political leadership scapegoat LGBTI people for donor sanctions
in an attempt to retain and reinforce national state sovereignty.
Further, the sanctions sustain the divide between the LGBTI
and the broader civil society movement. In a context of general
human rights violations, where women are almost are vulnerable,
or where health and food security are not guaranteed for anyone,
singling out LGBTI issues emphasizes the idea that LGBTI rights
are special rights and hierarchically more important than other
rights. It also supports the commonly held notion that homo-
sexuality is ‘unAfrican’ and a western-sponsored ‘idea’ and that
countries like the UK will only act when ‘their interests’ have been
threatened.
An effective response to the violations of the rights of LGBTI
people has to be more nuanced than the mere imposition of
donor sanctions. The history of colonialism and sexuality cannot
be overlooked when seeking solutions to this issue. The colonial
legacy of the British Empire in the form of laws that criminalize
same-sex sex continues to serve as the legal foundation for the
persecution of LGBTI people throughout the Commonwealth.
In seeking solutions to the multi-faceted violations facing LGBTI
people across Africa, old approaches and ways of engaging our
continent have to be stopped. New ways of engaging that have
the protection of human rights at their core have to recognize the
importance of consulting the affected.
Furthermore, aid cuts also affect LGBTI people. Aid received
from donor countries is often used to fund education, health and
broader development. LGBTI people are part of the social fabric,
and thus part of the population that benefit from the funding.
A cut in aid will have an impact on everyone, and more so on
93
the populations that are already vulnerable and whose access

to health and other services are already limited, such as LGBTI
people.
To adequately address the human rights of LGBTI people in
Africa, the undersigned social justice activists call on the British
government to:
Review its decision to cut aid to countries that do not protect

LGBTI rights
Expand its aid to community based and lead LGBTI pro-
grammes aimed at fostering dialogue and tolerance
Support national and regional human rights mechanisms to
ensure the inclusiveness of LGBTI issues in their protective and
promotional mandates
Support the entrenchment of LGBTI issues into broader social
justice issues through the financing of community lead and
nationally owned projects.
http://bit.ly/SVB0rr
94
10
Straight to the matter – fiction

Olumide Popoola
You might think that I should’ve headed straight for the arrival
gate. I shouldn’t have sat there denying the blazing heat, the
welcome that would surely hit me straight on, like a meltdown.
Just because there was this air-conditioned not-yet-land I could
hide in for now and later on fill it with the philosophical musings
of a 30-something. That age group is notorious for the musings
and until they’re in their 50s one must wait and endure their
new found wisdom. Especially should one reside at that point
(temporarily) in another age bracket. All of this so their fragile
emotional inner lives could deal with transience and the fact that
one eventually perishes.
What’s the rush, you might say? What’s the rush of getting
things done, pressing along, tying loose ends? Of bringing this
into a nice bundle that from now on can be carried on to patient
places where gentle people will carefully unfold and unwrap it?
What’s the rush? Well, age. Ageing. The invariable charge of infin-
ity and the hotter than July (in some real hot country) question:
will we prevail (meaning will we remain beyond death)?
But we’re not there yet, nowhere near. You keep interrupting
before we’ve had the chance of coherence. You would say, move
on, straight away. Don’t hesitate just to take in everything. Just
to stare at the clusters of people streaming by me, queuing in
animated manner underneath the slightly elevated glass window.
It completed the box inside which a couple of sweating men sat.
Receiving, inspecting, then issuing in beige uniforms: passport
control. The commotion was loud and powerful. I had to take
a rest and if you stay quiet I will actually get one too. I found a
bench on the wall, lining the swelling sight of travellers. Whole
families returning from successful lives abroad, business people
95
who took shopping opportunities after whatever their line of for-

tune had lifted them westwards; students on leave; other business
people from other shores looking to dock onto the fertile harbours
of this complicatedness. Searchers. Knowers. Returnees. Few fugi-
tives (as far as I could tell).
I would have smoked had I not been at the airport and had I
not been under-age. Together with the toxic fumes I would have
inhaled the scenes of elaborated reunions and recent farewells.
The losses and gains and the euphoric expectations of what was
about to happen beyond the immigration booth. But I didn’t
smoke; we were after all at the airport.
I too would soon pick up the pieces I had left behind or inter-
twine new memories with established and tested truths of mine, I
would. There was no need to delay, I can hear you say that. Stride
along into the future. Those who do, meet their fate early.
I was bending forward on the bench that I was sitting on
with my legs apart, my elbows firmly planted on my thighs,
right where the knees started, hands loose, dangling and totally
nonchalant. In this position all observation was a manner of look-
ing upwards, and casually turning my head, and following the
drama. The small girl who I had played with during the crowded
flight, or rather she had played with me, sought me out, running
up and down the aisle to where business class began, constantly
turning her fuzz-ball-crowned head. Her hair partitioned into
neat squares, held together by colourful dices and balls that made
a faint clicking sound every time she reached the dividing curtain
and her eyes looked back. Was I – and I was sure that it was me
she was seeking out – following her? Her dimples reaching for
me without words, she knew the value of her cuteness already
and the impact a smile would impart on anyone, not just a youth
like me. I couldn’t help it. I darted my arm out when she was on
her way back and with high-pitched chuckling she ran towards
it, then fell into it, over and over again. Her mother who sat three
seats behind me in one of the middle aisles hadn’t been too happy
about it. I wasn’t the type to instil anxieties, but well, I wasn’t
inducing any confidence in advanced baby-sitting skills either.
After half an hour of conversation and game playing between
me and the little one, Mum was sleeping, nevertheless. Out like a
dog, her head resting on the right neigbour’s shoulder. Like that
96
10 STRAIGHT TO THE MATTER
she was producing a false picture of marital bliss with him and
he – from time to time – looked at the woman who was passed
out on his arm as if at some point in the farther past he had knelt
and asked for her hand (or anything similarly appropriate). She
didn’t move at all, remained with her mouth wide open, feet
stretched out, now that finally they were outside the shoes. I had
stood the test and the child’s mother had eventually given in to
the faint buzzing, that all planes seem to give off like unlaboured,
even breaths – air-conditioned and altitude frozen into mechani-
cal anonymity – and that would make for a light sleep, above the
clouds, as they say.
I never got the girl’s name because her mother didn’t wake
up again until the films were being repeated for the third time
and the girl’s nappy was full and tears aflood. My tickling power
– and overall attraction – diminished instantly. Mum looked
astounded and took a moment to return from where her dreams
had taken her into the wide tube that was navigating the night
sky. She patted her daughter’s hair absent-minded, slinging her
arm around her small neck to console her but when the ledge of
the chair proved to be in the way she pulled the small body up in
one confident move. Her daughter ended up on her lap and with
her other hand she fumbled for her pumps to help her swollen
feet ease back into the blue patent leather.
‘OK, OK,’ she shushed and they went to the tiny toilet cubicle.
When they returned, the girl freshly changed and sleepy, the cap-
tain announced the imminent arrival in Lagos.
They were approaching the glass window. The mother’s royal
blue buba and iro were finished with a tangerine gele and matching
cobalt blue shoes and handbag. She handed the passport to one of
the pair behind the glass window. I waved but the little girl didn’t
see me. I should’ve gone over to say good bye, you may say, but
what for? They passed to the other side. What good would it do
to prolong this casual encounter as if it were of more significance
than it could possibly be?
They had arrived. I however, remained firmly in limbo.
He knew I was coming. He was probably amid the heaving
cluster of expecting this-side-bounds, looking out for me. Imag-
ining how I had myself found a similar outfit of matching skirt
and blouse and if not a purse then a suitably feminine carry-on
97
bag. Don’t laugh. He would be on the other side, his sunken eyes
squinting, too stubborn to accept how glasses versus pride would
ease his days. He would be there, shorter than myself, stocky but
only with a small belly, like I had seen on the picture Ada had
emailed. With silvery hair that slowly eased away from his fore-
head, leaving growing lakes amongst the bountiful sides.
You don’t remember Ada, do you? That is because you’re
always just a bit ahead of yourself. Those who wait might some-
times get the whole story. It’s up to you.
The queue was getting shorter and I was attracting attention.
Don’t say you could’ve told me so. Say that you understand. At
least pretend. That is an option.
It wasn’t just the security people who had already told me a
few times:
‘Sah. Dis place is not for waiting o. Go there and show your
passport.’
I had excused myself, pointed at my face from which the sweat
was pouring generously.
‘Sorry. Don’t mean to be a problem. Just a moment, if I may.
Please. It’s my circulation. I’m a bit dizzy. Just a moment to rest.’
They had left me there when I pulled the plastic bottle of water
out of my rucksack. No need to get anyone. Just a moment to come
by and chill. That’s all I wanted. The guard that had stood in front
of me in his impeccably ironed uniform, legs apart, arms folded
and thumbs hooked into his belt, towering over my sunken frame,
was now pointing at me. He was standing next to the passport
box, speaking to a man who had newly arrived. It was a tall, lanky
figure, thin and breathless and I instantly thought he must be the
supervisor. He looked like he had dashed out from a secret office
in the inner workings of the well-constructed and refurbished air-
port. There had been a fire, a severe one, my flight seat neighbour
had informed me before I had gotten absorbed with the girl and
ignored him. I hadn’t been into talking, my stomach felt too tense
to inhale and release words in regular fashion; and he was a first
year engineering student. I wouldn’t have known what to ask.
The guard moved away from the box with the immigration
officials, coming towards me in long strides.
The last time we had spoken was on the phone. I had spoken.
Dad had been quiet. I didn’t know whether he was on the other
98
end of the line, but the urge to say what I did had consumed me.
Riding a wave, a perfect one. At its crest – its highest point – I
was gushing out sentiments like no man’s business. Laying down
arguments really – prophylactic – all across the low and even
force that was arriving at the shore, slow and inevitable. I thought
they’d be there together, the points I’d made, like waves shoaling
towards the beach, where there was understanding. To be met
with multiple possibilities, which in my fevered excitement were
all positive ones. I hadn’t taken into consideration that it also
meant one could occupy different spots, in different bays, just
as we two are still struggling over the question at what age one
learns to sit with one’s helplessness.
What I had also miscalculated was that beach was synonymous
with holiday, thus unreal and impermanent. The stuff of dreams
that slipped through the consciousness and was best observed
through its gaps, but not taken for the real deal. I wasn’t sure if
he’d listened until his voice echoed in his unmistakably guttural
timbre inside my ear.
‘I have already made myself clear in my email. Have I not?’
I looked this up. This. What happened when my hopes col-
lapsed. The way the water arrives when something is in the way.
It says: diffraction refers to various phenomena that occur when
a wave encounters an obstacle, the apparent bending of waves
around a barrier. It also occurs with matter.
So I too crashed. I fell right through. It wasn’t a small obstacle,
it was huge. Everything.
I wonder what you would have suggested? With your sure
ideas about the simplicity of it all.
‘What’s the worst that can happen?’
Nothing was worse than this.
‘I have already made myself clear.’
Now, looking at it again, I can see that it wasn’t diffraction at
all. I was quite literally axed.
The supervisor arrived at my side.
‘Are you well? If you need any medical attention…?’
‘No, no, I’m fine. I’m sorry to keep bothering you. I’m just rest-
ing until the end of the queue has moved.’
‘Well, as you will see,’ he continued in polite fashion, extending
both his index and middle finger to the place where only minutes
99
ago there had been a line in front of the booth, ‘this is already so.
You need to show your passport to the official over there.’
‘Yes,’ it came out of my mouth warily, ‘of course.’
Last time I had been here I had only been a few years older
than the girl I’d played with earlier. A friendly stewardess had
taken my tiny hand and brought me from the check-in counter
into the aircraft. There was no one to hold my clammy hands now.
I unscrewed the plastic bottle I was still holding and took a deep
swig. Then I shouldered the backpack with sudden leverage. The
officer looked pleased. His hands on stand-by, ready to grab me
by the side should my body fail after all.
Surprisingly, everything went very quick but I should tell you
that there was a suspicious look: a long one that travelled from
my shaved head (number 1) to my oversized T-shirt and the
baggy three-quarter denims. Another thorough inspection of the
red passport.
‘Kara Funmilayo?’
‘Yes.’
‘Are you sure? Kara?’
He was there on the other side, he would be. Like that time
when I had been the aircraft personnel’s darling. When the stew-
ardess had led me out to passport control, he was waiting right
here, right by this place – or, actually, I’m not sure where it was,
it was before the fire, but figuratively speaking it was this exact
place. He had gotten me through security without queues, with-
out much scrutiny due to a bit of help from a beige-uniformed
military man, a friend who was generous towards dad and me. In
return dad was generous to him.
‘It’s not Yoruba. English.’
‘Oh, OK. Funmilayo?’
This last bit a question. One that didn’t await an answer. Not
from me. As I said, all went quick. He showed his box partner my
passport and as they were speaking to each other in low voices,
debating. Suddenly, he nodded vividly and stamped it. Another
lingering look but no more whispering. I was released. Emptied
out into the deserted baggage claim area where only a few cases
were left on the carousel. Mine stood out. A brand new sports
duffel bag, not unlike the blue-robed lady’s gele, only brighter, a
much brighter sort of pumpkin colour with white leather seams
100
and suspiciously small next to the set of four identically clothed

trolley cases. I was in no rush.
You might interrupt and mention that I hadn’t been so far, any-
way. That I had and have been digressing in every possible man-
ner. Ploughing through each detail in a laborious way. I, of course,
would have to reject your interference, deny it any grounds for
discussions, for surely details are a matter of consideration and
hardly have I elaborated on many. Maybe not enough? But wisely,
this time, I will keep my peace, join the observation, with you.
Searching. Knowing. Returning. Was I a fugitive?
The rucksack fitted onto my back like an extra piece of cloth-
ing, as if it belonged. Mine had been the last international flight in
and its arrival two hours previous had brought a steady stream of
good tips from the cheerful returnees and travellers. The baggage
handlers could see that I wasn’t a promising prospect. My late
coming had confirmed this already, my young age was another
clue. The lack of urgency in my stride gave view to my reluctance:
I was no achiever, no generous spender but although barely past
adolescence, someone with baggage. Other types of loads. A lost
wanderer.
‘Sah. Sey you na need taxi? Hotel? Transport? Directions?’
They tried, nevertheless, although with little conviction or
effort, but my shaking head only confirmed their suspicions.
They’d thought so.
His email had of course made everything very clear. Especially
the matter of direction and which one my life had gone. Which
decision I had made and that I had taken it without consulting
with him on the matter. The matter. As if one could palpate it, as
if there was such a thing; break it apart even, find within it free-
flowing and binding elements which one could designate certain
importance to. Onto one more than others. A matter of decision.
As if one could exchange them for another order and produce an
altogether different matter – or more precisely, form. Have them
arrange themselves in a refuting direction to the one I had so inde-
pendently insisted on. Which, to bring the matter to a close, had
opposed in the first instance, directions that should be inherent
and a given. That although matter could change, this particular
one was inherently made for permanence.
The tote bag felt good in my hand. The soft leather handle in
101
my palm prevented it from slipping. It actually absorbed a bit of

the moisture from my clammy hands, soaking up my anxieties
with it, which could only mean that things were looking up. My
confidence boosted itself into action. One more door, one more
wall to pass through.
Finally, with conviction, I walked through, striving forward,
silently congratulating myself for choosing the three-quarters,
although it had been uncomfortable when the damp wind lifted
the legs slightly from the inside when I left London hours ago.
There was an almost dull thud, the way the heat was welcom-
ing me and I abruptly stopped in my tracks. The pavement was
empty. No one was there. He hadn’t come.
Why must we go over this, you ask? Why return?
Sweat was again pouring down the length of my torso, this
time no longer in anticipation but with the help of humidity, in
full knowledge of the matter.
His word had said: ‘Obviously, your time in Europe has taken
you away from our way of life. Although you’re not yet to be con-
sidered a woman, you have proven to me that you are capable of
taking matters into your own hands.’
I had broken the form, claimed in youthful need a name that
was neither African nor one that could bear his, and he therefore
released me to my chosen destiny.
Young men were helping passengers from other flights lug
heavy cases into their waiting taxis. A large man with two
mobiles, one to his ear, with another gesticulating as two porters
heaved an oversized suitcase into the boot of a rusty Peugeot.
‘No, I’ve expected you at the time that I’ve told you to come
here. You come and you wait, you hear? I don’t need any apolo-
gies now, I’m standing at the airport, without a driver, without my
own car. It is unacceptable.’
My feet were heavy and there was no possibility of moving,
not even a centimetre. ‘But where are you? You are meant to wait.
Madam didn’t know that I was arriving at this time. You did!’
Four large cases in identical casing and descending size had
been stored in the trunk and on the back seat. The large, dark
man in beige pants and matching brown and beige checked polo
shirt heaved himself into the backseat, next to the smaller two
of the luggage quadruple. The driver waved a thank you to his
102
helper and the man was shouting into the phone, the door still
wide open.
You’re quiet now? Here is where I could need a wise interven-
tion, one of your sure help-alongs. I had called. Like you said,
what’s the worst that could happen.
‘Have I not made myself clear? In view of your decision you
are no longer considered part of this family.’
I was released. I wasn’t returning, I wasn’t searching – I knew
– and I was definitely not a fugitive. No one was here to get me,
what could I be running from? The crashing waves had split into a
magnitude of possibilities. They did not bear space for all matters.
Not this one. Aunty Ada had called and said, ‘Just keep quiet and
have a child. No one will ask afterwards. You’re so young. Your
father has neglected you when you needed him most. Don’t turn
your back on him now. Just go and have a child.’
I hadn’t turned my back, in fact here I was facing all, although I
had not brought a child, simply because I hadn’t borne one.
The man in beige stepped out of the car again, now holding each
of his phones to both ears before his voice and face calmed down
like the rough sea might do once the storm had passed the shore.
‘OK, I’ll wait.’
He hung up, then spoke quietly to the taxi owner, handing
him a generous amount of naira for his wasted time. I placed the
tote bag on the dusty cement square. A large car pulled up. The
darkened windows didn’t allow me to see who was inside and
the large man was blocking the view when he nearly ripped the
door out of his hinges so eagerly was his opening. Joyful hellos
were exchanged and he leaned further inside. A young driver in
a cobalt blue and orange XXL basketball shirt jumped out of the
front seat and grabbed the waiting bags. The man in beige was
finally smiling. In his relief he had forgotten the long wait, the
flustered anger and the earlier disbelief at being stranded at the
airport. He threw out light sentiments, forgotten was the disap-
proval, his heavy hand in friendly touch on the younger man’s
shoulder. Then he helped store the bags.
He hadn’t come because I was no longer his daughter. I had cho-
sen carefully, had looked for the words that would make him under-
stand, had asked friends and relatives, older mentors. After listening
to all and considering what you said, I had chosen what I thought
103
would be easily understood. When I called, following the email

exchange, and said I’d be coming in two weeks he had been quiet.
‘I’ve already booked the flight, I will be arriving on the 19th,
the last flight from Heathrow.’
‘Have I not made myself clear?’ After a long silence he added
dryly: ‘What about your lesbianism?’
The man in beige opened the back door again and proceeded
to enter. Then he turned to me.
‘Where are you going, son?’ he said. I shook my head. Tears
were rolling down my cheeks. He left the door leaning and
walked over to me.
‘You’ve been here for a while. No one is coming to get you?’
I said nothing. I couldn’t speak. He hadn’t come. The magni-
tude must’ve been obvious. Waves crushing into me, diffracting
all over the matter.
‘Where do you need to go?’
In my hand was the address I had memorised more to show off
and surprise him than out of need. There were several pieces of
paper because everyone knows how easily I forget and lose things
and my instructions had been clear: Keep them in separate places.
In case. I had them all together in one stack, so sure had I been.
‘That’s off Ikorodu. We’ll drop you on the way.’
He shouldered the tote bag and pulled me by the sleeve.
‘Sit in the back, with my wife.’
He himself chose the seat next to the driver. It was so cool after
the humid evening air, the air-conditioning humming slightly, the
door buzzing to remind us that it was still open. I sneezed. Clum-
sily I dropped into the seat, mumbling ‘Good evening ma’ while
trying to fade into the leather in order not to disturb anyone.
My damp T-shirt stuck to my skin like an already licked lollipop
picked up from the ground, sticky and slightly dirty.
‘Hello,’ she replied in comfortable manner, a flair of someone
who had seen the world and moved in it as if it was merely the
backyard to one of her townhouses. A generous smile flashed her
good set of teeth. It was encouraging and suggested they picked
up strangers all the time, but of course her husband explained. He
was eyeing me in the rearview mirror and turned around to start
a conversation, not interrogative but inquisitively enough to make
sure I knew that he only half thought that I was decent.
104
‘Straight from London? That’s funny…’

I looked at him and then his wife. She was holding the small
girl from the plane, who was sleeping soundly, and now I saw
that she was wearing the blue outfit, the orange gele placed on the
back rest. What is the likelihood? Again, I would have expected
you to comment on this. The timing, the coincidence. Twice in
close proximity, a blue and orange combination. Me in a stranger’s
car. Everything fitting so seamlessly, almost nothing in the way of
coherence.
‘My wife also…,’ he looked in the mirror at my face and
stopped mid-sentence. My short hair felt shorter and alarmingly
exposing. We stopped and the driver handed the money the man
in beige had given him to the collector in the small cement hut
outside. The car crawled over the uneven speed bumps then
accelerated, suddenly released from traffic and road stop. Night
scenes flashed by and the husband’s eyes kept a steady gaze, try-
ing to figure out how to approach me. The matter of the missing
welcome scene, the loose end that my appearance was bidding,
the tears that had dried on my cheeks.
‘We’re not far. Is someone going to be there? They know you
are coming?’
He paused.
‘I don’t mean to be … I mean, please don’t take it the wrong
way. You are a boy? Or a girl?’
From the other side the driver announced softly, as to not dis-
turb and fall out of favour for the second time this evening, that
we were entering the small street leading to the address on my
piece of paper. The husband turned towards me again.
‘They know you’re coming?’
This was it. A return. An unknown. A quest. I had arrived.
It is the form that makes a thing what it is. Change occurs
because the same matter can be arranged in different ways.1 All
was the same. All was different. I nodded.
For the heart of the matter is always somewhere else than
where it’s supposed to be.2
‘Yes, they know I’m coming.’
To allow it to emerge, people approach it indirectly by post-
poning until it matures, by letting it come when it is ready to
come. There is no catching, no pushing, no directing, no breaking
105
through, no need for a linear progression which gives the com-

forting illusion that one knows where one goes. Time and space
are not something entirely exterior to oneself.3
He knew I was coming.
Notes
1 Banach, David (2006) ‘Some main points of Aristotle’s thought’, http://
www.anselm.edu/homepage/dbanach/arist.htm, accessed 7 November
2012.
2 Trinh, T.M. (1989) Women, Native, Other. Writing Postcoloniality and
Feminism, Bloomington and Indianapolis, Indiana University Press: 1.
3 Trinh (1989): 1
106
11
The face I love: Zanele Muholi’s

‘Faces and Phases’
Raél Jero Salley
This essay analyses ‘Faces and Phases’ by Zanele Muholi, a project

started in 2006 and still ongoing. Muholi is a contemporary pho-
tographer and performance artist and activist working in South
Africa, whose work actively responds to questions about individ-
ual being and contemporary social belonging in Southern Africa
today. Muholi’s work imagines contemporary life with a mixture
of awe, excitement and romantic vision. Her works also challenge
conventional discourse on blackness, sexuality, gender and class.
‘Faces and Phases’ is an elegant, technically accomplished project
that aims to both empower Muholi’s female collaborators and
offer outsiders an innovative way of seeing, one that critically
engages contemporary visuality in southern Africa.1 The images
discussed here are from a phase of this project in 2011.
Muholi’s work is exceptional in the way it pushes new direc-
tions and agendas, as through her photography she confronts
violence acted upon the female body and the lives and abuses
experienced by black lesbians in South African townships. Muho-
li’s oeuvre includes images that reveal hate crimes and oppres-
sion directed toward lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgender/intersex
(LGBTI) communities, while other images highlight pleasures
and intimacies within those communities.
My aim is not to speak for Muholi or her collaborators. Rather,
my investment is in supporting the transformative potential
of Muholi’s work and explicating its impact on contemporary
visuality.
My discussion is organised in three thematic sections: docu-
ments; images, icons and indexes; portraits and values.
107
My main point is that while Muholi’s visual expressions are

often described according to the critical terms available (black
and lesbian), this project is geared not toward integration into
dominant structures, but rather toward transforming the basic
cultural fabric of hierarchies that allow quotidian experiences of
oppression to persist and operate efficiently.2 ‘Faces and Phases’
provides an occasion for critical engagement with ‘a regime of
visibility’ within which black queer marginality achieves coher-
ence. As a result, the project offers a moment for a nuanced and
attentive examination, one that has the potential to reconfigure
currently exploitative sociocultural relations and produce new
arenas of expression.3
Look, for instance, at Mbali, who stands to the side, close to
a wall, her closely shaven blond head tilted and left arm folded
behind her back. Mbali confronts us with a confident gaze and
an open, three-quarter pose. The arrangement proudly displays
her t-shirt, emblazoned with the iconic superwoman symbol.
Photo: courtesy of the artist
Mbali Zulu,
KwaThema, Springs,
Johannesburg, 2010.
Silver gelatin print
Image size: 76.5 x 50.5cm
108
11 THE FACE I LOVE: ZANELE MUHOLI’S ‘FACES AND PHASES’
Muholi’s engagement with Mbali comes after violence – a hate

crime in 2008 in which a member of the community (Eudy
Simelane) was murdered. Mbali’s portrait is made with this event
in mind. Muholi describes the picture as a commemoration,
memorial and historical record of the roles brave women play in
the face of pain and suffering. Mbali’s choice to wear an icon of
heroism communicates a defiance, resilience and fearlessness in
the face of violence, stigma and homophobia.
Muholi insists on a documentary style of image making for her
‘visual activism’. She is intent on producing an historical archive
of images for and of black lesbians, bisexuals, transgenders and
queers. She speaks forcefully when she explains, ‘It is about
observing and taking action, about taking pictures of herself and
other women to heal from their past.’4
This observation and action matter dearly to those of us who
live in South Africa, where homophobia is widespread and hate
crimes are regularly perpetrated. While the images circulate
among the audience that serves as her subject, they also reach a
broader audience in order to present locally specific, culturally
readable visual performances as alternatives to current concep-
tions of identity.
Visual documents
A history of black photographic image making has been con-
cerned with opening up the apparently fixed meanings of
images, and one of the key sites is documentary photography,
a form that carries with it a claim to truth, the message of ‘this
is how it really was’. Constant (self-)documentation, Jennifer
Blessing suggests, is an attempt ‘to fix identity, to hold up a mir-
ror image of the self, to be who you want to be, to be “real” but,
most of all, to be sure you exist’. But the documentary form may
also be seen in a wider political framework. For black photogra-
phers, using documentary aesthetics is potentially an attempt to
reposition guaranteed centres of knowledge, certainties of real-
ism, and struggles to contest negative images with positive ones.5
Such pictures exhibit an interest in making the private public,
and suggest a family album, a community and a struggle with
which the viewer is invited to empathise.
109
Betesta Segale,

Gaborone, Botswana, 2010.
Betesta offers an example of Muholi documenting family,

community and struggle. Betesta is a transgender person from
Botswana, a country with the only transgender support group
on the continent, called Rainbow Identity Association (RIA),
founded by Skipper Mogapi, who is also featured in ‘Faces and
Phases’ (2010). Nonetheless, Betesta is still faced with isolation,
an experience Muholi describes as a continual process of ‘com-
ing out.’ Betesta faces the challenge of existing outside a fixed,
defined sexual identity, and thereby challenges those viewers
who demand such definition. As Jean Genet writes: ‘Changing sex
doesn’t consist merely in subjecting one’s body to a few surgical
adjustments: it means teaching the whole world, forcing upon it,
a change [or reinvention] of syntax.’6 Genet’s notion of a funda-
mental turnabout of syntax implies an underlying signification
beyond transsexualism, one that points to the possible abolition
of a fixed ‘reality’ (and by extension the possibility of documenta-
tion) of sex altogether.7
110
The point is that ‘Faces and Phases’ engages the documen-

tary photographic form against fixed polarities and boundaries.
Without a ‘real’ or essential black lesbian or transgender subject
with which to ground signification, we are faced with unfinished
visuality, continuously contingent, unguaranteed distinctions.8
As Baudrillard theorises: where poles cannot be maintained, one
enters ‘absolute manipulation’, and criticises potential forms of
‘new authenticity’. Muholi’s pictures of South Africans delight
in the documentation of what is labelled unusual, and possibly
assert the ‘realness’ of the never-before-seen or the unimaginable,
allowing, even provoking, viewers to stare back and ponder.
This critical visual encounter leads us to ask: what sort of look-
ing is this, and how does it work?
Images, icons and indexes

My argument is that ‘Faces and Phases’ provokes a way of looking
that potentially reconfigures sociocultural relations through the
movement of images, icons and indexes.
Look at Pinky Zulu, for instance. Here we are confronted with
an image – a likeness, figure, motif or form that appears in or
through the material support of the medium (in this case, pho-
tography), which forms the set of material practices that brings
the image and object together to produce the picture which, in
this instance, includes the figural subject and symbolic text. As
complex assemblages of virtual, material and symbolic elements,
the picture communicates and produces meaning.
Photographs, observes Christian Metz, are pictures that offer
both indexical and iconic signs. An index commonly refers to a
list, a systematic catalogue, an indicator or a way of expressing
a relationship or value. Consider this in the context of Muholi’s
practice, which emerges out of her encounters as an activist at the
nexus of black African cultural politics and multiple dimensions
of class, gender, sexuality and ethnicity in South Africa.
The index refers to a process of signification in which the sig-
nifier is bound to the referent not by social convention, not by
similarity, but by actual connection in the world. Pinky Zulu was
there in 2010, posing to produce the photographic image in South
Africa, which grounds it in a specific space and time.
111
Pinky Zulu,

Constitution Hill,
Johannesburg, 2010.
Muholi’s stated aim is to provide ‘positive’ visual alternatives

to black lesbian marginality, which involves a cultural strategy
that responds to reductively iconic images.
The icon is an image, representation, symbol, someone or
something famous, or something otherwise with larger than life
status. Icons are often perceived to represent universal concepts,
emotions and meanings. A crucial function of an icon is to bring
out a notion of public and collective effect in the nation state. In
fact, a photographic icon may be a form of public art that gener-
ates civic action. The icon is an aesthetically familiar form that
has the ability to project an ‘emotional scenario’ to manage a
basic crisis, a relational sign that produces affective responses by
invoking normative codes, meanings and values. While the index
is grounded in space, time and the material world by direct physi-
cal connection, the icon is a mere relation between the sign and
the thing signified.
112
While Muholi’s pictures may be indexical, I want to argue that

a repetitive emphasis on incomplete narratives of black lesbian
subjects and communities may emphasise what Nicole Fleetwood
identifies as non-iconicity – a counterpoint to over-determined
representations of lived experience. Muholi suggests as much by
provoking the viewer with complex, open questions:
What does an African lesbian look like? Is there a lesbian aes-

thetic or do we express our gendered, racialised and classed
selves in rich and diverse ways? Is this lesbian more ‘authentic’
than that lesbian because she wears a tie and the other does
not? Is this a man or a woman? Is this a transman? Can you
identify a rape survivor by the clothes she wears?9
By asserting non-iconicity, ‘Faces and Phases’ emphasises spe-

cific and particular indexical aspects of the photograph, which
reshapes the sort of relations one may form with the photographic
objects. These non-iconic pictures critique incomplete narratives
of, for and about black lesbian existence, and develop archives,
communities and histories as counterpoints to unfinished, trou-
bled and troubling representations.10
Distinctive features of Muholi’s work include her relationship
with her subjects as well as their self-presentation. These portraits
are intimate. They come out of time spent together.11 But they are
also public, and have had national and international impact.
Since our interest is with the ways in which this project is
geared not toward integration into dominant structures, but
rather toward transforming the basic cultural fabric, we must
inquire: ‘What role does portraiture play in relation to commu-
nity, nation and value?’
Portraits and values

The portrait has been a symbol for higher human qualities since
ancient times. While portraits convey a likeness of an individual,
they also demonstrate the imagination of the artist and a per-
ceived social role for the sitter in ways that raise the subject above
the conventions of the moment. The historical conventions of
portraiture matter to Muholi’s work insomuch as they remind us
of the traditional features of the portrait: it exhibits personal and
113
Ziyanda, Cape Town, 2010.

Image size 86.5 x 60.5cm
public qualities, a duality of likeness and type, and stylisation and

individuality.
Usually, a portrait is defined as a work of art that represents
a unique individual. But this simple definition is not enough
because a portrait is complex and contradictory. While it may be
concerned with physical likeness in appearance, it may also sug-
gest something about the subject’s inner position or life, character
or virtues.
Three factors are useful to considering the complexities of
portraits, writes Shearer West. First, portraits may show specific
and distinctive aspects of a sitter as well as generic qualities val-
ued in the sitter’s context or milieu. Second, while all portraits
represent the body and face, they also refer to the soul, charac-
ter or virtues of the sitter. Third, all portraits involve a series of
negotiations (usually) between the artist and the sitter, and the
impact of these negotiations, and the viewpoint of the photogra-
pher, shape the picture.
114
I would add that portraits have qualities of the object of rep-

resentation (iconicity), refer to the act of sitting (indexicality) and
contain gestures, expressions, and props that can be read with
knowledge of social conventions (symbolism). It is the indexical
value that seems to transport us into an actual moment in the past
when the artist and sitter encountered each other in a real time
and place.
In ‘Faces and Phases’, the images are as much about the indi-
vidual as about a collective or community presence. The sitters
see themselves not framed as the other so much as infiltrating the
status quo, bringing their community (or nation) to the forefront.
To this point Simon Njami writes:
Mastering your own image means bringing into the world

voices and colours that elude globalisation and uniformisation,
it means refusing to be just the fruit of the other’s gaze. It means
assuming, in a kind of silent contradiction, your own vision of
yourself, following your cultural codes and aesthetics.12
As Benedict Anderson has argued, a modern nation is not a natu-

ral fact: its origin, history and destiny are the stuff of myth, made
and not given, but ‘imagined communities’ always disavow their
artificial, constructed character, constructions produced from
images and discourses about the seeable and sayable.
Consider these observations alongside Muholi’s decision to
‘capture images of [her] community in order to contribute towards
a more democratic and representative South African homosexual
history’.13 Muholi decries the reduction and sensationalisation
of the many different, complex stages, roles and phases within a
black lesbian community, so in ‘Faces and Phases’ photographic
portraiture supports nation building.
The project also presents likeness itself as an unstable concept,
an idea to ‘be balanced against the limitations of representation,
which can only offer a partial, abstracted, generic, or idealised
view of any sitter’.14 Whether or not a portrait was actually based
on a sitting, the transaction between artist and sitter is evoked in
the imagination of the viewer.15
These portraits, then, paradoxically present the photograph as
the object we look at, but also refer to the photographic session, a
115
transaction between the sitter and photographer – the thing that

is always invisible to the viewer. As Barthes writes, ‘[the photo-
graph] is not what we see’.16 The photographic portrait redoubles
this instability because as an indexical image it seems to freeze a
moment in time and aid memory, but it also falsifies experience,
or mythically provides an iconic ‘natural and universal [visual]
language’.17
Looking at the images in ‘Faces and Phases’, the viewer is
confronted with questions: is the thing unseen that which shapes
black lesbian experiences of political and ethical life? Is it a
troubling presence of exclusion? Is this an effective method to
form a sense of belonging, kinship or nation in visual rendering?
Looking at Muholi’s ‘Faces and Phases’ portraits in the context of
portraiture, community and national values, one encounters enig-
matic pictures that defy any single thread of explanation.
New narratives
‘Faces and Phases’ is a group of social images that exude an
exhibitionistic self-delight. They appear without self-doubt or
sentimentality, and seem to offer a dream of total control and a
demeanour of mastery. The pictures either ‘speak to us’, some-
times literally, sometimes figuratively; or they look back at us
silently.18 Because pictures have this kind of social and psycho-
logical force, we talk as if pictures have feeling, will, and desire.
What I have tried to do is reflect on how this power is constituted
and performed in this context.
In the process, I have moved away from an analysis of poli-
tics of representation, and toward increased concern with how
subjectivity itself may be constituted through visual discourse,
how subjectivity is performed through visual technologies.19
This is part of an effort to resist overdetermined narratives of
black or lesbian identity in favour of noting how these pictures
resist imposed labels by linking the visual subject to us as
agents of sight and objects of discourse that impact the produc-
tion of visuality.
When I say visuality I mean the social field of the visual, the
everyday processes of looking at others and being looked at. It is
this complex field of visual reciprocity that is actively constitutive
116
of social reality. Muholi’s figures are not subjects ‘captured’ on

film, rather, these are subjects that capture and bring us into a
world where to perform is to control. These non-iconic images
refuse to project a prescribed ‘emotional scenario’ to manage cri-
sis, in favour of a visual presentation that lessens the weight on
the black lesbian visual to do so much. ‘It is a move away from
the singularity and significance placed on instantiations of black-
ness to resolve that which cannot be resolved. Rather than invoke
normative codes, meanings and values, these pictures open them-
selves to love without ‘hypervisibility’ or turning into idols, that
is, subjects of ‘abomination and adoration’. These ‘Faces’ may
demand love, but do not need or return it.
To speak of ‘the face I love’ in Muholi’s ‘Faces and Phases’ is a
way of relating to a (libidinal) object, a picture. Some faces offer
a picture of seriousness, others begin to smirk, others appear
with a spirit of pleasure and play. In all of these varied modes of
self-presentation, I see in Muholi’s portraiture work an effort to
present – on their own terms – a multitude of visual subjects who
have been excluded from dominant South African society and
public memory, both during apartheid and today. In this regard,
‘Faces and Phases’ negotiates complex knots that afflict the subject
and object of racism, sexism and gender bias by means of portraits
that show complex individuals occupying multiple subject posi-
tions and enunciations.20
Conclusion
My point has been to suggest a way into these photographs that
does not reduce them to social criticism, excessive category or
viable commodity. This is important because I do not read these
pictures as ridiculing the supposed homogeneity of (the South
African) nation, (black, lesbian or transgender) community or
even (homo or heterosexual) spectatorship. Instead, ‘Faces and
Phases’ actively reveals how the phenomenon of ‘black lesbian’ is
currently capable of becoming visible in ways that enable (and/or
force) a re-vision of existing dominant conceptions of the world.
This includes a re-tooling of visual mechanisms, a sort of reinven-
tion that occurs through critical consideration of the needs and
interests of the humans that appear in ‘Faces and Phases’.
117
Notes
1 N. Fleetwood (2011) Troubling Vision, Chicago, University of Chicago
Press: 37.
2 Cohen, Cathy (2005) ‘Punks, bulldaggers, and welfare queens: the radical
potential of queer politics?’, Black Queer Studies: 21–51.
3 For further discussion on seeing and looking as it operates in
contemporary visual culture, see Marita Sturken and Lisa Cartwright
(2001) Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture, Oxford,
Oxford University Press.
4 Personal correspondence between the author and Zanele Muholi, Cape
Town, October 2010.
5 Blessing, Jennifer (ed) (1997) Rrose Is a Rrose Is a Rrose: Gender Performance
in Photography, New York, Guggenheim Museum: 96.
6 D. Bailey and S. Hall (2003) ‘The vertigo of displacement’, in Liz Wells
(ed) The Photography Reader, New York, Routledge: 381.
7 Genet, as quoted in Sarah Wilson, ‘Femininities-masquerades’, in
Blessing (1997: 148 and 178).
8 This kind of turnabout is akin to the détournement developed in the 1950s
by the artists of the Situationist International. In general it can be defined
as a variation on a previous visual work, in which the newly created
one has a meaning that is antagonistic or antithetical to the original. The
original work that is ‘détourned’ must be somewhat familiar to the target
audience, so that it can appreciate the opposition of the new message. See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Détournement and http://www.cddc.vt.edu/
sionline/presitu/usersguide.html.
9 R. Salley (2009) ‘Unfinished visuality: contemporary art and black
diaspora 1964–2008’, PhD thesis, University of Chicago.
10 Z. Muholi (2010) ‘Faces and Phases’, Cape Town, Michael Stevenson Gallery.
11 Fleetwood (2011: 42).
12 Parallels are to be found in Nan Goldin’s photographs from the early
1970s, for instance. Goldin photographed drag queens and pre-op
transsexuals. Drag queens have been the subject of many 20th century
photographers, including Brassaï, Lisette Model, Weegee and Diane
Arbus. See ‘Queer reality’ in Blessing (1997).
13 S. Njami (2010) A Useful Dream: African Photography 1960–2010, Silvana
Editoriale Brussels, Brussels, BoZar Books, Centre for Fine Arts: 12.
13 Z. Muholi, artist statement, ‘Faces and Phases I’.
14 S. West (2004) Portraiture, Oxford, Oxford University Press: 24.
15 West (2004: 41).
16 R. Barthes (1980) Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography: 6 as quoted
by W.J.T. Mitchell (2005) What Do Pictures Want? The Lives and Loves of
Images, Chicago, University of Chicago Press: 274.
17 L. Wells, ‘General introduction’, in Wells (2003: 5); Mitchell (2005: 273).
18 For discussion of the lives (and loves) of images, see Mitchell (2005): 30.
19 Fleetwood (2007: 12) employs this succinct language.
20 Mitchell (2005: 47).
118
12
Caster runs for me

Ola Osaze
In South Africa, thousands of miles away from New York City,

Caster Semenya lives and breathes. Perhaps she is already train-
ing for the next race, picturing a victory not overshadowed by
questions about her gender. She emerged out of relative obscu-
rity to shatter the world record and win the gold medal at the
women’s 800-metre final in Berlin in 2009.
Her victory was so astonishing that all the whisperings about
her gender were suddenly amplified. A few other runners, who
thought the title was rightfully theirs, grumbled publicly. The
International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) stepped
in, refusing to believe that someone so young, new and, some
would argue, so black and poor, could win. They did the unimagi-
nable: forced Semenya to undergo a battery of ‘gender tests’. Most
female-bodied people dread that annual visit to the gynaecologist.
Many shudder at the thought of laying on the examination table,
legs stirruped with a medically trained individual studying away
in between them. What Caster went through at the hands of sup-
posed gender experts, psychologists, endocrinologists, gynaecolo-
gists and internal medicine specialists makes the routine pap smear
exam look like a nice, peaceful stroll on a sandy shore.
To me, as a Nigerian who defies gender categorisation, Semen-
ya’s story is all too familiar. I decided to interview other New York
City Africans who, in some way or other, are also gender ‘outlaws’.
I wanted to learn what aspects of Caster’s story they strongly iden-
tified with, their analysis of how Caster had been treated, and
what the entire world can learn from this moment. I asked NCK,
an African man who wanted to maintain anonymity, why there
was such a furore around Semenya’s gender expressions. ‘[It’s] not
only how dare she put herself within the arena of woman, but how
119
dare she come out of those trappings [of poverty] and run the race,
cross the finish line, wear the [gold] medal and the South African
flag.’ He connects the athlete’s experiences to the legacy of coloni-
alism in Africa, stating this is the same way labels like ‘coloured’
and ‘Indian’ were used to impose and uphold apartheid in South
Africa. Words are not meant to impose limitations, he explains, yet
words and phrases like ‘masculine’ or ‘hermaphrodite’ have been
used by other athletes, IAAF officials and mainstream journalists
to dehumanise Caster, in spite of her win.
Kagendo Murungi, a Kenyan woman who identifies as gender
non-conforming as an act of resistance against society’s two-
gender system, argues African women’s successes are constantly
devalued because of pervasive racist and sexist stereotypes.
‘There is a long history of the most private aspects of our physical
anatomies being paraded around the world for the pleasure of
the European elite. The spectacle and outrage of Saartjie Baart-
man, the “Hottentot Venus”, might be the best known example of
this phenomenon,’ she declares. Similarly, Yvonne Fly Onakeme
Etaghene, a self-identified Nigerian-dyke-poet, argues: ‘If Caster
can be someone who is not fitting into a socially prescribed gen-
der role, then that means our genders’ demarcations are not real.’
IAAF officials demanded Caster essentially prove she is a
‘traditional’ woman. ‘Well, what is a traditional woman? What
are traditional women’s bodies?’ queries NCK. ‘They are trying
to say that this is one body that we can exclude out of the corpus
of bodies labelled as women, as opposed to examining the label
of woman, and seeing that the experience is so much larger and
this person has transcended all of it.’ Transcending, in Caster’s
case, has involved being a natural-born athlete, refusing to obey
gender norms in terms of how to dress or act, training endlessly
and developing a muscular body that many, regardless of gender,
vie for. (Linda Hamilton’s muscular build in Terminator 2 was the
only reason I went to the gym in the 1990s.) Masculine women
are nothing new, so why are Caster, and gender non-conforming
people in general, demonised by mainstream society? Etaghene
blames it on people’s inability to accept gender expressions fall-
ing outside the socially prescribed two-gender system enforced
in practically every sphere of life. ‘People don’t know how to deal
with athletic bodies unless they are attached to people who have
120
12 CASTER RUNS FOR ME
penises. [They are] not able to deal with ways in which women
can be and are masculine.’
Gender non-conformity, Etaghene argues, is a vital part of the
tapestry of African experiences and expressions. ‘If you look at
African cultures and others from the dawn of time, there have
always been masculine women and feminine men, and people
who have traversed the gender spectrum, whether it be in a
spiritual ceremony and someone who is biologically a woman
is possessed by a masculine spirit, and is acting in a way that is
[perceived as] masculine. That is gender-revolutionary.’ The dark-
skinned, ’fro-hawk sporting poet has often been vilified for her
identity. ‘I can relate to people poking at you and making a spec-
tacle out of you. Whether it be what I have to say, or how I look, or
being a Nigerian dyke, people make that a spectacle like, “Oh my
god, you’re a Nigerian dyke, there’s only one of you and you’re so
weird”.’ Etaghene uses art as a way to heal from such experiences.
‘It’s about staying grounded and focused and knowing that I am
my own normalcy. I am not left of centre. I am my own centre. I
don’t look at, for instance, heterosexual white femininity as who
I should be.’
What has been encouraging is how South Africans, sensing the
racist and sexist underpinnings of the IAAF’s actions, resolutely
stood up for their ‘home girl’. Etaghene, Murungi and NCK
think this presents the perfect opportunity to increase visibility
of, and respectful dialogue about, the interconnectedness of Afri-
can women and lesbian, gay, bisexual, gender non-conforming,
transgender and intersex experiences. ‘If nothing else, at least,
perhaps the mainstream press will report on intersex people and
leave [the offensive term] “hermaphrodite” in the past where it
belongs,’ adds Murungi. Similarly, Etaghene feels hopeful that
more people will ardently support intersex rights, thereby placing
intersex issues on a more global scale. Additionally, according to
Murungi, mainstream media’s ‘irresponsible, outdated, knee-jerk
racist, sexist, transphobic, exotifying’ portrayal of Caster has been
repeatedly challenged by an outpouring of DIY journalists and
social networking enthusiasts.
People have posted affirming messages on websites like Caster
Runs For Me and For Caster Semenya. Others have uploaded
videos on YouTube, expressing their solidarity in a multitude of
121
ways. For example, a one-minute-long cartoon piece, also titled

‘caster runs for me’, by queer Turkish German artist Beldan Sezen
urges people to question gender roles and defy any attempts
to police gender expressions. In Etaghene’s case, solidarity was
expressed through the creation of a love poem to honour Semenya
as a survivor. In an excerpt from her poem, ‘Caster Semenya:
praising your name’, the poet looks to the past and prophesises
about the future:
but it hurts to be a visionary sometimes, to be brilliant,

to be excellent
sometimes it hurts in ways we could never have imagined
the trailblazers often get yelled at
misunderstood and demonized –
from Jesus to Tupac
Audre Lorde to you, Caster
anyone who is different or exceptional
feels the brunt of unexpected pain & criticism
the children of your critics
will praise your name,
rock t-shirts with your face on it,
have posters of you on their walls to inspire them to be great.1
Note
1 The rest of Etaghene’s poem can be found on her blog, a dyke of a certain
calibre: http://www.myloveisaverb.com.
122
13
Transsexuals’ nightmare:
activism or subjugation?
Audrey Mbugua
With the advent of LGBT activism, concerns have been raised

about transphobia among homosexuals. The primary goal of this
chapter is to explain the basis of this transphobia, provide exam-
ples of transphobia among homosexuals and offer recommenda-
tions on how to deal with transphobia and the marginalisation of
transsexuals by some homosexuals. But, before I do that I need
to issue a disclaimer: some homosexuals might feel the chapter is
deficient of the respect they are accustomed to from human rights
activists. We have been used to the disproportionate privileging
of gays and lesbians, meaning it’s an abomination to criticise
homosexuals when they are wrong. Why? Because you don’t do
that. You don’t hurt the feelings of homosexuals. Why? Because
you don’t!!! I will not go off course to offend for the sake of it but
neither will I sugar-coat any words in this chapter.
When I talk of transgender or transsexual people, I will be
referring to people who experience a long-lasting and persistent
discomfort with their assigned sex and seek medical and legal
assistance to transition from one sex to another. Note that I will
not be talking about drag queens and kings, male sex workers
who go around dressing in certain clothes to get attention from
clients and I will definitely not be talking about shemale porn
actors, cross dressers and effeminate gay boys and butch lesbians.
123
Abuses and violence by some gays and lesbians

Take a moment and reflect on these words:
A transsexual is a mentally deficient gay man with a fetish for

amputation. I, as an out and proud gay man, am disgusted that
these people are given legal rights to trick others into believing
they are what they are not. Gay people don’t pretend to have
a ‘medical condition’. If you want to treat a transsexual, treat
them to intense therapy to get over their self-loathing of their
homosexuality.1
It is remarkable such a statement can be made by a homosexual.

Early in June 2011, I wrote the following untrue paragraph for a
small test (remember, the paragraph is hypothetical – it is not true):
A homosexual is a mentally and sexually deficient skunk with

a fetish for sodomy. I, as an out and proud transsexual, am
disgusted that these people are given legal rights to trick others
into believing they are what they are not. Trans people don’t
pretend to be sexually deficient. If you want to treat a homo-
sexual, treat them to intense therapy to get over their unnatural
orientation.
I then approached a gay friend of mine, told him I got it from a

certain website and asked him what he thought of it. He said it
was hateful, false, stupid and based on prejudice.
I then showed him the first paragraph of a gay man insult-
ing transsexual people and asked him what he thought of it.
Anyone would think the reaction would be the same as for the
hypothetical paragraph attacking homosexuals. But, to my shock,
this young man recoiled and said that people were not aware of
transsexual issues because there wasn’t enough information and
resources so people ended up ‘misunderstanding them’.
I managed to get similar sentiments from others and it is worth
reading a few:
I am a lesbian. I do not like transsexuals. My problem is this:

there are people out there born without feet, arms, legs, etc.
and yet they somehow come to terms with the body they were
born into. To claim that you need surgery, or are somehow
124
13 TRANSSEXUALS’ NIGHTMARE: ACTIVISM OR SUBJUGATION?
born in the wrong body … well, shit, aren’t we all?! I think to

remove your penis, and insert said flesh inside of your body,
or the other way around, is a cheap cop-out and a lazy way
around the problems that really plague your heart… In India,
men often [resort] to castrating themselves as a way to reach
enlightenment faster, although I recently saw a video where the
men said they were doing this because they feel like women …
which I again think is crap … I am so incredibly tired of psy-
chologically ill people using cross-dressing, third genders, and
transgendered platforms to carry out their own fantasy, while
the rest of us have to suffer.2
I am gay, and I hate transgendered people. Probably because I
watched a documentary about gay people, that resulted in that
we are naturally born gay, through the amount of exposure to
testosterone whilst in the womb. But I don’t see how transgen-
dered people can be natural. I like people who dress as male/
female for entertainment … I find it sickening that transgen-
dered people would want to change their gender. Or that a man
would dress as a woman, seriously and not for entertainment.3
I find that there are a lot more people in the GL community
who dislike Trannies because they find them selfish, indeci-
sive, overly sexually fluid and basically dirty, confused, and
dramatic people. To destroy their families and a great base of
their friends takes a certain level of being self-absorbed. It takes
another level to choose to not be one gender or the other, but in
between, and then to have a relationship where the one normal
partner has to be constantly supportive of the TG partner takes
an even greater level of self-inclusion. Plus every transgendered
person I know has had to make some big dramatic production
out of every choice they’ve made, to start doing drag, to not
start doing drag, to not identify as gay, to identify as lesbian,
it really doesn’t matter what they choose, it has to be some big
grand thing. It’s ridiculous to ask all of the gay community to
participate and submit to this level of drama because in com-
parison to gender reassignment surgery, our drama (regardless
of how legitimate) is dwarfed and poo-pooed…4
There are a number of reasons why some homosexuals hate and

marginalise transsexuals:
First, some homosexuals oppress and marginalise transsexu-
als because they are desperate to look ‘normal’ in the eyes of
125
heterosexuals. It is their way of saying, ‘Hey, look at me! Don’t I

look like you heterosexuals? But look at that thing pretending to
be something it’s not. It’s a freak. Let’s do something for it to con-
form to our gender norms’. In an act of desperation, they inflict
pain on other minorities. Look at the following excerpts from
transgender people:
Early this morning, I was mis-gendered by a gay man on a bus

journey. I ignored his slight but he continued sucking up to his
female friend. When I was about to get off he followed me and
deliberately swung his bag striking my bottom and apologised
… even after apologising, he turned back to his female friend
laughing out loud and said, ‘didn’t I tell you he‘s a man?’ …
a gay man or any other man groping a transsexual woman
to gain the friendship of a straight woman suffers first from
transphobia but also internalised homophobia.5
Trans people often use the argument of them having nowhere
else to go, but having nowhere to go doesn’t mean you have
to go somewhere. Especially if that somewhere is a civil rights
group that’s trying to earn respect not mockery.6
Second, some homosexuals isolate transsexuals because they

regard them as security risks. This is a scenario I have seen among
some gays in Africa, including Kenya. They don’t like to be seen
associating with transsexuals in public. And not just all transsexu-
als but transsexual women who don’t blend as women or who are
open about their identity. This is common in hostile parts of Kenya.
You see, members of the public were convinced that it is these
transsexual women who are the gays and, to be precise, that ‘they
are the bottoms’ (the ‘wife’ in a male homosexual couple) and if
you are seen with one then you are the big spoon (the husband).
So most gay men will not want to be seen with these ‘bottoms’
because they will out them (as gays put it). So they will margin-
alise and chase them from their LGBT organisations or events to
avoid attacks from members of the public.
Third, some gays and lesbians are very jealous. They think we
are competing for attention, beauty and rights. That’s why some
will always want to put us down. I once went out in the company
of some lesbian friends and I was talking to this girl in the group
126
and, out of the blue, one of my lesbian friends was telling the
group that I was a man. And, using such rubbish, she got the girl.
Look at the following:
In my teens, I was friends with Phil, a gay guy … wasn’t happy

being a male, so I decided to change my sex … Men checked
me out and Phil HATED all the attention I was getting … Phil
came in my new home, looking jealous … I wasn’t getting
good vibes from this queen … Somebody called Deshaun’s (her
boyfriend) job and said that he was living with a man with
titties and a dick. Deshaun and I thought Phil was behind it.
I passed beautifully and back then, people did not know that
much about trans issues. I ‘befriended’ Tony and Melvin, two
jealous queens. God, they were envious of me. They slashed
my car tires. Sprayed silver paint all over my auto. Threw eggs
on my door. I swear to God, I didn’t do anything to these guys.
My only crime was being an attractive trans woman, who had
a man by my side … I could sit here for hours and share count-
less stories about things gay men did to try to screw up my life.7
Sometimes, their attacks on transsexuals are based on miscon-

ceptions. Some homosexuals think that transsexuals want to be
assimilated into their community. And, instead of looking at it
objectively and directing their anger to their homosexual col-
leagues who are to blame for this, they insult transsexuals. For
example:
I am a bi woman and I think we lack credibility as ‘mentally’

stable people because we’re being lumped in with people who
in my opinion self mutilate themselves. If that is too harsh a
description then I would lump them in with people who like
plastic surgery … who are always dissatisfied with who they
are physically. but I am told my friends and have read too many
articles by transgender people that [their] choice to change their
bodies and appearance has NOTHING to do with their sexual-
ity … SO why are they lumped in with gays n lesbians in every
argument, parade, policy and whatever else there is when gays
and lesbians are fighting for their civil rights. I think transgen-
ders have NO business in the gay and lesbian ‘community’.8
Yes they should be in the bloody beauty section if anything, all
they care for is looks. We have real problems not just image.9
127
Similar sentiments – from homosexuals – can be accessed on other

websites:
I think the appropriate treatment is to teach people to love

themselves as they are, not irreversible hormone therapy and
performing hatchet-jobs on one’s genitalia.10
I cringe at the ‘T’ crowd being lumped with gays and lesbi-
ans. I mean all the power in the word to them, but I feel that
sexual dysmorphic disorder, or whatever its called is just that,
a disorder. I think trans people just hate themselves for being
gay, whether they know it or not. I’ve never met a trans person
who wasn’t a complete car wreck looking for endless attention
to boot. I think it drags down the gay rights movement to be
attached to the always photo-ready trans circus.11
I agree somewhat that trans people, particularly FTMs, are
pretty messed up, that they’re not so much ill as deluded. Trans
people should have their own community, their own organisa-
tions, their own legal defense fund.12
No it’s (transsexualism) a complete aberration or abomination.13
I have no problem with gays, or lesbians, or transgenders, but
i personally believe there is something mentally wrong with
transgenders. I don’t hold that against them though. You cant
help being gay but you CAN help changing your sex.14
There are a number of transgender people who had something to

say about lumping transsexuals in with homosexuals:
YOURE AN IGNORANT BIGGOTED HYPOCRITICAL *****.

DO YOU THINK I WANT TO BE GROUPED WITH YOU
F*GS AND CARPET MUNCHERS???? NO!!!!!!!15
[A]bsolutly no transsexuals are born that way with a condition
that is medically treatable gay peopl just have a skew sexuali-
tyy and dont make the correct choice in gender preferenc for
their gender . we should not be in their group in no way shape
or form but now transgenders which are a group of cross-
dresserd drag queens and other sexual devients do belong in
the gay groups.16
It wasn’t our choice to be ‘lumped in’ with the GLB. The
problem is that THANKS to EFFEMINATE GAY MALES
128
cross-dressing, doing drag, feminising their bodies for sex

work, etc, the general public has come to regard anyone who
presents an atypical gender expression as gay or lesbian. YOUR
OWN GROUP created this problem.17
These three were responding to the above transphobic attacks.

Another noted that:
I am a Transsexual woman who neither seeks anything from, or

gives anything to, the LGB community. As far as I’m concerned,
if every LGB person vanished from the face of the earth tomor-
row, it wouldn’t affect my Transsexualism one iota … I have
nothing against LGB people, but their condition has NOTHING
to do with my condition. Frankly, I don’t care what any of these
‘communities’ do. As far as I’m concerned, they’d be better off
looking at my example for guidance and support, than I would
be looking at theirs. How are communities full of people like
this going to benefit me?18
You have to forgive my colleagues’ intemperate language, but

given the provocation and accusation of invading the homosexual
community and transphobia you would have to understand that
their message is not any bit unclear; transsexuals are not homo-
sexuals, we are not interested in being homosexuals or people
perceiving us as homosexuals, we are proud of ourselves and our
achievements. We have no business being in the LGB movement,
we know who we are and are proud of ourselves. Furthermore,
I wonder what transsexuals would gain from being part of the
LGB community; primarily, we lose out because people attack and
discriminate against us, thinking they are attacking homosexuals.
There are some transgender people who would attack my logic
and resort to non-issues. For example, some would claim that
there are transgender women who are lesbians and transgender
men who are gay. (By the way, why not say there are transgen-
der people who are drivers, bankers, advocates and so forth?).
I wonder what relevance such statements have to the genesis of
transphobia in the gay community. Others will blame all these on
ignorance of the transsexual concept within the gay community.
But if we adopt such kind of thinking, what is to stop all cisgen-
der people from attacking and killing transgender persons and
129
blaming it on ignorance? Ignorance is not a defence. I am sure

most of the gays who are transphobic don’t know much about
transposons? Do they go around insulting transposons or spew-
ing forth hate speech against transposons?19 In harsh times our
minds can have a habit of lying to ourselves before we go out to
the world lying to others. We need not to bury our heads in the
sand; the problem is not ignorance.
And it is with this in mind that I turn to the topic of gaynisation
of transgender people and the gayjacking of trans lives to serve
the homosexual agenda.
Gaynising/lesbianising and gayjacking trans

lives
Gaynising/lesbianising is the process of homosexuals turning
transgender people into homosexuals. Gayjacking is the process
of using transsexual issues and struggles to pimp up the gay/
homosexual agenda.
Scrutinise this dream of a gay activist:
My dream is a day when no LGBT person has to choose

between being openly gay – or being killed.20
Then consider the following statement:
The gay community, or LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and

transgender) community, is a loosely defined grouping of LGBT
and LGBT-supportive people, organisations and subcultures,
united by a common culture and civil rights movements.21
Lumping transgender people under the gay label is a common

practice among some homosexuals and their allies. It is based on
the ridiculous assumption that the LGBT community is the gay/
homosexual community. This practice is detrimental to transgen-
der people for the following reasons:
First, LGBT organisations end up neglecting the transgender
community and their issues. Gay struggle includes decrimi-
nalisation of homosexuality, same-sex marriages and prides, men
who have sex with other men (MSM) and HIV, condoms, dental
130
Table 11.1 Prevalence of HIV in Mumbai
Year 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007
Combined 23.9 23.6 16.8 18.4 Hijra & 49.2 3.9 29.6 42.2
MSM, hijra & transgender
transgender
prevalence MSM 9.6 6.0 7.6 8.4
dams and lubricants. The issues of transsexuals include hormone

therapy, sex reassignment surgery, electrolysis and changes of
names and sex markers on identification and academic docu-
ments among others.
There are numerous organisations purporting to work on
transgender issues and they don’t. Yet donors don’t question
them – but if it were a mainstream organisation channelling
funds meant for homosexual people to cancer patients then there
would be a storm. But homosexuals are allowed to get away with
it because of the disproportionate privileges they enjoy. Of all the
donor officials working with the LGBTI communities I have met,
only one is transgender. The rest are homosexual men and women
and, of course, most do not appear to like the idea of people such
as Audrey questioning imperialist ideologies among some homo-
sexual people. The gays and lesbians take the lion’s share while
transsexuals eat the leftovers at the periphery. This animus sucks
like hell. We need to stop babysitting homosexuals and treat them
like everyone else.
The serious effects can be seen in the desegregation of data on
HIV prevalence among transgender women from that of MSM
where some ‘experts’ placed them, in their infinite wisdom and
with the encouragement of some homosexuals (see Table 11.1).
The data was provided by the Mumbai AIDS District Society.22
From 2000 to 2003, the medical and social interventions to stem
new HIV infections were carried out from homosexual perspec-
tives. But with the desegregation of data from 2004 to 2007 we
begin to get a better picture of the magnitude of the problem of
HIV among transgender women and can see that the interven-
tions that were earlier being channelled (through a homosexual
lens) were counterproductive for transgender women. Similar
131
data and trends are provided in the reference paper. A year ago,
I started a campaign to have the data for transgender women
desegregated from that for MSM and homosexual men and all
the resistance that I face comes from homosexuals. I don’t know
what they stand to lose if transgender women are not part of their
MSM campaigns; they come out so arrogantly and brutishly that
you have to feel concern that these are the same people who are
forcing transgender women to accept their help.
Second, the habit of gaynising transgender people poses secu-
rity risks to transgender people. Homophobic people end up
violating the rights of transgender people because they have been
made to believe that they are the gays. Government officials end
up denying transsexuals their rights because they don’t want to be
seen to be ‘promoting homosexuality’. I am not insinuating that
it is okay to discriminate against gays and lesbians and wrong to
discriminate against transgender people. But it is wrong to make
transgender people sacrificial lambs or a shield for gays and lesbi-
ans. I would rather be confronted for a ‘crime’ I am guilty of than
for the ‘crimes’ of others.
Lastly, gaynisation of transgender people is intellectual fraud.
It is done to confuse people and is malicious. It is is a mark of self-
stigma among some homosexuals.
At times I sense a certain level of desperation among some
homosexuals when confronted by the anti-gaynisation campaigns
transsexuals are putting up. For example, some LGBs will rush
to defend themselves, using the cliché, ‘but there are transgender
people who are gay’. (Why the obsession about sex and trans;
why not say there are some trans who are doctors, engineers,
models and accountants?) It is even weirder: for some of them a
trans man who is attracted to men is gay and those dating women
are butch lesbians. Trans women dating men are gay men whereas
those dating women are lesbians – you can see how cunning they
can be. Some of us grew up adhering to this model till we knew
better. Education is liberating. If you have ever interacted with a
section of the homosexual community you will have discovered
that there are no straight transgender people. They always twist
things for us to be part of them.
In March 2011 I invented a system known as the transsexual
nomenclature on sexual orientation (TNOSO):23 all transgender
132
persons attracted to men are T5,000, those attracted to women are

T7,000, those attracted to all are TATA (Transgender Attracted To
All) and those attracted to nobody are T0. The system received
remarkable support from some transgender people, but most
homosexuals abused me for it (as if that was going to change any-
thing). They accused me of using propaganda and science fiction
to break the gay movement: so sad. Then there are transsexuals
who felt there was a possibility that donors and gays would think
of us all as homophobic traitors. I really sympathise with this lot
– their desire to be seen as good transsexuals or to fit in the ideal
caricature (for trans women) of a woman is incompatible with the
secret principles of transsexuals. It is bad enough to believe in
other people’s lies but a serious misstep to start believing in your
own lies.
And, I cannot forget to remind some homosexuals of the fol-
lowing. You overzealously tell people your bedroom activities are
private affairs. You tell the church and the state to stop poking
their noses in your private affairs. However, you change your
tune when it comes to trans people; you assume you have the
right to know how transsexuals have sex, with who, when, why
and what label is appropriate for them. I urge transsexuals to
retaliate against oppressive homosexuals; no more babysitting
some people who think the world owes them an apology and
special attention because they are gay.
There is a need to go deeper into the topic of why some gays
force their labels on others. I posit that such individuals are not
proud of who they are; they acknowledge the fact that they are
sinners and will suffer torment on earth and in heaven. These
individuals get scared and foolishly decide to make other people
targets of their torment. Their reasoning is that it is comforting to
know you are not the only one who is suffering, there are millions
of others in your situation and they are coping well. The mantra
is: transsexual people will never be happy if the homosexual com-
munity is unhappy.
133
Misrepresentation and misinformation

Once upon a time in the world of mental health, homosexual-
ity was classified as a mental disorder. It was not until 1973 that
homosexuality was removed from the Diagnostic and Statistical
Manual for Mental Disorders of the American Psychiatric Association,
Edition II (DSM-II). We are now seeing some gays and lesbians
pushing for gender identity disorders to be expunged from the
DSM-V. The International Lesbian and Gay Association is one
institution that is zealous on the topic. They are demanding:
The removal of Gender Identity Disorder (GID) of both the

Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders of the
American Psychiatric Association (DSM-IV) and International
Classification of Diseases (ICD-10), which are related to the
World Health Organisation…24
And that’s not the end:
Free access to hormonal treatments and surgery (without

psychiatric care … This campaign comes against the stigma
that is disqualifying gender identity in both the Diagnostic and
Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders of the American Psychiatric
Association and the International Classification of Diseases.25
So, the poor lad in our village laughs at me because he read the
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual Text Revised Edition IV (DSM-IV
TR) and stigmatised me? That police officer who was harassing
me in the street the other day did it because he is a regular reader
of the DSM-IV TR and knows about GID?
I once met three homosexuals who supported the idea of
expunging GID from the DSM-IV TR and I could sympathise with
their arguments: ‘Transsexualism is not a medical condition and
should not be in the DSM … Audrey, do you know homosexuality
also used to be classified as a mental disorder till it was expunged
in 1973?’ They waxed on.
Do these people think of the consequences of expunging GID
from the DSM-V? Transsexuals need medical attention relating to
transsexualism and doctors need to be trained on how to man-
age transsexualism. You lose these once you expunge it from the
134
DSM-V and you transsexuals and those to be born in the future

will never be able to access medical services relating to your sex
transitions. We cannot afford to pussyfoot over the issue. Sense-
less people have to take their crazy ideas where they came from.
But, some gays and lesbians are motivated by selfish reasons:
‘GID’ (DSM-IV) entered into the picture as a potential repres-

sive and dangerous oppressive agent for lesbians and gays.
Since many lesbians and gays do not conform to the hetero-
sexual bipolar cultural gender paradigm, they have been and
can continue to be oppressed by the APA … hundreds of LGBT
youth are confined to psychiatric institutions and subjected to
‘treatment’ to change their sexual orientation … The classifica-
tion of ‘Gender Identity Disorder’ as a disease presents a major
obstacle to accessing health care.26
This is utter nonsense. If gays and lesbians are being forced by

medical practitioners to change their sexual orientation then they
can sue these medical practitioners or their hospitals instead of
pulling the rug out from under transsexuals’ feet – the DSM-IV is
a diagnostic tool for gender identity disorders not homosexuality/
sexual orientation. Doing away with it jeopardises access to medi-
cal services for transsexuals.
Additionally, some gays and lesbians need to stop making false
statements. I have heard and read articles by some homosexuals
and their allies telling the world that LGBTI people in Africa are
criminalised.27, 28, 29 Homosexuality is criminalised, transsexualism
and intersexuality are not. The habit of making people targets for
anti-gay hatred and discrimination is unacceptable. If someone is
criminalised then they should not implicate others.
The situation is getting to a critical level. There are these
homosexuals who are introducing themselves in workshops and
meetings as ‘LGBTI persons’. When you probe, they say they
mean they are gays. This phenomenon is called ‘gayflage’ (from
‘camouflage’) and needs to be clipped in the bud. It is disgusting
and a very fine form of treachery.
I managed to talk to two transsexuals from Kenya about all
these unacceptable behaviours by some gays and lesbians:
135
TXCRD
What’s your opinion about transgender people being forced to work with
gays and lesbians? Transsexuals should be an independent group.
It is very important for transsexuals to have their own voice in the
society and not homosexuals talking on their behalf and pushing
them around as if they own them.
Have you ever had your rights abused by some homosexual? Yes, abusing
me to the point of calling me a man, another one told me together
with my transgender friends that we would go to hell, they have
threatened me and stolen from me. I think most are like that.
What do you think of homosexuals? Most are very bad.
Do you like being lumped or associated with homosexuals? I don’t
like being grouped together with them and I don’t like being
associated with them. I don’t like the way people talk about
homosexuals and it’s assumed I am in there. Also, they don’t get
to answer for the abuses they carry out.
What do you think should be done about LGBT activism? Transgender
issues should be independent but I don’t care what the rest do
because they push themselves to transgenders.
TRT101
What do you think about homosexuals? Most are bad people. Their
behaviour is bad and ungodly.
Do you like being associated with homosexuals? No. I don’t see why I
should always be pushed to associate with homosexuals. I should
be able to exercise my freedom of association
Have you ever had some homosexuals abusing your rights? Yes, one
tried to make me a sex slave in addition to him stealing my Ksh
8,000.
Do you like homosexuals claiming they work on transgender rights?
No. It makes me uncomfortable and makes me feel horrible.
Most don’t do the right thing and we are left to suffer because
of their mistakes.
What do you recommend with respect to LGBT activism? Homosexuals
should work on their issues and transsexuals on theirs. We can
136
work together when in agreement but they should not force us to

work with them.
Conclusion
Transphobia is a reality among some homosexuals. It takes the
form of verbal abuse, discrimination, exclusion and hate speech. It
runs deep and can be overt or covert, but it has debilitating effects
in the transsexual community.
Homosexuals are protected by an abnormally thick wall of
respect – undeserved respect. This means that you are not sup-
posed to criticise homosexuals because some assume they are
entitled to special rights and privileges. If there is evidence to
prove they are wrong then it is for that evidence to be thrown in
the trash bin, not them.
Transsexuals don’t want to be lumped with homosexuals.
This association is normally counterproductive due to the confu-
sion it causes in mainstream society. Additionally, the issues of
transsexuals get ignored by LGBT organisations in favour of the
homosexual agenda. Transsexuals demand space to voice their
own issues independent from the gay rights movement.
Some homosexuals want the LGBT community to be unpacked
so that it becomes the LGB community. Transsexuals have
expressed similar desires due to the problems involved in work-
ing with most homosexuals.
It seems everyone at any level of ignorance about transsexuals
has the inherent right to give their ‘expert’ opinion about trans-
sexuals and transsexualism. Some homosexuals fall under this
category. They feel that just because they are homosexuals, they
are always right and are qualified enough to give an opinion
about transsexuals and transsexualism.
Recommendations
Transsexuals need to be careful of the people, groups and
organisations they associate with. They need to be able to know
constructive people and should realise they have the freedom of
association. They should not be dictated to about who to work
with. There is no reason why we transsexuals should be working
137
with other people simply because these other people are homo-
sexual people.
The wishes of transsexuals and homosexuals who want a split
from the LGBT community should be respected. The issues of
transsexuals are totally different from those of homosexuals, and
splitting the LGBT community will enhance greater focus on
transsexual issues.
Transsexuals need to be assertive. Most transsexuals are scared
of criticising homosexuals; they are scared of being accused of
homophobia.
Those homosexuals (and their allies) who have a habit of
carelessly jumping into transgender issues and pretending to be
experts in this field need to stop doing so. While a few homo-
sexuals have something worthwhile to offer, most homosexuals
inadvertently or intentionally create problems for transsexuals
due to the misinformation they spread about transsexuals. Some
homosexuals impose a superiority complex over transsexuals,
they neuter trans folks, misguiding them to engage in destructive
sexual behaviour, substance abuse, and encourage us transsexuals
to divorce ourselves from the health fraternity and our families.
Transsexuals need to make concerted efforts to educate main-
stream society about transgender issues. They need to make
mainstream society understand that transsexuals are not homo-
sexuals and are not related, and that the issues (e.g. legal) of trans-
sexuals are different from those of homosexuals. In connection to
that, I would advise the mainstream society to take whatever the
homosexual community says with a pinch of salt.
Dedicated to the transsexual race across the universe.
Notes
1 ‘Is a “transsexual” a woman or a cross dressing eunuch?’,
CrossDressingQuestions.com, http://crossdressingquestions.com/is-a-
transsexual-a-woman-or-a-cross-dressing-eunuch.html, accessed 1 June
2011.
2 Nathan Tabak (2010) ‘Transgender rights are gay rights’, Change.org,
http://news.change.org/stories/transgender-rights-are-gay-rights,
accessed 1 June 2011.
3 ‘I hate transgendered people, please convince me not to’, http://
au.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080830200855AAB9ZEu,
138
4 ‘Why do gay/lesbian dislike transgendered people?’, http://www.

answerbag.com/q_view/913328, accessed 13 June 2011.
5 Mia Nikasimo (2010) ‘Transgender people face hate speech from lesbian
and gay people’, Black Looks, http://www.blacklooks.org/2010/10/
transgender-community-face-hate-speech-from-lesbian-and-gay-people/,
6 ‘Do you think transgender should be lumped in with gays and lesbians?’,
Yahoo Answers, http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=201010141
21109AAJH3MA, accessed 13 June 2011.
7 Pamela Hayes (2011) ‘Why do some gay men hate transsexuals?’,
Transgriot, http://transgriot.blogspot.com/2011/01/pams-ponderings-why-
do-some-gay-men.html, accessed 13 June 2011.
Yahoo Answers, accessed 15 June 2011.
9 Ibid.
10 ‘Chaz Bono is no longer gay. Well, then it’s time for the old heave-ho’,
(2010) The data lounge, http://www.datalounge.com/cgi- bin/iowa/ajax.
html?t=9212259#page:showThread,9212259, accessed 15 June 2011.
11 Ibid.
12 Ibid.
13 ‘Do you think transsexualism or transgendered is a sexual orientation?’,
Yahoo Answers, http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=200811281
23203AAYICtM, accessed 15 June 2011.
Yahoo Answers, accessed 15 June 2011.
15 Ibid.
16 Ibid.
17 Ibid.
18 ‘LGB People, what are your views on transgender individuals?’, Yahoo
Answers, http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20101201123307
AA2TITq, accessed 15 June 2011.
19 A transposon is a chromosomal segment that can undergo transposition
(Oxford English Dictionary).
20 R. Hofmann and R.O. Gutierrez (2011) ‘Fearing no evil’, http://www.poz.
com/articles/David_Kuria_HIV_2591_20107.shtml, accessed 16 June 2011.
21 Wikipedia, ‘Gay community’, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gay_
community, accessed 16 June 2011.
22 A.L. Guevara (n.d.) ‘The hidden HIV epidemic. Transgender women in
Latin America and Asia’, International HIV/AIDS Alliance, http://www.
msmgf.org/files/msmgf//Latin%20America/ART_EN_010808_HID.pdf,
23 ‘Transsexual nomenclature on sexual orientation’, TransgenderKenya,
http://www.transgenderkenya.com, accessed 16 June 2011.
24 ‘Groundwork for the campaign against the pathologizing of
gender identity. Stop trans pathologizing’ (2012) International
Lesbian and Gay Association, http://trans.ilga.org/trans/
139
welcome_to_the_ilga_trans_secretariat/library/articles/groundwork_
for_the_campaign_against_the_pathologizing_of_gender_identity_stop_
trans_pathologizing_2012, accessed 17 June 2011.
25 Ibid.
26 Tere Prasse, ‘Genderevolution sidebars’, http://womynweb.net/gendersb.
htm, accessed 17 June 2011.
27 ‘African LGBTI Manifesto/Declaration’ (2010) http://www.priorityafrica.
org/African_LGBTI_Manifesto-FINAL.pdf, accessed 17 June 2011.
28 ‘MCC call to action: save LGBT lives in Uganda’, http://mccchurch.
org/2011/05/10/mcc-call-to-action-save-lgbt-lives-in-uganda/, accessed 17
June 2011.
29 Kiwianglo (2011) ‘Ugandan bishop addresses U.N. on tolerance for LGBT
community’, http://kiwianglo.wordpress.com/2011/04/11/nigerian-bishop-
addresses-u-n-on-tolerance-for-lgbt-community/, accessed 17 June 2011.
140
14
The media, the tabloid and the

Uganda homophobia spectacle
Kenne Mwikya
Introduction
On 9 October 2010 Rolling Stone,1 a Ugandan tabloid, outed 100
alleged ‘homosexuals’. It printed their names, photographs, home
addresses and other contact information – with a line on the
front page that said ‘hang them’. It further claimed that gays and
lesbians and bisexual and gender non-conforming people were
planning to recruit one million children. By the end of that week,
the tabloid had gained major traction in world news and was
featured in a range of publications including the Guardian and the
New York Times.2
News of the Rolling Stone outings spread rapidly. PDF cop-
ies of the issue circulated with comments of the kind of fiercely
anti-homophobia rhetoric that dominates the spaces in which
the tabloid had gained relevance. That is how the Uganda Roll-
ing Stone intrusion came to pass. I call it ‘intrusion’ because the
flood of commentary – most of it against the outings – skipped an
important phase, i.e. the details around the outings and analysis
of their relevance, which in turn could have limited their power.3
In this chapter, I examine the relationship between the media
and the queer community in East Africa by focusing on Uganda,
which has gained international notoriety for the introduction of
an anti-homosexuality bill in parliament and the media spectacle
it caused and, as far as the reintroduction of the bill in parliament
is concerned, continues to cause as I write this chapter.4 I look at
how the tabloid press in Uganda, the regional and international
141
media, and in particular the pro-queer blogs, approached the

queer rights (essentially, human rights) crisis in the country. I
argue that such coverage sidesteps crucial ruminations on the
crisis by concerned intellectuals and denied the country opportu-
nities to defuse the crisis.5 I propose critical reflection and rethink-
ing on the relationship between the media and the queer commu-
nity by queer African activists, intellectuals and spectators.
Background
It was not the first time Uganda had witnessed mass outings by
disreputable tabloids. Another tabloid, Red Pepper, had started
publishing the names, identifying features, places of employment,
residences and contact information of activists and other ‘out’
queers as early as 2007. These events were sparked by a conference
arranged by US evangelicals and attended by journalists, police
officers, members of parliament and government and other stake-
holders that gave the rallying call against queers in the country. It
was, I should note, the first time a tabloid had been morphed by
its pro- and anti-LGBTI readers into some sort of powerhouse in
which ideas, debate and conversation could collate.
In a Uganda where an anti-homosexuality bill had been tabled
in parliament by David Bahati MP in October 2009, the allegations
and outings were both bizarre and scary.6 The allegations found
a ready population, which had been inundated with anti-LGBTI
rhetoric from politicians and religious leaders that blamed LGBTI
people for the country’s social problems. Worse still, only a small
and underfunded group of sexual minority activists existed in
Uganda, an activist network that could not keep up with the logis-
tical and financial capabilities of religious and government insti-
tutions supporting anti-LGBTI measures in the country. In this
context, Rolling Stone and its predecessors threatened queers in
two crucial respects. First, the normalisation of tabloid media as
a viable repository for ‘collecting’ discourse legitimised the need
to open up discourse. Second, however, the tabloid itself, with
its severely biased material, encouraged readers to focus not on
the quality of reporting and the fact of the outings but on queers
living in Uganda. This meant that instead of asking whether it
was ethical to ‘out’ LGBTI people, the discourse revolved around
142
14 THE UGANDA HOMOPHOBIA SPECTACLE
whether or how the information provided by Rolling Stone should

be acted upon. These two situations acted in concert with each
other to produce a scenario in which discourse, debate and con-
versation were premised on biased, unquestioned information,
on which the public (which readily and regularly consumed this
information) were encouraged to act.
In the few days that followed, Rolling Stone had become a
‘newspaper’ rather than a tabloid of high disrepute and bad
grammar. Giles Muhame, the man behind the murky paper, was
deemed a ‘journalist’.7 This redefinition of the paper and its edi-
tor became one of the many un-doings by Western liberal media
and subsequently by pro-LGBTI blogs and African news agencies,
which were giddy about carrying such a controversial story and
sourcing news from Western agencies rather than carrying out
their own investigation. The redefinition of the Ugandan Rolling
Stone created an inaccurate picture of the tabloid as the institu-
tionalisation of anti-LGBTI bigotry and homophobia in Uganda
and, indeed, Africa. It could be said that Rolling Stone’s power lay
in its ‘tabloidness’ and our gullibility in ‘condemning’ something
that had a readership of around 3,000 people.
The proponents of the concept of some sort of ‘gay agenda’ have
always insisted that activism by sexual minorities has been covertly
and overtly supported by the increasingly liberalised media.8 On
the other hand – and I see this in a country such as Kenya where we
have many people coming out in support of LGBTI people9 – activ-
ists and bloggers have insisted that it is good for the media to paint
a picture about queers, whether favourable or unfavourable, prem-
ised on the pragmatic view that ‘publicity is publicity’. This means
that our ability or willingness to engage with highly prejudicial
and biased reporting about queers in Africa is directly related to
whether or not we appreciate the fact that some ‘headway’ is being
made in trying to spark discourse on sexual and gender variance
by such reporting. Hence, the policing of homophobia, transphobia
and prejudice in media reporting is scant. As debate can have vari-
ous ways, ends and means that do not directly aid a more tolerant
discourse on homosexuality or gender non-conformity, activists
seem to be involved most of the time in a severely unequal relation-
ship with the media to the detriment of the activists themselves and
queer people all over the continent.
143
Indeed, it would be churlish not to point out that we have had

many op eds in our newspapers, and features and interviews on
television and radio which have highlighted the ‘plight of gays
and lesbians’, especially when it comes to health and basic rights
(such as the decriminalisation of private, consensual same-sex
relations, anti-discrimination laws and hate-crime legislation).
However, such endeavours have been based on misinformation
and the wide-eyed perception that queers need ‘support’ – com-
monly translated as pity.
Such undertakings have not been totally clean. Newspaper
dailies and TV and radio still carry biased and unbalanced news
and analysis, sometimes sliding off to tabloid status with lies or
misinformation about queer activists, stereotypes and the sub-
cultures emerging out of a tense discourse on sexual identity, the
menace from both foreign and local fundamentalist groups and
the queer erasure that sometimes stings but also aids the nuanced
if not closeted existence of most LGBTI people.
This kind of doublespeak betrays the fact that the media are
just using homosexuality to get a wide readership. Thus, the dou-
ble portrayal of misdirected compassion and contempt or indiffer-
ence portends a turbulent future on how reporting by the media
will be interpreted and debated by the public. It must be noted
that journalism, as with other professions in Africa, is still deeply
embedded in hetero-patriarchy, still linked to religious doctrine
and still governed, more or less, by profit, government censorship
and the political rhetoric of the day.
It can thus be said that media coverage of queer issues tends to
be incredibly complex within local, translocal and glocal spaces,
inhabiting different forms, following different methods and envi-
sioning divergent ends.
The circumstances under which Rolling Stone operated were
not unique as its outing tirades had been preceded by Red Pep-
per. The only difference with Rolling Stone was the overwhelming
media attention it received and the muffled analysis inundated
by such coverage. Both tabloids thrived on events that had
shaped the lives of queers in Uganda for the worse, namely the
normalisation of anti-LGBTI sentiment by US evangelicals and
local religious and political leaders and the anti-homosexuality
bill introduced to parliament by MP David Bahati. One would
144
have thought that this would have been a good time to think
about the coincidence between what was being published by Roll-
ing Stone and other tabloids and the rising anti-LGBTI sentiment
in Uganda, the introduction of the anti-homosexuality bill in the
Ugandan parliament and its subsequent featuring in national and
international cultural, political and ideological debate. Nothing
like this happened.
Since the introduction of the bill, international attention on the
country’s treatment of LGBTI people has shifted from the wider
picture of human rights and sexual freedoms to fighting the bill
independently of other human rights abuses. From this separa-
tion and the subsequent opposition between fighting the anti-
homosexuality bill and larger issues of human rights abuses in
Uganda, it can be deduced that the legitimisation of LGBTI rights
was the intended outcome once the bill had been defeated – a
huge gamble. I doubt media attention on the Rolling Stone issue
would have lasted as long if the bill were not as menacing or, and
this is more telling, if the Western factors in this equation, that
is the US far-right evangelicals and the shifting of culture wars
from the West to Africa’s fertile grounds of religious fervour, had
been absent.
Events surrounding queer or ‘homophobic’ Uganda have fol-
lowed an almost cyclical pattern of events and reactions since the
US evangelical conference, the Red Pepper outings, the introduc-
tion of the anti-homosexuality bill, the Rolling Stone outings, the
January 2011 death of activist David Kato and the kerfuffle that
surrounded the seeming end of the anti-homosexuality bill in
the Ugandan parliament in May 2011 and the reintroduction of
the bill in 2012. For people with a genuine concern over what
is taking place in Uganda, the intimidation of activists and the
normalisation of anti-queer rhetoric which are symptoms of the
dehumanisation of LGBTI people, the cacophony does not make
sense. Intellectual thought and analysis have been scant and were
muffled by the din of blogs and news sites summarily concluding
that Uganda is homophobic.
Media machineries in Africa do not get off the hook, as on
close scrutiny there is little coverage of the queer and human
rights crisis in Uganda. Instead, we see general self-censorship,
or supposed censorship by governments, about issues affecting
145
queers in the continent and an over-reliance on Western media

for news and reportage about African affairs. This paved the way
for Western news sites to handle reporting on queer Africa with
an authoritative fervour that concentrated on the pragmatics and
drew a picture that would evoke passionate responses about how
‘homophobic’ Africa is. In the end the coverage of the Uganda
homophobia spectacle ended up, in the eyes of most Africans
watching the story, as an example of Western governments using
their media to overly criticise and impose ‘foreign’ beliefs upon
them. Such an articulation is fallacious, but in a continent where
the biggest propagators of ideology are the church and the gov-
ernment, this made sense.
African news agencies have also shown great irresponsibility
in their coverage of queers in their own continent. The system
for addressing concepts such as balance in the coverage of queer
Africa is flawed, so the media in Africa have ended up deeming
coverage of LGBTI persons, their stories and their impact, per-
ceived or otherwise, in society as something of a formality. This
is evidenced by the fact that although the media publish diverse
stories which are both pro-queer and ‘socially conservative’ if
not prejudicial, debate on homosexuality has been precluded
by the too easy consensus of an anti-LGBTI stance. The ball is in
the media’s court to produce material that will generate genuine
debate, conversation and discourse and see whether the end
will be the usual conclusion that homosexuality is wrong and
un-African.
The Ugandan Rolling Stone betrayed the similarities with
which the news agencies in Africa, Western news agencies and
pro-queer blogs handled the news, and the way such reporting
in the end went only to serve the needs of their consumer bases.
The tone in which these differing media machineries carried their
stories was consistent with their core readerships. Rolling Stone
largely catered for the needs of the Ugandan who wanted to ‘be
in the know’ but could not afford a newspaper such as the Daily
Monitor or the New Vision – the two mainstream newspapers in
Uganda. On the other hand, a paper such as the Guardian (Lon-
don), known for its wide reporting on queer Africa, caters to an
audience that is – and here I’m speculating – interested in the
‘internationalism of queer’.10 Reporting by a network such as the
146
BBC was hardly destined to be a viable collation point for debate,

conversation and analysis in Africa given the differences between
a country which is debating same-sex marriage rights and a con-
tinent still grappling to wrest itself from the clutches of sexual
minority repression. Much can also be said about Rolling Stone.
Even in Uganda, there came a time when Rolling Stone was just
debated with the enthusiasm of an anecdote from the past, losing
traction with its core readership. I pit these extremes against each
other to point out the similarities between reporting endeavours
across the wide spectrum between a tabloid in ‘backwater’ Kam-
pala and a paper such as the Guardian in London.
I want to point out the ‘spectacularisation’ by both the Western
news agencies and Rolling Stone and its predecessor, Red Pepper.
While Rolling Stone concentrated on the trumped-up accusations
that queers were recruiting children, queer blogs amplified its
power. Giles Muhame was, meanwhile, institutionalised and
invited to interviews where he demonstrated his flailing mastery
of English. The aftershocks of this portrayal are still with us today
in that Muhame’s comment after receiving news of activist David
Kato’s death was that it was the work of the government to kill
queers and not the public.11
Another example of spectacularisation is a documentary by
Scott Mills of the BBC that deems Uganda the ‘worst place to be
gay’ – never mind that such a demonstration does not change
perceptions about how to approach queer activism in Africa and
takes the well-trodden path of ‘Africa is homophobic’.12 Such
reporting is exclusively geared at a Western audience keen on
insulating itself from the rest of the world. In this way it conveni-
ently ignores its own homophobia and transphobia, including
bullying, beatings and even murder, as well as racism and Islamo-
phobia, and summarily uses its findings as evidence to suggest
the viability of a concept like ‘African homophobia’. Uganda is the
new Iran, an African backward state that terrorises queers, who
are, curiously, saved from being associated with the homophobia
found in spaces which they inhabit. The heroic Western media has
imposed itself as the leader in ‘helping’, or the more job descrip-
tive ‘exposing’, queer activism on the continent not as it really
is but how they want it to be. Activism and intellectual thought
around queer Uganda have been pushed onto the backburner, as
147
from reading the media you would think that activism in Uganda
is either non-existent or totally disorganised and frantic, with its
ultimate goal being defeating the anti-homosexuality bill.
However, some criticism should also be levelled against the
strategies which activists use in their work to end state-sanctioned
repression against queer minorities in their countries. The total-
ity with which Western paradigms are used in activism in Africa
should be suspect given that the feasibility of such strategies in
Africa is in question and that even in the spaces in which they
were previously employed, the results were wide-ranging and
not always positive.13 With such a ‘way of doing things’ deeply
embedded in paradigms of Western activism, interference by
Western news agencies was not only seen as appropriate by
Western media but also as an extension of a globalisation of queer
rights in which the West was the paragon. But tensions between
the aspirations of the West and the needs of places such as Africa
and the Middle East cannot be blanketed by internationalism.
Their paths are markedly different, as are the immediate needs
and challenges that befall countries such as Kenya and Uganda
as opposed to the US and Britain. These tensions do not address
the normalisation of ‘homosexuality is un-African’ and blatantly
ignore and often threaten bridging attempts by religious organi-
sations concerned over the increasing interpretation of moral-
ity as something institutional rather than a cultivated, personal
aspect of human nature. Queer internationalism demands that
players have ‘something’ that is ‘good’ to bring to the table. Queer
internationalism is not as binding as it is touted to be, nor as ben-
eficial as it is portrayed as when fighting homo/transphobia in a
localised space such as Uganda. The actions of queer internation-
alism only go to engender the rampant belief that LGBTI activism,
just like homosexuality, is a Western import and an imposition on
a people’s sovereignty. These are issues that internationalism, in
its inchoateness, cannot address inclusively or conclusively.
The activist–media ‘cooperation’ in Africa is a bittersweet
affair, with the media taking the upper hand. Thus, objectivity
and bias, just like the terms of any debate, are closely monitored
and policed by the media, which set them in the first place. An
example is an article that appeared in the Daily Nation that com-
pletely misrepresented David Kato and his wide-ranging work
148
as an activist and a pioneer in the fight for sexual minority rights

in East Africa. The article went out of its way to feign a sense of
balance by printing lies and quoting non-sources and in the end,
Kato was portrayed as a promiscuous, HIV-positive, uppity per-
son – things which, even if true, would be completely irrelevant
to his work as an activist.14 The article received a large number of
comments condemning Kato and all queers, with religious zealots
enforcing LGBTI stereotypes, and a general agreement that his
death was a good thing. Thus people who knew nothing about
David Kato or his work were ‘invited’ to voice their hatred and
ignorance of LGBTI issues. Much the same can be said about the
reactions from Ugandans who welcomed the outing sprees by Red
Pepper, Rolling Stone and the blog posts and the reporting from
Western media on the homophobia spectacle.
In November 2010, a group of LGBTI activists – Kasha Jac-
queline, David Kato and Pepe Julian Onziema – petitioned the
Ugandan High Court to stop further outings by Rolling Stone.15
Their actions show how their resilience to the repression of sexual
and gender variance in Uganda has emboldened activists. These
are extremely brave people who have remained in their countries
and continue with their work as activists. Only a few weeks after
a judge ruled in favour of the applicants of the petition, David
Kato was killed outside his house under unclear circumstances.
The anti-homosexuality bill was shelved a few months later, in
mid-May 2011, amid confusion over whether it would be tabled
in parliament.16
Where does this leave progressive queer African bloggers, com-
mentators and intellectuals? The Uganda homophobia spectacle is
a wake-up call for more in-depth thinking, commenting, critiques
and organising. As the guardians of our own narratives and the
people called to safeguard our own cultures and beliefs, it is time
to seriously reconsider our chequered relationship with the media
and call for more objectivity: balance or bust! A new collective in
which activist groups cooperate with unaffiliated but nonetheless
supportive bloggers, commentators and thinkers must be forged.
In a country like Kenya, Rolling Stone could have been criticised as
highly abusive of journalistic ethics and best practices but none-
theless seen as relevant. These are the rules of engagement that
LGBTI activist groups must reconfigure. Cooperation with the
149
media must aim to produce content which serves the public by

telling the truth, being objective and telling stories of vulnerable
groups and not as a good opportunity to tabloidise reporting for
the sake of arousing interest. The concern raised about the com-
mentary of queer stories by Western news agencies, especially
the pro-queer blogs, is a symptom of our dependence on Western
thought and modes of activism as a paradigm effective enough to
work in places such as Uganda and the ineffectiveness of queer
internationalism and rights-based imperialism imposed within
countries, on governments and on societies.
Witnessing the transfiguration of the Ugandan Rolling Stone
from a lowly paper to a bastion of queer oppression in Africa, the
following has to be asked:
1 How did transnational/international anxieties over sexual

orientation affect the reporting of the Uganda homophobia
spectacle?
2 How do we address the interference of Western media in
queer African affairs, agencies which comment with the air of
imperialism and with their own ends in mind?
3 How should Western groups and individuals that aim to
provide queer Ugandans with much needed support do so?
4 How do we approach the anxieties of foreign paradigms in
addressing activism? Are their stories our stories? To what
extent do we see ourselves in the stories that they tell about us?
5 What should be done about the biased reporting of queer in
Africa, or is this just an excess of the non-queer mainstream
in manipulating uncharted territory in law books and social
sanctions?
These questions are just a few which should be asked and
answered analytically to pave the way for a new queer rights
activist framework that is not only responsive to the needs of
African gay, lesbian, bisexual and gender non-conforming per-
sons but which is able to influence decisions in decades or centu-
ries to come.
The dust had settled, David Kato’s alleged killer was sentenced
to 30 years imprisonment for the crime and David’s legacy was
150
solidified, tentatively, with the setting up of a Vision and Voice

Award with his name.17 But at the time of finishing this article,
the anti-homosexuality bill had been reintroduced in parlia-
ment twice, in 2011 and 2012, with the death penalty having
been dropped from the 2012 version.18 The Ugandan govern-
ment continues to harass sexual rights activists, infringing on
their fundamental freedoms and threatening arrest on dubious
or no grounds at all.19 With this resurgence, the Uganda homo-
phobia spectacle should be tested on how far and to what extent
it informed and influenced debate on sexual minority rights in
Uganda and Africa. It would seem it has failed that test.
We could only hope that all the participants involved have
learned from the spectacularisation and that if they have not,
there are people willing to constantly and incessantly expose the
failings of the spectacle. We can only hope that the East African,
African and global public will not be in for another round of info-
tainment at the expense of real human rights issues in Uganda
and the rest of Africa.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Keguro Macharia and Sokari Ekine for gen-
eral feedback and intellectual, political and emotional sustenance,
editing and correcting aspects of this work.
Notes
1 For further information, see Wikipedia entry on Rolling Stone (Uganda),
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_Stone_%28Uganda%29, accessed 12
March 2011.
2 X. Rice (2010) ‘Ugandan paper calls for gay people to be hanged’,
Guardian, 21 October, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/oct/21/
ugandan-paper-gay-people-hanged, accessed 19 November 2012; J.
Gettleman (2011) ‘Ugandan who spoke up for gays is beaten to death’,
New York Times, 27 January, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/28/world/
africa/28uganda.html?_r=1, accessed 12 March 2011.
3 For instance, Box Turtle Bulletin’s ‘Slouching towards Kampala: Uganda’s
deadly embrace of hate’ (www.boxturtlebulletin.com/slouching-toward-
kampala.htm, accessed 12 March 2011), a timeline of events leading up
to the introduction of the anti-homosexuality bill, focuses too much on
the Western influences that might have sparked debate and conversation
on the bill within Uganda’s political and clerical class and takes only a
casual interest in the internal forces that actually made the bill’s entry
151
into parliament possible. But though certainly biased in this aspect, it is

still a useful site if one wants to get hold of relevant news and blog sites
that have covered and are still covering the story in Uganda. Another
page on the Box Turtle Bulletin site, on the Ugandan Rolling Stone
(www.boxturtlebulletin.com/rolling-stone-uganda.htm, accessed 12
March 2011), was also helpful in gathering wide-ranging information on
not only the attitude employed by various blogs and news sites covering
Uganda on this but also the quality of information.
4 C. Ni Chonghaile (2012) ‘Uganda anti-gay bill resurrected in parliament’,
8 February, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/feb/08/uganda-gay-
death-sentence-bill, accessed 19 November 2012.
5 See Keguro Macharia (2010) ‘Homophobia in Africa is not a single
story’, 26 May, http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/may/26/
homophobia-africa-not-single-story, accessed 19 November 2012;
and ‘Explaining African homophobia?’ (2010) 24 May, http://gukira.
wordpress.com/2010/05/24/explaining-african-homophobia/, accessed
19 November 2012. Both are a response to Madeleine Bunting’s (2010)
assertion of ‘African homophobia’, ‘African homophobia has complex
roots’, 21 May, http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/may/21/
complex-roots-africa-homophobia, accessed 19 November 2012, a notion
based largely on the anecdotal and other aspects of homophobia found
in all cultural contexts. Keguro challenges scholars from the West to
actually engage with scholarly work and activist collectives that have
amassed a wealth of knowledge on African sexualities, information that
would dispute any conception of an exceptional ‘African homophobia’.
Keguro’s challenges could be employed many times over when it comes
to the Uganda homophobia spectacle.
6 A copy of the Anti Homosexuality Bill, Uganda 2009 can be found at the
Warren Throckmorton website, http://wthrockmorton.com/wp-content/
uploads/2009/10/anti-homosexuality-bill-2009.pdf, accessed 19 November,
2012. More information about the bill, its publication and subsequent
controversy internationally can be found at the Wikipedia entry, ‘Uganda
Anti-Homosexuality Bill’, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uganda_Anti-
Homosexuality_Bill, accessed 19 November 2012.
7 Examples of the Ugandan Rolling Stone being misnamed as a
newspaper include Rolling Stone, USA (‘African ‘Rolling Stone’ impostor
spreads hate agenda’, http://rollingstone.com/politics/news/african-
rolling-stone-impostor-spreads-hate-agenda) and in the UK, Simon
Akam (2010) ‘Outcry as Ugandan paper names “top homosexuals”’,
Independent, 22 October, www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/
outcry-as-ugandan-paper-names-top-homosexuals-2113348.html,
accessed 12 March 2011.
8 What is now called the ‘gay agenda’ is a notion deeply embedded in
Americanism to the extent that the modalities of its argument cannot
hold water in a region such as East Africa where LGBTIQ rights
organisations have neither the logistical nor financial capabilities to carry
152
out the huge ideological campaigns that such a notion can require of
the LGBTI community. However, though the arguments are fickle and
sometimes based on falsehoods, they continue to be used worldwide to
justify the criminalisation of queers, the suppression of LGBTIQ rights
and consequent bastardisation of queer rights activism.
9 Denis Nzioka (2011) ‘Gays in Kenya causing quiet revolution’, 26 January,
www.gaykenya.com, http://www.gaykenya.com/3881.html, accessed 12
March 2011.
10 For a summary of this, read Keguro Macharia’s ‘Africa’s
queer internationalism’, The New Black Magazine, http://www.
thenewblackmagazine.com/view.aspx?index=2527, accessed 12 March
2011.
11 X. Rice (2011) ‘Ugandan “hang them” paper has no regrets after David Kato
death’, Guardian, 27 January, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jan/27/
uganda-paper-david-kato-death, accessed 12 March 2011.
12 Scott Mills video for the BBC, ‘Worst place to be gay’, http://www.bbc.
co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00yrt1c/The_Worlds_Worst_Place_to_Be_Gay/,
accessed 12 March 2011.
13 Keguro Macharia, ‘Glocal strategies for LGBTI activism’, www.gaykenya.
com/news/3769.html, accessed 12 March 2011.
14 E. Rukundo (2011) ‘Nairobi: Gay activist in the eyes of his friends and
foes’, Daily Nation, 6 February, http://www.nation.co.ke/Features/DN2/
Gay%20activist%20in%20the%20eyes%20of%20his%20friends%20and%20
foes%20/-/957860/1102396/-/item/0/-/t11skl/-/index.html, accessed 12
March 2011. A similar article appeared in the Ugandan Daily Monitor on
the same day.
15 ‘Judge orders Ugandan paper to stop publishing gay lists’, CNN, http://
edition.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/africa/11/02/uganda.gay.list/?hpt=T2.
16 It is difficult to say what exactly happened. Details concerning the said
‘death’ of Uganda’s anti-homosexuality bill and whether the Ugandan
political class will pursue a similar bill in the new session of parliament
still remain sketchy. Pink News (2011) ‘Confusion over Uganda’s anti-
homosexuality bill’, 5 May, http://www.pinknews.com/2011/05/11/
confusion-over-ugandas-anti-homosexuality-bill, accessed 2 June 2011.
17 J. Mayamba (2011) ‘Gay activist murderer sentenced to 30 years’,
Daily Monitor, 10 November, http://www.monitor.co.ug/News/
National/-/688334/1270664/-/bgvjh8z/-/index.html, accessed 19 November
2012. The David Kato Vision and Voice Award recognises ‘an individual
who demonstrates courage and outstanding leadership in advocating
for the sexual rights of LGBTI people’. The inaugural recipient of this
award was Jamaican gay activist Maurice Tomlinson (http://www.
visionandvoiceaward.com, accessed 20 February 2012).
18 Sokari Ekine (2012) ‘Uganda will pass anti-homosexuality bill this
year, says speaker’, Guardian, 26 November, http://www.guardian.
co.uk/world/2012/nov/26/uganda-anti-homosexuality-bill, accessed 16
December 2012.
153
19 (2012) ‘Ugandan minister shuts down gay rights conference’, Guardian,

15 February, http://guardian.co.uk./2012/feb/15/ugandan-minister-gay-
rights-conference?newsfeed=true, accessed 20 February 2012.
154
15
The single story of ‘African

homophobia’ is dangerous for
LGBTI activism
Sibongile Ndashe
As the nascent movement for lesbian, gay, transsexual and inter-

sex (LGBTI) rights grows, staking claims in public spaces and
becoming more visible, the next phase requires that attention be
paid to the message that helps propel the movement. It ceases
to be sufficient to count the numbers of statements and words
of support that the movement receives. The starting point has
always been that LGBTI rights are human rights and hopefully
that is the end point as well. This current phase of activism has to
respond to the social context, explain what the movement wants
and is asking for, and identify allies and refine activities and
strategies in order to respond to the challenges and opportunities
faced by the movement. What was once unclear has to be clarified
and unquestioned strategies need to be questioned. Movement
building remains an integral part of this process. I will focus on
one aspect of movement building: the opportunities and chal-
lenges of building and sustaining relationships with other move-
ments, local, regional and international.
Different countries on the continent are at different phases of
activism. In some countries, there are no movements to speak
of and ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ remains the only form of activism:
people know that there are LGBTI people in the communities but
there is no discussion to be had. There are countries where there
have been movements which have remained static, as it has not
been possible to expand the circles of activism. There are countries
where the movement has been able to entrench itself into civil
155
society. The saying ‘Africa is a continent, not a country’ is made the

more important where a single story continues to pervade LGBTI
activism on the continent, i.e. that activism does not exist and that
there is only homophobia. Other commentators have eloquently
critiqued the single story that is told about African civil society’s
relationship with the LGBTI movement on the continent.1
The single story is indeed a dangerous story that makes it
easier to impose ready-made solutions in the sea of ‘nothingness’;
it makes it easier to undermine local processes because ‘they
are not happening’; and it makes it easier to co-opt individuals
and call them local movements in order to gain a foothold in
a country. This gives non-African voices the cover to pursue
their own agendas and reinforces homophobic elements within
society when they argue that homosexuality is part of a Western
agenda. Even with the best intentions, foreign interventions often
misunderstand local dynamics and politics and can do much
more harm than good. More fundamentally, the attempted foreign
leadership of the movement’s struggle in Africa subordinates
the interests of the local community to those of external actors,
reinforcing entrenched racial divides within the global movement
and drowning progressive voices and positive developments.
The search for homophobes, in a context where homophobia is
known to exist, is pointless unless, of course, the only point is to
gather evidence of homophobia and name and shame those who
have been ‘outed’ as homophobes. This fascination with outing
homophobes has enabled the silencing of progressive voices.
It also denies the opportunity to be heard to those who have
changed, voluntarily or otherwise, are undecided, beginning to
speak out or are saying things that are progressive.
For example, in talking about how homophobia is tolerated by
the state in South Africa, an incident about now-President Jacob
Zuma is often quoted. He was speaking to traditional leaders in
ways that qualify as incitement to violence by stating that when
he was growing up no gay person would have stood in front him.2
Zuma was rightly and roundly condemned for these statements.
At the time, he had been dismissed as the country’s deputy
president but was still the ANC’s deputy president. Within days
of this statement becoming national and international news,
Zuma issued an unqualified apology.3 In subsequent narratives of
156
15 THE SINGLE STORY OF ‘AFRICAN HOMOPHOBIA’
the story, the apology continues to be erased as it is inconvenient

to the single narrative of how African political leaders are not
reformed. In another incident, when Zuma was pushed into
saying something about the conviction and sentencing of Tiwonge
and Steve in Malawi by the Democratic Alliance, he wrongly
stated that South Africa had already condemned the incident.4
No information about the alleged statement of condemnation of
the conviction could be found. However, the effect was that the
president of South Africa had condemned the conviction in the
South African parliament, which is a positive step for the country
to take. Despite the inherent contradictions with South Africa’s
international relations ‘policy’ of not commenting on the domestic
affairs of other countries in the region, the condemnation, which
was clearly issued for the first time in parliament when Zuma was
pushed, was rendered immaterial by the single story.
Similarly, when Zimbabwe’s prime minister said that there
were enough women for men in Zimbabwe and he could not
understand why men would want to breathe on each other’s
ears,5 he was vigorously condemned for this statement. When his
party, the MDC, swiftly moved to issue a statement, distancing
the organisation from the statement,6 the single story would not
allow the retraction to stick. This is despite the fact that arguably
the largest party in the country had effectively adopted a stance
advocating LGBTI rights.
Similarly, the Kenyan prime minister, Raila Odinga, wrongly
referred to the Kenyan constitution as prohibiting same-sex
relationships.7 The Kenyan constitution is silent on this issue.
Within days of this statement, after he was condemned, he
claimed that he had been misunderstood. While he did not retract
the statement he made it clear that he no longer wished to be
bound by it, in public at least.
In all three instances, the danger posed by the initial statements
cannot be overstated. The statements were hateful and devious.
They were all talking to constituencies which they had judged to
be more favourable to homophobia. Nothing in their pasts could
have prepared their progressive supporters for the statements.
Zuma cannot be said to have been testing waters; this is what
made his first statement the more shocking. Tsvangirai and
Odinga have both been portrayed in the media as progressive
157
advocates of democracy and human rights, and their statements

were shocking because they appeared to be a denial of the
applicability of human rights to the LGBTI community. However,
the retractions and corrections clearly show that there are
social forces within and outside these three countries that have
the power to control, mitigate and negate the homophobia of
individual politicians. Who stands to benefit when the narratives
erase the fall-out and the retractions that happened after the
statements were made?
While these and other political leaders’ utterances have
remained firmly in the spotlight, progressive voices and other
positive developments continue to be erased. In Uganda the leader
of the opposition and then candidate for president, Kizza Besigye,
has publicly stated his opposition to the anti-homosexuality
bill and advocated the decriminalisation of homosexuality.8 He
based his objection primarily on the right to privacy, as meaning
the state has no interest in what people do behind closed doors,
although he also argued that arresting and prosecuting members
of the LGBTI community was a waste of public funds.
Similarly, in Malawi, weeks after the legislature voted to
include lesbian same-sex conduct under the provisions of the
penal code, which prohibits same-sex relationships, the minister
of justice and constitutional affairs, Dr George Chaponda,
stated that Malawi would not change the laws to decriminalise
homosexuality after Germany cut its financial aid to the country
in response to its failure to do so.9 He also argued, however,
that while homosexuality remained against the law, Malawi had
privacy laws that protected people from the intrusion of the state
and said that homosexuals would generally not be prosecuted.
While this is not the perfect solution, the use of privacy laws may
be the best short-term strategy in Malawi to protect the rights of
LGBTI people. And yet these statements are ignored by the single
story narrative.
From these examples it can be seen both that homophobia remains
strong on the continent – of this there can be no doubt – but also that
there are pressure groups within African societies, within political
parties and national parliaments as well as within governments,
which are prepared to take on the homophobia and to pressure
governments towards respecting the rights of LGBTI people.
158
Africa must move fast. Now!

In other parts of the world, there have been varied, complex
and prolonged processes aimed at realising the rights of LGBTI
people. Although there is not one formula or road map that
can be cut, pasted and found to be useful for everyone, some
of the strategies suggested for some countries seem to be set
against a gradual and incremental development of the movement.
Strategies proposed for the African movement have varied but
what they have in common is the idea that movement building is
surplus to requirement and that there is a quick way in which the
indignity, stigma, violence and hate against LGBTI people can be
remedied. It is even suggested that the answer to how to tackle the
various forms of violations of rights of LGBTI people can be found
in courtrooms and that the solution can be as uncomplicated as
finding a lawyer, a client, writing a brief and getting the courts
to declare as unconstitutional the laws that criminalise same-sex
intimacy. A growing and cautious movement is increasingly being
requested to be more assertive and aggressive in claiming rights.
Those who argue otherwise are accused of being content with the
status quo or of simple cowardice. It is part of the single story to
propose a single solution for ‘Africa’ regardless of the levels of
preparedness within countries to undertake action and in denial
of the specific contexts of individual countries. The potential
negative impact of such a strategy in countries that are not ready
is huge. It is quite possible that legal decisions will be made at
national and regional levels that criminalisation of homosexuality
is both constitutional and in compliance with the African Charter.
This may have a reinforcing effect on criminalisation across the
continent and damage countries where local strategies are hav-
ing some success in changing attitudes. This is in addition to the
potentially catastrophic effect on the individuals who are chosen
to bring cases in these countries.
Get sanctions!
It was only a matter of time before African countries started
objecting to being bullied by Western countries to change their
position on homosexuality. Politically, with homophobia the dom-
inant narrative on the continent, this is an easy sell for politicians.
159
The currency called ‘withholding financial aid’ has clearly been

overtraded. Withholding aid on behalf of a minority is a danger-
ous, double-edged sword as it often leads to further suffering by
other disadvantaged groups, the beneficiaries of aid, and can lead
to further isolation of the minority.
When Malawi rejected the Germans’ financial aid because of
its condition that it decriminalise homosexuality, the loser was,
of course, the multiple causes that the financial aid supported.
Politically, the loser was Germany for being a bully and not
caring about human rights but for insisting on ‘imposing Western
values’. It was easy for Malawi to hold its head up high and say,
‘This money is a threat to our sovereignty and undermines our
political autonomy, the social and cultural values that we hold.’
Regardless of how this move came about, how does this help
the local LGBTI movements become entrenched in the local civil
society movements that need donor funding to do a range of other
activities and provide services to other causes? How does this
move enable the local movements to continue dialogue with their
governments when ‘their issues’ have cost the country so much
in foreign aid? The single story disregards local processes and
context and pretends that the LGBTI movement is insular and can
work without local ties.
Outspoken friends
Increasingly, there is a view that the fight for ‘gay rights’ is more
than just a fight for human rights. Western involvement is easily
denounced as another form of colonialism and something that
should be rejected as a matter of principle. There are various ways
in which the sentiment is expressed but there is a view that the
West cares more about the rights of gay people than other human
rights, in the same way as it has always seemed to care about the
human rights of people whose countries had oil. In January 2011,
when David Kato10 was murdered, international organisations
and governments were elbowing each other onto the podium to
denounce the murder. The Ugandan authorities’ response was to
immediately deny that homophobia had any role to play in Kato’s
murder. Others asked where was this display of outrage from
the international community when people were butchered in the
160
streets. If it was minorities that the West cared about, where were
they when the Batwa people continued to be hunted in the Congo,
the Basarwa people faced human rights violations in Botswana,
and the albinos in some parts of East Africa were murdered?
Where was the outpouring of support and media attention when
all of that happened?
The big distinction between discrimination against sexual
minorities and the discrimination that other groups are subjected
to is that the law serves to authorise, normalise and legitimise
the discrimination by criminalising the sexual conduct of sexual
minorities. In almost all cases, governments will gladly own
up to the laws and justify their existence. The other forms of
discrimination are often issues that the governments themselves
feel that they do not have a solution to and have taken steps to
prohibit discrimination on that basis. If the governments are the
perpetrators of the violations, they will still not easily admit to
them. At the most, the governments will often seek to absolve the
state machinery and demonstrate how they are complying with
international human rights standards by launching investigations
in order to prosecute those who were involved. For as long as
Western involvement is seen as an instigator or sole supporter
of the LGBTI movement, the growth of the movement and its
entrenchment into civil society will remain elusive and the
autonomy of the movements will remain in question.
Similarly, well-intentioned Internet campaigns aimed at
advancing LGBTI activism can achieve the opposite. In December
2010, the co-directors of AIDS-Free World embarked on a letter-
writing campaign in order to speak out against homophobia.
Initially, it appeared that they were writing to institutions. They
wrote to the African Union, the Commonwealth and the United
Nations. Then there was correspondence between Paula Donovan
and Bernice Sam, who is the regional director of Women In Law
and Development in Africa (WILDAF).11 The facts, largely drawn
from the correspondence between the two, relate to a comment
by Bernice Sam during the Ghanaian constitution review process.
Sam is alleged to have said, ‘We believe it is time for our
constitution to define marriage clearly because we cannot hide
from the fact that these kinds of union may catch up with us in the
future. This is the time to say, we don’t want same-sex marriages.’
161
There are many things that are concerning about the

correspondence, including the tone, the language and the content.
I will focus on two, the context and the issue. Ghana does not
have a big LGBTI movement; the Centre for Popular Education
and Human Rights (Ghana) (CEPERGH) and others are working
towards building such a movement. The issue of decriminalisation
has not been publicly debated. Over the past year there have been
marches organised by Christian and Muslim organisations against
homosexuality. A few public figures, like human rights lawyer Nana
Oyeh Lithur, have been willing to publicly associate themselves
with the plight of same-sex relationships. Needless to say, at this
stage same-sex marriages, although required for full equality, are
not yet on the agenda. Bernice Sam is a respected women’s rights
advocate not only in Ghana but also in West Africa and other
parts of the continent. The nascent LGBTI movement is seeking
to expand circles of activism with other mainstream human rights
organisations. In many parts of the world, the women’s movement
has been a traditional supporter and it continues to be an ally of the
LGBTI movement in many parts of the continent.
How is Bernice Sam’s public flogging and urging to denounce
homophobia helpful to anyone? Which activist asked for same-
sex marriage in Ghana? Who, in Ghana, had been prepared to
enter into a debate over same-sex marriages? Gay marriages
continue to be contentious the world over. A big refrain by many
opponents on decriminalisation is, ‘If we decriminalise they’ll
want to get married and adopt children.’ Advocates and activists
have consistently said, ‘That’s not what we are talking about
now. Let’s cross that bridge when we get to it.’ The UK’s equal
love campaign and the US’s almost finished battle on same-sex
marriages cannot be transplanted to Ghana. It is an untimely and
non-contextual intervention. It forces local activists to answer and
enter battles that are not of their making and put issues on the
agenda where there is no capacity to deal with them.
Conclusion
The situation in Africa regarding the rights of LGBTI people is
diverse and complicated by national and local politics, history
and societal norms. While homophobia is particularly strong in
162
English-speaking Africa, partly as a consequence of colonial laws,

it does also exist in French-speaking Africa. Some mainstream
civil society organisations and opposition political parties have
begun to support the movement, while others remain populist on
the issue. Countries where the government feels the least legiti-
mate are often the strongest in their homophobic rhetoric, making
external criticism potentially counterproductive. Each country
will need to develop its own strategy in realising the rights of
LGBTI people and the single story militates against this, creating
the impression that there is a simple, often legalistic, response to
what are clearly human rights violations.
It will be important for local movements to interact with
regional and international allies in their fight for LGBTI rights.
Local, regional and international collaborations have been able
to help movements to develop effective strategies. However, it
will be crucial that local movements retain ownership of their
struggles and that regional and international movements serve to
complement and assist. In this vein it is important to ask questions
about relationships with non-national civil society organisations.
Are these relationships about initiating actions or supporting local
movements? What can international NGOs do in countries where
there are no active civil society movements? What happens if the
processes are not anchored, owned or supported by local groups?
How do local and international LGBTI movements interact with
hostile/neutral local mainstream civil society organisations? How
are progressive or neutral local politicians used to develop positive
change? The single story narrative of the African homophobe
does not allow these questions to be asked and answered honestly
in the varied countries on the continent and therefore acts as a
barrier to developing effective national strategies.
Acknowledgements
A special thanks to my friends Solomon Sacco, who provided
critical feedback and insight and helped immensely in clarifying
and shaping some of the ideas, and to Joel Nana, who is always
available on the other end of the line to discuss, share facts and
ideas, provide insight and challenge some ideas. All mistakes are
entirely my own.
163
Notes
1 Keguro Macharia (2010) ‘Homophobia in Africa is not a single story’,
Guardian, 26 May, http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/
may/26/homophobia-africa-not-single-story, accessed 18 June 2011.
2 iol (2006) ‘Zuma provokes ire of homosexuals’, 26 September, http://
www.iol.co.za/news/politics/zuma-provokes-ire-of-homosexuals-1.295239,
3 News24 (2006) ‘Zuma sorry for “gay” remarks’, 28 September, http://
www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/Archives/ZumaFiles/Zuma-sorry-for-gay-
remarks-20060928, accessed 18 June 2011; BBC (2006) ‘Zuma apologises
for gay comments’, 28 September, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/5389378.stm,
4 Brendan Boyle (2010) ‘Zuma slams Malawi imprisonment of gays’, Times
Live, 27 May, http://www.timeslive.co.za/local/article474052.ece/Zuma-
slams-Malawi-imprisonment-of-gays, accessed 18 June 2011.
5 New Zimbabwe (2010) ‘Mugabe, Tsvangirai slam homosexuals’, 26
March, http://www.newzimbabwe.com/news-2109-Mugabe,+Tsvangirai+
slam+homosexuals/news.aspx, accessed 18 June 2011.
6 Sithandekile Mhlanga (2010) ‘Zimbabwe PM Tsvangirai’s comments
on gay rights only personal opinion – spokesman’, Voice of America
(VOA), 26 March, http://www.voanews.com/zimbabwe/news/
Zimbabwe-Tsvangirai-Said-to-Agree-With-Mugabe-on-Gay-Rights-
26Mar10-89284972.html, accessed 18 June 2011; Blessing-Miles Tendi
(2010) ‘African myths about homosexuality’, Guardian, 23 March,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/mar/23/homophobia-
africa-gay-rights, accessed 18 June 2011; Zimbabwe Reporter (2010)
‘MDC in damage control over PM gay remarks’, 26 March, http://
zimbabwereporter.com/politics/816.html, accessed 18 June 2011.
7 Bernard Momanyi (2010) ‘Arrest gays, Kenyan PM orders’, Capital News,
28 November, http://www.capitalfm.co.ke/news/Kenyanews/Arrest-gays,-
Kenyan-PM-orders-10670.html, accessed 18 June 2011.
8 IQ4News (2011) ‘Kizza Besigye condemns “kill the gays” bill’, 11 January,
http://www.iq4news.com/iq4news/kizza-besigye-condemns-kill-gays-bill,
9 Nyasa Times (2011) ‘Malawi refuses “homosexuality” aid condition’,
9 February, http://www.nyasatimes.com/national/malawi-refuses-
%E2%80%98homosexuality%E2%80%99-aid-condition.html, accessed 18
June 2011.
10 A Ugandan LGBTI activist, who was murdered on 26 January 2011.
11 AIDS-Free Africa (2010) ‘Homophobia plagues Africa, correspondence
between AIDS-Free World and Bernice Sam’, 16 December, http://aids-
freeworld.org/Newsroom/Press-Releases/2010/Homophobia-Plagues-
Africa.aspx?p=2, accessed 18 June 2011.
164
16
Telling stories – fiction

Happy Mwende Kinyili
Shining ebony. I always think of shining ebony when I look at his

face. Slender, fine features form this young lad. Elegance under-
scores his every movement. I watch him speak as the words elude
me, and instead read his face to hear his heart break. He pulls
back into himself and searches desperately for some resolution,
some way to comfort himself as his heart breaks with self-loathing
and bitterness. I cry.
Her eager eyes stare deep into mine as she listens to my words.
She wants her hearing to change the world – her world. She
moves with me, sways to the beat of my words – each staccato a
stamp of hope. The sun is shamed by her radiance, hope breathes
in her. She rushes out to the world, ready to tell a different story.
The world kicks her out – her rendering is false, the word is clear,
she is wrong and she is sin. The light is brutally snuffed out. She
breaks. And breaks, again. Her eyes bore holes of hatred into her
being. I cry.
I walk into church on Sunday morning. Young, progressive
up and comers are gathered by the thousands, singing songs of
praise and worship. They search for divinity, deity, holiness –
they search for God. Your fire burns within me … burn within
me with your fire. Lift up your eyes and see the glory of the Lord
is on the earth, arise! Lifting holy hands in worship. Bow down
and worship him, enter in … consuming fire, sweet perfume …
this is holy ground. Some are moved to their knees, others to lay
prostrate before their God.
The pastor steps to the pulpit. The sermon begins. I watch faces
in the congregation. Most nod in agreement, eagerly in consent
with the pastor. Hallelujahs and praise Gods are heard from
the congregation. Yet in their midst, ignored and condemned
165
faces drop and a tear breaks the tenuous hold and slides down
their faces. The pastor’s words, though intended to liberate,
imprison many souls. They stare from between their prison bars
to the option presented – You are a sinner, but because we are all
sinners, we cannot condemn you. What we do is pray for your
redemption. Let God redeem your soul. I cry.
I find young Shining ebony, standing at the beach staring out
into the water. We talk. He tells me of his love of men. How each
day, he wakes up and prays to overcome this love. He fasts every
other month, believing that this will be the fast through which
his love of men is overcome. He prays for redemption. Why
doesn’t God hear his plea? When will God bring him healing and
redemption to walk away from his cross? When will he desire a
woman as he desires a man?
I tell him my story.
I walked this earth for 33 odd years. In my lifetime, I sought
good in humanity and many a time, I found good in humanity. I
sought the divine in humanity and that too I found in my people.
Sadly, as I walked the earth, it was clear to me that the search for
divinity in the heavens had taken my people far away from the
divine they sought. And so, I walked a different path and taught
those who would hear. The leaders in the search for the divinity
declared that I was Beelzebul1 because my ways were different
from their ways. The religious leaders of my time shunned me
because I feasted with tax collectors and ladies of the night, and
I had women active in my ministry on earth. Those whom the
leaders called the lowest in their time, I loved and held close to my
heart. I remember the time I had dinner at the Pharisee Simon’s
house, and a woman who had been condemned as a sinner came
to me and washed my feet with her tears and precious oil, and
dried my feet with her hair. Simon, in his continued condemnation
of the woman, thought that I, as a holy teacher, should not let her
touch my feet. It was sad to see that Simon could not understand
the love she poured out to me and the love I in turn poured out to
her. Simon failed to see the divine in her.2
Similarly, as I watch the world today, I see that there are those
who have been given status and are counted as those worthy.
They look at you, Shining ebony, and see your love for other men
as that which is not worthy. They declare your love sin, and state
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16 TELLING STORIES
that because of your love, they cannot love you in totality. They
declare you less important, less valuable, less worthy to be my
child. Yet, as they teach from their mega churches and mighty
pulpits, they forget that which I taught when I walked this earth.
Those who loved indiscriminately, I would call to my side. Those
who saw the divine in all humanity, I would call to my side. They
continue to forget my teaching, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did
it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you
did it to me.’3
The charge was simple, ‘Love your neighbour as you love
yourself.’4 Yet, the teachers of today declare that it is because
of this very love that they shun you and declare you a sinner.
They state that they cannot love you without calling out and
condemning the ‘sin’ you live, the ‘sin’ of your loving another
man. Yet, my disciple Paul taught them love and left no room for
ambiguity. Paul taught love as patient and as kind, love as that
which does not envy, boast and is not arrogant. Love is that which
does not insist on its own way. It does not rejoice in wrongdoing,
but rejoices in truth. Love bears all things; believes, hopes and
endures all things.5 Despite these words, the teachers of today are
noisy gongs and clanging cymbals – for they speak with no love.6
Shining ebony looked at me as I concluded my story. His
disbelief, he explained, was because while I had shifted the focus
to love, I still remained silent on the teachings in the Bible used
to condemn his love for other men. Despite the message of love I
shared, this message did not silence these teachings. Did God not
consider these messages would kill and destroy those like him
as they were included in the teachings of God? Shining ebony
turned away and said, ‘The love you speak of is held back from
me and mine.’
My heart broke. The hatred rained on Shining ebony had
snuffed out the possibility of his accepting divine love. To Shining
ebony, I continued my story.
My story, the story you read in the Bible, is all about divine love.
People, just like you, Shining ebony, speaking out of their moment
in history and cultural reality, wrote down their divine experience,
and the teachings were then shared with millions of people across
time and space. They wrote of war and of worship. They tell us
about the birth of their loved ones and their inevitable death.
167
They try to make sense of their world and write of their search for
certainty. Yet, what ties together their stories is their experience
with divine love – the giving and receiving of divine love.
In our moment in history, we struggle to make sense of these
stories and to give them appropriate importance in our daily lives.
We find that we cannot live out the stories exactly as they did, and
the examples offered conflict with each other or with our innate
sense of rightness. Unfortunately, we often turn to these conflicts to
keep down those who have been kept down across history, and to
advance an agenda that does not carry divine love. Across history
and in different places around the world, women, black people,
economically oppressed people, homosexual people – anyone
whose experience of divine love did not fit in with those who held
the power at that moment in history – were condemned and declared
sinners and less valuable members of society. The teachings of the
bible were used and continue to be used to condemn them and deny
them an experience of sanctioned divine love.
Shining ebony, my message to you is not to explain why the
teachings of the bible have been used as they continue to be used –
to deny others the experience of divine love. Rather, I teach of love
– the love that prompted my walk on this earth to find the divine
in all humanity and to share my experience of divinity with all
humanity. My life was to offer hope to those who society declared
hopeless, and to teach divine love through my actions. For I gave
my life for all of humanity, because of my love for all of humanity,
and it is this love that I continue to share with all people so that
all people can love as I have loved them.
Notes
1 Matthew 12:24.
2 Luke 7:36–50.
3 Matthew 25:40.
4 Matthew 22:39.
5 1 Corinthians 13:4–7.
6 1 Corinthians 13:1.
168
17
‘Faces and Phases’

Zanele Muholi
I decided to capture the positive images of my community in

order to contribute towards a more democratic and representative
South African lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and intersex (LGBTI)
history. I embarked on a journey of visual activism to ensure that
there is black LGBTI visibility, to showcase our existence and
resistance in our democratic society, to present a positive imagery
of (especially) black lesbians and trans people. The first phase of
‘Faces and Phases’ began in 2006 and the series, which is ongoing,
is now in its third phase.
Aside from the dictionary definition of what a ‘face’ is (the front
of the head, from forehead to chin), the face also expresses the
person. For me, ‘Faces’ means me, photographer and community
worker, being face to face with the many lesbians and trans
persons I interacted with from different Gauteng townships such
as Alexandra, Soweto, Vosloorus, Katlehong, Kagiso.
Individuals in this series of photographs hold different positions
and play many different roles within the black LGBTI community:
soccer players, actresses, scholars, cultural activists, lawyers,
dancers, film makers, human rights/gender activists. However,
each time we are represented by outsiders, we are merely
seen as victims of rape and homophobia. Our lives are always
sensationalised, rarely understood. This is the reason for ‘Phases’:
our lives are not just what make the newspaper headlines every
time one of us is attacked. We go through many stages, we express
many identities, which unfold in parallel in our existence.
From an insider’s perspective, this project is meant as a
commemoration and a celebration of the lives of black lesbians
and trans that I met in my journeys through the townships. Lives
and narratives are told with both pain and joy, as some of these
169
women were going through hardships in their lives. Their stories

caused me sleepless nights as I did not know how to deal with the
urgent needs I was told about. Many of them had been violated;
I did not want the camera to be a further violation; rather, I
wanted to establish relationships with them based on our mutual
understanding of what it means to be female, lesbian and black in
South Africa today.
I call this method the birth of visual activism: I decided to
use it to mark our resistance and existence as black lesbians and
gendered persons in our country, because it is important to put a
face on each and every issue.
‘Faces and Phases: II – Siyafana’, which means ‘we are the
same’ – considers the similarities and differences within our ‘black’
race. Our creator might have fashioned each of us differently, but
in his/her eyes we are the same species. Yet there are apparent
differences and nuances that differentiate us from our neighbours.
It is this negotiation of sameness and difference that moved me
to continue with my project ‘Faces and Phases’, where I captured
photographs of different people in various countries. This had
Asanda Fanti, Stockholm, Sweden, Skye Chirape, Brighton, United

2011 Kingdom, 2010
170
17 ‘FACES AND PHASES’
been a way of responding, out of frustration, to the ongoing

violation, rape and murder of women (especially queers) in Africa
because of our sexualities and ethnicities. I embarked on the
Siyafana project at the height of the xenophobic and homophobic
attacks in South Africa that have led to the mass displacement
of people in my country. Many died, women were raped, even
small babies became victims of hate crimes, regardless of the
constitution that stipulates equality and democracy for all. Far
from home at the time, I was accommodated and embraced
by strangers while residing in Toronto, Canada (which does
not happen to everyone). I don’t know what treatment my late
Malawian father experienced at the hands of the past regime
when he and his fellow men migrated to South Africa in the
1950s looking for greener pastures. However, the reality was not
greener for these ‘others’. Often they were left homeless without
food and employment after their houses were burnt.
Featured in this series are beautiful, young and matured
human beings from various places, from Toronto to London,
Johannesburg and Cape Town. One can’t distinguish who is from
‘TK’ Tekanyo, Gabarone, Botswana, Kasha N. Jacqueline, Toronto,

2010 Canada, 2009
171
Funeka Soldaat, Makhaza,

Khayelitsha, Cape Town, 2010 North West, 2011
where or how each person defines her/himself. From women

to transmen to ‘whatever’ – people are people. Human beings
deserve to be treated with love and respect, each and every one of
us. My aim was to capture the subtle complexities that challenge
our prejudices due to ignorance and hate. Even though we speak
different languages, at the same time there are commonalities
within our multiple identities – black/queer/women, etc.
The photos here are from ‘Faces and Phases: III’, which was
launched at the 2012 Documenta 13 in Kassel, Germany, and it
is this fact that is my point of departure for the third series. The
question I ask, and would like others to consider, is ‘What does
it mean to have a travelling exhibition which was first shown at
Documenta?’ Documenta is a specific and highly selective space
that comes together once every five years. What does it mean to
exhibit black lesbian, queer art in such a white space at the height
of hate crimes taking place in South Africa? Note that none of
the portraits are smiling. Now, there is an intensity, a piercing
of stance and of eyes. There is almost an accusation – Where are
YOU? What have YOU been doing? You look but you are always
silent – nothing but a gaze!
172
18
Twice removed: African

invisibility in Western queer
theory
Douglas Clarke
Western queer theory has set itself up as a leader in the field.

That is to say, queer theory that is coming out of US, and to a
lesser extent Canadian, academia is what is commonly thought
of as being the most well developed theory on the subject of
same-sex desiring, homosexuality and queer lifestyles. It seeks to
shake the foundations of what is commonly accepted as ‘normal’
sexuality and searches out ways to create acceptance, history
and intellectual property for homosexuals of all ages, classes and
backgrounds (Fuss 1991, Seidman 1996, Hawley 2001). Yet, there
is a distinct lack of consideration for African same-sex desiring
culture. It is as if Western queer theory attempts to erase both
African-ness and African-centred homosexuality. This essay seeks
to address this double erasure by calling into question the practice
and motives of Western queer theory and how it applies itself to
what I will call the ‘African question’. For a theory that seeks to
disrupt power and cultural normativity, Western queer theory is
firmly rooted in the West’s historic and popular notions of what it
is to be African and Afro-homosexual.
A note on language: because I will be arguing from a theoretical
vantage point, I will refer to African homosexuality or Afro-
homosexuality as terms to cover the broad expanse of Africa’s 54
countries. In no way does my pan-Africanist language seek to
homogenise the people or the sovereignty of the countries on the
continent. My broad linguistic strokes serve only as a counterpart to
the language and content of current, popular Western queer theory,
173
which often treats Africa as a country rather than a multidimensional

continent. It is a reality of theoretical discourse that the author must
use language that covers a broad expanse of subjects even if it seems
to be to the detriment of finer distinctions and subjectivities. With
this apology and explanation in mind, I move on to define more of
my terms in the hopes of creating the clearest example of theoretical
literature that can be produced at this time.
This essay is a critique of the queer theory that is coming out
of Western academic discourse, which is, in the confines of this
piece, to be understood as the writing, discourse and dialogue
about queer culture, homosexuality, same-sex desire or any other
facet of non-normative sexuality being produced in academic
institutions in the US and Canada. This does not disqualify or
rectify the racist and ‘blind’ queer theory of any other country. It
is only used to define the terms that will be used throughout this
essay. As well, this essay will deal with ‘African-ness’, a created
term to demarcate its subject from African Americans or North
American ‘Blacks’. In no way does this term mean to encapsulate
an essence or essential nature of all Africans. Finally, this essay
will use a host of terms to deal with homosexuality and queerness.
In fairness I think that it is important to state categorically that
while Western queer theory has compartmentalised queerness
into several categories (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered,
transsexual, intersexed, etc) it would be unwieldy in an essay
of this size to spell out all the categories every time that one is
used. For that reason I will often refer to homosexuality or queer
as a catch-all term meant to represent the sexuality of all those
who do not consider themselves part of the popular majority
of heterosexuality. Having set out all of my terms, I turn my
attention now to a few ways Africa has already contributed to
queer studies as a field.
It should first be stated that Africa has given the world a
form of queer theory that largely remains invisible or ‘unsaid’,
as Epprecht (1998) has described it. Africa, unsurprisingly, has
a long history of homosexuality and queer relations. Many of
these queer relationships have remained quiet as they have
contravened a not-so-secret, unspoken agreement of silence
between ‘polite’ Africans. It is transphobia, a fear not of same-sex
relationships but of the lack of discretion (Epprecht 2005: 253).
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18 AFRICAN INVISIBILITY IN WESTERN QUEER THEORY
What can be read in this transphobia is a tolerance of homosexual

activity although not a respect for it (Epprecht 1998: 636). What
I mean by tolerance is just that, a bearing with or permissive
attitude that exists so long as these activities do not become
public knowledge. Epprecht goes further by saying that especially
in Zimbabwe there was the attitude of turning a blind eye to
‘discreet, eccentric or “accidental” homosexual acts provided
the proper compensation and social fictions were maintained’
(Epprecht 1998: 645). So why do I bring this up? Certainly I am
not advocating secret homosexual relations or specious treatment
of those whom society ‘believes’ could be ‘gay’, but what is
important is acknowledging that Africa has a model for queer
theory that is largely unexplored in the Western world. If the
cautious reader takes Epprecht at his word, then, we can see that
Africa, long before the West came around, had a policy in place
to tolerate homosexual activity so long as it was kept behind
closed doors. No doubt, everybody wants a theory which is more
progressive, allowing homosexuality to be more than tolerated
even out in public, but it cannot be denied that Africa does give
the West a good starting point to jump off from. Allowing people
their own sexual choices does not destroy a society or cause it to
fall into ruin, but it does allow advances to occur. Africa, for all the
debate and erasure that has happened, does have several strong
queer advocacy groups which have come to light since the 1980s,
including the Jacaranda Queen contests (Black drag queens) and
GALZ (Gays and Lesbians of Zimbabwe). Having briefly outlined
some of the advancements Africa has made (socially and for queer
theory), I can continue to the main topic at hand, how the West
has attempted to erase and background African queers.
African sexuality, as a study, is a topic that is difficult to
pin down; it has a long history of theoretical speculation and
is fraught with many racist issues. African sexuality has been
subject to anthropological research which sought to determine
the sexual practices of African and other ‘primitives’ (Lyons
and Lyons 2004: 5, Epprecht 2008: 34); it has been subjected to
scholarship which oversexualised the Black man (Fanon 1967:
159–60, Lyons and Lyons 2004: 131) and most recently it has
been subject to an erasure of sorts, a denial of sexuality to those
who inhabit the same-sex desiring cultures of Africa (Spurlin
175
2001: 185, Johnson 2005: 127). Africa is marginalised in Western

queer theory, which means that queer Africans are not being
represented in the leading literature or theoretical frameworks
dealing with sexuality. Though lesbian and gay sociology is still
not as common or widely distributed as it should be (Stein and
Plummer 1994: 178), African queer studies are even less so. By not
having a voice that is being recognised in the emerging literature,
African sexuality is being pushed past the margins into obscurity.
The effects of this are devastating; whole identities are not being
accepted or contributing to the overwhelmingly White and North
American canon of queer theory. It also makes the job of the
researcher more difficult. In pulling together the information
needed for this essay, I found there was a considerable lacuna
in sources that explicitly dealt with the erasure of African queer
identity in queer theory. There were plenty of sources that dealt
with African American sexual politics, Black sexual stereotyping
and the history of African American sexual stigmas (Collins 2005,
Russell 2008), but not much about African queer theory. It seemed
as if the literature itself was condemning the African homosexual
to the margins. What became abundantly clear was that the
West was certainly in a position of control when it came to the
dissemination of academic queer theory; moreover, it was White,
academic North America that was in control. Many sources dealt
with sexuality, queerness, homosexuality and gender categories,
but few gave serious attention to the intersections of race and
cross-cultural identities. This essay hopes to bring to light what
is missing and draw a sharp distinction between how the West
has used queer theory and how Africa can create its own unique
queer theories.
To a large extent, Western queer theory has overlooked
the multi-ethnic aspects of identity creation. Not only has
queer theory not taken a look at the multicultural dimensions
of sexuality but it has also eschewed a close look at the
multicultural dimension of its own study. Focusing so closely
on sexuality, Western queer theory has overlooked race and
essentially ‘white washed’ the figure of the homosexual (Sullivan
2003: 66). This means that most of the queer theory that has been
written has been written with the White homosexual in mind. At
best there is a cursory treatment of cross-cultural representations
176
and expressions of same-sex desire (Spurlin 2001: 185), which

often invent the Black homosexual through the Euro-centric and
Euro-American gaze. Said’s (2003 [1978]) concept of positional
superiority helps clarify how queer theory has rendered the
Black homosexual invisible. ‘Positional superiority … puts the
Westerner in a whole series of … relationships with the Orient
without ever losing him the upper hand’(Said 2003 [1978]: 7).
Substitute ‘Africa’ for the ‘Orient’ and the meaning is functionally
equivalent in this discussion. For the West, the upper hand is
significant; it is an ‘us’ against ‘them’ mentality that has existed
in many popular representations of foreigners. To lose the upper
hand would simply mean the West did not have the right answer,
or more specifically it would mean that the West did not have
the only answer. By couching things in terms of position (upper
hand), Said has drawn attention to the very way the West deals
with cross-cultural issues. Superiority is invoked when the West
is able to give a suitable answer to its own questions with little
regard to those that fall outside of its constructed parameters.
Positional superiority is nothing more than a statement claiming
validity in all possible circumstances without actually testing
those circumstances which are not your own.
The West has set itself up as the authority on knowledge about
the homosexual experience. Those who are not part of the West can
only benefit from the imposition of this structure. Africa cannot
make its own way without appealing to the knowledge (and
hence power) of the West. Two choices stand before the African
homosexual: either disregard your identity and adopt one of a
Western style or fit yourself into prearranged categories of Western
fabrication. Both these choices seem inauthentic, outdated and
mostly racist. Why is it that Africa should yet again adopt a Western
model instead of creating one of its own? What is it about White
homosexuality that Black Africans share to such an extent that they
must adopt Western theories to better understand themselves?
And what is it about the West that sets it apart from the rest of the
world when it comes to understanding the multiple identities that
come along with being homosexual? All of these questions cry out
for attention and answers that are yet to be seen from the Western
world. What is needed is a decolonisation of the theory that is being
created, allowing new intersections to be produced.
177
Frantz Fanon, a Black psychoanalyst and intellectual, wrote

extensively on how to decolonise a country, both intellectually
and physically. Fanon spent his life in pursuit of understanding
the relationship between the coloniser and the colonised,
especially in respect to their mental lives. He was interested in the
subjectivity of the Black body that existed in a White supremacist
world (Cherki 2006: 26). Working from a largely psychoanalytic
perspective, Fanon questioned colonialism and its legacy and
the impact it had on individuals who lived within its confines
(Gendzier 1976: 502). His theories proved important for many
scholars and continue to hold influence in post-colonial studies. It
is the anti-colonial and decolonisation theories that this essay will
adapt to the current topic of queer theory.
For Fanon the colonised world was split in two: the colonisers
and the colonised. The coloniser’s world was compartmentalised,
cold and sterile and the site of ‘sermonisers, counsellors and
“confusion-mongers”’ (Fanon 2004: 4). These confusion-mongers
set out to oppress by spreading the rhetoric of the colonisers. It
is their job to subjugate the colonised and feed them the ‘truth’
as the colonisers see it. The other half of the colonised world is
given over to the colonised who walk about shoeless, in shacks
and on their knees (Fanon 2004: 4–5). This is a world that is
fed information to keep it quiet and obedient. What Fanon has
described here is nothing less than the situation of Western queer
theory. The White Western academics are the colonisers, feeding
the (African) ‘colonised’ information that they say is true and
which they impose as a rule on the colonised identities. Where
does this leave the identities of Afro-homosexuals? Erased,
stereotyped and demonised (Nagel 2000: 123). Perhaps even
worse than this, it leaves the identities split. Africa is torn
between the coloniser’s words, which offer a dominant Western
perspective on their identity, and a uniquely African-centred
approach to homosexuality as it is constructed in African culture.
The continued subjectification of the African identity to Western
queer theory creates the double consciousness of Dubois. W.E.B.
Dubois was an American sociologist who sought to understand
the consciousness of the African American who felt himself to
be both a Negro and a citizen. The Negro attempted to find a
place in racist American society, which led to ‘two unreconciled
178
strivings, two warring ideas in one dark body’ (Dubois 1903

[1999]: 11). How could one be both a Negro and a citizen if
citizenship required you to not be a Negro? This is the problem
that Dubois sought to unravel throughout his life. In much the
same way this essay asks how Africans can allow Western queer
theory to speak for them. Moore, theorising on both Dubois and
Fanon, says that this often drives the Black body to Whiteness, to
a desire to accept Whiteness (Moore 2005: 758) or in this essay,
to accept Western-ness in hopes of collecting the two halves of
the double consciousness. To leave the African identity split is to
leave it ahistorical and susceptible to the imposition of Western
ideas. What is needed is a whole consciousness which is able to
understand its own history, identity and future (Moore 2005: 761).
The only way to reconcile the two halves of this split is through
decolonisation. There must be a choice made between the two
warring ideas. Turning back to Fanon, who states, ‘decolonisation
is always a violent event’ (Fanon 2004: 1), it is through this
violence that the colonised are able to struggle for their history
and win out against the coloniser’s ideas. However, this is not
the type of violence that uses guns or knives; rather this is a
decolonising violence which humanises and returns the identity
to the colonised. For Fanon, the colonised have a right to self-
determination, self-definition and decolonisation (Rabaka 2009:
168). If the colonisers violently impose their ideas from on top,
then the colonised have the right to return that violence to regain
what has been erased by the imposition. This violence is the type
that unites the split consciousness and gives power back to those
who have been marginalised and erased. Through the use of
decolonising violence, the colonised learn to determine what is
best for them and how to create their own identity, which is the
exact opposite of erasure.
It may seem that this essay has turned violent, that it is now
based on the language of fighting and destroying, but this is not
the case. What is being proposed is a decolonisation of thought,
a removal of the imposition of the Western way of thinking,
which would allow Africa to reclaim (or create) a system of
theory that would be based on African history, African culture
and African identities. This new queer theory would be African
from inception, not based on Euro-American models that are
179
being debated in Western academic traditions. This essay is not

able to give Africa the answer, seeing as it is being written by a
Westerner, but I can give a model and tools that will guide the
creation of a pan-African theory. The model and tools that follow
are ‘polite suggestions’ that outline a theoretical framework that
may be helpful in reclaiming African homosexual identities.
Epistemic decolonisation is just as violent as physical
decolonisation, except that it deals with issues of theory, identity
and thought. It is a rejection of what is being implanted by the
‘sermonisers’ of Fanon. What is needed to combat this imposition
is the conviction to apply an alternate theory that neutralises
the enforced system. In the ‘African question’ a theory is needed
that allows Africa to create a structure that repels Western queer
theory, which adopts the spirit of queer theory in general but
does not follow doggedly in what has been written. It cannot
be forgotten that what the West has set down has effectively
erased African identity. What Africans need is to reclaim that
identity and move forward with something that celebrates what
they can bring to the table. One way of doing this is by taking
responsibility for their sexuality.
Joyce Trebilcot, a philosopher and feminist theorist, takes up
the topic of responsibility and how it applies to sexuality. Trebilcot
says that the first thing to realise about taking responsibility for
a situation is that it is not the same as taking responsibility
for the cause of that situation (Trebilcot 1984: 421). Somebody
may take charge of cleaning up spilled milk without actually
having spilled it. In the same way she says that an individual
can take responsibility for their sexuality now, without having
to account for what it has been and what it will be in the future
(Trebilcot 1984: 421). What can be extracted from this for the
current discussion is the need for Africans to ‘let go’ of what
has previously been theorised about their queer identities and
start fresh from their own perspective. This is not to say that
anybody should forget what has been theorised in the past.
Specious accounts which read Africa as limited and unilinear
and which reinforce basic racist assumptions will always be
part of and a detriment to African history (Pincheon 2000: 40).
What I am saying is that Africa can take responsibility for that
history, while not taking responsibility for causing it. No doubt
180
it is easier said than done, but with that accomplished, moving

on becomes much more rewarding. Trebilcot goes on to say, ‘To
take responsibility for one’s sexuality, broadly conceived, is to
take responsibility for the whole range of erotic/sexual/gender
phenomena that are aspects of one’s actions, attitudes, thoughts,
wishes, style, and so on’ (Trebilcot 1984: 422). To add to this list
I would say that it also means taking responsibility for being
heard and removing oneself from the margins. If sexuality is
something that can be taken charge of and an individual can
be responsible for all the phenomena that go with it, then it
can be epistemically decolonised by theorising counter to the
imposed ideas. By acknowledging the situation and refusing to
take responsibility for how it came about, the colonised are able
to shrug off the weight of answering to the imposed colonial
ideas. When these ideas have been cast off, the colonised are
able to take responsibility for their sexuality as it stands, devoid
of impositions and roadblocks, giving them the opportunity to
create something that is a better fit for the whole range of their
specific sexual practices and desires. Taking responsibility, then,
is one such way to reunite a bifurcated consciousness, repairing
history and moving forward in the knowledge of a humanising
epistemic decolonisation.
One last point should be made here. This chapter is dangerously
close to reinforcing the binary problem without yet having
mentioned it. The binary problem exists when theories attempt
to neatly package their subject matter; hence we get Black/
White, Occident/Orient and gay/straight sitting in opposition
without appreciating the crossover that actually occurs. I would
like to take the remaining portion of this piece to address this
danger. Binaries are disastrous things; by using them a theorist
is able to make a strong point on the surface, but one that does
not hold up under scrutiny. They hold within them unspoken
similarities that are effaced or ignored in the interest of winning
an argument. For example, the statement ‘gays are not straight’
seems valid and strong, yet how could one understand what it
is to be straight or gay if the other did not exist and share some
similarities. Similarities would include the notion that both
gayness and straightness must exist in relation to a body, they
inform something called ‘sexuality’ and they are both categories
181
used to classify sexual partners. What we have seen so far in this

essay is that there is a deep divide between the queer theory of the
West and that of the emerging theory of Africa, but this is not to
say that they are exclusive and bound only by their own borders.
Diana Fuss argues that binaries are about coupling that which is
inside and that which is outside (Fuss 1991: 1), meaning there are
always those that it includes (inside) and those which it excludes.
Further, it can mean that there are those who are able to execute
said practice (inside) and those who cannot (outside). In the field
of sexuality studies this binary is often invoked when speaking
about those who are making the theories. Those who construct
the theories often couch the distinctions in who is included in
their proposals and those who are excluded. When speaking
about queer theory, as we have seen, White queers tend to be the
dominant subjects of Western queer theory, which immediately
excludes Africans to the outside or marginal limits. This discourse
also goes back to Said’s idea of positionality, where we have seen
Africa as a continent outside of any theory that deals with the
‘Western’ world. So what sets this essay apart? Did not this essay
call the knowledge from the West colonial? This must mean that
I have argued for Africa to be on the inside now and the rest of
the West should be moved to the margins. I dearly hope that this
is not the case.
Fuss goes on to say that the figure of inside/outside cannot be
entirely taken away, but that does not mean that it must always
stand for diametrically opposed opposites. She says, further, that
any given term always depends on what is exterior to it (Fuss
1991: 1). This simply means that if we do not have something on
the ‘outside’ then we cannot know what is ‘inside’. This chapter
will now attempt to make a case for this reasoning. When it comes
to Western versus African queer theory, it is undeniable that
the West has attempted to make theories which encompass all
queer cultures without exception. These theories ultimately fail
because they do not take into account the cultural differences that
exist in multicultural communities or cross-cultural countries.
Western queer theory also does not take into account the issue
that they are imposing ideas on thinkers without giving them
the ability to speak for themselves. Taken together, these issues
put the West in the ‘inside’ position, having ‘inside’ knowledge
182
and ‘inside’ comprehension. Yet, there would be no impetus, no

reason to ‘take responsibility for sexuality’ if this positioning did
not happen against the background of Africa being considered
on the ‘outside’. Being positioned on the outside certainly can
be read as being a bad thing, not having insight and not being
privy to the important dealings which take place at the heart of
any matter. However, every interior must have an exterior which
bounds it, which gives it its meaning. If there was no outside then
there could never be an inside, it would just extend to infinity.
Therefore I can say that without the West positioning Africa on
the outside, the West would never come into the knowledge that
what they are doing is imposing their colonial ideas on other
thinkers. Africa, in some ways, determines the West. I have taken
the notion of inside/outside and turned it on its head a bit. Many
scholars will argue that so long as the language of position exists
there can be no true fairness of representation. I am not saying
that those scholars are wrong. My point is only that in this essay,
at this time and dealing with this subject, I do not want to set up a
strict dichotomy of Africa versus the West. Instead, I want to say
that the inside determines the outside just as much as the exterior
determines the interior. There are boundary crossings that exist
on a theoretical as well as a practical level. Therefore, what I
want to call attention to is the erasure that such positioning has
already caused. It is not about Africa coming back to dominate
the Western academic tradition so much as it is a discussion about
how Africans can decolonise their thought and react with theories
and identities of their own.
In conclusion I would like to say that this was not an easy essay
to write. I had to balance on a fine line of post-colonial study that
leads along twisting paths. Stray too much one way and it would
seem that I am blaming Western theory for all of Africa’s queer
theory faults, stray too much the other way and it would seem
that I am positioning Africa above the West. I hope that I have
done neither of these things. When I started this project I sought
to make a point of how dominant Western queer theory has been,
how widely disseminated it is and how persuasive its arguments
are. I also sought to show that being this formidable can lead to
many issues, the main one for me being that it was erasing Africa
and African queers. With the completion of this piece I know
183
that I will continue to work diligently to make a stronger case

for Africans to take the reins of their own sexuality and become
responsible stewards for their own academic tradition. I know
that Africa is slowly coming to its own and making waves in the
academic community and I am thankful that I have been given
this opportunity to lend my voice. Through the decolonisation
of thought, Africa has a chance to break free of the margins and
plant itself firmly as a theoretical force to be reckoned with.
Decolonisation may be a violent affair but it is also a necessary
one. It is my hope that African queer theory will be the next topic
that gets discussed at Western universities, not because I think
that the West can do it better but because Africa will have made
such a contribution that it can no longer be ignored.
References
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Collins, P.H. (2005) Black Sexual Politics: African Americans, Gender and the New
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T.H. (eds), New York, Norton and Company
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Epprecht, M. (2005) ‘Black skin, “cowboy” masculinity: a genealogy of
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Exploration to the Age of AIDS, Athens, Ohio University Press
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Fanon, F. (2004) The Wretched of the Earth, New York, Grove Press
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Theories, Gay Theories, New York, Routledge
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queer studies I learned from my grandmother’, in Johnson, E.P and
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185
19
NGOs and queer women’s

activism in Nairobi
Kaitlin Dearham
Introduction
In the past decade, the rise of the queer movement in Africa
has prompted the formation of non-governmental organisations
(NGOs) throughout the continent. In Kenya, some of the first
NGOs working to address lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender
and intersex (LGBTI) issues were established in Nairobi. These
organisations operate at a local level, while drawing on para-
digms developed by transnational queer movements and strug-
gles. This chapter is an examination of the methods and structures
employed in the queer women’s movement in Nairobi through
the case study of an LBTI women’s group called Minority Women
in Action (MWA). I will discuss the phenomenon of ‘NGOisation’,
which is the process of institutionalisation and professionalisation
of NGOs. NGOisation, as well as the heavy reliance on a human
rights framework, limits MWA’s ability to address the needs of
queer women in Nairobi. Nevertheless, MWA has been successful
in creating a strong network of queer women who support each
other and engage in various forms of activism.
This essay is based on qualitative research carried out for
a larger project on the topic of queer women’s organising and
identity construction in Nairobi. Fieldwork was conducted in
Nairobi during May to August 2010. Throughout my research,
I worked primarily with MWA, which is a member of the
Gay and Lesbian Coalition of Kenya (GALCK). At the time of
research, the organisation was run exclusively by volunteers, the
186
19 NGOS AND QUEER WOMEN’S ACTIVISM IN NAIROBI
majority of whom were Kenyan. Research was conducted through

participant observation1 and in-depth interviews with 21 queer
women between the ages of 20 and 40. The majority of interview
participants were members of MWA or other GALCK-based
organisations, particularly Artists for Recognition and Acceptance
(AFRA), a group for queer women artists, and Gender Education
and Advocacy Programme (GEAP), a transgender rights group.
Some interviewees worked for organisations that collaborate
with or fund LGBTI organisations. All research participants were
assigned a pseudonym to protect their privacy.
The landscape of organising in Kenya has shifted since this
research was carried out. More organisations have been created,
some advocacy-oriented and some social. As more groups are
established, sex workers and transgender people are becoming
more vocal and visible. There are also more safe spaces for queer
women now than there were in 2010. Over the past two years,
GALCK has experienced managerial and financial problems
which have strained its relationship with the LGBTI community.
Given the proliferation of human rights-focused groups,
issues of accountability, transparency and oppression within the
movement remain as relevant as ever.
Terminology
The vast majority of the women who participated in this research
identify as lesbians. However, most held other identities – such as
gay, dyke, queer, bisexual or transgender – alongside the label of
lesbian. Some women refused labels altogether.
Many women noted that ‘queer’ was not widely used in
Kenya because most people have not been exposed to the term.
Broadly speaking, ‘queer’ refers to people whose sexuality or
gender identity falls outside of the boundaries of heterosexuality.
It is also used to refer to a movement which seeks to deconstruct
compulsory heteronormativity2 and stable sex/gender roles. The
flexible and malleable quality of the term ‘queer’ is one of its most
important characteristics.
When discussing specific research participants, I will refer to
them using the terminology of their own preference. However,
when referring to research participants or to the community
187
as a group, I will use ‘queer’ rather than LGBTI, in order to

acknowledge the presence of women who do not identify with
any of the identities encompassed by LGBTI. In the discussion of
organisations working on queer issues, I will continue to use the
acronym LGBTI, since the organisations specifically target ‘LGBTI’
people and employ a more static understanding of sexuality.
LGBTI NGOs in Kenya

Kenya has a burgeoning queer community, which is becoming
more visibly organised and is pushing for human rights. Ocholla
writes that as early as the 1960s, gay men were gathering in public
bathrooms and in tearooms in downtown Nairobi (Ocholla 2011:
94). Evidence of an organised political movement first arose in
1997, with the formation of Ishtar MSM. This organisation was
originally formed to address the needs of male sex workers; it
has since expanded to work for the health rights of all men who
have sex with men, as well as transgender women (Kuria 2009: 2).
A number of other LGBTI organisations have formed following
Ishtar. While some focus on health, others aim to make changes
in some of the legislation pertaining to sexuality in Kenya.3 Others
have a mandate to educate the public or to provide safe social
spaces for LGBTI Kenyans. In 2006, the Gay and Lesbian Coalition
of Kenya formed. GALCK is a coalition of six of the major LGBTI
rights groups in Kenya, and works to support their goals and
objectives (Kuria 2009: 5). Five of these groups, including MWA,
share office space in Nairobi.
Minority Women in Action was formed in 2006, shortly after
the formation of GALCK. Several women who had been part of
the early organising efforts began to meet to discuss the possibility
of forming a group specifically for women. Faith, one of MWA’s
co-founders, explained the original goals of the organisation:
The aim was basically to fight for our rights. Essentially, to

build us up, build our capacity … to advocate to other organisa-
tions and individuals, so that they would understand where we
were coming from … and also to handle issues on sexual and
reproductive health, which no one had really done before. And
then, of course, to have fun.
188
The founders saw the need to create an organisation

specifically for women, as queer women were under-represented
in the existing LGBTI organisations. Many women saw this as
an indication of a larger problem of gender hierarchy within
Kenyan society, and the resulting relative lack of women in public
and political spheres. In the following comments, interviewees
speculate on the reason for the dominance of men in LGBTI
organising:
Mary: Basically, it’s a patriarchal culture, so people don’t really

see women that much … Maybe we’re not used to being seen.
Maybe it’s a culture thing.
Jake: It’s a man’s world … For the gay man, when he was born,
he was told, ‘You’re a man, this is your world, you control it.’
When a woman is born, she is told, ‘You have to be a good wife
… or mother. Your place will be … serving your husband.’ But
for the guy, it’s like, ‘You have to run this country.’ That’s why I
think there are more gay men in GALCK than lesbians.
Rose: Even in mainstream human rights organisations, women
have had to fight a lot for their place. So it’s really not any
different within LGBTI organisations … it’s just a patriarchal
system. It’s a system in which the more dominant has the voice
… and it happens that a lot of the time women are margin-
alised. I was hoping it would be different, because gay men
[suffer from] patriarchal oppression too. But it happens not to
be different within the LGBTI community … Even in women’s
organisations, there’s a tendency to sideline trans and intersex
[issues].
Interviewees identified the reproduction of gender hierarchy

within LGBTI organisations as the major reason for the need to
create a queer women’s organisation. Another reason given for
the lack of women’s voices in LGBTI organisations was that there
are more queer men who are willing to be open about their sexu-
ality than women. This relates to women’s economic marginalisa-
tion, as well as the social pressures on women to marry and have
children at a relatively young age compared to men. Finally, the
tendency of LGBTI organisations to focus heavily on men who
have sex with men (MSM) and HIV/AIDS was identified as an
additional factor precipitating the formation of a queer women’s
189
organisation. While HIV/AIDS is a relevant health concern for

queer women, programming and workshops generally focused
more on this issue than made sense for them. The formation of
a queer women’s organisation meant that women could focus on
the issues that specifically concerned them.
From the beginning, MWA was formally organised, developing
a leadership structure, strategic plan and a constitution within a
year. The steering committee is the top decision-making body
of the organisation. It is elected yearly from among the MWA
members and consists of eight officers with various financial,
administrative and programming duties. The steering committee
communicates suggestions and ideas to the rest of the members,
and is responsible for organising activities, events, workshops
and seminars.
NGOisation
Though the development of LGBTI rights-oriented NGOs is rela-
tively new in Kenya and on the continent, other social movements
have also employed the NGO model as a form of political mobi-
lisation. The feminist movement saw an explosion of women’s
rights NGOs in the 1980s and 1990s. The subsequent ‘NGOisation’
of the movement has been criticised by scholars and activists
alike (Alvarez 1998 and 1999, Armstrong 2004, INCITE! 2007).
The organisations which formed through the feminist movement,
and later the queer movement, are frequently hierarchical and
highly bureaucratic. Donors, who are concerned with financial
accountability, push organisations towards professionalised, for-
mal structures which are easier to monitor (Alvarez 2009: 177).
Because NGOs are so often dependent on external funding, and
donors like to fund projects which have demonstrable impacts as
a ‘return’ on their ‘investment’, NGOs often prioritise short-term
projects with quantifiable results. This means that organisations
are frequently governed by practices which are similar to those of
corporate businesses (Alvarez 2009: 177).
Armstrong (2004) points out that while such practices ensure
that NGOs are accountable to their donors, neither NGOs
nor donors are reliably accountable to the local community.
Hierarchical structures and an emphasis on professionalism,
190
which encourages elite leadership, means that it is easy for NGOs

to became alienated from people at the grassroots level (Armstrong
2004: 40). In this sense, the most marginalised community
members are often unintentionally excluded. The necessity for
NGOs to speak a language that appeals to donors means that they
are often employing an international development lexicon which
may not resonate in local contexts. In this section, I will examine
the effects of NGOisation on queer women’s organising in Nairobi
through a discussion of the use of the human rights framework
and of class issues.
Human rights
The adoption of the human rights framework by LGBTI organisa-
tions reflects a larger pattern of mirroring approaches and prac-
tices taken by ‘mainstream’ NGOs. MWA works within the human
rights framework by working to secure the rights of LBTI women
in Kenya, and educating its members on human rights principles.
Yet queer women in Nairobi are divided on the applicability and
efficacy of the human rights framework. Some argue that it is the
most effective means of addressing queer issues. Others are more
sceptical about its use in this context, questioning its efficacy even
as they employ it pragmatically within their own organisations.
In the African context, morality or cultural arguments are
often used to counter human rights arguments (see Cobbah 1987,
Njoh 2006). Cobbah writes that human rights institutions have
historically engaged in cultural imperialism, highlighting the
fact that when the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was
adopted by the United Nations in December 1948, the UN was
dominated by Western countries, and most of sub-Saharan Africa
was still under colonial control (Cobbah 1987: 316). Despite this,
many argue that the human rights framework is not Western in
origin. Rose, one of MWA’s co-founders, explained:
Human rights, the word itself, is Western. But … is it to say that

there were never human rights concerns in Africa before colo-
nialism? Honestly, I do not believe that … perhaps the words
used nowadays or other superficial aspects are Western, but the
concept of human rights, human dignity, treating people with
dignity, a sense of justice, were there.
191
Nevertheless, it is very easy for homophobes to dismiss queer-

ness as Western, particularly when it is being defended primarily
through the use of a theoretical framework which is widely con-
sidered to be alien.
This is not to say that the human rights framework should
be abandoned entirely. This framework can be useful when
it comes to advocating changes in policy and legislation, as
these frequently employ rights-based language. However, it is
important for queer activists to be able to hone our arguments to
particular audiences. As Khadija, who works for a social justice
organisation, observed, ‘I think that when we’re talking to that
type of [grassroots] audience, human rights language is limiting,
in that it sounds very imperialist. It sounds very donor-driven.’
Khadija also pointed out the limitations of employing an
exclusively policy-oriented approach, since it pushes organisations
to constantly engage with state institutions. Challenging
homophobic state policy is important and necessary work, but
is sometimes done to the neglect of communities in which queer
Africans still live and negotiate their everyday interactions. This
means that a change in legislation, though always welcome and
victorious, does not always reflect the reality on the ground.
The persistence of human rights violations relating to sexuality,
despite the wide state endorsement of treaties and conventions
upholding sexual rights, demonstrates the limitations of these
instruments; that is, the disconnect between international and
national laws, and local lived experience.
The perception of human rights as Western and donor-driven may
also alienate queer activists from their larger communities. Njoki, a
lesbian poet and songwriter, and co-founder of AFRA, explained:
There’s a feeling like we as gay people are isolating ourselves

from the rest of the community. The heterosexual people feel
like we are fighting for special rights. When you talk about
LGBTI rights, it makes them feel like we are advocating for
special rights that are more pronounced over theirs.
This perception that queer Kenyans want to be ‘special’ or ‘dif-

ferent’ from other Kenyans serves to reinforce the cultural argu-
ment that queerness is alien and that it has no place in African
192
communities. Leah, who is a member of MWA and works for a

sexual rights funding organisation, also emphasised this danger
by explaining how the human rights framework does not neces-
sarily resonate with activists, but that they continue to use it prag-
matically because it is easily understood by international donors.
Leah cautioned against employing inappropriate approaches for
the sake of gaining funds, pointing out that relationships with
funders are easily lost as political trends change. She explained,
‘Right now I think sexual minorities are like the flavour of the
month, so everybody wants to work with them. But what do you
do when we’re not the flavour of the month, then what happens?’
Class issues
The professionalisation and institutionalisation of NGOs, as well
as the emphasis on policy-oriented work, often create class divi-
sions within organisations. In the case of MWA, though effort
is made to address the needs of all members, many of the low-
income members felt that the programming did not address their
reality and challenges. Queer women from low-income areas
experience more violence and sexual assault than women liv-
ing in middle-class neighbourhoods. Though violence and rape
are not exclusive to low-income neighbourhoods, economically
oppressed women are disproportionately affected. In interviews,
this was partly attributed to a difference in living conditions and
increased dependence on family for survival. Women who shared
a room with family members, or who lived in extremely close
proximity to neighbours, found that their behaviour was easily
policed. This policing took the form of verbal harassment, physi-
cal violence, and rape. Reverie, a lesbian from a high-density,
low-income suburb of Nairobi, explained the impact of living
conditions in her estate.
In the ghetto … the law is not really enforced and people don’t
really know about legal issues. They take the law into their own
hands. So if they think that today you’re supposed to be beaten,
they do exactly that. If they think today you’re supposed to be
raped, that’s exactly what they’ll do … And you’ll do nothing
about it. ’Cause the legal system doesn’t really care what you’re
going through.
193
Outside of the ghetto, I think it’s different. People know, but

you live in this context where others really don’t care about
your business … We’re a [large] population living in the ghetto.
And the people, the way you live, the small spaces: it’s very
easy for people to get into your business.
When it comes to safety, it is more difficult for women from low-

income areas to engage in risk management practices when their
very living conditions heighten the likelihood of their being ‘pun-
ished’ because of their sexuality. Yet NGO discussions of queer
women’s security often do not take class differences into account.
Jake, another lesbian from a low-income neighbourhood,
described the challenges of queer women in these areas by saying,
‘In ghettos, you’ll find queer people, and they’re illiterate. They
have no skills. You know, day-to-day life, it’s a struggle for them.
Since you don’t have an education, you have nothing. The only
option you have is to get married, ’cause getting married doesn’t
need a lesson.’ Val, an MWA steering committee member, also
discussed the ways in which lack of formal education and visible
queerness can make it more difficult for queer women to gain
employment. She explained:
We’re all queer and we all have the same problems. Maybe
some more than others [because] there’s also a huge gap in
financial status. You find that a lot of these young girls are
struggling. The toms can’t really wear a frock or a dress … and
go out for an interview because they feel like they’re not being
who they are. Who they need to be. And what happens is that
the years go by, and you don’t have an employment history.
And you find yourself in the same place you were at twenty.
But it’s no fault of your own … life just sucks.
The few of us who have made it a little bit, we may not be
doing enough to uplift the ones that are not really making it …
it takes a lot of sacrifice on ourselves, to help the ones who are
down. But then again you wonder how to start … You know,
when I was twenty I was in college, and for me, school was a
priority. Go to school, get work. But other people don’t have
those opportunities, and I think that’s what’s lacking. I tell you,
I don’t know how to bridge that gap. For sure, I don’t.
194
Though Val herself is a gender non-conforming lesbian, she

was able to overcome the difficulties associated with not being
‘feminine enough’ because of her educational background and
the opportunities this afforded her. Her comment about toms4
being unable to find work was a common complaint among low-
income, gender non-conforming women, who would often end
up being unemployed or working in the informal sector.
Queer women in low-income areas are often more dependent
on family for financial support, and may become trapped in
heterosexual relationships and marriages to survive. It can be
difficult for these women to participate in NGO-style workshops
and other activities for several reasons. Such activities, which are
frequently conducted in English, may be inaccessible for those with
little formal education; for women who are living with or married
to men, the need to attend a meeting can be difficult to justify;
and meetings and other activities are often held downtown or in
middle-class neighbourhoods, which can be difficult for lower-
income women to access because of travel time (as low-income
neighbourhoods and informal settlements are mainly located on
the outskirts of Nairobi). Reimbursement for fares, however, is
normally provided for women who attend MWA’s workshops and
activities. Alice, a former committee member, speculated, ‘It would
be nice if they could reach out more to the women, especially at
the grassroots. Because usually the meetings we have are up-class,
you know, up-town kinda meetings. And really there are a lot of
women out there who have not been reached.’
Some women, both from the member base and from the
steering committee, mentioned the hierarchical nature of the
organisation as a stumbling block to addressing class issues. But
the larger impediment seemed to be the lack of communication
and dialogue on class differences within the organisation. Naomi,
a steering committee member, stressed communication as key:
I feel like what it is, is that we need to be having these conver-

sations and we need to have them more frequently. No one’s
talking about it … I feel like if we had more dialogue, we could
build bridges, [break down] misconceptions, preconceived
notions we have about each other. So that we could come
together and have a more cohesive group.
195
Naomi mentioned that people were ‘dug into their positions’,

and that political and class education was needed to resolve the
issue. Rose also talked about the importance of dialogue and
education in addressing the class issue:
To deal with class differences, which are so inherent in people,

it will take re-socialisation. It will take re-educating people in
some of the things they take for granted. The same way we have
to re-educate people on patriarchy, on women, on homosexual-
ity, on transgenderism, on intersex people … re-examining our
concepts, which is very difficult.
Here, Rose is drawing an important parallel between class

and other structural oppressions. Many interview participants
expressed a common desire to address this issue – the willing-
ness is certainly there. Nevertheless, it is a challenge for an
organisation which prioritises professionalism to find a place
for low-income women in the leadership structure. The struggle
to include people from a diversity of economic backgrounds in
the decision-making processes and leadership of organisations is
common in the NGO world.
Successes
MWA has made great gains despite the difficulty of working
within an NGOised environment. The women who were involved
in the creation of MWA, and those who are currently involved in
organising, are very dedicated to their work. Many put in long
hours of unpaid work and contribute their own resources to cre-
ate a more equal and safe society for queer Kenyans. In this sec-
tion, I will discuss organisational successes in creating visibility
and encouraging queer mobilisation.
Visibility
MWA and GALCK have a great impact on making the public
aware that queer people exist in Kenya. The fact that these organi-
sations were formed and are run by Kenyans helps to deconstruct
the myth that queerness is ‘un-African’. MWA and GALCK’s vis-
ibility and persistent advocacy work have helped queer issues
196
become part of public consciousness and dialogue, which is a

major change from even five years ago. Rose described the impact
of GALCK’s participation in the World Social Forum in 2007:
We had a tent, not even a desk. And we called it Q-spot. We

had people’s poems, we were showing the community’s art-
work. There were sessions, other organisations from around
Africa also participated, there were workshops. And we had
a permanent desk where we had people talking about LGBTI
issues. Members of the public could come, ask questions, we’d
have conversations. And it was actually very good because we
got a lot of media out of it. So that at least helped to wipe out
that myth that LGBTI people do not exist in Kenya, for those
people in denial.
This was one of the first times that queer people appeared pub-
licly as a group in Nairobi, speaking for themselves.
Safe spaces
The GALCK office, and other spaces which MWA occupies for
events, are some of the few places where queer women feel able
to relax and do not have to monitor themselves for fear of reveal-
ing their sexuality. These formal LGBTI safe spaces complement
the informal queer safe spaces which queer women develop for
themselves outside of organisations through personal relation-
ships and networks. Research participants unanimously agreed
that finding a social and/or activist space in which they could ‘be
themselves’ was an enormous relief. Sam, a member of AFRA,
described the first time she came to the GALCK centre: ‘It felt
really awesome … because previously, I used to hide myself …
but when I met the first group of lesbians and bisexual people, I
was so impressed. I felt like I have a family out here. I don’t have
to hide myself anymore.’
Many participants described their first encounters with MWA
or other GALCK organisations as ‘meeting family’, or finally
finding a place where they fitted in or belonged. Ruth, who is on
MWA’s steering committee, described how being in the presence
of other queer people had the effect of normalising her sexuality:
‘I could see people, they’re happy... they’re behaving like nothing
197
big, just like any other normal person.’ Being in a space dominated
by queer people was a major step for many queer Nairobians,
who may have previously felt isolated and alienated even if they
already knew one or two queer people. Faith explained that when
MWA was forming, ‘There was a lot of excitement … I think
prior to that time, lesbians … were all sort of scattered. But this
basically brought all the lesbians together, at least the little circle
that knew each other within Nairobi.’
Mobilisation
MWA and other GALCK organisations have succeeded in mobi-
lising the queer movement in Kenya by creating linkages with
other queer and ally organisations, encouraging the creation
of new LGBTI organisations elsewhere in the country, and by
inspiring queer Kenyans to engage in activism outside of organi-
sational contexts. As one of the first, and certainly one of the most
visible, groups working for LGBTI rights in Kenya, GALCK has
been a positive example and in some cases a catalyst for others
who may want to start queer organisations or do queer work in
Kenya. Some of these groups have decided to employ more radi-
cal approaches in their activism.
Even for those who have decided not to engage in activism
through MWA or other formal organisations, MWA has been a
useful point of connection to other queer women. Those who have
decided not to participate in the organisation, largely because
of structural concerns, continue to engage in queer activism of
various sorts. This may be formal (working with another NGO) or
informal (maintaining emotional and financial support networks
with other women, or articulating their struggles through art or
media engagement). In this sense, involvement with MWA has
been a jumping-off point of activism for many.
Coalition
The fact that several Kenyan LGBTI rights NGOs have come
together as a coalition group protects them from some of the pit-
falls of NGOisation. Though GALCK’s member organisations are
to a degree competing for funding, the organisations frequently
come together to hold events as a coalition. The fact that several
198
organisations share office space means that it is easy for their

members to exchange ideas and collaborate on projects. The
coalition helps maintain both movement-building and diversity
by encouraging its member organisations to work together. This
echoes Tsikata’s (2009) observation that the formation of coalition
groups among women’s movements in Ghana has enabled activ-
ists to transcend some of the issues of NGOisation by coming
together on matters of common interest.
Strengthening the movement

In her analysis of feminist NGOs in Israel, Hanna Herzog states
that ‘the strength of the movement comes from its willingness to
self-criticise, as well as from its diversity’ (2008: 274). In this way,
women’s organisations managed to remain effective and true to
their feminist roots despite NGOisation. I believe that this senti-
ment is equally applicable to the queer movement. Queer wom-
en’s NGOs must engage in self-criticism through an examination
of their programmes and structure, looking at whether they are
serving their membership base, and by being open to discussion
and debate. It is important for members to be willing to speak up
and work to correct what they perceive to be problematic within
the organisation.
In the African context, it is particularly important for the queer
movement not to pigeonhole itself. In Kenya, as in elsewhere on
the continent, homophobic discourse often takes on a cultural
bent, decrying queerness as ‘un-African’. Two ways in which
the NGOisation of queer movements reinforces this discourse is
by encouraging NGOs to specialise to the point of isolation, and
by encouraging the use of the human rights framework, which
as previously stated is often perceived as Western and relies
primarily on engagement with the state at the expense of focus on
communities. In order to avoid isolation, it is critical to reach outside
of the queer community and develop strong alliances. This means
not just working with other organisations that address queer issues,
as is already happening, but also being present as queer Africans
in other progressive movements. Of course, the challenge behind
this type of engagement is ensuring safety, since even so-called
progressive political spaces are not necessarily safe enough for
199
queer Kenyans to be open about their sexuality. One example of

coalition-building in Nairobi was the Warembo Ni Yes campaign,5
in which women from diverse backgrounds mobilised to push
for the adoption of the new Kenyan constitution. This campaign
brought together women from labour, feminist, queer and sex
workers’ movements, from a range of economic backgrounds.
Through coalition building and learning from other
progressive movements, queer NGOs may also develop new
ways of approaching their activism, to complement the human
rights approach. While reflecting on this issue, Naomi said:
I feel like there are different ways [of organising]. The human
rights model is only one ... I feel like it’s not effective enough
when we’re not able to answer these questions when it comes
to culture, which is ingrained, deeply ingrained, even within
the LGBTI themselves.
She went on to explain that we have so much knowledge in

Kenya, and in Africa as a whole, which could be used to create
a new framework for activism. In other words, we must use the
knowledge and traditions of our own communities to inform our
activism, rather than relying on what may have been effective
elsewhere in the world.
MWA has done important and groundbreaking work in the
establishment of a queer women’s movement in Kenya. However,
it is critical to acknowledge the limitations of the dominant
NGO model, and ensure that the creation of organisations does
not mean the exclusion of some queer women. Dialogue, self-
reflection and progressive alliance-building are important tools in
creating a strong queer movement in Africa.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank all the sisters who participated in my
research for sharing their lives and stories so generously with
me. A special thank you goes to the women of Minority Women
in Action, who welcomed me and introduced me to the com-
munity. I would also like to acknowledge the Social Science and
Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), which pro-
vided financial support for this project.
200
Notes
1 Participant observation is an anthropological research method that
involves taking part in daily life and activities, while simultaneously
observing and collecting data relating to those activities. During
participant observation, I observed group interactions and how beliefs
and values were expressed in a relatively natural, informal setting.
2 Heteronormativity is a set of assumptions about sex and gender roles
which legitimises homophobia and transphobia. Heteronormativity
assumes that people fall into only one of two sexes (male or female)
and genders (men or women), which have certain roles in life.
Heterosexuality is assumed to be the only natural sexual orientation,
which means that only sexual and marital relationships between a man
and a woman are acceptable. Sex and gender are assumed to naturally
correlate, which means that transgender and intersex people are
excluded from heteronormative frameworks.
3 Sections 162 through 165 of the penal code are commonly interpreted
to mean that sexual acts between people of the same sex are illegal in
Kenya. The law is very ambiguous, referring to ‘unnatural offences’,
‘carnal knowledge against the order of nature’ and ‘acts of gross
indecency’ (Kenya Law Reports: 2010). These laws were established by
the British government during colonial times, and have remained in the
Kenyan penal code since then.
4 ‘Tom’ is a short form of ‘tommy’, a term for an androgynous, boyish or
gender ambiguous queer woman derived from the term ‘tomboy’.
5 http://www.waremboniyes.org, accessed 15 March 2010.
References
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Sam and Val (2010) personal interviews, Nairobi, Kenya
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of the 1990s and challenges for the new millennium’, in Alvarez, S.E.,
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Re-visioning Latin American Social Movements, Boulder, CO, Westview
Alvarez, Sonia E. (1999) ‘Advocating feminism: the Latin American feminist
NGO “boom”’, International Feminist Journal of Politics, 1(2): 181–209
Alvarez, Sonia E. (2009) ‘Beyond NGO-ization? Reflections from Latin
America’, Society for International Development, 5(2): 175–84
Armstrong, Elizabeth (2004) ‘Globalization from below: AIDWA, foreign
funding, and gendering anti-violence campaigns’, Journal of Developing
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Human Rights Quarterly, 9: 309–31
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INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence (ed) (2007) The Revolution Will
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kenyalaw/klr_home/, accessed 15 March 2010
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forward’, 6 May, http://galck.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=a
rticle&id=17:history&catid=9:activism&Itemid=9, accessed 7 May 2010
Njoh, Ambe (2006) Tradition, Culture and Development in Africa: Historical
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Publishing Company
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individual organizations to three coalitions’, Development, 52(2): 185–92
202
20
The struggle for intersex rights

in Africa
Julius Kaggwa
Being intersex is a journey along the indeterminate middle ground

between male and female; this variance or diversity in sex devel-
opment and gender is still very controversial in Africa. This chap-
ter highlights the extreme social, cultural and religious biases that
surround this controversial ground in Africa, as well as the corre-
lation between gender and sexuality from an African perspective.
Challenges and opportunities around sex, gender identity
and sexuality in Africa are strongly linked to the family, and are
frequently grounded in culture and disparate ideologies. While
many individuals have used conservative ideologies to oppose
gender and sexual diversity in Africa, emerging sexual rights
voices have underscored common values of democracy, health
and human dignity to advance them. My chapter explores the
struggles involved in challenging the traditional binary sex and
gender dichotomy in Africa and how culture, including religion,
has been used to advance a repressive agenda as well as acting as
a barrier to advancing freedom of gender and sexual expression
in Africa.
It is an established fact that sexuality is an integral part of the
human experience. Yet in most parts of Africa, sexuality is still
greatly gendered and only discussed in terms of procreation and
disease control. This is one of the reasons why most sexual health
programming in Africa focuses on behaviour and attitude change,
especially in the area of sexual activity and expression. Sadly,
however, cultural dictates in the form of fundamentalist religious
beliefs and social standpoints have meant that these interventions
and messages are also gendered and exclusive to conventional
203
sexual expressions and relations. The convention is that one is

either male or female and that the male and female will in turn
engage in monogamous heterosexual sex – which is the sexual
activity between one woman and one man. It does not embrace
atypical sex identities and alternative sexual relations, such as
sexual activity among gender and sexually variant people.
Africa is vast and diverse in her cultural content and yet
there are commonalities in attitudes to human sexuality and
gender diversity in almost all of our countries. Variance in
gender and sexuality is frowned upon and considered to be
taboo in dominant African culture. Most African families –
which are usually extended in composition – do not openly
engage in discussions on sex and sexuality. Furthermore, sexual
development, activity and expression are usually shrouded in
extreme secrecy. For example, in my tribe of Baganda in Uganda,
sex cannot be bluntly called ‘sex’. It is alluded to in proverbial
terms, such as ‘pointing another to the devil’s realm’ (okutunuza
omuntu mumbuga za sitani) or in a more positive light ‘a private
adult conversation’ (akaboozi kekikulu). It is therefore from this
fixed cultural premise that arguments around sex development,
gender, sexual diversity, sexual activity and choice are considered
‘un-African’ and unwelcome.
In many countries in Africa, dominant gender discourse takes
the strictly binary forms of woman and man. Anything outside
of that is aberrant. However, even within that binary dichotomy,
man remains the more privileged gender. This is also seen in
HIV interventions, where pregnant women are subjected to
compulsory HIV testing but not the expectant fathers, where
female sex workers are blamed for fuelling the pandemic and not
the men who buy their services, where it is more acceptable for
genital mutilation to be done on intersex infants to make them
girls rather than leave them as supposedly ‘dysfunctional’ boys,
where there is more brutal rape of women, regardless of whether
such women are intersex or not.
In many African countries, enormous resources have been, and
are still being, spent to establish HIV and malaria prevention and
treatment programmes and to address social justice and economic
problems. However, gender and sexual variance is still a key social
determinant of inequalities in accessing those programmes. Even in
204
20 THE STRUGGLE FOR INTERSEX RIGHTS IN AFRICA
the wake of men-who-have-sex-with-men (MSM) and women-who-

have-sex-with-women (WSW) HIV programming, a sub-culture
that assumes that only gay or anal sex exists besides heterosex has
ensured the exclusion of the myriad of identities in which sexual and
gender expression takes many different, other forms. For example,
intersex people in Africa often find themselves destitute. And when
they are sick, they are not able to freely access health care. As a
result, they self-medicate both for illness and hormonal medications
with over the counter and often expired medicines. Often, they will
even share needles. This is one of the challenges intersex people
share with their African transgender counterparts. More often than
not, they will not be able to determine their seropositive status
and yet, due to the pressing need to survive, they seek a livelihood
through sex work (usually with no protection whatsoever). Even in
this industry, they are discriminated against.
Culturally and politically, non-conformity to prescribed sex
and gender categories and roles is considered immoral and
is vehemently discouraged and criminalised in most African
countries. This deters many people from accessing social justice
and services and, at the very worst, makes them rebels or criminals.
Intersex, lesbian and transgender women, for example, refrain
from seeking sexual and reproductive health services for fear of
being harassed, ostracised and discriminated against. Sexually
risky activity resulting from lack of appropriate information and
interventions for this population has fuelled the incidence of hate
crimes, sexually transmitted infections, HIV and AIDS among
these populations in most of Africa.
In many instances, religious and cultural fundamentalism
is evident in the way policymakers and medical practitioners
are sceptical and scornful of the body politics of gender non-
conforming people, to the extent that they craft all possible ways
to exclude these populations from society as cultural and social
rejects and criminals. A case in point is the anti-homosexuality
bill which was tabled in Uganda by member of parliament David
Bahati in October 2009.
Examples drawn from provisions in the bill include the broad
fashion in which homosexuality is defined to include ‘touching
another person with the intention of committing the act of
homosexuality’. This is a provision highly prone to abuse and which
205
puts all Ugandan citizens of all genders at risk. Such a provision

would make it very easy for a person to witch-hunt or bring false
accusations at will against another simply to cause scandal.
Furthermore, if one’s job is in any way related to sexual and
reproductive health services, human rights activism, advocacy,
education and training, research, capacity building and related
areas, the anti-homosexuality bill poses a serious threat in its
provision about the ‘promotion’ of homosexuality. The bill seeks
to silence human rights activists, civil society, the media and
anyone who would engage with issues related to sexual and
reproductive rights. Since sexuality is a dynamic and integral part
of the human experience, regardless of which gender or sex we
identify as, legislation such as the anti-homosexuality bill makes
all of us potential victims and criminals.
This bill shows how society and policymakers are using
religious arguments to establish categories for people when they
design culture and policies that reveal prejudices and biases
based on homophobia, racism, sectarianism and so on. It also
informs us that culture as we know it is continuously evolving
and can be the vehicle that either impedes or promotes positive
social and economic change. In the case of this bill, undeniably
everything is being done to deny sexual and reproductive health
rights to Ugandan citizens who are considered not to conform to
cultural dictates of what ‘normal’ gender and sex classification
should be. In this regard intersex people are mistakenly taken
to have two sexual organs or to have the ability to have sexual
intercourse with both men and women, portraying them as either
gay or bisexual. Additionally, some intersex people who opt
to change from a best-guess sex assigned at birth will travel a
journey similar in some ways to that of a transsexual person and
often face similar prejudice and exclusion.
In most African societies children born with these variations are
often killed shortly after birth or, if not, they are kept hidden from
social and community life. Our media and community engagement
efforts around intersex health and rights over the past two years
have slowly broken through this barrier and provoked constructive
dialogue around broader gender and sexual identities.
It is important to note that family institutions all over Africa
are undergoing significant transformation, especially in terms
206
20 THE STRUGGLE FOR INTERSEX RIGHTS IN AFRICA
of the dialogue around the correlation between gender and

sexuality as well as the importance placed upon sex and gender
roles. There have been increasing publicity and evidence that
many African people, from all walks of life, have bodies that do
not conform to ‘normative’ male or female bodies, some of whom
practice, and express themselves through, exploratory gender
expressions and sexual activity. We cannot afford to shy away
from the fact that there are many people who occupy the grey
middle ground between male and female. The subject of debate
is usually whether sexuality, sexual activity and variant sex
classifications should be gendered; whether or not these people –
whose sex is indeterminate at birth or at puberty – have rights to
life, information, appropriate health and dignity in their chosen,
forced or intrinsic gender identities and expression.
In the case of Uganda, the intersex reality challenges the
extremist religious and moralistic culture that denies sexual
minorities and non-conforming genders access to and enjoyment
of sexual health and rights. These lived realities include (all
names have been changed):
Musa, a 16-year-old boy who lives with his mum and was diag-
nosed with undescended testes and hypospadias as a baby; he
was operated on as a child but surgery was not successful
Mary, a 22-year-old woman who has ambiguous genitals where
a male penis developed within her vagina; she attributes her
failure to find a marriage partner to this intersex condition
John, a 20-year-old young man living with his stepmother who
has had corrective surgery more than twice but who still can-
not find the funds to remove the under-developed uterus, close
the vaginal opening and release the penis
Jane, a four-and-a-half-month-old child who was born with
ambiguous genitals, whose doctors had reported hypospadias
and genital malformation; she was being hidden by her mother
and was later reported dead under mysterious circumstances
Ivan, a 23-year-old man who was near suicide because his
breasts had developed like those of a woman; he was binding
them in a similar way to that done by female to male transgen-
der people.
207
Social and cultural issues, just like science, are always evolving
– even in Africa. We know that change and the ability to adapt
to it are the ingredients of a dynamic and progressive society.
And any society can resolve to adapt to any necessary changes
within its social and cultural moulds in order to ensure that all
the freedoms of its people are protected. In the era of searching for
best practice in human rights advocacy, it is a matter of urgency
for Africa to appreciate differences in sex development, gender
identities and related human rights. The critical challenge is how
to formulate relevant strategies to achieve this within our cultural
contexts as Africans.
The critical aspect about which we need to educate ourselves
as Africans is that while we need identities for the purposes of
organising, intersex in itself is not an identity and an intersex
person will often find themselves taking on other identities when
it comes to gender, sexual orientation and choice. We must also
acknowledge that dehumanising societal attitudes, under the
convenient guise of ‘cultural dictates’ towards intersex children
and people, are clearly a gender- and sexually-based violence issue.
As a mitigation strategy, the intersex movement in Uganda and
the East African region is focusing on creating greater visibility
and amplifying voices around intersex issues and related human
and sexual rights through public education and media and
community engagement.
208
21
African statement on sexual

orientation and gender identity
2012-03-07
Human Rights Council 19 Session-Geneva
We African activists speak on behalf of the people throughout

the continent who continually face persecution and violence on
the basis of their sexual orientation and gender identity. We also
speak in solidarity with the sentiments of the Women Living
under Muslim Laws in their letter addressed to the President of
the Human Rights Council.
We have received with joy the report of the UN High
Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay that highlights the
deplorable state of human rights for LGBTI people.
We commend the leadership of South Africa in opening dialogue
around the human rights of people with non-conforming sexualities
and identities. We urge Member States to take this opportunity to
engage in constructive dialogue on this important issue.
The African continent has risen and continues to rise against
oppressive structures like colonialism, apartheid, despotism and
dictatorships. LGBTI persons however continue to experience
oppression and violence that derive from:
1. Archaic and barbaric colonial laws against adult consensual sex,

2. Colonial Victorian ideas of morality disguised as African
traditional values,
3. Patriarchal notions of gender and gender expression,
4. Religious fundamentalisms,
5. Strongly held social constructs that contradict the African
values of Ubuntu, acceptance, peace and shared co-existence.
209
LGBTI persons in Africa continually face stigma and discrimina-

tion, harassment and arbitrary arrests, alienation from family and
faith, lack of access to social services including health, justice,
housing, education and dignified livelihoods. All these, despite
African states being signatories to the Universal Declaration
of Human Rights, the African Charter on Human and Peoples
Rights, particularly Article 2 and 3, and the AU values of equality
and non-discrimination.
We as African LGBTI activists are not asking for any new or
special rights, we urge you as our African states, to live up to your
obligations under international and regional instruments and
your own national constitutions; all of which recognise equality
and non-discrimination for all persons.
We call upon our African states to end violence and
discrimination against LGBTI citizens, abolish all discriminatory
laws in existence. We call upon those states currently considering
legislating such laws to cease. We call upon all African states
to create legal and social environments conducive to the equal
enjoyment of all rights for all citizens.
http://bit.ly/UvZzMj
210
22
Queerying borders: an Afrikan

activist perspective
Bernedette Muthien
planetary piss? neutron?

i yearn to float with ducks i am an infinite ravine
on open air waves engorged rivers erode my scar
nip pluck tuck everywhere tissue
neither here nor there lickmarbling the craters
i am both none inbetween on all sides
kiss her fuck him desire nations in-habit my being
only a dream as i moisten for his mastery
sitdowncomic pencilling and fingertip her open-legged
shower songs vulnerability
thru unwooded electrical storms all the while aware
of all our innocence
made of nothing but
air
+/- i am charged
with no sides
Any field of study only has relevance if actual people, and specifi-
cally communities of people, are able to use it in concrete ways.
Hence, theorising entirely for theory’s sake, however intellectu-
ally stimulating to some of us, has absolutely no relevance to
the daily, lived realities of grassroots (or ‘ordinary’) people. One
should, however, tread cautiously with such a dualistic view, a
view derived from lived experience in both activist and academic
(rarely intersecting) environments. At times ‘ordinary’ people
211
are not seen to be ‘theoretical’ about their ‘experience’ and the

theoreticals seem hopelessly devoid of being experiential – fluidly
speaking, an experience is theoretical in as much as the theoretical
is very much experiential. They should not be put on oppositional
grounds. Simultaneously, and especially to avoid dichotomising
theorising and experience, the inextricable experience–theory
dance is not often slow and close, but rather loose and jagged,
and often exploitative, rather than co-creational. Hence my own
passionate commitment to participatory, action-based research
methodologies that seek mutual skills exchange.
In the broader African context, and particularly in South Africa
almost 20 years into democracy, systemic transformation is of
critical importance. Questions relating to how one transforms
societies from inequality, injustice and systemic violence into
societies of reconciliation, diversity, justice and non-violence are
issues most pertinent to many of us. Violence is a daily, lived
reality for non-heteronormative people the world over, and
especially in Africa, but even closer to home in South Africa in
particular. Here, as is the case everywhere, lesbians are subject
to what this author calls ‘curative rape’, the rape of women
perceived of as lesbian by men, ostensibly as a ‘cure’ for/of their
(aberrant) sexualities. Other men also, even more ironically,
subject some gay men to this ‘curative rape’. Hence theorising
about non-heteronormativity, and lesbianism in particular, cannot
be divorced from the ordinariness of ‘curative’ rape for many
lesbians the world over, and in South Africa specifically.
Further questions to contemplate include: how relevant a
field of lesbian studies is to ordinary people, what is a lesbian,
and who defines lesbianism. The word ‘lesbian’, as are most of
the concepts encompassed within the rainbow or alphabet soup
of letters LGBTQI, was coined and developed outside African
realities. In South Africa Nguni speakers have long (erroneously)
referred to homosexuals as stabane or ‘hermaphrodite’ (intersex).
The original inhabitants of southern Africa, the Khoe-San, are not
heteronormative, and genders and sexualities are seen as fluid and
dynamic, rather than as static binaries. This fluidity applies to most
ancient indigenous peoples the world over, from Native American
berdache to Indian hijras. These include people usually referred to
as a ‘third sex’, transgender, intersex and/or anything other than
212
22 QUEERYING BORDERS: AN AFRIKAN ACTIVIST PERSPECTIVE
the stereotypical masculine–feminine dichotomies. Definitions

usually work in negative terms, which define self in relation
(and usually in opposition) to an Other. Hence, homosexual
means not heterosexual, and lesbian means non-heterosexual, or
homosexual, woman. However, employing a linear definition of
lesbian may exclude the infinite varieties of sexuality choices that
are ‘inbetween’ and vary over time and with circumstances.
So how should one define lesbian? Many people I associate
with define lesbian as the equivalent of gay homosexual, i.e. the
opposite of heterosexual. While the construct queer embraces
those who are non-heteronormative and includes the inbetween
fluids, the construct lesbian does not necessarily include me,
because I define myself as beyond binaries, as inbetween and
fluid, dynamic and variable. Perhaps some may call me bisexual,
but this term too subscribes to a notion of polarity – that I am both
poles – when in fact I shift and change positions, not on a static
linear continuum, but on an endlessly spiralling ellipse that, not
ironically, is ovoid, symbolic of female reproductive power. Is
lesbian defined as orientation, or as preference? Are we victims of
biology, or active agents with choice?
While I do respect those who identify as lesbian, we all know
lesbians who sleep with men, and lesbians who, even if they don’t
act on them, enjoy sexual fantasies of men. The same applies to
women who identify as heterosexual and, often silently, mentally
or actually, engage sexually with other women. Many African
women outside South Africa who might identify as lesbian
elsewhere are married with children and/or practice their same-
sex sexuality in silence, due to the violence of post-colonial
patriarchal homophobia. For example, a leading African gender
activist’s house was bombed at least once, because she worked on
sexualities broadly and lesbian activisms specifically, apparently
outside of the general public view. One of her tasks has been to
establish discreet national networks for gay men and gay women.
It is this clandestine sexualities activism that directly resulted in
the attacks on her, and which warrants such extreme caution on
her part. A further example was attacks on Intersex South Africa
co-founder, Sally Gross, which necessitated similar personal safety
measures. Personal acts of violences against non-heteronormative
activists are closely tied to the generic societal violences against
213
those perceived of as not heterosexual, including the ‘curative’

rape of women perceived of as lesbian, which is so prevalent
that queer organisations in South Africa have entire projects
specifically dedicated to this form of gender violence.
It is precisely the imperatives of heteropatriarchy that keep
both lesbians and their straight sisters in the flimsy boxes of their
binaried sexuality. How much simpler it is to find safety in a
homogenous identity, even if all identities are more complex upon
further investigation. For example, archaeo-anthropology shows
that humans have always migrated across continents throughout
time, and hence the idea of a homogenous race or nationality is
flawed at best. We are each, all, hybridised, without any definite
certainty about origins. The only thing we can ever really be
certain of, at this stage, is that we are all born human, even as
some ancient spiritual traditions, such as Hinduism and Jainism,
refer to inter-species reincarnation.
If we assume that sexuality, like any other identity, shifts
constantly on the endless circumference of an infinite ovoid,
then sexuality can never really be fixed, is not predetermined
and primordial, does not hold us hostage physiologically. After
all, the field of physiology itself evinces that chromosomes and
hormones are by nature fluid, and both ‘male’ and ‘female’ exist
in all human beings. Static polar genders of male and female are
therefore not scientifically accurate, and merely serve the interests
of heteropatriarchy, to divide and rule, in similar ways that
science has been used to divide and conquer during colonial eras
and under apartheid in South Africa. As Stephen Batchelor puts it:
Things are not as clear-cut as they seem. They are neither cir-
cumscribed nor separated from each other by lines. Lines are
drawn in the mind. There are no lines in nature … [Everything
emerges] from a matrix of conditions and in turn becomes part
of another matrix of conditions from which something else
emerges (Batchelor 1997: 76).
Is there such a construct as an African lesbian? Is the idea of an

African in a globalised world possible? One cannot forget how
54 UN-recognised national (colonial) borders cut through indige-
nous ethnic groups like the Dagara, who live in Burkina Faso and
Ghana, as well as the Khoe-San, who continue to live in Namibia,
214
Angola, Botswana and South Africa. As a continent, Africa argu-

ably has the world’s most diverse cultural and historic legacies
with up to 3,000 languages still spoken.
Africa includes the range of Lesotho’s lesbian-bisexual miners’
wives in Cheryl Stobie’s work and Ifi Amadiume’s (1988, 1998,
2002) writings of women-to-women marriages in her native
Nigeria. Stobie (2003) critiques the book Boy-Wives and Female
Husbands: Studies of African Homosexualities, which offers a range
of texts from the 18th to the late 20th century, and examines a
considerable number of sub-Saharan cultures, providing ample
evidence of homosexual practices being indigenous over a long
period. There is much fascinating material, including translations
of ethnographic accounts of pre-colonial and colonial times, court
records of male homosexual ‘crime’ in early colonial Zimbabwe,
same-sex marriages, the concept of ‘male lesbians’ in Hausa (West
Africa), adolescent same-sex sexual behaviour, cross-dressing,
role reversal and women who love women in Lesotho. Also of
interest is an appendix with a list of 50-odd African cultures with
same-sex patterns, most of which have local terms for same-sex
sexual practices or roles, and there is evidence for same-sex erotic
relationships between co-wives, and between (heterosexually)
married women in Lesotho.
Speaking of his native Dagara people in Burkina Faso, Malidoma
Somé asserts that gender has very little to do with anatomy:
It is purely energetic. The whole notion of ‘gay’ does not exist

in the indigenous world. That does not mean that there are not
people who feel this way that certain people feel in this culture,
that has led to them being referred to as ‘gay’ … The great
astrologers of the Dogon are gay … Why is it that everywhere
else in the world, gay people are a blessing and in the modern
world they are a curse? It is self-evident. The modern world
was built by Christianity. They have taken the gods out of the
earth and sent them to heaven, wherever that is… (Somé 1993).
Sobonfu Somé reflects on the ordinariness of Dagara women’s

sexual-spiritual intimacies:
Sexuality, including woman-to-woman sexuality, is so inte-

grated into the spiritual life of the Dagara that her people have
215
no word to specify ‘lesbian’ or even ‘sex’… Like many other

Africans, the women of Dagara do not sleep with their men.
Women need to sleep together, to be together to empower each
other … then if they meet with men, there is no imbalance …
We have a female father who gives us male energy. She looks
like a male. Anything we feel or experience that we haven’t
dealt with is expressed. This women’s group ritual balances
their male/female energy. It is so we are not completely male or
female (Somé 1994).
Alicia Banks (2005) cites an article entitled ‘Inside gay Africa’ to

describe how the Watusi still have a reputation for bisexuality. In
the cities of East Africa, Zande women risked execution by pleas-
uring each other, sometimes with phalluses fashioned from roots
and in Zaire, homosexuality had a mystical element to it while
bisexuality is also quite common among the Bajun tribes of east
Africa. So while the word lesbian may have ancient Greek origins,
the practices it describes are certainly universal, and definitely
include Africa. However, what is clear from many of the citations
above is that sexualities are not necessarily divorced from spiritu-
alities or other aspects of life and being human, as well as the fact
that sexualities have always been fluid, especially in pre-colonial
Africa and many other ancient indigenous societies.
Rather than a narrow focus on lesbianism, and lesbian studies, it
may serve Africa better if we re-historicise and re-claim pre-colonial
fluidities as at least one way of moving beyond the stranglehold of
colonial, and still prevalent, binaries, oppressions and violences. In
this sense alone, queer studies broadly offers a more comfortable
reception, rather than a home, entirely because it offers greater
inclusivity, even as it suffers the same dis-eases of power and
exclusion as any other field of study. One should never forget the
irony of pre-colonial being defined in relation to the colonial. As the
iconic African feminist scholar, Ifi Amadiume, puts it:
Pluralism and opposition are not colonial imports. Yet there

is wide disagreement on how to name society in Africa before
the colonial encounter. Hybridity writers have unfortunately
unleashed such virulent attacks against the idea of an authentic
African tradition that many have caved in and avoid the notion
of tradition in Africa, preferring to use concepts like transition
216
and modernity. They suppose that all that was precolonial is

dead and buried. I am reclaiming the concept of the traditional in
Africa to mean precolonial African cultures, but concede a problem
with a rigid time break or something static. I argue that the tradi-
tional can also be in the present, and the traditional can be dynamic.
This is why I introduce a juxtaposition of notions of collective
kinship and opposition (Amadiume 2002: 7, emphasis added).
The struggles for basic lesbian rights are still far from being
globally realised, including in South Africa where the notion of
‘curative’ rape has gained the country renewed notoriety after
South Africa entered the Guinness Book of Records for its high rape
statistics during 1999. Gender-based violences serve as a precise
reminder that heteropatriarchy should be our focus, and that
sexuality studies and activisms need to be inclusive of the whole
range of sexualities that have always been practised. Until such
time, lesbians and gays who routinely discriminate against more
fluidly queer folk perpetrate the very same cultural and other
violences as does heteronormativity in modern societies.
We need to raise critical questions of how the identities
we choose, or find ourselves engaging in, help us to live in
practice. How relevant is identity studies to the daily lives of
ordinary queer people, and indeed to the struggles against
heteropatriarchy; how do queer studies help people realise their
full sexual health and freedom? Homophobia sits alongside other
systems of oppression, such as racism and sexism, and needs to be
analysed and combated in these intersectional contexts.
Adopting and living any beyond-heteronormative identity and
lifestyle is a subversion of heteropatriarchy, and hence contributes
towards transforming society. If one’s identities and lifestyles
attempt to transcend status quo binaries, it may prove to be all
the more revolutionary, even as it may be more challenging, to
hold one’s ground in opposition and under coercion from both
perceived polarities.
In her germinal essay, ‘The master’s tools will never dismantle
the master’s house’, the late Audre Lorde wrote:
Those of us who stand outside the circle of this society’s defini-

tion of acceptable women; those of us who have been forged
in the crucibles of difference; those of us who are poor, who
217
are lesbians, who are black, who are older, know that survival
is not an academic skill [original emphasis]. It is learning how
to stand alone, unpopular and sometimes reviled, and how to
make common cause with those other identified as outside the
structures, in order to define and seek a world in which we can
all flourish … In a world of possibility for us all, our personal
visions help lay the groundwork for political action. The failure
of the academic feminists to recognise difference as a crucial
strength is a failure to reach beyond the first patriarchal lesson.
Divide and conquer, in our world, must become define and empower
(Lorde 1981 [1979]: 99–100, emphasis added).
In walking the transformative talk, may this queerly fluid and

inbetween activist, who identifies as polymorphously perverse
for its ironically subversive and transformative potentials, leave
you satisfied with the moment, fully aware that any authenticity
is merely an ideal…
IQ picture perfect
u’re in the centre there’s a thumbprint
of your war against conflict on a face without a pupil
and yet the silences of an entire and lines of identity
alphabet circling the frame
around one Greek letter greyscale
closes the infinite spiral with some swatches
of balkanisation of peach
decapitating life’s a finger supper
this (in)voluntary bastard’s snap
air
supply
31 August 2003, Women in

Black conference, Italy, for Lepa
Mladjenovic
218
Acknowledgements
With appreciation to Engender for supporting the writing of this
chapter: http://www.engender.org.za.
Bibliography
Amadiume, Ifi (1988) Male Daughters and Female Husbands: Gender and Sex in
an African Society, London, Zed Press
Amadiume, Ifi (1998) Reinventing Africa: Matriarchy, Religion and Culture,
London, Zed Books
Amadiume, Ifi (2002) ‘Bodies, choices, globalizing neo-colonial
enchantments: African matriarchs and mammy water’, Meridian, 2(2):
41–66
Banks, Alicia (2005) ‘Gay racism: white lies/black slander’, in Fito,
feminist e-zine, http://www.engender.org.za/publications/
JLSQueeryingBordersfinal.pdf, accessed 17 December 2012
Batchelor, Stephen (1997) Buddhism Without Beliefs, New York, Riverhead
Lorde, Audre (1981 [1979]) ‘The master’s tools will never dismantle the
master’s house’, in Moraga, C. and Anzaldúa, G., This Bridge Called My
Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color, Watertown, MA, Persephone
Press: 98–101
Muthien, Bernedette (2003) ‘Why are you not married yet?!
Heteronormativity in the African women’s movement’, Women’s Global
Network for Reproductive Rights Newsletter 79, http://www.wgnrr.org (in
English, Spanish and French), 17 December 2012
Muthien, Bernedette (2005) ‘Playing on the pavements of identities’, in van
Zyl, M. and Steyn, M., Performing Queer, Cape Town, Kwela Books
Ochs, R. and Rowley, S.E. (eds) (2005) Getting Bi: Voices of Bisexuals Around the
World, Boston, MA, Bisexual Resource Center
Stobie, Cheryl (2003) ‘Reading bisexualities from a South African
perspective’, The Journal of Bisexuality, 3(1): 33–52
Somé, Malidoma (1993) ‘Gays: guardians of the gates’, http://www.oocities.
org/ambwww/GAYS-IN-AFRICA.htm, accessed 17 December 2012
Somé, Sobonfu (1994) ‘The lesbian spirit’, Girlfriends Magazine, http://www.
oocities.org/ambwww/GAYS-IN-AFRICA.htm, accessed 17 December
2012
219
23
LGBTI-Queer struggles like other

struggles in Africa
Gathoni Blessol
Much has been written about the African lesbian, gay, bisexual,
transgender, intersex-queer (LGBTI-Q) struggle to attain equality
and freedom, ideally enabling acceptance and inclusion by Africa’s
religious, culturally diverse and traditional societies. What both
our LGBTI-Q community and the larger African society tend to
forget is that LGBTI-Q persons are not aliens from space or the
West – like it is claimed – but are a representation of our African
communities; only the concepts, definitions and ideologies that
shape our struggle for recognition are foreign and estranged.
What this implies is that the LGBTI-Q communities are African
through and through, are religious, are part of the rich cultural
diversity and are both traditional and non-traditional people.
They are daughters and sons, brothers and sisters, mothers and
fathers, friends and family, neighbours and even grandparents of
our African communities.
While at the 2011 World Social Forum in Dakar, Senegal,
I attended one of the ‘Queering Africa’ sessions. Here I was
introduced to a concept that left me yearning to reflect and redefine
my personal struggles. The speaker was by far the most powerful
queer and human rights defender I had ever seen or heard. She
was also a member and activist in the democratic left movement
in South Africa. I remember my contradictions being how she,
considering her sexuality, had arrived at such political radicalism.
How was she able to speak so eloquently on other struggles in her
country? Aside from the fact that the South African constitution
upholds the rights of sexual minorities, how had she won the
respect, hearts and trust of people from other movements?
220
23 LGBTI-QUEER STRUGGLES LIKE OTHER STRUGGLES IN AFRICA
I took the opportunity to discuss with her my questions about

her work as an activist across social movements. She told me that
while her sexuality still remained a very important part of her
life, there was so much more to her as a person and as an activist
than her sexuality. There was the woman who is African and part
of a people who are oppressed in this patriarchal, sexist, racist,
class-ist and capitalist society which places the dollar over human
life. While her race, gender and sexual orientation – which had
constituted the basis of her oppressions – remained important to
her struggle, her politics went beyond her identities.
She continued that what the LGBTI-Q community needed was
the presence of a politically conscious queer movement across
Africa, a movement that was aligned with other struggles to
end capitalism and the social, economic and political injustices,
exploitations and oppression that come with it.
This activist was so powerful that she moved not only me but
also the whole audience. She was a leader in all respects and
someone I wanted to emulate in the future. In fact, for the first
time I deemed I needed an education in all forms of humanity.
Something else she said that remains a sad truth was that
LGBTI-Q struggle is one of the loneliest struggles in Africa. It is
extremely hard to demand solidarity, and this is compounded
by the many divisions in the movement over variances of power,
culture, tradition and politics.
In this chapter I try to relate my understanding of some of
the variances discussed in the sessions to the context we have in
Africa and in Kenya, for instance the power struggle between the
religious extremists/fascists and the liberals.
The religious extremists in Africa, whose kingdom of heaven
has been bestowed on them because of their ‘righteousness’,
are the followers of the evangelical ministries from the West in
testimonies, speech and norms, sometimes even in accent and
spiritual tongue. The irony is not lost. Most of the religious
practices we have here in Kenya are influenced by the Western
notion of spirituality and religion, which is based on what is male,
white, ‘prosperous’ and their God – who is a Caucasian man.
Our African religious leaders preach to us these doctrines in US
accents using strange spiritual tongues – ‘shammah, ‘nisi’ and ‘eloi’
– none of which are African words to refer to God.
221
Our churches have been accused of receiving huge amounts of

funding from their religious ‘brothers and sisters’ in the United
States to support them in their persecution (even promoting the
death penalty) of LGBTI-Q people. Please note that all this is done
in the name of the Lord, as my comrades and I clearly witnessed
while attending the burial of David Kato, who was murdered in
his own house in 2011. At the burial a priest, a shameless one,
contested the noble life David had here on earth and the efforts
he put into the struggle, stating that even animals ‘know’ who
they are supposed to ‘mate/sleep’ with. That ‘man of God,’ for
whatever reasons, be it his religious madness or ‘righteousness’,
had no right to disrespect the deathbed of another.
I felt cheated by religion and the few mad men that spread
the gospel, presenting an image of a creator that is more hateful
and vengeful than the holy, loving god they preach. Their double
standards are obvious: the religious leaders strongly preach
against homosexuality as an issue of morality while they condone
murderers, rapists and capitalist oppressors, glorifying them and
committing their filthy souls to the Lord to rest in eternal peace.
In addition, the role of the church in conflict and war is not a
secret; the hate speech in the Rwandan genocide, the supplying of
weapons in the Burundi civil war or the partisan preaching before
the December 2007 election in Kenya that fuelled the outbreak of
brutal post-election violence are but a few examples.
The observation in my country Kenya of these same religious
extremists is that they have experienced a loss of state power
after the people voted for a constitution in 2011 that enhanced
the proper integration of the existing Kadhi courts of our Muslim
brothers and sisters into our judicial system. Secondly, the new
constitution states clearly that Kenya is a secular state, meaning
the separation of the state from the church.
Thus how else can they regain power other than by dictating
what is morally upright, and what issue is better suited than
homosexuality, which is already disdained by society?
The religious extremists’ rivals are the ‘liberals’, those on the left
who would raise questions on the universality of norms and the
oppressive capitalist system, those who are supported by the pink
colonialists, cupcake feminists and ‘visionary’ interventionists.
They are the well-suited, middle- to upper-class bourgeoisie that
222
come to Africa to ‘save’ the ‘poor’ African people. They are the
college students who volunteer after graduation to ‘help’ and
later return as board members and CEOs of NGOs and especially
donor organisations with all the answers and the perfect visions.
And as we have learnt by now, aid comes with a price, no matter
how little, so over time the continent has seen the birth of countless
NGOs that derail the processes of any progressive movement and
change in Africa. They start as great organisations and end up as
bureaucratic petition factories. I am not insinuating that all NGOs
have ill intentions, but as Issa Shivji states in his book Silences in
NGO Discourse: ‘We do not judge the outcome of a process by the
intentions of its authors. We aim to analyze the objective effects of
actions, regardless of their intentions.’1
The end result of this catastrophic ideal, as in most struggles,
has been a rise of donor-motivated LGBTI-Q activism and
organisations that are ‘visionary’ driven, impractical, capitalistic
and commercialised – mostly marginalising the grassroots’
struggles, realities, concepts and solutions. Our LGBTI-Q
organising has in the large part become hierarchically structured,
donor mandated and limited in activism. This has left very few
conscious LGBTI-Q spaces which are progressively analytical and
radical or with the ability to raise awareness in their communities
about issues affecting us as Africans, such as the multiple levels of
oppression that come from our socio-economic or socio-political
realities as first African then queer people.
This has in turn limited our thinking to what donors ‘want’ and
how best we can acquire funding rather than how we can incorporate
our struggles with the other social rights movements alongside
which we live and work. As a result, the bourgeois cadre has given
birth to a few ‘liberators’ of the LGBTI community, who again are
donor chosen. They have become the public face of the struggle and
are well-funded gatekeepers. This has led to further divisions around
economic status and class such that one queer person cannot relate
to another without considering how well known they are and the
depth of their pockets. Another consequence has been the lack of a
strong, passion-oriented queer movement which adheres to its own
localised grassroots constituencies in Africa. All this is compounded
by the religious madness that is leading to the gross and fatal human
rights violations of the African LGBTI-Q community.
223
The contradictions in the way the LGBTI-Q movement has

developed so far have added to the perceptions in the wider
heteronormative society that homosexuality is a Western thing or,
as a comrade of mine would put it, ‘something someone picked
up on their way to the city life’. Another belief, and one I heard on
my way home from the World Social Forum, is that becoming gay
happens when one is moving up the ladder and wants to obtain
money. In the case of women, they become feminists, and later
lesbians, to avoid the responsibilities of having children. I found
these statements to be obnoxiously funny.
However, if the LGBTI-Q movement could re-examine
historical evidence of the amazingly diverse and complex African
sexual practices and expressions, they would have something
to refute these misconceptions and enhance their struggle. I
believe it is a crucial step in any struggle for people to gain an
understanding of where they are from, where they are and where
they are heading to. In fact, once you begin looking into material
about homosexuality or sexual identity in general in ancient
African cultures, it is incredible how many studies and stories are
revealed that contradict completely the rigid notions of African
sexuality that are being termed as ‘African’. These studies provide
historical evidence of homosexuality in pre-colonial Africa found
in language, naming, drawings and religious practices that reach
from the very north to the south, from west to east.2 To name
only a few, one could draw attention to the Qemant of central
Ethiopia, where homosexual relations between shepherd boys
were common, or the Maale in southern Ethiopia where men
(ashtime) performed female tasks and had sexual relations with
men. Likewise, the Meru of Kenya embraced men (mugawe)
who dressed as women and sometimes married other men.
Also, among the Kikuyu in Kenya, woman–woman marriages
were quite common. Some scholars argue that these were more
practical than sexual relationships; nevertheless the fact remains
that they existed and still exist. The Hausa called homosexual
transvestites yan daudu. The Nzema of Ghana practised marriages
(agyale) between two men who were in love with each other.
The Kirundi language of Burundi has at least five words for
male–male sexuality. In Angola marriages between two men were
honoured and prized and men behaving like women were called
224
chibados. Among the Zande of Sudan, sex between two females

is called adandara. And on and on I can go! This and much more
shows that homosexuality existed long before Christianity came
to this continent – only it wasn’t bracketed as it is in the acronyms
we use these days – and it defies the theory that homosexuality
is un-African.
Lack of knowledge of our history is a major setback not only
in the LGBTI-Q movement, which is being fought against with so
much fervour, from left, right and centre, but in any movement.
African history has largely been researched for us by Western
scholars, causing lack of sufficient and proper documentation,
for instance, the ridiculous dictations we recited in pre-school
that deliberately and wrongly told us Dr Livingstone ended
the slave trade in Africa and Dr Krapf discovered Mount Kenya
when in fact our ancestors had lived on those lands viewing the
same mountain and had named it Mount Kirinyaga. Yet we were
told that it was a white man that had discovered it. Ironically, it
continues to be referred to as Mount Kenya even after attaining
our ‘in-dependence’.
Another misunderstanding arises when the words ‘African’,
‘constitution’ and ‘Christianity’ fall in the same sentence in an
argument against homosexuality. Christianity is not African
because it came into Africa along with Islam, as a ruse for
the ‘civilising’ mission and colonisation in the 18th century.
The constitutions of African countries also came about after
colonisation and were presented as British or French instruments
to bind their colonies, including Kenya. Our history was dictated
and fed to us by the colonialists to justify their inhumane acts, and
after independence they presented us with a few of their puppets
to emulate and celebrate as our heroes while they reinforced
capitalism in the name of globalisation to the continent. This
has left most struggles, including the LGBTI-Q one, without a
discourse that is practical and African oriented.
The various struggles fight the same oppressive system they
are knowingly or obliviously part of. An example is found
within our LGBTI-Q advocacy spaces where we ignore class
oppression, hierarchies and bureaucracies and end up narrowing
our struggles down to only sexual liberation for a few. A reading
of LGBTI-Q history and politics in all their complexity enables
225
us to recognise the reality that there is more to this struggle than

meets the naked eye. A more complex exploration of African
LGBTI-Q history and politics along with colonialism will lead us
to an understanding of the relationship between the oppression
of black people in general and women and LGBTI-Q people in
particular. This in turn will leave our struggle open to be studied,
analysed, criticised and hopefully accepted as one of the oldest
African customs in history.
The state and its political leaders are another hindrance to
these struggles. Politicians tend to use the LGBTI-Q community
for political mileage or to hide the real issues that are affecting our
countries. A perfect example was the parliamentary confusion in
Kenya at the end of 2010 when the case files on who murdered
Robert Ouko resurfaced. Then Luis Ocampo3 of the International
Criminal Court (ICC) unveiled the list of those suspected of
being responsible for the post-election violence, which brought
chaos among the parliamentarians. This was followed by ‘finger
pointing’, in a spectacular political show of accusations and
denials, rhetoric and propaganda. I could not afford to miss the
news; it was like watching a drama series.
Amusingly, as the suspense and doubt mounted among the
Kenyan populace, the prime minister (PM), while in Kibera slum,
ordered the arrest of gay people in Kenya. This immediately gave
the Kenyan populace something to think about other than the
post-election violence. While the Kenyan political elite figured
out ways to fundraise to prevent their fellow goons from going
to the ICC, the Kenyan populace was busy arresting and beating
up people in the homosexual community, as the PM had advised.
But when Kenyans were no longer distracted by such rhetoric
and refused to be deterred from the ICC issue, the dirty game of
politics was applied. The PM claimed in front of the international
community and Ocampo that he had been misquoted and that he
acknowledged the rights of the ‘gays’ – whatever that meant. He
then repeated virtually the same gabble during Kirima’s4 burial,
which was after the Wikileaks saga.5
The queer struggle is also situated in the socio-economic and
cultural reality of people’s everyday lives, a reality which dictates
how LGBTI-Q people interact with and survive in the world
around them. Society has interpreted LGBTI-Q lives and struggles
226
as being nothing more than sexual deviation or disorientation, as

though these people are not social, political and cultural beings
like everyone else and have no rights to claim. It is on this issue of
rights that the debates on sexual orientation and gender identity
focus. It is a normative mindset brought about by patriarchy,
sexism, capitalism, plus the gender roles assigned at birth,
which ignores the intersex people living among us. As a result,
gender assignment becomes problematic for society though not
necessarily the individuals themselves.
We need to decolonise our minds from imperialism and
capitalism to become a society which is conscious and diverse
and which acknowledges that homosexuality is human, as it is
African. Decolonisation creates socially progressive initiatives
and spaces that do not cluster and classify issues into established
norms. We need to consider different forms of engagement and
education to show our people that Africa has a grounding and
richness in humanity that is all-inclusive, away from the political,
social and economic manipulation and rip-off that has been
taking place.
The positive view is that people and cultures are never fixed
but, rather, are constantly changing over time. For example,
two decades ago it was seen as wrong in any context to get a
divorce, or for women to wear trousers. Our societies can change
over time, knowing that social, economic and political struggles
intersect. These issues all seem familiar in every struggle, but
there has been a void, waiting for action to take place.
While we discussed change in the World Social Forum sessions,
our brothers and sisters in Egypt and Tunisia united and were
making that change. They made their history, redefined the
‘normal’ that Mubarak was untouchable, and revolutionised their
populace. I left the World Social Forum with only one concept. We
need to reclaim our own histories, decolonise the minds of our
people, build our own societies and with our own rules, which are
African by Africans. With solidarity, comradeship and unity, let us
put all our differences and personal politics aside and fight that
which is oppressing us, by having a wave of movements (one that
is already vibrating in Africa) that will bring that change. That, to
me, is the new world I anticipate seeing.
227
Notes
1 Issa Shivji (2007: 2) Silences in NGO Discourse: The Role and Future of NGOs
in Africa, Nairobi and Oxford, Pambazuka Press.
2 An excellent start to the topic is Steven O. Murray (2009) ‘Homosexuality
in “traditional” sub-Saharan Africa and contemporary South Africa’, in
Seven Sister Study Group Reader, Volume 1.
3 Luis Moreno Ocampo was the prosecutor at the International Criminal
Court (until June 2012) who prepared the case against the alleged main
perpetrators of the violence which occurred in 2007–08 after the contested
Kenyan elections. Four of six suspects faced trials that are ongoing as I
write.
4 The late Kirima was an infamous business person who was murdered on
his way home one evening.
5 Wikileaks is an Internet platform/forum that exposed a lot of shady
dealings between politicians and the United States.
228
24
Small axe1 at the crossroads: a

reflection on African sexualities
and human rights – life story
Kagendo Murungi
I am an African human rights advocate who became engaged

with formal human rights work in 1996, fresh out of graduate
school and in need of a work visa. Years before, as a women’s
studies major, I had been exposed to the intersectional analyses
and creative expressions of lesbian feminists of colour. As a femi-
nist, I began to wonder whether human rights principles were
being applied to the lives of continental Africans who loved peo-
ple of the same gender and faced persecution for it. I wanted to
know where this work was being done, whether it was part of the
feminist movement and how to become involved.
During my first semester in college, as I strolled through the
bookstore one morning, I had been drawn to the bright orange
of Zami,2 and slipped it into my cart after briefly glancing at its
back cover. I remember being impressed by the low, wide stack of
orange and marvelling at the abundant visibility of a publication
by a Black lesbian. My research began then and there.
As a young feminist African immigrant student coming of
age in the late 1980s and early 90s, I was exposed to pragmatic
innovations in the application of rights frameworks to localised
and transnational injustices, violations and imbalances through
my campus and community anti-apartheid, anti-heterosexist,
anti-racist, feminist work.
The first image of an openly gay continental African I ever saw
was of a smiling Simon Nkoli, the pioneering South African anti-
apartheid, pro-gay rights activist working against HIV/AIDS. My
229
first encounter with the ramifications of visibly supporting human

rights for all women without regard to their sexual orientation was
in 1995, during the UN Fourth World Conference on Women in
Beijing. For my participation in the lesbian human rights march,
I was framed in a short but highly sensationalising article in a
national Kenyan daily as young, studying abroad and surrounded
by a sea of arm-waving white women (read: impressionable, too
far from home for too long, whitewashed, Westernised, tokenised
by a foreign colonial agenda and confused). When I received a
copy of the article from my father, I was too paralysed by my
own fear of the consequences to really consider what my parents’
experience of shock, worry, anxiety and concern must have been
like at the time.
I wished then that I had emerged into a broadly recognised,
obviously legitimate pan-African, democratic, postcolonial
liberation movement. I would come to understand more about
the actual arena and my relative position in it in the months and
years to come, through my work with human rights organisations
to document the lived experiences of continental African LGBTI
people and to advocate on their behalf.
In hindsight, I have wondered how I could have somehow
been more prepared for the complete damnation and stigma
of dealing with sexual orientation, in any public way, as a
continental African. There are few first-person descriptions of
African lives in the transitions between isolation, shame, ridicule,
threats, blackmail, violence, self-hatred, courage, hope, fear,
activism and love. I still search for a tangible sense of lived
indigenous African same-gender loving experiences. I want
to see detailed accounts, from Africans themselves, of their
successful experiences navigating personal roles and community
responsibilities. I want to see how people like myself have made
the journey from these spaces to wholeness.
In the mid-90s, the topic of homosexuality was introduced into
the public domain in African countries at an unprecedented level.
In the month prior to the Fourth World Conference on Women,
President Mugabe of Zimbabwe became the first African head
of state to publicly denounce and ostracise African homosexuals,
with such vehemence as to bring him infamy. I learned that
Kenyan President Moi had responded to the international media
230
24 SMALL AXE AT THE CROSSROADS
frenzy surrounding the Beijing advocacy for lesbian rights as

women’s rights by ridiculing the women’s rights movement,
calling its agenda into question, and belittling its great strides and
concrete achievements, especially in the decade since the Third
World Conference on Women in Nairobi in 1985. I lamented later
news about peripheral, stigmatised communities and groupings
in several African countries that had been pushed even further
underground. Meanwhile, the vast majority of advocates for
African women’s rights kept any possible analytical proximity to
these issues obscured, for fear of having their legitimate struggles
as straight women undermined by association with lesbian issues.
Open season on LGBTI Africans was officially under way.
The making of an activist

Following the emotional and political intensity of the women’s
conference in Beijing, I decided to engage with the substance of
what was politically at stake in an issue that had impacted my
life so dramatically. I accepted the offer of a full-time job with
(IGLHRC), where I would help create a regional programme,
including a focus on Africa. I practically stepped out of the class-
room into the vast arena of international human rights. I set out
to absorb as much knowledge as possible about international
human rights protocols, conventions and mechanisms; regional
human rights bodies; relevant national constitutions and penal
codes; allied non-governmental organisations; and useful media
outlets for the work.
My first cycle of involvement in working for sexuality-related
human rights from a US base exposed me to the daily rigours
of working to legitimise human rights for ‘sexual minorities’ in
regions of the world where broad-based support for them is still
in its infancy. I was transformed both personally and politically
through my work alongside committed organisers, in which
we supported and challenged each other in countless ways to
expand our approaches to realising sexuality-related human
rights. The substance of my daily work included monitoring,
confirming and disseminating information about human rights
violations; writing action alerts and press releases; liaising
231
with governmental, non-governmental and intergovernmental

organisations; and fielding information requests from media,
policymakers, colleagues and supporters.
I was fortunate to have been exposed, during my college years,
to the importance of a gender perspective on human rights and
its core concern with the invisibility of women’s experiences
in applying and developing mainstream human rights law
and related United Nations mechanisms. In the historical
development of human rights paradigms, women had never
been conceptualised as legal subjects. The appropriate subjects
of human rights law had been white, male, land-owning citizens
of politically and economically independent Western nations, to
whom alone the presumptions of universality and indivisibility of
rights could possibly be applied. Most of the substantive norms
of international human rights law had been defined in relation to
individual men’s experiences, and were stated in terms of discrete
violations of rights in the public realm.
In order to address the equal status of women, advocates
had begun undertaking conceptual shifts to explicitly and
systematically address the respective socially constructed realities
of women and men. The impact of culturally specific gender roles,
particularly in the private sphere, had begun to be recognised as
an impediment to women’s full enjoyment of human rights as a
condition of their equal status in society. The rights of all women
to make individual sexual choices and to conceive children
regardless of marital status, without the threat or reality of
exposure to violence within the domestic sphere, were essential to
their full enjoyment of rights to bodily integrity and health.
My involvement in the work taught me that these rights had
direct implications for applying international human rights law
and practice to the elimination of sexuality-related discrimination
and injustice. I learned that issues of violence against women and
women’s reproductive freedom were inextricably linked to human
rights issues related to sexuality, justice and freedom. That African
heads of state have most often addressed their anti-homosexual,
fundamentally anti-feminist, inflammatory messages to local
women’s groups was no simple coincidence. Deteriorating socio-
economic conditions within African nation-states had turned
LGBTI Africans into easy scapegoats, in the face of expansions in
232
civil society, growing movements for women’s rights, constitutional

reform, HIV/AIDS education and prevention, affordable drug and
treatment access, post-independence land rights, and anti-hunger
and pro-democracy movements.
I also learned that the success of work on African sexual rights
should be reflected in a practical recognition of the multi-centricity
of the issues and structures needing to be addressed. This should
result in a constant structural transformation of the sites from
which the work is being done as fresh analyses emerge from the
work itself. In the face of the global drought of African-written
publications on African same-gender desire, love, relationships
and communities, the application of human rights frameworks to
the conditions of LGBTI Africans in independent African states
necessitated linkages with African women’s movements. My
experiential understanding of the need for more accountable and
effective applications of human rights law and practice to the lives
and rights of African same-gender-loving people convinced me of
the urgent need for multimedia documentation of best practices,
or successful indigenous and diasporic strategies.
Working as an African immigrant on African lesbian and gay
rights from a US-based organisation in the context of globalised
economic inequities, prevailing patriarchal notions of indigenous
statehood and citizenship, and current resurgent fundamentalisms
was an experience fraught with immense paradox. For some
measure of self-protection at that time, I adapted by utilising
an alias for my professional work and seeking political asylum.
Working for the implementation of human rights frameworks
as a mobile, multiply located, indigenous African immigrant
woman, crossing national borders and dealing constantly with
immigration bureaucracies while speaking and acting from
shifting locations, was purely exhausting and surreal. I was
randomly faced with strange, harassing and threatening phone
calls and emails, along with the constant threat of blackmail.
These tensions and perils of negotiating, juxtaposed with erasure
and overexposure from within an obscured discourse, finally led
to my taking a break.
I needed time to reflect on my personal and political experiences
as a human rights agent. I craved channels through which to
creatively claim more of my pan-African legacy. I yearned for
233
a deeper exploration of the new dimensions of my life path. I

sought more solid grounding in daily practical responsibilities for
my health and to my loved ones. I left my human rights job and
began searching for ways to more evenly balance my commitment
to creative political work for socio-economic justice.
With time and the patient support of friends and family, I
began to understand that my isolated efforts to cope with the
pressures of my experiences by fragmenting myself in practice
and appearance had been based in illusion. Using my image in
one place but not my name; speaking my name at one site but not
my experiences; sharing my personal experience somewhere but
not my full analysis anywhere – none of this had worked. Those
partial identities and fractured narratives had not protected me.
I had remained adrift in a hegemonic discourse on my rights,
unprepared as yet to coherently contribute to shifting it. When
I stopped working for the realisation of identity-based civil and
political human rights, it was because that daily work was failing
to sustain me in basic ways. I needed the close proximity of
people who shared more aspects of my daily experience. Thus,
I relocated to the north-eastern US, with its abundance of first-
generation African immigrant communities. I sorely needed
social and cultural infrastructural support for my whole Black
African self.
In downtown Manhattan and Brooklyn, I linked up with
a group of pan-African performance artist friends who were
creatively expressing themselves on issues of gender, sexuality
and nationality. They generously took me into their fold, and
I joined them at rehearsals and discussions, primarily as an
inquisitive voyeur into aspects of my own life. I attended social
gatherings of pan-African friends of numerous sexualities and
gendered realities, where we watched and critiqued gender-
sexuality dimensions and stylistic devices in cinematic depictions
of Africans; performed poetry; shared stories; flirted; danced;
laughed; ate; and created community. There, so far away from
‘home’, many of us unable to travel for long periods due
to fluctuating immigration statuses, we bravely pieced our
psyches together, contemplated wholeness and created family.
Witnessing my community’s basic collective need for safety, trust,
friendship, creative self-expression and economic autonomy, and
234
our individual contentions with that need, reaffirmed my sense

of social and cultural human rights as primary to and indivisible
from civil and political rights in this country as well as our
countries of origin.
This group of north-eastern artist-activists had initiated
successful translocal initiatives (that is, initiatives between
localities rather than across national boundaries), which
continue to be supported by voluntary labour and the generous
donations of our translocal networks, along with assistance
from progressive international, philanthropic and human rights
organisations. We are succeeding in mobilising increasing funds
in support of African political and sexual dissidents displaced
due to their work on sexuality-related human rights. These
courageous and resourceful men and women are survivors of
harassment, detention, torture and rape. The significance of our
autonomous agency – our individual and collective choices as
African communities – is evident, since our comrades often have
no other immediate recourse to justice, even when their cases are
already well documented by human rights organisations (whose
missions, nonetheless, do not include the systematic release of
emergency funds for sexual and political dissidents in need).
Linking the past to the future

Human rights discourses deployed in response to the current con-
ditions of African all-sexual3 people too easily obscure the agency
of these very subjects. The decontextualised visibility of LGBTI
Africans, in the absence of sustained, autonomous educational
efforts, limits our local and translocal organising potential. While
we remain exposed to all manner of personal policing, includ-
ing the constant threat and reality of exposure to blackmail, we
cannot afford to have our courageous life stories and initiatives
erased, sidelined or subsumed by the well-intentioned agendas
of others. We must remain vigilantly conscious of our historical
relationship to movements, both in the US and in our countries
of origin, that have had broader visions for social transformation.
Our historical legacy as African all-sexual people includes
victories over slavery, colonisation and apartheid; and centuries of
experience with multi-pronged organising for fundamental social,
235
economic and political transformation and freedom for all. Our

conceptual approaches to organising draw from the multilingual,
interdependent, intertextual, intersectional strategies of pan-
African, Black and Third World feminist movements. It is essential
that our progressive US-based allies contextualise themselves
relative to this country’s history of genocidal war against
indigenous peoples and enslavement of Africans, and recognise
the centrality of white supremacist ideology to the maintenance of
white structural privilege and US capitalist expansion.
While current mainstream LGBTI and human rights
publications may provide some interesting and even useful
perspectives on our lives and organising, they too casually uphold
white male structural privilege. These purported defenders of our
existence and rights reveal their cynicism and myopia when they
apply paternalistic packaging to African all-sexual experiences
without explicit and systematic consideration of our complex
autonomous agency in perilous circumstances. The survival of
all-sexual Africans working under life-threatening conditions
in fragile coalitions urgently requires demonstrated recognition
from our allies that the eradication of white supremacy and
male supremacy goes hand in hand with the eradication of
heterosexual supremacy.
Our daily material realities and political economies as
migrants, along with our ideological convictions and political
alliances as Africans, influence our social language, cultural
expression and pragmatic parameters as agents for change. In
September 1999, a tri-continental coalition of African, Black and
migrant LGBTI people realised a timely cultural intervention at
the first Africa-based International Lesbian and Gay Association
(ILGA) Conference in Johannesburg, South Africa. With the
support of the Astraea International Fund for Sexual Minorities
(for whom I worked as a programme consultant the following
year), members of our New York-based African LGBTI network,
the Johannesburg-based Gay and Lesbian Organisation of the
Witwatersrand (GLOW) and Amsterdam-based Black and
migrant LGBTI group ‘Strange Fruit The Real’ planned and
created a cultural free-zone dubbed ‘Unifying Links’, which
served as a clearing house for the experiences and needs of
lesbian feminists of colour attending the conference.
236
A group of us, hoping to inspire self-expression among global

lesbians of colour and our friends and allies, drafted and circulated
a list of goals and strategies for our multimedia intervention
and requested input and participation from our allies. Our
explicitly anti-racist and pro-feminist agenda prioritised self-
empowerment, visibility, autonomous and equal participation on
our own terms, the creation of space for networking and creative
cultural self-representation, monitoring and documentation of
the conference itself, and good old-fashioned fun. To this end,
we secured and decorated a room in the conference hotel in
which we screened independently produced videos reflecting
our various communities, maintained tables and wall spaces
where allies could display their organisational materials and
creative works, and sustained a critical dialogue on issues arising
at the conference as well as issues crucial to local and translocal
organising by lesbian feminists of colour.
Africanising sexual rights

As we know, many African states remained colonies of European
countries during the drafting of the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights, and only became party to it after gaining inde-
pendence during the last half-century. This is the context of the
ongoing debate regarding questions of universality versus cul-
tural relativism in the application of human rights frameworks.
Global economic shifts of expanding capitalism in postcolonial
African states keep them in unequal political relationships with
Western industrialised nations, further complicating the applica-
tion of human rights frameworks. These complexities, applied to
the realisation of sexuality-related human rights, require that we
utilise interdisciplinary approaches that consciously explore the
multiple dimensions of social oppression. Such approaches allow
us to raise the following questions (among others):
How can we work collaboratively from a US base with indige-

nous community-based organisations and individuals without
usurping their territory and re-victimising them?
How can we utilise the human rights framework and its reli-
ance on the identification of victimised individuals and groups
237
(in this case lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgender people)

while maintaining our critique of identity-based sexualities
and the human rights framework itself?
How can we promote geographical equity and autonomy
by contributing to the greater redistribution of economic
resources?
How can we centralise issues of racist violence, xenophobia,
police brutality, anti-immigrant backlash and racial profiling,
all of which impact on our daily lives, as part of a two-way
information exchange?
How can we sustain autonomous networks and groups of pro-
sexual rights and LGBTI people of colour as we maintain our
employment in institutions with various agendas?
How do we access various sites and channels of communica-
tion to document and publicise our lived experiences and
analyses?
The human rights questions in African sexuality-related issues

must be related to practical, effective anti-racist and anti-imperial-
ist liberation politics. This requires conscious effort. One example
of success in such efforts has been the application of feminist
analyses to issues of women’s agency and power in sexuality-
and gender-related violence, resulting in the transformation of
language by movements against sexual harassment and assault.
The battered women’s movement, in particular, has succeeded in
changing the terminology from ‘victim’ to ‘survivor’ when refer-
ring to women who have been subjected to violence and abuse.
Black feminist and civil rights movement analyses have also illu-
minated the discursive limitations and adverse collective psychic
impact of referring to African Americans as a ‘minority group’
rather than as members of ‘under-represented’, ‘under-resourced’
and ‘over-exploited’ communities. These sorts of discursive
shifts necessarily disassociate conditions of social, economic and
political injustice from membership in particular ethnic groups or
inhabitants of particular geographical locations.
The application of racial equality and the discursive
empowerment of indigenous Africans, along with substantive
measures to ensure gender equity, are inextricable from human
rights approaches to sexual freedom. Only such multi-pronged
238
approaches can hope to begin to surmount the obstacles of

conservative cultural, religious and political constraints on
sexuality-related rights. Sexuality-related human rights are not
merely an issue of sexual identity. Sexuality-related human
rights practices, which require a public association with sexual
orientation or membership in a ‘sexual minority group’, must
therefore be problematised. Failure to do so risks the loss of varied
social, cultural and economic dimensions in meeting challenges to
the general realisation of basic rights and fundamental freedoms.
In order to mobilise timely responses to the anti-homosexual
witch-hunts in our countries of origin, African all-sexual human
rights workers based in the US have found it strategically
useful to develop ties with all-sexual organisers on the African
continent and anti-heterosexist allies throughout the world. There
is an increasing demand for swift and coordinated resettlement
assistance for political dissidents active in sexuality-related
human rights work who are fleeing from their countries of origin.
Integral to this is the need for the establishment and expansion
of emergency funds for sexual and political dissidents and for
indigenous organisers in the sexual rights arena.
If we are to destigmatise the defence of human rights for
LGBTI Africans, we must first recognise that any African who
does so publicly is immediately marked as a homosexual and
directly subjected to social stigmatisation. This is certainly true
for Africans in Africa, but also for those of us in the diaspora.
My three-year tenure as Africa/Middle East/Caribbean regional
specialist at the IGLHRC made me the only ‘Kenyan lesbian’
easily associated with lesbian and gay rights via Internet searches,
which contributed significantly to my duress at the time. This
is clearly not helpful in sustaining an effective sexuality-related
human rights movement. Ensuring African autonomy in self-
identification is therefore crucial to this work, and requires the
broad implementation of standards for security and the protection
of confidentiality. These standards must include freedom in the
selection of public identities, including the use of aliases as basic
security prerogatives.
People-centred human rights advocacy work that protects
freedom of expression should permit and encourage practitioners
to frame and promote their work as they see fit. For example,
239
when I returned to the IGLHRC as programme officer for Africa

and south-west Asia, I elected to identify myself via a theoretical
network (the Africa Southwest Asia Network) for purposes of
identification with a collective rather than individual purpose.
I also chose to identify myself as an African feminist as being
more practical and strategic than public identification in terms of
sexual identity in a limiting mainstream rights context. My work
at IGLHRC evolved primarily into initiating locally directed,
applied-research project partnerships combating violence against
women (‘curative rape’) and between women (domestic violence),
as well as fostering human rights and ‘personal growth’ for
women of various sexualities in Africa. To identify myself more
strongly with African women’s and gender rights activists, I have
also at the time of writing succeeded in changing my professional
title to ‘Africa programme officer’. Women’s work for gender
justice is a fine African tradition with which to ally myself as an
African woman working from a US-based gay and lesbian human
rights organisation.
Action networks have worked effectively as tools
for postcolonial Third World feminist organising for a few
decades now. Issue-based and regional translocal networks
empower collaborative work, while supporting the autonomy
of the respective constituencies involved. They help mobilise
political will and economic resources in urgent matters; expedite
communications; and offer opportunities for social, cultural
and analytical support, among other things. In work on human
rights issues related to African sexuality, region-identified action
networks offer practical discursive and security platforms for
promoting public identification with contentious issues. Political
groups working on these issues are challenged to heightened
creativity, in order to prevent the imposition of dangerous sexual
identity labels that can mark particular subjects for discrimination
and restricted mobility. Community strategies for action, such
as identification and linkages with regional and issue-based
networks, offer the advantages of depersonalised visibility and
broader bases from which to advocate for justice.
We need to conduct basic needs assessment surveys within
indigenous and diasporic African all-sexual communities.
Meanwhile, other documented needs include funding, technical
240
support, strategies for overcoming language barriers, leadership

development, human rights trainings, publications on similar lived
experiences, multimedia production and distribution, speaker and
performance venues, development and promotion of standards
for the protection of intellectual property, ‘South–South’ dialogues
and ‘Third World within–Third World without’ dialogues.4
Bringing it all back home

My political methodology has been rooted in US-based Black
and Third World feminist principles and pan-African feminist
strategies for translocal human rights work. My spirit has been
sustained through creative expressions of community organising
and self-expression in my local neighbourhoods. Being involved
in aspects of video distribution and production along with poetry
writing and performance has provided me with necessary sites
for community interface and grounded inspiration. If sexuality-
related human rights are to be equitably realised by Africans
on the continent and in the diaspora, cultural agency is a basic
necessity, along with autonomously documented knowledge and
sustained material support of community-building initiatives.
My experiences have taught me that efforts to link human
rights issues to our communal realities as human beings are
about process and perception. Our familial processes impact
on community perceptions and vice versa. We must always
remain critically conscious of our complex and sometimes
contradictory subjective positions in human rights advocacy.
Human rights advocates are a diverse body of subjects, with
varied perspectives based on their communal realities. In the
development of appropriate methodology, effective human rights
strategies must address both the experiential needs of the subjects
under consideration and the content of specific rights. As new
strategies are developed and implemented, the current climate
of volatility in the sexuality-related African human rights arena
necessitates particular sensitivity to the inclusion of African all-
sexuals in decision-making positions. In this way, the benefits
of deep analysis in consciously applied knowledge, along with
those of content production and distribution, can be applied to
expanded rights concepts and discourses.
241
Confronting the stigma, silence and denial related to African

homosexuality has challenged me to work to reverse the results
of negative external identifications, incomplete self-definitions,
fossilised attitudes and static histories by naming what is
connected and what matters to me. I returned to formal human
rights work after three years of creative work for economic,
social and cultural pan-African human rights in a variety of
geographical locations. I am blessed with a renewed sense of
hope, a clearer vision of some next steps to implement, the close
support of friends and new daily rituals for self-care.
This chapter was originally published in M.J Alexander, L. Albrecht,

S. Day and M. Segrest (eds) (2002) Sing, Whisper, Shout, Pray!:
Feminist Visions for a Just World, Edgework Books.
Notes
1 From a Bob Marley lyric:
Why boasteth thyself, oh evil men,
Playing smart and not being clever?
I say you’re working iniquity to achieve vanity, yeah,
But the goodness of JAH JAH endureth forever.
If you are the big tree,
We are the small axe.
Sharpened to cut you down,
Ready to cut you down.
For the full text, see http://www.bobmarley.com/songs/songs.
cgi?smallaxe.
2 Audre Lorde (1983) Zami: A New Spelling of My Name, Santa Cruz, CA,
Crossing Press.
3 ‘All-sexual’ is a term used in the Caribbean Forum of Lesbians, All-
Sexuals & Gays (C-FLAG) network to indicate that it considers all-sexual
behaviour to be part of a sexual continuum in which classifications such
as ‘gay’, ‘lesbian’ and ‘bisexual’ often cannot be rigidly applied. The terms
‘men who have sex with men’ and ‘women who have sex with women’
are attempts to move around these rigid classifications. The term ‘all-
sexual’ refers not only to biological and sexual characteristics, but also
to social attitudes related to them. ‘All-sexuals’ therefore refers to same-
gender-loving persons whose actions are not in violation of the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights, that is to say, whose actions are not abusive
to minors and other persons who are in dependent circumstances or of
diminished capacity, or otherwise in violation of the rights or personal
dignity of any person. See http://www.jflag.org/misc/allsexual.htm.
242
4 Third World Within (TWW) is a New York City-based network of

people of colour organisations. Their purpose is to highlight ‘domestic’
issues resulting from US racism and economic restructuring, to educate
and mobilise communities of colour around these issues, and to work
in solidarity with activists, organisers and communities in the Third
World and around the world to demand accountability from the US
government and international institutions for their role in developing
and maintaining policies and institutions destructive to the Third World
and Third World communities in the US.
243
25
Nature ain’t rigid – poem

Mia Nikasimo
Spanning the world I was a man
From Africa to Asia; I am now a woman
From Europe to Utopia I was a woman
Anywhere you go I am now a man
In gender identity I was seen as both
There are no absolutes I am neither…
In gender identity You are a man, a mob says
There are only relatives You are a woman, a mob says
Forcing absolutes I am a woman, i insist
Upsets the balance I am not a man but some insist
Of nature – a gradual wedlock Now both I am
of both Now neither am i
Brings equilibrium I am everybody
I am not everybody
this is... I stand at the cusp
Of both and neither
Its natural from birth i was told
And so when you
Botherwise; only aged three or
Say you know all
four
All you know is
Frontier identity gender the is Yourselves
this – Yourselves
One are genderqueer + Is know you all
transgender Know you say you when
You be to fought be to have So and neither and both of
wars if Cusp the at i
Knot a to up adds this all Everybody not am i
244
25 NATURE AIN’T RIGID
Everybody am i Equilibrum brings

Neither am i A gradual wedlock of both –
Now both am i nature of
Man a not am i Balance the upsets
Woman a am i Absolutes forcing
Neither am i Relatives only are there
Both now am i Identity gender in
Woman a am i Absolutes no are there
Man a not am i Identity gender in
Go you anywhere
Four or three aged only (?) Utopia to Europe from
Botherwise; told was i Asia to Africa from
Birth from natural its all this adds up to a
Knot if wars have to
So you told me? Be fought to be you
Man a not am i Transgender + genderqueer
Woman a are you Are one – this is the gender
Woman a not am i Identity frontier
Man a are you
Woman a am i Is this
Man a are you
Woman a am i Cos
Nature aint rigid
245
26
On the paradoxical logic of

intersections: a mathematical
reading of the reality of
homosexuality in Africa
Charles Gueboguo
Introduction
Scholarly friends wonder why I ‘bother’ to debate with anti-
homosexuals and reactionaries rather than just focusing my
attention, as an African scholar, on ‘supporting reasonable people
to help the dinosaurs die out faster’, particularly when so many
excellent scholars have already abundantly demonstrated the
‘evidence’ I am going to discuss, which is also now completely
accepted by UNAIDS, all the major donors and even many
African governments through, for example, their AIDS national
strategy plans or their human rights reports.1
I would argue that, as a constructionist, I do not take social facts
for granted and I do not see them as static. I keep in mind that
they are dynamic in their essence, meaning every time that, as an
observer, you try to address ‘homosexualities’ in Africa you will
always have something new to discover. That is true for all social
facts. Should we assume that because neocolonialism, corruption
or democracy, for example, have already been addressed by well-
known scholars and in a very rigorous manner, all has been said?
What about the fact that science is perceived as a cumulative
process of discovery (Bourdieu 2001)? The fact that same-sex
sexualities have been well addressed by non-African scholars is
not an excuse to stop trying to ‘rethink’ the social realities which
246
26 ON THE PARADOXICAL LOGIC OF INTERSECTIONS
still bring tragedies to the daily lives of individuals in Africa

due to their sexual orientation: death, rape, blackmail, extortions
(Thoreson and Cook 2011). But as we will see further, the issue
that I underline here is another way of phrasing the now inner
binaries between what should or should not be said regarding
homosexualities in Africa. Who actually has the legitimacy
to argue who can and cannot speak about homosexuality?
Scientifically speaking, my answer is no one.
I therefore suggest that the ongoing dramatic situation of
people on the continent who love the same sex as themselves
could be addressed in different ways, and mine is an assumed
theoretical position. This is because, although homosexuality
has been addressed by scholars in Africa, myself included, we
have still missed the answer to why the daily life of individuals
is getting worse. My hypothesis is that we still need to challenge
and add theory, not in the Greek sense of theoria, that is pure and
simple contemplation, but in the sense of a philosophical position.
The intention is to address and challenge the common-sense
view regarding same-sex sexualities across the continent that
homosexuality issues are seen as secondary to be scientifically
addressed. While so doing, my aim is to attempt to re-open the
field of possible interpretations.
That being said, I would like to continue to discuss in this
paper the boundaries, noticed in some common social discourses
in the continent, of the binary hierarchy that holds between social
objects that are considered worthy and those that are considered
by some people to be unworthy, particularly where the latter are
consigned, along with their relevant social agents, to the margins
of society. ‘Homosexualities’ in Africa à la Murray and Roscoe
(1998), which sometimes seem to be considered unworthy, are,
with some exceptions, often consigned to the margins.2 This act of
pushing such reality to the fringes of accepted social boundaries is
the move that creates an initial sense of emptiness.
Here, homosexuality apparently does not exist in Africa:
according to some intellectually discredited anti-homosexual
individuals, it was imported from elsewhere, quite often from the
West; it seemingly exists as something of secondary importance
that the mostly international media exploit for their own ends;3
and, finally, homosexuality is but a non-identity, a manifestation
247
of ‘bisexuality’, whose only goal seems to be to strengthen the

position of the dominant phallo- and heterocentric order.
This is to say that the root of this emptiness can be found in
some common-sense discourse in a social space. The economy
of this social space is characterised by a politics of confinement,
contentiousness and abstraction, which remains the nature of the
performative social space of compulsory heterosexuality (Butler
2005). The symbol of this space is the erect phallus. Indeed, in
dominant political discourse on the continent, a distinguished
place is reserved for the penis in the ways in which life, power
and pleasure are symbolised, as has been shown by Mbembé
(2010). A not insignificant influence is granted to the work of the
phallus. While every observer can notice that this situation is
not at all different from elsewhere in the world, the author keeps
explaining how before, during and after colonisation, power in
Africa has sought to wear the face of virility. Even more so, the
formulation, implementation and understanding of power largely
worked according to the idea of an infinite erection. The political
community operating in this space has always wanted, above
anything else, the equivalent of a male society, and this has ‘always’
been depicted by an erect penis.4 Hence the hypothesis that the
whole psychology of power in Africa could have been organised
around the phenomenon of the swelling of the virile organ.
Likewise, the whole creative discourse (poiesis) that produces
homosexualities in the social sphere continues to reflect the way in
which social systems represent homosexualities and, consequently,
also the structures that render impossible its very erection as an
entity not confined to the fringes of what is speakable.
It is this habitus (a system of acquired long-term dispositions)
that, on the whole, when translated into an ethos of evasion, has
its roots in the near-total – therefore partly speakable – social
negation of a viable space for homosexuality in Africa. The
structure of this position cannot be seen in isolation from the
prevailing politics of confinement. For Ekotto (2010: 183), this
notion translates as the impossibility of a subject feeling free
to participate in the game of social interaction without feeling
constrained by the race, gender or sexual orientation of another
person supported by a dominant mode of interaction. The
dominant mode can be understood as external forces that are
248
oppressive and that do not allow the subject to be the master of

his or her own destiny. I call this symbolic system of domination,
which uses, among other things, confinement as its teleology of
subjection, the phallus.
Moreover, the performance of habitus that determines the
direction of individual trajectories suggests that the origin of
homosexuality lies in a space belonging to the other, and also
places its existence at the margins of the socialised body – which
is different from a subject’s normative incorporation in the form
of an ethos and a habitus. Here, the socialised body expresses the
idea of a social group in a process of normative systematisation,
projecting the illusion of a coherent whole (holon) as an ‘abject’
fact. In this area, taboos create boundaries within a social space
(Kristeva, as cited by Butler 2005: 254), at the same time as creating
the basis for the formation of emptiness, although its point of
departure lies at the very heart of sociation (society in the process
of formation) (Javeau 2003). Taboos will always be pushed to the
margins. Emptiness is the matrix that carries all prohibitions,
things that are unspeakable: in short, socially ‘unworthy’ objects.
These are objects that, in what Derrida called a phallocentric
culture, are excluded from the spectrum of intelligibility and from
what is politically visible and objectifiable (to follow the Latin
meaning of objectare: to cast in front of oneself, in order to observe).
Drawing on mathematical logic, I would like to show how
‘unworthy’ social facts can be found, quite paradoxically, to
intersect with ‘worthy’ social facts. In its performance, the
intersection of ‘worthy’ and ‘unworthy’ facts within the social body
can make ‘unworthy’ facts appear as recessive elements. Such is
the case with homosexual reality in Africa. A demonstration of the
logic of this recessiveness will then allow us to put forward the
hypothesis that ‘unworthy’ facts are non-dominant, but existing.
As such, these facts are also worthy of being seen as speakable
facts, to be analysed and discussed in general, as can be seen
in this volume. It is therefore not about a myth, an invention or
the construction of a reality that apparently does not exist, for
some ill-informed extremists, on the continent,5 or which has
supposedly been imported from elsewhere, from the opposite
shores of the Atlantic. This is the fallacious conceptual argument
that, across the continent these days, brings about the effects of
249
stigmatisation, discrimination, intolerance, rape, physical and

verbal assault, and even murder committed against people who
claim to belong or are suspected of belonging to this ‘pariah’
category (Gueboguo and Epprecht 2011).
Whether we agree with it or not, it is necessary to recall the
fact that homosexualities exist in Africa and that they can, on
this basis, be a marker revealing something about an area of
social reality. I will support my argument with an approach
used in recessive theory as applied to the field of mathematical
logic, which will highlight the paradox that can emerge out of
intersectionality. This will involve analysing the intersection
that holds where there is a manifestation of recessive elements,
supported by mathematical logic (Nyeck 2010).
Nyeck and ‘intersectionality’

In her analysis of colonial blackmail, Nyeck raises the issue of
knowing how to determine the causal relationship between a
number of subjects coinciding in Africa and the appropriate meth-
odological approach to be used. In response, she proposes that a
discourse resting on intersectionality as its theoretical framework
be formalised. From intersectionality, she suggests that ‘the under-
standing that socio-political issues are sometimes intertwined in a
way that makes differentiation very difficult helped cover impor-
tant grounds in the study of sexuality and politics’. Further on in
her analysis, however, she shows how intersectionality, if it is the
only theoretical framework being used, is not always sufficient as
a way of drawing out the dialogue and solidarity that might exist
between and beyond intersecting categories, especially when the
area of intersection is a social space involving hyperbole and con-
troversy, as we have already highlighted above.
Consequently, she draws upon mathematical logic to
demonstrate how these categories interact and, in doing so,
draws attention to their paradoxical nature. Her aim is to show
the non-visible relation that exists between the categories of
homophobia, (state) institutions and Cameroon (as a space
of contention). In doing so, she draws attention to their
equivalence, their state of inclusion and their intersectionality,
all from a mathematical perspective. By using such an
250
approach, she discusses the necessary paradox surrounding

this intersectionality. She states that:
While colonialism and homosexuality may intersect as distinc-

tive discursive categories in what I call, ‘colonial blackmail,’
to oppose the gay rights movements in Africa, the outcome of
their intersection is etymological fallacy because it is empty.
This emptiness, I argue, is paradoxical and counterintuitive
in at least two ways. First the outcome empty is paradoxical
because it unintentionally and necessarily defeats the purpose
of the strategic use of colonial blackmail as the baseline for
wholesale resistance against domestic queer activism in Africa.
Second this outcome is counterintuitive because it does not suf-
ficiently suggest that homophobia alone is what hides behind
this emptiness (Nyeck 2010).
Here, I will take up her method of analysis and adapt it by intro-

ducing elements of linguistics and psychoanalysis in an attempt
to draw out any scientific interest there might be for researchers
looking at homosexualities in Africa. By using mathematical logic,
my aim is to investigate the relationship held between the French
words homosexualité (homosexuality), chercheur (researcher) and
Afrique (Africa).
‘Homosexualité, chercheur and Afrique’:

mathematical logic, intersectionality and
paradox
Let us consider the sets following H, A and C, which represent
the set of letters (x) that make up the words homosexualité (homo-
sexuality), chercheur (researcher) and Afrique (Africa), where x can
only appear once. The distinct, extensional definition is therefore
as follows:
H = {homsexualit};
A = {afrique};
C = {cheru}.
Here, each element x is the smallest distinct, meaningful unit
in language, or what Saussure calls a phoneme. Phonemes are
the distinct elements we perceive, which, when taken in isolation,
define nothing at all, unless we place them alongside each other,
251
in relation to other phonemes. From a social perspective, each

element x refers to the manifestation of a particular social reality,
whereas from a psychological perspective, it refers to the label
of individuality: what we call the ‘I’ (le je). As such, the ‘I’ has no
content (Dubet 1994). The ‘I’ can hold up without the ‘me’ (le moi)
(Chébaux 1999), which is manifested in, among other things, the
desire for pleasure (jouissance). But in fact, the ‘me’ combines with
the ‘I’ and becomes a fixed, integral part of the structure-giving
‘us’ (le nous). The ‘me’ is the internal control for the expected roles
assigned to a social agent, right up to his or her death. The ‘me’
(or ego) is a product of the super-ego internalising normative
demands, and the ‘us’ is a synthesis of this, a way of relating
to structured interaction that is acquired from early childhood
(Dubet 1994: 129). It is possible for there to be variable failures in
the enactment of this in relation to normative assessments made
by the ‘us’, since the ‘me’ can actually decide to be thrust to the
margins of normative standards. If the ‘me’ manages to derive
pleasure within the receptacle of the normalised, structured
world, there still remains at this level an illusion of being what
appears to be the case (Chébaux 1999: 131), or better what is
projected as being the case. This is why, according to Goffman
(1974), the ‘me’ remains the interpretive structure used in the
space occupied by the individual within the ‘us’, if we go by the
behaviours expressed by that individual. In this case, there can be
no ‘me’ without the ‘us’ (Mead 1963 [1934]), and no ‘us’ without
there being an opposition to ‘them’ (eux): ‘the elementary form
of this relationship opposes the in-group, existing only in the
constant affirmation of its difference and its distance from the
out-group’6 (Hoggart 1970 [1957], as cited by Dubet 1994: 114).
As such, the in-group appears as an autonomous ‘me’, which
we call society. This society has an identity, has a patronym that is
able to be used, has regulations that could appear as road signs,
such as green lights and red lights. In short, what we have is a
whole system of organisation (Touraine 1975: 605). Consequently,
the idea that the ‘me’ is an integral part of the ‘us’ at the same
time as lacking the concept of being opposed to ‘them’ is a
utopian vision. Pleasure (in the homosexual sense), which is one
manifestation of the extension of the ‘me’ (Chébaux 1999: 125), can
only be understood in the context of this discursive relationship
252
with the ‘I’, which can itself become a pathological relationship

if, in turn, the ‘I’ is considered without reference to the ‘us’ (Elias
1973 [1932]).
If we therefore agree on the fact that each phoneme is not a
phonetic but a practical representation of an area of reality (or
individuality) that shapes the whole of each separate set, and
therefore falls under the heading of sociation (in Javeau’s reading
of the term), in this case H = A = C if and only if each set shares
the same phoneme as another set. In the case in hand, there is no
relationship of equality between these sets:
When applying her analysis of blackmail to ‘homophobic

discourse in Africa’, in this regard Nyeck postulates that if sets
of letters are not equivalent in their physical nature, they can
still hold something in common. They might, for example, have
the same number of variables. This cannot be verified in this
particular case.
However, one could see how in French the variable Afrique
(Africa), when set out, loses none of its particular attributes,
contrary to what happens with homosexualité (homosexuality)
and chercheur (researcher). This allows us to postulate that Africa
remains a whole (i.e. it is non-homogeneous), that is constructed
as a contentious space within which the other variables interact
and give it meaning. The variables therefore play their role
within the matrix of Africa, while still not being equal to Africa.
However, I advance the idea that they might have something
in common if we consider the cardinal number relating to their
intersecting sets. But I also argue that each variable carries an
element of its meaning in the form of a phoneme that is drawn
from the root Afrique (Africa). So, we said a phoneme holds no
meaning except when it is placed in relation to other phonemes,
and never if it is taken in isolation. In this case, there is no ‘me’
without reference to ‘us’.
As such, if R refers to a relation such as below:
HRARC
this implies that:
In other words, H is in relation (R) with A and C if their

intersection is not empty, which means that they do not share a
253
common phoneme. All the possible combinations in the intersections

of elements within these sets show that they are related:
These sets are in relation with each other. We can even see
how H (homosexualité) holds a strong relation with A (Afrique) if
we count the cardinal number they have in common, which is
4, as opposed to the two other intersections which have only 2
in common. The notion that the origin of homosexuality is non-
African is therefore demolished. This mathematical conclusion
stands alongside conclusions drawn from work outside the field
of mathematics (see Murray and Roscoe 1998; Epprecht 2004,
2008; Gueboguo 2006, 2009).
The weak proportion of relations between H (homosexualité)
and C (chercheur) is significant in that, among other things, it
reveals a social logic that places facts that are either worthy
or unworthy of scientific attention into a binary hierarchy. As
such, in the field of speakable possibilities and things that are
constructed as social facts in Africa, there seems to exist a binary
hierarchy between issues of the moment and matters of urgency
at a particular moment in time. Issues of the moment include the
set of crises undermining African societies as a whole, namely in
the fields of war, natural disasters, health disasters, governance
and democracy (Gueboguo 2009: 171). In common parlance,
matters of urgency refer to a desire to reconnect with one’s
‘African’ cultural heritage (especially in the way this is observed
by certain members of the African diaspora) in order to better
equip oneself against the challenges of a globalised world. These
are objects that, through their illusory ‘utilitarian’ nature, appear
to be worthy of interest.
The dialogic relationship that is established between these
objects does not offer any possibilities to what is consigned to the
margins of what is socially objectifiable and speakable. When faced
with utilitarian urgencies, there is a process of political confinement
that is therefore concerned with relating current events that are
socially acceptable. When remarking on the submissiveness of free
intellectuals who are eager to present papers on such imposed
subjects of the moment, Bourdieu could therefore not help stating
254
that this situation held ‘something rather pathetic’7 (2002: 70). What
we can see here is the symbolic violence and the internalisation
of masculine domination (Bourdieu 1998). What is unsaid in the
eagerness of these intellectuals is confined to illusio, or the interest
in dominating one’s particular time, which makes it inevitable that
one will encounter history in the making. Meanwhile, homosexual
reality is perceived as not being part of this.
As such, the near-total apparently8 social negation of
homosexual reality in Africa gives rise to the phenomenon’s
confinement within a quaternary space – to use palaeontological
terminology – and its being forced to the boundaries as something
unworthy, as a stain or a blemish. Within the binary hierarchy
that exists between different priorities, between urgent issues and
urgent matters of the moment, to be interested in homosexual
reality is seen to be digressive and seems to carry with it a sense
of danger. In her critique of Douglas with regard to this stain or
blemish, Butler (2005 [1990]: 253) stresses that social systems can
be vulnerable at the margins. In turn, the margins of society are
considered to be dangerous. What we have here is a slippery
slope argument, where cracks in the socialised body lead us to
fear chaos in social formations that are already in crisis. This
fear is presented as being more justified than the practice of
homosexuality which, belonging to the private sphere, would
lead us to think that homosexuality would have failed to become
part of history in the making. True history is the only version
we are allowed to hear, and the only version allowed to offer
solutions to the building of nation states (Hayes 2000, Epprecht
2008) and to the long-established resistance to foreign domination
(Iliffe 2009 [1995]), according to the official propaganda.
This building of nation states and this resistance was begun
with difficulty after independence was granted across the
continent (Ela 1998). This is why for decades the only legitimate
and speakable contributions to research on the continent tended
only to be focused on central topics such as kinship, economy,
conservation, gender, racism, colonisation, post-colonisation,
war, famine, dictatorship, genocide, the animalistic way in
which power is performed (Oloruntoba-Oju 2006). The binary
relationship held between unworthy and worthy objects in
research in this area therefore becomes a general battleground,
255
where the struggle for supremacy over meaning is always included

in the act of re-performance (Cixous, as cited by Moi 1985: 105) in
scientific research. The hierarchy of priorities in question is only
maintained within this relationship of struggle, at the same time
that this oppositional relationship is produced. In fact, the binary
difference only exists in the relationship that places worthy
objects – which are to be found within the socialised body – and
unworthy objects – which are also situated within this body – in
opposition to each other, hence the paradox that emerges. In this
way, at the point of intersection between these conflicting forces
and these interests, ‘African queer subjectivity should emerge as
an emptied set after powers intersecting in its making lose their
appearance of priority’ (sic) (Nyeck 2010).
Bourdieu (2002 [1984]: 197) does not see this any differently
when he stresses that one of the means by which social censure
is exercised can be found specifically in this hierarchy of objects,
or where such objects are considered either worthy or unworthy
of being studied. Consequently, social agents will find themselves
spending their lives classifying themselves by appropriating
objects that are themselves already classified. However, they
also classify others who also classify themselves through the
reappropriated objects they classify (91–2).
This logic can also be used to explain, among other things,
how according to what has been demonstrated, the relationship
between chercheur (C), Afrique (A) and homosexualité (H) can be so
weak. But we could also draw upon the explanatory variable of
social organisation to reinforce our position, or even the political
will of the governing authorities found on the continent. This
involves discussing the ideas that politicians hold in relation
to the role of researchers on the continent, both in terms of the
place (within geographical and political space) and the domains
(which are also politically motivated) they occupy. But let us first
evaluate the outcome of the interaction between the three sets,
Afrique (A), homosexualité (H) and chercheur (C), which results in:
Here, we can see that there is a relation, and it involves the

same weak relationship of equivalence as the relation (R) found
in: H R C and C R A. This allows us to postulate that the phonemes
belonging to H (homosexualité) occur as recessive factors in the
256
larger set A (Afrique) and, consequently, may be a concern for

C (chercheur, or researchers in Africa). The recessive nature of a
phoneme as a social fact operating within a contentious space
does not therefore mean that it does not exist or cannot justify its
being consigned to the margins of the macrocosm of society.
Following Dubet (1994: 75), and using sociological analysis,
one might say that what is foreign (or here, recessive) is not what
belongs to another culture, despite what shared representations
focus on. It is in fact at the very heart of sociation and also
separate from this process due to its very individuality. As has
been mentioned, a phoneme holds no meaning when taken in
isolation. By extension, situational categories that are pushed to
the margins, outside a contentious space, are to be found in the
social world, just like all other categories (Bourdieu 2002 [1984]:
12). Why is this the case? Due to the following:
Conclusion
We have been able to define the following relation (R) between the
sets in hand: H R C and C R A if their intersection is non-empty.
And according to mathematical theory, a relation is an equiva-
lence relation if it is reflexive, symmetric and transitive.
A relation is reflexive if each element is related to itself, as is
the case in the following:
It is symmetric if the fact that A R H necessarily implies that

H R A.
Finally, it is transitive if A R H and H R C, and therefore A R C.
To put it in a less abstract way, this means that we might take each
phoneme we have marked out as an element forming part of social
reality or as an element that is representative of the equivalence
relation (R) we have just demonstrated. This is to say that studying
one single category is equal to studying all other categorical realities
in the area of sociation, or society in the process of formation. Hence
the use of the term representative for each instance of element x,
which operatively we refer to here as a phoneme.
257
In other words, writing about and discussing homosexualities

in Africa holds value in representing an area of social reality in the
same way that writing about and discussing post-colonisation,
democracy, governance, war, social problems and disease does.
The aforementioned binary hierarchy therefore no longer has
any reason for being. In turn, urgent issues and urgent matters
of the time themselves become empty, if their goal is merely to
place a cordon sanitaire around the issue of homosexuality – or
any other categorical fact in society that is deemed to be of
secondary importance. The concern now is to know how the
issue of homosexuality in Africa might emerge from its isolation
in order to operate alongside and interact with other social issues
in a pragmatic and therefore concrete way. Here, it might provide
answers to the whole trend towards globalisation and, thereby,
the widespread social changes that are taking place.
This chapter was translated from the French by Tim Cleary.
Notes
1 See, for example, how the report by the Kenya Human Rights
Commission (2011) is presented as a big breakthrough, according to
my friend Marc Epprecht. He argues that human rights approaches in
general and AIDS issues in particular are now used as entry points to
address the realities of homosexualities where they are forbidden by laws
and social norms.
2 Marc Epprecht made a very pertinent remark here, saying that I
sometimes overstate my point because in the flow of the debate, while
not taking social facts themselves for granted, I used to assume that
everyone should know that some facts are evident, for example that
South Africa is known, since 1996, to be the first country in Africa to
have addressed the principle of non-discrimination in its constitution.
Here I will try to correct that position by adding that there are many
others that have now done the same: Cape Verde is the second country
on the continent to have decriminalised same-sex relationships, in 2004.
I attended the December 2008 UN meeting in New York where Gabon,
Central African Republic, Rwanda and Sierra Leone were among the
countries which signed or signalled their intention to support the UN
General Assembly’s resolution to include sexual orientation within
the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Botwsana’s high court is
discussing the same as I write.
3 While this could be true to some extent, I am not denying there is a
real sense of solidarity by LGBTI groups in the West, with the support
258
of Western governments and organisations such as ILGA, IGLHRC,

the LGBTI chapter of Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch or
amfAR, the Foundation for AIDS Research.
4 In private communications with Marc Epprecht, he subtly responded
to this point by saying that when he thinks about Zimbabwe, one of his
fields of work, political space at the village and chief level is circular and
flat, allowing for free debates and argument. He added that if he looks at
parliament buildings around the continent, they are often roundish and
breast-like. Compared to banks, they do not seem very phallic. So, the
debate is open: this is my input.
5 Marc Epprecht (1998, 2006, 2008 among others), in almost all his research
in Zimbabwe, stated that if you go to the villages, people will say,
of course we know ‘homosexuality’ has always been here. The same
statements are recorded by Murray and Roscoe (1998).
6 Quotation translated from the French.
7 Quotation translated from the French.
8 One can see again the paradox because, as has been observed, there
are associations of same-sex loving people in the majority of African
countries with varying degrees of acceptance (Gueboguo 2008, 2010).
And according to the United States Department of State Human Rights
Reports for 2009 (USDS 2010), for example in Gabon, ‘Discrimination
and violence occasioned by homosexual and transgender conduct
was not a problem’ or in Mauritania (where, despite a potential death
sentence) there was ‘no evidence of either societal violence or systematic
government discrimination based on sexual orientation, and there were
no criminal prosecutions during the year’. Those points are made to
acknowledge and to recognise the non-deterministic situation that is
drawn by some extremists within some societies. This helps to keep away
from an over-generalisation that could be informed by only the worst-
case scenario while there are some perceptible changes at a certain social
level in some places in Africa.
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261
27
Mounting homophobic violence

in Senegal
Mouhamadou Tidiane Kassé
In February 2008, a wind of homophobia swept through Senegal.

It continues to sweep the country, with periods of exacerbation
and moments of calm. The ebb and flow is fed by information
and comments on homosexuality published periodically in the
local press. In a country that is 95 per cent Muslim and 4 per cent
Catholic, popular disapproval remains based on religious beliefs,
but it is also based on cultural and social structures which impose
a strict moral order in certain areas of social life. Considered a
practice ‘against nature’, homosexuality carries penalties ranging
from one to five years imprisonment, plus 100,000 francs (about
€150) to 1,500,000 francs (about €2,200) in fines.
Homosexuality has long been tacitly tolerated in Senegal.
Section 319 of the penal code, which condemns sexual relations
between persons of the same sex, was introduced in 1962 but
has rarely been applied. Men who have sex with men (MSM)1
have lived openly, occupying social roles where their identity as
homosexuals was fully expressed. They pandered to the ‘grandes
dames’ of Senegalese society; some of them even became stars of
the jet set and social gatherings in Dakar. Besides these ceremonies,
their presence was also seen as a sign of sophistication at family
celebrations (baptisms, marriages, etc). They have even been noted
in political circles, where their ability to mobilise and entertain
community members reinforced the skills of women in those areas.
In this regard, the sociologist Cheikh Niang notes that during
the colonial period ‘gorjigen’ (homme–femme or man–woman, a
term that refers to the homosexual in Wolof) played political roles
alongside women in the cities formerly called the Four Communes
262
27 MOUNTING HOMOPHOBIC VIOLENCE IN SENEGAL
of Senegal (Dakar, Saint-Louis, Gorée and Rufisque). The two

main political leaders of the pre-independence period, Lamine
Guèye and Léopold Sédar Senghor, both enjoyed the support of
female leaders (dirijanké, or lady) who, between 1950 and 1960,
surrounded themselves with gorjigen. Several oral sources report
that the gorjigen of Saint-Louis played a leading role in the electoral
victory of Senghor and staged his triumphant entry into Saint-
Louis after his 1950 electoral campaign (Niang 2010).
The homophobic violence recorded in Senegal since 2008
therefore contrasts with the attitudes that had hitherto prevailed,
as much in its actual manifestation as in its scale. Circumstantial,
episodic and isolated, the phenomenon has reached a degree
and form never before experienced. There has been a systematic
hunt for homosexuals, in the form of harassment, stoning and
lynching. The media have regularly reported these incidents. In
one case, the buried body of a person alleged to be homosexual
was unearthed and dragged out of a Muslim cemetery. The debate
has occupied the press for weeks, including, at its extremes, calls
to murder. It has been noted that some of the most hardline
positions taken were from Muslim religious circles, especially
from the Collective of Islamic Associations of Senegal (CAIS).
The hunt for homosexuals began following the publication by
Icône, a local magazine, of pictures showing a gay marriage. Before
the concert of indignation had invaded the press, the people
identified in the images were arrested by police on 4 February
2008. With this marriage, ordinary Senegalese discovered a little-
known side of homosexuality. Common representations had
been limited to the image of people who were effeminate in their
attitudes and had close circles of female friends. This ‘marriage’
was seen as an attack on a sacred institution and revealed to many
that homosexuality is not an attitude, but also a sexual orientation.
‘Indeed, for the Senegalese, (…) the term Gorjigen, unlike the
word homosexuality, refers explicitly to gender relations, not sex’
(Niang 2010).
Perceived as a trend and not an effeminate sexual orientation,
homosexuality has long been tolerated in Senegalese society.
Signs and acts of hostility against homosexuals were evident
at times, but never reached the widespread violence seen since
February 2008. Crowder (1959), cited in a study by a team from
263
the Université Cheikh Anta Diop de Dakar (Niang et al 2003),

suggests that this tolerance has been noticeable since the colonial
period: ‘The elders and faithful Muslims condemn men for this,
but it is typical of African tolerance that they are left very much
alone’ (Crowder 1959). This tolerance, at times an indifference to
homosexuality, is no longer the norm.
Several events have taken place since 2008 to strengthen the
radicalisation against homosexuality. In December 2008, nine
people were arrested by the police for alleged homosexual acts.
The case will carry on for a long time. The arrests of February 2008
did not result in prosecution; the five defendants were released
from police custody and the matter was allowed to run its course.
This time, the case ended in court. At the end of the trial, the court
pronounced sentences of eight years in prison. This penalty goes
beyond the penal provisions against homosexuality, and reflects
a climate of rampant homophobia and the feelings of a judge
outraged by the comments of the defendants. Before the bar, some
of the defendants openly acknowledged their sexual orientation
and practices. Their attitude was perceived as a challenge, or even
an insult.2 Prior to this, trials for homosexuality had given way to
denial, regrets and tears.
The silence of the authorities

This judgment garnered international condemnation, both from
the French government and organisations defending human
rights. Locally, a joint statement was issued by the African
Assembly for the Defence of Human Rights (RADDHO), the
International Federation of Human Rights, the Inter-African
Union of Human Rights and Amnesty International Senegal to
say ‘no to homophobia, yes to tolerance’. The text called on the
state’s obligation to ‘ensure respect for the physical and moral
integrity of persons involved … and, more generally, to condemn
in the strongest manner homophobic acts likely to undermine the
physical and moral integrity of homosexuals’. Referring to article
7, paragraph 2 of the constitution of Senegal, the organisations
also argued that ‘everyone has the right to life, liberty, security,
and free development of his person’. This provision is seen as
potentially encompassing the sexual orientation of individuals.
264
These events passed without any reaction from the Senegalese

government, leading to the creation of a climate of impunity
over attacks against homosexuals. In this respect, Codou Bop
points to a political weakness created by economic crisis, where
popular movements are indicative of a popular mistrust towards
the authorities (Bop 2009). Reminders to the government that,
in addition to the laws and constitutional provisions already in
place, they were also signatories of international conventions
caused them great embarrassment. But faced with public pressure,
they have still not taken positions in line with the international
commitments they have undertaken.
Violence against homosexuals was accompanied by ferocious
attacks against any rhetoric or attitude that provided an alternative
view of homosexuality. When the five people arrested in February
2008 were released, public opinion was that a homosexual lobby
was nestled in the heart of power. The reaction from abroad was
denounced as an ‘immoral’ Western war against religious and
moral values. Homosexuality has also been linked to the spread
of AIDS in a country where this group has a very high prevalence
of HIV infection – a 21.5 per cent rate of infection compared with
0.7 per cent in the general population.
These attitudes of rejection and denial stubbornly refuse to
recognise the fact that homosexuality is a reality rooted in Senegal,
even though the fact is particularly evident in certain quarters and
references to it are not lacking. In 2002, a team of researchers at
the Université Cheikh Anta Diop conducted a study attesting to
the importance of homosexuality in Senegal and its frequency
across socio-economic groups and ethnicities (Niang et al 2003).
Before the wave of homophobia, homosexuals were among the
actors engaged in the fight against HIV/AIDS. It was decided that
the current situation made it unsafe to continue their strategies
for responding to the epidemic and consolidating the results
achieved by Senegal in this area. To escape the violence, HIV-
positive homosexuals stopped going to health facilities where
they could have received antiretroviral drugs. Those groups who
had animated the network for awareness and prevention of the
HIV epidemic have suspended their activities. Networks through
which gay organisations fighting against AIDS organised their
response to the epidemic have also fallen apart; their members
265
have left to escape acts by angry people or police operations.

Moreover, the nine people convicted in January 2009 argued that
they were arrested while conducting training sessions in the fight
against AIDS.
The risk of losing the networks of associations for homosexuals is
considered serious, as MSM are a bridge group in the transmission
of HIV. Faced with homophobia, many marry and maintain
heterosexual relationships to conceal their same-sex orientation.
In addition, more and more young people tend to engage in
homosexual practices for financial gain – a disguised form of
prostitution – while maintaining their heterosexual activities.
Immediately after the arrests in December 2008, a number
of NGO leaders, researchers and others involved in the fight
against AIDS established an informal crisis committee. Their
first action was to plead for the release of the nine prisoners.
Subsequently, they engaged in a more sustained action to put an
end to the ‘persecution of MSM in Senegal and the promotion of
greater respect for their dignity’. Their strategy for promoting
an environment of tolerance towards homosexuality is based on
building alliances with Christian leaders and Muslim moderates,
journalists, representatives of public authorities, politicians and
intellectuals. In addition, they conduct training programmes to
reinforce the skills of those involved in advocacy.
Homosexuality and AIDS

The approach adopted by the crisis committee is not to frame
the debate about homosexuality in terms of human rights or to
advocate for the decriminalisation of homosexuality. The empha-
sis, rather, is on issues of public health: the safeguarding of the
achievements of the fight against AIDS; respect of the right to
health; and ensuring support for homosexuals through access to
treatment services and prevention. It is in this dimension of public
health that the committee seeks to promote religious and cultural
discourses of tolerance and non-violence.
MSM are trained to enable them to handle advocacy themselves.
Journalists are also targeted to inform them of the realities of
homosexuality in Senegal, to allow them to reflect the issues
related to the fight against AIDS, and to provide parameters for
266
analysis that strengthen their approach to the issue. Health service

providers are another group that have to be addressed, to ensure
better management of MSM in prevention and treatment of HIV/
AIDS. Similarly, police services accused of violent attitudes against
the group and members of the judiciary system are also targeted.
Approaching the issue of homosexuality through the fight
against AIDS can be explained by the fact that the visibility of this
group has been favoured in recent years through their involve-
ment in advocacy and prevention of this epidemic. Previously
grouped in informal networks, in the early 2000s they began to
better organise themselves together to act as partners with organi-
sations involved in the response to AIDS. From this associative
movement has emerged a trend where many of those involved
openly acknowledge their sexual orientation. A study conducted
by Poteat et al (2011) on the impact of repression against the gay
community reported that they aspire to full recognition of their
rights and more respect for their privacy. But there is a potentially
dangerous trend emerging, in which prominent members of the
community are for the moment opposed to these aspirations.3
During the International Conference on AIDS and STIs in Africa
(ICASA), held in November and December 2008 in Dakar, the
announcement of a proposed march to demand better treatment
of homosexuality in the context of the fight against the epidemic
provoked indignation and even threats from some religious
circles. The march did not take place, but the crystallisation of
homophobic sentiment was exacerbated by open violence which
erupted after the arrest of the nine people in December which,
upon their sentencing to eight years in prison, led to an open hunt
for homosexuals.
The coincidence of timing between the staging of ICASA and
the arrests reinforced the idea that homosexuality in Senegal was
encouraged by external stances and influences. This perception
has caused the crisis committee to promote reflection and home-
grown reactions against homophobia and to curb the activities
of foreign organisations. In February 2010 a delegation from
(IGLHRC), who came to Senegal for the launch of the organisation’s
report on homophobic violence, were persuaded not to release
the report publicly. MSM who testified in the report following
267
the violence of 2008 and 2009 shared this opinion, fearing that
new condemnations from foreigners might revive the hostility
towards their community. The public release of a Human Rights
Watch report scheduled for November 2010 in Senegal was also
cancelled for the same reasons.
Those responsible for the two organisations rallied to this
position after a meeting with the crisis committee. They could,
however, have met with the Senegalese authorities to present
them with their reports, and held meetings with human rights
advocacy organisations, as well as groups responsible for fighting
against AIDS. The reports they have compiled, which include
testimonies from MSM on their experiences with violence and its
multifaceted impact, have become useful tools for training and
advocacy.
Homosexuality and the media

Since the outbreak of violence in 2008 and 2009, things have
calmed down. The same causes do not always produce the same
effects. Two people were arrested, tried and convicted in June
2010 for ‘acts against nature between two persons of the same
sex’, but the sentence passed was only three months in prison for
both defendants, very different from the 10-year sentence set by a
judge a year earlier (HRW 2010).
The minutes of the trial published in the media have not given
rise to the expression of homophobia by journalists or in public
debates in the mass media. The radical religious circles have not
inflamed the issue, a fact which has gone virtually unnoticed.
They had played an important role in triggering the violence
of past years, a fact that has prompted Codou Bop to consider
related political considerations. For her, the fundamentalist
Islamic groups had an interest in disseminating such speech
in consideration of local elections in March 2009, as a way to
consolidate their political position by taking advantage of a
phenomenon that focused media attention on them and garnered
wide press coverage (Bop 2008).
In their reports, the IGLHRC and Human Rights Watch (HRW),
like Cheikh Niang in his study on the processing of information
about homosexuality, have accused the press of fuelling the
268
violence triggered by homophobia between 2008 and 2009.

Articles and broadcasts have contributed to this, relaying and
exacerbating homophobic sentiments through their commentary.
But the analysis is truncated, as much of it considers the role of
the media in isolation from other sociopolitical determinants. This
is not the first time the issue of homosexuality has been discussed
in the Senegalese press, but such an outburst of violence was
never witnessed before.
In 1999, a parade of gay transvestite supermodels, held in the
Saly Portudal tourist resort, made headlines in the newspapers,
supported by photographs, without provoking physical attacks
against homosexuals. In 2003, a lawsuit between a homosexual
and a famous entrepreneur of great renown, amid accusations
of blackmail and infidelity, mobilised the media and drew huge
crowds for several days of hearings, with a strong presence
from the gay community, who came to support one of their
own, without any violent reactions from people. Similarly, in
June 2002 the newspaper Frasques published a special edition
on homosexuality, with testimonials and pictures of people who
were open about their sexual orientation.
One can also go back to the 16 September 1991 edition of the
newspaper Le Soleil, in which an article entitled ‘Homosexuals:
the right to be different?’ tried to consider the debate. In
their anonymous testimony, three men affirmed their difference
(‘attracted to men’), the difficulty they experienced in living
with this sexual orientation (‘leave us alone…!’), but also their
determination to exist (‘I was always queer…’).
In the 10 April 1995 issue of Le Témoin, an article entitled ‘In
the world of homosexuals’ was published with a front page photo
of a famous homosexual who described his experience and spoke
of homosexuality as a practice of ‘men like everyone else’ and
sometimes those of ‘high class society’. The newspaper wrote:
socially, they (homosexuals) do not make any effort to enliven

entourages of drianke (ladies), to serve them selflessly without
looking to their own future. When they earn their living, they
are typically found managing shady ‘clandos’, where misfits
come to drink alcohol for next to nothing, while executives with
loosened ties and discarded jackets amuse themselves playing
269
rabbles, far from their usual circles where they are bound by
requirements to show restraint.
Homosexuality is widely perceived in Senegal through such a

caricature to generate, according to perceptions, contempt, rejec-
tion, indignation or tolerance.
Homophobic violence in 2008 and 2009, although fed by religious
beliefs, characterises a certain social orthodoxy, manifested as
a form of violence against a state deemed responsible for all
forms of disturbances associated with socio-economic crises. The
same resentments remain, and the Senegalese authorities are
struggling to define themselves around an issue that embarrasses
them. In March 2011, a member of the presidential majority, the
vice-president of the National Assembly, tabled an oral question
inviting the government to explain information published by a
local newspaper, L’Office, which noted the ratification by Senegal
of the Geneva Convention which decriminalised homosexual
practices. In his question, he stated:
Despite the denial made by Minister Coumba Gaye (Minister

for Human Rights), this information, insufficiently dissemi-
nated, continues to make waves, to the point of inspiring talks
during Friday prayers in mosques. This situation has created a
stir in the country; I ask the government to come to the National
Assembly, to tell its members and the people of Senegal, the
truth about this case.
The information was unfounded (BlogMensGo n.d., Siberfeld

2011), but the uproar it caused is a testament to the strength of
convictions feeding homophobia in Senegal. Physical attacks
have ceased, but the sense of violence remains latent. MSM are
determined to silence any event that makes them visible to the
public and the media. They have been given the responsibility
to not disturb a society that does not accept them, so as not to
endanger themselves and not to expose local organisations con-
ducting advocacy, and to restore and consolidate an environment
of tolerance.4
270
Homosexuality and human rights

Among homosexual associations there has been some interest in
taking on a human rights approach. But whether as expressions
of resistance or claims of human rights, such reactions are rare,
and even silenced by members of the community itself. It is rather
through evolutionary social change, in the hope of arriving pro-
gressively at a more open society, that they hope to find greater
social tolerance and recognition of their rights.
In fact, even though Senegal has signed conventions and
charters that underpin international norms of respect for human
rights, the legal texts of the country continue to harbour provisions
of law which, even beyond the criminalisation of homosexuality,
render illusory the possibility of legal protection for sexual
minorities claiming their rights. A climate of fear destroys the
open pursuit of the promotion and protection of rights.
Among MSM, evidence abounds of the ‘danger’ of seeking
help from security forces and the law. Their experience indicates
that appeals for protection only open the door to further violence.
One reports:
They [the police] were beating us morning, noon and night.

We had no right to counsel and we were not allowed to make
phone calls. The police were constantly telling us that we had
no rights because we are impure, and cursed, and that we could
not share anything with the others, not even the toilets.
Another testimony tells of the conditions of interrogation by

the police: ‘The police took our phones and noted the numbers
of our loved ones. One of them called my mother and told her,
“You know what? Your son is gay!” before hanging up on her’
(HRW 2010).
The Senegalese gay scene is still marked by a lack of knowledge
and understanding of the law related to sexual orientation. The
evident hostility noted among the judiciary compounds the
problem of legal redress for the MSM community.
All these factors constrain the involvement that homosexuals
might have in the few initiatives taken to promote tolerance
towards them or involve them in social debates concerning the
rights of sexual minorities.
271
Notes
1 Men who have sex with men (MSM) is more commonly used than the
French equivalent, ‘hommes ayant des relations sexuelles avec d’autres hommes’
(HSH), and was used in the original text to describe homosexuals.
2 Evidence obtained from a member of the crisis committee which was
established to advocate for the release of convicted MSM. After several
weeks of detention, they were released after the Court of Cassation
quashed the verdict due to irregularities.
3 This view was affirmed to the author by the leader of one of the main
MSM associations in Senegal.
4 As of 23 March 2011, the signatories of the convention numbered 85, with
Senegal among them. Other African countries which had signed included
South Africa, Central African Republic and Sierra Leone.
References
BlogMensGo (n.d.) ‘Un tribunal de Dakar a condamné, le 29 juin 2010, deux
hommes à trois mois de prison ferme pour homosexualité’, Gayromandie,
http://www.gayromandie.ch/Prison-ferme-pour-homosexualite-au.html,
Bop, C. (2008) ‘Sénégal: “homophobie et manipulation politique de l’Islam”’,
Women Living Under Muslim Laws, http://www.wluml.org/fr/node/4514,
Comité de crise (2012) ‘De l’orientation en temps de crise au plaidoyer à
long terme: promouvoir la tolérance et le respect des droits des groupes
vulnérables au Sénégal’, Dakar, Comité de crise
Crowder, M. (1959) Pagans and Politicians, London, Hutchison
Human Rights Watch (HRW) (2010) ‘Fear for his Life: Violence against Gay
Men and Men Perceived as Gay in Senegal’, HRW, 30 November, http://
www.hrw.org/en/reports/2010/11/30/craindre-pour-sa-vie-0, accessed 5
December 2012
Icône Magazine (2008) 20 February
L’Office (2011) 23 March
Niang, Cheikh (2010) ‘Content analysis of the Senegalese media on the
treatment of the issue of homosexuality and homophobia’, unpublished
study commissioned by Panos Institute West Africa
Niang, C.I., Tapsoba, P., Weiss, E., Diagne, M., Niang, Y., Moreau, A.M.,
Gomis, D., Wade, A.S., Seck, K. and Castle, C. (2003) ‘“It’s raining stones”:
stigma, violence and HIV vulnerability among men who have sex with
men in Dakar, Senegal’, Culture, Health and Sexuality, 5(6): 499–512
Poteat, T., Diouf, D., Drame, F.M., Ndaw, N., Traore, C., Dhaliwal, M., Beyrer,
C. and Baral, S. (2011) HIV Risk among MSM in Senegal: A Qualitative Rapid
Assessment of the Impact of Enforcing Laws that Criminalize Same Sex Practices
Siberfeld, Judith (2011) ‘Dépénalisation de l’homosexualité: 85 pays
signent une declaration à l’ONU’, Yagg, http://yagg.com/2011/03/22/
depenalisation-de-lhomosexualite-85-pays-signent-une-declaration-a-
lonu/, accessed 5 December 2012
272
28
Queer Kenya in law and policy

Keguro Macharia
On 28 November 2010, Raila Odinga, prime minister of Kenya,

said, ‘If found [homosexual couples] should be arrested and
taken to relevant authorities.’1 Five years earlier, such a statement
would have elicited mainstream silence or approval. This time,
however, mainstream newspapers published articles challenging
Raila’s statement.2 Professor Makau Mutua, a legal scholar and
chair of the Kenya Human Rights Commission, argued, ‘the [new]
Constitution protects gay rights’. Makau based this statement
on two elements of the constitution: it guarantees equal rights
and it does not explicitly forbid gay marriage.3 It is too soon to
tell whether Makau’s confidence is justified. As with the US and
India, sexual minority rights will probably have to be debated
through Kenya’s law courts.4
In this article, I offer one narrative about the state of Kenya’s
sexual minority rights by examining three intertwined enactments
of law and policy: the Sexual Offences Act (2006), the National
Policy on Culture and Heritage (2009) and the newly promulgated
constitution (2010). In examining these documents and the debates
that surround them, I track how Kenyan-ness is defined in relation
to sexuality. I argue that we need to understand sexual minority
rights in relation to sexual majority rights. Any attempt to argue
for the former without considering the latter risks missing their
mutual constitution. I build on cultural theorist Neville Hoad’s
insightful argument that ‘homosexuality’ is ‘one of the many
imaginary contents, fantasies, or significations (sometimes in the
negative, sometimes not) that circulate in the production of African
sovereignties and identities in their representations by Africans
and others’.5 And I examine how the figure of the ‘homosexual’
circulates in Kenyan legal and cultural discussions and documents.
273
The Sexual Offences Act (2006)

In 2006, the Kenya Parliament enacted the Sexual Offences Act.
It represented sustained activism over more than a decade by
a coalition of organisations including the Federation of Women
Lawyers-Kenya (FIDA), the Coalition on Violence Against Women
(COVAW), the Child Rights Advisory Documentation and Legal
Centre (The CRADLE) and the Centre for Rights Education and
Awareness (CREAW).6 The Sexual Offences Bill first came to pub-
lic awareness in December 2004, as it was being shepherded into
the parliamentary process by nominated Member of Parliament
Njoki Ndung’u. Prior to assuming public office, Ndung’u, who
has a postgraduate degree in human rights and civil liberties,
had worked in the public sector, as state counsel in the Attorney
General’s office, and in the private sector, including a stint as a
political analyst for the Organisation of African Unity. She was
also an active member of Kenya’s civil society, as a former mem-
ber of FIDA and a women’s rights activist.
The bill created what Michel Foucault terms an ‘explosion’
of discourse around sexuality.7 It was the first time that sex
and sexuality had been discussed so openly and at length in
parliament, in the mainstream media and in online forums.
Kenyans discussed courtship and marriage, traditional ritual and
gender violence, consent and coercion.8 As Kenyans debated the
(often tenuous) lines across welcome, acceptable and criminal
intimacies, they defined (and defended) what constituted normal
gendered bodies and sexual intimacies. In this section, I detail
how debates around the bill established the family as the target
of sexual offences, and draw out the implications for this strategy
for sexual minority activism.
Early in 2005, Ndung’u outlined the expansive scope of the
bill when she argued, ‘it is not just girls and women who can be
victims; the law must recognise boys and men too are abused.’9
By specifying that ‘boys and men’ were also sexually vulnerable,
Ndung’u extended the bill’s province to protect a wide range of
people, including sex workers and sexual minorities. Certainly,
some Kenyans interpreted the bill that way. For instance, the
Kenya Episcopal Conference, an association of Catholic churches,
supported the bill, arguing, ‘There are too many broken bodies,
274
28 QUEER KENYA IN LAW AND POLICY
broken hearts and broken minds of children, women and men

littering the landscape of Kenya all injured, brutalised and often
enough, killed by sexual violence.’ However, the conference added,
‘Currently, abortion, prostitution and homosexuality are illegal. The
Catholic bishops would wish to have assurance that this bill does
not repeal existing laws on these matters in such a manner that
these evils are introduced through the back door or by default.’10
The conference worried that the bill might protect sexually marginal
figures, prostitutes and homosexuals, and acts that were against
Catholic doctrine, such as abortion. Likewise, the Council of Imams
and Preachers of Kenya (CIPK) was wary of measures that would
legalise homosexuality.11 These groups wanted parliament to define
the segments of the population worth defending.
In addition to religious leaders, other socially conservative
groups tried to restrict the scope of the bill and argued that
it should reflect Kenyan values. Notably, Wanjiru Muiruri, a
member of the Kenya Parents Caucus, claimed that ‘progressive
human rights activists’ probably viewed Kenya as ‘an anathema, a
pariah, for stubbornly adhering to what they consider traditional
and oppressive laws that are discriminatory against gays, and
la di da…’. However, laws that potentially protected sexually
marginal figures would ‘undermine the moral fabric of society and
undermine the institution of family in Kenya.’12 Muiruri wedded
sexual practices and institutions to national identity, suggesting
that the Sexual Offences Bill was as much about defining proper
and improper forms of intimacy as it was about defining proper
and improper forms of national belonging. She advocated what
queer theorists Lauren Berlant and Michael Warner describe
as ‘national heterosexuality’: ‘National heterosexuality is the
mechanism by which a core national culture can be imagined
as a sanitised space of sentimental feeling and immaculate
behavior, a space of pure citizenship. A familiar model of society
displaces the recognition of … systemic inequalities.’13 Muiruri
effaces ‘systemic inequalities’ when she implicitly claims that
‘progressive human rights’ risk ‘undermin[ing] the institution of
the family in Kenya’. In her zero-sum-game model, human rights
activism cannot co-exist with ‘national heterosexuality’.
In retrospect, Muiruri’s implicit argument that the bill was
supposed to protect ‘the family’ signalled a major shift in strategy
275
around getting the bill passed. On 1 April 2006, an article in the

Daily Nation captured this re-orientation around the family:
[T]he ladies who met this week under the auspices of the Kenya
Women Parliamentary Association had a powerful message for
their male colleagues: Support us in this fight against depraved
sexual predators, for if they are allowed to continue, it is your
daughters as well as ours, your sisters and mothers as well as
ours and, increasingly, even your little sons, who will become
the next victims.14
The Daily Nation reports agreed with the parliamentarians, and

ended the article thus: ‘Those beasts who prey on our daughters,
sisters, mothers and wives must be made to pay heavily.’ Civil
society activists sent SMS messages to male parliamentarians that
read, ‘Do the right thing by supporting the Bill. You are support-
ing your wife, mother and daughter and sister.’15
This rhetorical emphasis on ‘wife, mother’ and so on changed
the site of vulnerability: sexual offences were no longer what
were committed against potentially anonymous girls and women
and men and boys; they were committed against the institution
of ‘the family’. In passing the bill, legislators would be affirming
their loyalty and devotion to ‘the family’. As queer theorist Lee
Edelman has asked, who would dare to be against the family?16
No longer were parliamentarians being asked to protect any
and all people who may have been sexually abused, including
prostitutes and sexual minorities; instead, they were asked to
defend their kin.
However, this focus on defending the family was costly: male
legislators who had opposed provisions on sexual harassment,
marital rape and female genital excision argued, disingenuously,
that these (and similar) provisions threatened practices of
courtship and marital vitality. How, questioned some MPs,
would one be able to distinguish between courtship and sexual
harassment? This question exposes the contradictions inherent
in the bill: legislators sought to protect the conditions that enable
heteronormativity, including the formation of proper, and some
claimed properly African, gender roles while simultaneously
protecting marriage and family from sexual offenders. Moreover,
276
‘traditional’ practices such as female genital excision could be

defended because, as some MPs argued, they helped to police
gender; strategically embracing cultural relativism, advocates
for excision argued that it made women marriageable. As long
as gendering practices and courtship rituals could be tethered to
creating marriages and defending families, they received a pass.
Nor could the bill be perceived to attack gender and sexual
practices that happened within marriage. This latter argument
came to the fore in debates about marital rape. Even though the
provisions against marital rape had been in the initial draft of the
bill, available in December 2004, the debate about marital rape
gained in intensity in the latter part of April and through May
2006 – parliament passed the bill in the last week of May 2006.
Marital rape gained in intensity as a problem the more the bill
focused on protecting the institutions of marriage and the family.
Then health assistant minister, Enoch Kibunguchy, claimed,
‘This bill will break families because it says that one can rape
his wife.’17 Other MPs argued there ‘was no way non-consensual
intercourse could occur between loving spouses’.18 In an absurd
and tragic irony, the bill set up to protect against sexual offences
had been transformed into one that protected the family. As long
as the heteronormative family was the unit deemed vulnerable, it
could not, simultaneously, be a site within which sexual offences
took place. Discussions around marital rape suggested that the
bill’s ultimate goal was to protect a Kenyan sexuality realised in a
patriarchal, heteronormative family.
Proponents of clauses against sexual harassment and marital
rape claimed that their biggest opponent in such debates was
culture, which was being used as an excuse by tradition-bound
men not to change the law. This explanation is only part of the
story. As the bill contracted in scope, from trying to protect all the
women and girls, men and boys who were sexually vulnerable
to defending the heterosexual family, it became practically
impossible to include any provisions that might impede the
formation of the heterosexual family or that might expose cracks
in the façade of the family. The heteronormative limits imposed on
the Sexual Offences Act made it impossible to criminalise acts that
take place within the sacred space of the heterosexual marriage
bed. In protecting the family against invaders from outside
277
– stranger rapists, prostitutes and homosexuals – legislators could

not protect the family from dangers internal to its structure. Nor
could they protect the sites of its formation – sexual harassment
remains a real threat, as do other forms of gendered and sexual
violence designed to create normative bodies and relationships.
From law to policy: the family

In August 2008, Kenya’s Ministry of State for Culture and
Heritage circulated a draft of a newly formulated policy on cul-
ture and heritage. Although not explicitly stated, the policy was
clearly a response to the chaos of the post-election violence that
rocked the country in January and February of 2008. The official
policy was released in 2009. As the ‘Overview’ to the policy notes,
‘Policies that aim at the inclusion and participation of all citizens
are guarantees of social cohesion and a prerequisite for peace.’19
Broadly speaking, the policy has a dual mandate: it attempts to
forge unities within Kenya’s already diverse communities and it
seeks to control the meanings of contact with countries, practices
and ideologies that are, ostensibly, foreign to Kenya. It is a pro-
posal, then, that both imagines and tries to produce Kenyan-ness
as a form of intimacy that faces internal and external threats.
More explicitly than the Sexual Offences Act, the National
Policy on Culture and Heritage (2009) defines the role of the
family in relation to Kenyan-ness. Chapter 4 is devoted to ‘The
Family,’ and I cite it in its entirety:
The foundation of the Kenyan society has always been the

family as the smallest unit of society and kinship relation-
ships. However, with the advent of modern culture we have
embraced contemporary concepts of family brought about by
inter marriages between Kenyans and other nationals.
Policy statements
The Government will work in concert with other institutions to
strengthen the family and kinship relations as a foundation for
a unified Nation.
The Government will provide easy access to families by
developing cultural facilities at local level i.e. community
cultural centres, libraries, facilities for performing and visual
arts for the benefit of small rural communities, increase
278
facilities for artistic education from young children, at primary

school level.20
Chapter 4 is brief, slightly more than 100 words. Like the curt,
declarative statements used to issue orders in the military, this
brevity not only assumes but constructs Kenyan intimacy as an
already decided issue. Brevity, in this instance, functions as a
strategy of foreclosure – this statement does not encourage or
welcome dialogue. Culture and heritage are anchored in a very
specific sexual form, and there can be no legitimate debate about
the form of national heterosexuality.
By claiming that the ‘foundation of Kenyan society has
always been the family’, (my emphasis), this document rewrites
and erases Kenya’s urban histories of prostitution, class-based
histories embodied in Kenya’s very important trade unions, multi-
ethnic coalitions that function outside of kin-based frameworks,
and the violent histories of colonialism that forged unities out of
disparate groups.21 Positing this very specific intimate foundation,
the heterosexual family, as the central form through which
‘Kenyan society’ emerged erases the innovative, creative forms of
affiliation that were central to creating and constructing Kenya.
‘Always’ also erases the temporal markers of Kenya’s emergence
as a nation. Now, whether we choose to privilege colonialism or
not is a matter of legitimate debate. We need not anchor the
development and emergence of ‘Kenyan society’ to 1885 or
1952 or 1963.22 The forms this nation has taken developed much
more unevenly, in short and long bursts, and it might well be
that 1922, when labour activist Harry Thuku was arrested, is
more significant for the emergence of cross-ethnic alliances than
1920, when British East Africa was renamed Kenya. However,
in positing ‘the family’ as that which works around time, as the
foundation on which temporality itself rests even as it also resists
temporality, this document un-writes the very urgent histories we
need to understand and disseminate if we are to embrace our rich
multi-ethnic, multi-political, cross-class, multi-cultural histories.
Arguing that the modern family – which remains undefined
– emerges through ‘inter marriages between Kenyans and other
nationals’, this policy builds on two assumptions. First, it presumes
that marriages between Kenyan nationals do not re-define marriage,
279
the family, or Kenyan-ness in any way. Ethnicity, race, religion

and class have no intimate specificity. A marriage between, say, a
Gikuyu and an Indian, or a Luo and a Kamba, raises no questions;
inter-generational marriages are similarly unproblematic, raising
no new questions or paradigms. These claims are simply not borne
out by Kenya’s history.23 Important ideas of what it means to be
Kenyan are anchored in our histories of intimate negotiations.
We are constantly creating and re-creating ourselves and Kenyan-
ness through our forms of intimate affiliations and filiations. Our
innovative intimate lives offer paradigms of how culture and
heritage are constantly dynamic and evolving. Positing intra-
national marriages as static, pre- or anti-modern institutions robs
Kenyans of valuable paradigms.
The second major assumption of this statement is that
heterosexual marriage offers access to intimate modernity.
As recent scholarship demonstrates, forms of intimacy are
increasingly adduced as evidence of modernity. States that
embrace queer rights, for instance, are deemed to be more modern
while states that still criminalise queer rights are considered
primitive.24 Consequently, in framing forms of intimacy as
gateways to modernity, this policy document embeds itself
within existing paradigms. However, this Kenyan policy limits
intimate modernity to heterosexual intimate modernity, refusing
the possibility that modern intimacies exist in arrangements quite
distinct from married heterosexuality. Married heterosexuality
gets defined in terms of culture and heritage, while everything
else, single motherhood, abstinence, promiscuity, queer desires
and practices, are implicitly marked as a-cultural, a-modern,
a-traditional, contributing nothing to history, to the present, and
to the future.
All this within approximately 40 words in the introductory
paragraph.
It is against this a-historical background that the policy
statements are set, and each one merits careful attention.
The Government will work in concert with other institutions to

strengthen the family and kinship relations as a foundation for
a unified Nation.
280
This formulation implicitly opposes those who want to ‘strengthen

the family and kinship relations’ to unnamed others who seek to
destroy them. Indeed, this policy statement builds on and buttresses
the Sexual Offences Act, by privileging the heterosexual family unit
as an object of state surveillance and protection.
To be sure, this statement in support of the family is important,
especially if we are to realise the rich possibilities of what it
means to be multi-ethnic and multi-racial. Indeed, a concerted
government effort to support national integration through
intimate means is vital, especially in the aftermath of the turbulent
post-election violence, which sundered intimate bonds. We need
to construct a national space in which the claims of ethnicity do
not have the power to break intimate attachments, a national
space in which intimate attachments have the power to re-define
ethnic-based politics.
However, if we are to grant intimate attachments such a
foundational role in creating and sustaining the nation, then it
seems both strategic and logical that our national goal should
be to multiply the possibilities for intimate attachment, to
recognise both the range and diversity of intimate arrangements
we occupy and create. We are not all marrying heterosexuals,
and to anchor the country on this foundation risks alienating the
many unmarried, but still intimately attached, youth; the women
and men who provide intimate services; those of us who remain
abstinent or celibate; and those of us who experiment with gender
and sexuality in a range of ways. We need to realise the potential
of the variety and diversity of intimate arrangements we occupy,
not foreclose their possibilities to produce national cohesion, or
what Walt Whitman terms ‘adhesion’.25
Unlike the first policy statement, which is relatively clear, the
second is garbled, unclear, illogical even. It reads:
The Government will provide easy access to families by devel-

oping cultural facilities at local level i.e. community cultural
centres, libraries, facilities for performing and visual arts for the
benefit of small rural communities, increase facilities for artistic
education from young children, at primary school level.
281
On a purely syntactical level, the sentence lacks a clear

predicate. To whom will the government ‘provide easy access
to families’ and for what purpose?26 Yet, to dismiss the sentence
based on its syntactical idiosyncrasy risks missing what it
suggests, no matter how clumsily.
Briefly, it appears that ‘cultural facilities’ contain families – that
is where one finds them, where they are constructed, and where
they circulate. The aim of cultural facilities is thus to ‘contain’, in
the sense of restrict and seal in, ideas of what families are. It is
from ‘culture’, as created in ‘cultural centres, libraries, facilities
for performing and visual arts’ that we receive ‘easy access’ to
families. In short, these cultural institutions, created or supported
by the Ministry of Culture and Heritage, have as a primary
mandate the creation of intimate spaces of attachment. They teach
us what appropriate intimacy looks like, how families function.
Cultural spaces and institutions are, thus, not designed to
innovate new social and intimate arrangements, nor should they
challenge our pre-conceived ideas about appropriate intimacy.
What seems especially striking about this list of cultural
facilities is how they manage and circulate knowledge: from
the performing arts, including local community-based theatre,
to libraries that store and disseminate knowledge, to the visual
arts, ‘culture’ should provide ‘easy access to families’. Artistic,
cultural and literary (in the broad sense of written) works
should at all times provide ‘easy access’ to the family and be,
to use an Americanism, ‘family friendly’. If inadvertently, this
section recognises the relationship between the imagination
and intimate innovation: intimate acts and arrangements can be
created, fashioned and re-fashioned. In contrast, government-
sponsored culture seeks to arrest unruly imaginations that might
foster queer inclinations. Artistic and literary depictions that
challenge the form and function of the narrowly defined family
are, presumably, a-cultural, and worse, challenges to producing
a ‘unified nation’. It is important to realise what is at stake here:
nothing less than the unity of the nation. Those who critique
this policy are, consequently, not only ‘against family’, they are
against a ‘unified nation’.
The scope of this statement is incredible, for these specific
cultural spaces, libraries, cultural centres and museums have
282
offered refuge and solace to many isolated queer and questioning

folk. We have looked for ourselves within the pages of medical
books, psychiatry textbooks, dictionaries, encyclopaedias; have
recognised ourselves in Radclyffe Hall, James Baldwin, Oscar
Wilde, Shakespeare; have felt intimately connected as we watched
plays, movies, ballets; have learned what to call ourselves, how
to name and re-name ourselves, how to occupy the world as part
of it, even when isolated. To then identify such spaces as hetero-
cages, spaces of containment, is to erase possibility, to magnify
loneliness, to enshrine impossibility as the condition of queerness.
It is especially noteworthy that two groups are mentioned:
rural communities and young children, presumably those who
have not been corrupted by the deracinating effects of urban
modernity, those who have not been infected with intimate
otherness. As constructed, rural communities and young children
bear the burden of intimate memory. Rural communities are
especially important because they continue to be regarded as
keepers of tradition, in memory if not necessarily practice. In this
document, ‘rural communities’ are implicitly distinguished from
those who marry ‘foreign nationals’ and thus innovate modern
forms of the heterosexual family. Rural communities become
intimate museums, devoted to maintaining ‘traditional’ forms of
intimacy that, in this document, are robbed of their diversity and
heterogeneity.
In rushing to protect ‘rural communities’ from the intimate
disruptions of modernity, this policy erases the histories of
intimate and erotic innovation that are a rich part of Kenya’s
multi-ethnic heritage. Gone are the gender-bending practices in
which biological women functioned as cultural men; erased are
the woman–woman marriages practised in a range of groups;
muted are the practices of partner sharing within age groups;
censored are the inter-generational relationships that are central
to growing up rituals.27 I return, once again, to the brevity of
this chapter, which assumes that Kenya’s intimate histories need
neither elaboration nor consideration, that terms like ‘family’ and
‘kinship’ exhaust how we have lived and constructed our intimate
lives. This silence renders a-cultural what should be deeply
cultural, a-historical what provides texture to history, a-specific
what enables multi-ethnic specificity.
283
By juxtaposing rural communities and young children, this

policy statement implicitly aligns the two, infantilising rural
communities and de-urbanising young children. Both groups,
this document suggests, should be protected so that they, in turn,
can protect us by modelling for us how proper heterosexual
intimate arrangements should function.
Despite and because of its brevity, this chapter merits the
attention of gender and sexual activists. This chapter and the
policy it contains are not laws. However, enacted as official
government policy, this chapter could be marshalled in creating
repressive laws. Anti-feminist and anti-queer constituencies may
draw on this official definition of intimate culture and heritage to
advocate repressive and punitive laws.
Combining law and policy

In this final section, I return to Makau Mutua’s confident assertion
that the newly enacted constitution protects gay rights and re-
evaluate it in light of the recent history I have outlined so far. To
briefly recap my argument: since debate started in earnest about
the Sexual Offences Act in 2005, Kenyans have passed a series of
laws and policies that wed national belonging to heterosexuality
and that pledge to protect the heteronormative family; national
heterosexuality has been increasingly protected in law and pro-
moted by policy. Heterosexual marriage and heteronormative
families have been so sutured to the nation that an attack on either
or both is considered an attack on Kenyan-ness. Simultaneously,
law and policy have implicitly defined non-normative forms of
gender expression and sexual practice as threats to the family, as
that against which the family must be defended.28
In 2007, the year following the passing of the Sexual Offences
Act, Amos Wako, Kenya’s then attorney general, introduced
a marriage bill into parliament.29 Officially, as Judy Thongori,
a family lawyer, explained, the bill would help to harmonise
Kenya’s patchwork of laws that recognised multiple forms of
marriage, including religious, civil and customary.30 Unofficially,
the bill responds to the anxieties provoked by debates around
the scope of the Sexual Offences Act and is a national response to
international activism on gay marriage.
284
This unofficial capacity is made explicit in the definition of

marriage in clause 2.3: ‘Marriage means the voluntary union
of a man and a woman intended to last for their life time.’ Not
once in the entire bill is same-sex marriage or any other queer
variation mentioned. Mutua has argued that the absence of
prohibition implicitly suggests approbation: ‘As any average
first year law student knows, a liberty or freedom that is not
prohibited is permitted.’31 However, an interview conducted with
Njoki Ndung’u soon after the Sexual Offences Act was enacted
offers some insight into the relation between the unsaid and the
unlegislated: ‘There were claims from some conservative religious
quarters that the Bill sought to legalise same-sex relations and
abortion. This surprised me because knowing the sensitivity of
these topics in Kenya, I had gone out of my way to ensure that
the Bill did not appear to address these issues.’32 For Ndung’u,
the unsaid is part of what Haitian scholar Michel-Rolph Trouillot
calls ‘the unthinkable’.33 What is neither permitted nor forbidden
is effaced as a historical possibility.
Even more telling, the language and intent of the marriage bill
were folded into the new constitution. Section 45.1, in chapter
4, on the Bill of Rights, reads, ‘The family is the natural and
fundamental unit of society and the necessary basis of social order,
and shall enjoy the recognition and protection of the State.’ Section
45.2 continues, ‘Every adult has the right to marry a person of
the opposite sex, based on the free consent of the parties.’ The
juxtaposition of these two sections delimits what we mean by
family, sex and gender. In the draft constitution, ‘family’ is not
a metaphor for relations of care between individuals, but is a
heterosexually reproductive institution secured through blood. The
constitution does not recognise fictive kinship relations based on
class and other affinities. Second, this section recognises only two
gendered and bodily configurations: adults come in binary pairs,
the ‘man’ and ‘woman’ mentioned explicitly in the marriage bill.
The genius of this law is that it renders in affirmative, positive
terms what other forms of legislation elsewhere in Africa, Nigeria
and Uganda, for instance, have tried to render in negative terms.
It does not ban gay marriage. It promotes heterosexual marriage.
However, this affirmative legislation echoes, in spirit, the negative
legislation that has raised hackles across the world. Notice, it
285
does not say: Kenya bans homosexual marriage. Nor does it say:
Kenya only recognises the humanity of appropriately gendered
and genitalised human beings. Rather, it affirms the importance
of family and marriage and vows to protect these institutions.
But against whom should they be protected?
It is only when we ask this question that we understand how
much these two clauses resemble proposed anti-gay legislation
in Uganda. The heterosexually reproductive family must be
protected against queers, against men who sleep with men and
women who sleep with women and against trangender and
intersex individuals who disrupt the neat gender binary that
anchors the nation.
My goal in this essay has been to begin tracing how intimate
life is structured across Kenyan law and policy. In doing so, I have
focused not on laws and policy that are explicitly anti-queer – be
that anti-homosexual or anti-trans – but, rather, on those laws and
policy that, while seemingly indifferent to queer bodies, desires
and practices, actually rely on those bodies, desires and practices
to anchor their own normative being.
Notes
1 Lucas Barasa (2010) ‘Kenya PM orders gays’ arrest’, Daily Nation, 28
November, accessed 1 January 2011.
2 See Macharia Gaitho (2010) ‘Mr. PM, the Bill of Rights you fought so
hard for covers gay Kenyans too’, Daily Nation, 29 November, accessed 1
January 2011; Lukoye Atwoli (2010) ‘Homophobia only serves to spread
homosexuality’, Daily Nation, 4 December, accessed 1 January 2011; Rasna
Warah (2010) ‘Raila owes Kenyans an apology, not denial, over statement
against gays’, Daily Nation, 5 December, accessed 1 January 2011.
3 Makau Mutua (2010) ‘Why Kenya’s new constitution protects gays’, Daily
Nation, 11 December, accessed 1 January 2011.
4 The ruling in India merits close scrutiny by African queer activists. The
full text is available at http://www.sacw.net/article985.html.
5 Neville Hoad (2007) African Intimacies: Race, Homosexuality, and
Globalisation, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press: xvi.
6 For a history of the bill-making process, see W. Onyango-Ouma, Njoki
Ndung’u, Nancy Baraza and Harriet Birungi (2009) The Making of the
Kenya Sexual Offences Act, 2006: Behind the Scenes, Nairobi, Kwani Trust.
7 Michel Foucault (1978) History of Sexuality, trans. Robert Hurley, New
York, Vintage: 17. A copy of the final bill can be found at http://www.
mzalendo.com/Bills.Details.php?ID=1.
286
8 See, for instance, the blog post and ensuing discussion from the blog
‘What an African woman thinks’, at http://wherehermadnessresides.
blogspot.com/2006/05/sexual-offences-bill.html; Owino Opondo (2005)
‘MPs back tough new penalties for rapists’, Daily Nation, 28 April; Emman
Omari (2005) ‘Apprehension as MPs vote for castration bill’, Daily Nation,
28 April; Ory Okolloh (2005) ‘Rape: focus on the victim’s needs’, Daily
Nation, 9 May; Rosemarie M. Onyando (2006) ‘Cultural values, my foot!
This is rape’, Daily Nation, 28 April; Odhiambo Orlale (2006) ‘Members
cast fear aside to discuss taboo subject’, Daily Nation, 30 April; Billow
A. Kerrow (2006) ‘Islam quite comfortable with sex bill’, Daily Nation, 4
May; Emmo W. Opoti (2006) ‘Sexual bill won’t stop rape; toss it out’, Daily
Nation, 9 May; Chris Foot (2006) ‘Sex bill unjust and nonsensical’, Daily
Nation, 9 May; Oyunga Pala (2006) ‘Why we must embrace this bill’, Daily
Nation, 13 May; Alexander Eichener (2006) ‘An offence against humanity’,
KenyaImagine, 30 November. All accessed 10 June 2010.
9 Mwangi Githau (2005) ‘MP’s campaign to stem tide of sexual offences’,
Sunday Nation, 13 March, accessed 11 June 2010.
10 Kenya Episcopal Conference, ‘Statement on the sexual offences bill’,
http://www.kec.or.ke/news.asp?ID=7, accessed 3 January 2011.
11 Athman Aram and Mathias Ringa (2006) ‘Muslim Council supports
sex bill, criticises male MPs’, East African Standard, 29 April, accessed 3
January 2011.
12 Wanjiru Muiruri (2006) ‘There’s hidden agenda in sex crimes bill’, Daily
Nation, 28 March, accessed 3 January 2011.
13 Lauren Berlant and Michael Warner (1998) ‘Sex in public’, Critical Inquiry,
24(2): 549.
14 Daily Nation (2006) ‘Join Forces on Sex Bill’, 1 April, accessed 3 January
2011.
15 Daily Nation (2006) ‘Engrossing debate as sex bill is brought to the house
of the floor’, 30 April, accessed 3 January 2011.
16 Lee Edelman (2004) No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive, Durham,
NC, Duke University Press.
17 Kennedy Lumwamu and Tom Matoke (2006) ‘MPs take sex bill war
home’, Daily Nation, 1 May, accessed 4 January 2011.
18 Owino Opondo (2006) ‘House passes sexual offences bill’, Daily Nation, 1
June, accessed 4 January 2011.
19 Kenya Government (2009) National Policy On Culture and Heritage,
Nairobi, Government Printer: 1.
20 Kenya Government (2009): 32.
21 See Luise White (1990) The Comforts of Home: Prostitution in Colonial
Nairobi, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, and Tabitha Kanogo (2005)
African Womanhood in Colonial Kenya, Oxford, James Currey.
22 1885 was the date of the Berlin Conference, the infamous Scramble
for Africa; 1952 was the ‘official’ start of Kenya’s nationalist struggle,
in which the Mau Mau took a foundational role; and in 1963, Kenya
achieved independence from the British.
287
23 Within Kenya’s post-independence history, the most famous case on

the complications of inter-ethnic marriage was that staged between
the widow of S.M. Otieno, Wambui Otieno, and his clan members.
See Patricia Stamp (1991) ‘Burying Otieno: the politics of gender and
ethnicity in Kenya’, Signs 16(4): 808–45; April Gordon (1995) ‘Gender,
ethnicity, and class in Kenya: “Burying Otieno” revisited’, Signs 20(4):
883–912; David Cohen and E.S. Atieno Odhiambo (1992) Burying S.M.:
The Politics of Knowledge and the Sociology of Power in Africa, London,
James Currey. More recently, Wambui Otieno has also been the focus
of controversy for marrying a man several years her junior. See Grace
A. Musila (2005) ‘Age, sex and power in modern Kenya: a tale of two
marriages’, Social Identities, 11(2): 113–29.
24 Neville Hoad (2000) ‘Arrested development or the queerness of savages:
resisting evolutionary narratives of difference’, Postcolonial Studies,
3(3): 133–58; and Cindy Patton (2002) ‘Stealth bombers of desire:
the globalisation of “alterity” in emerging democracies’, in Arnaldo
Cruz-Malavé and Martin F. Manalansan IV (eds) Queer Globalisations:
Citizenship and the Afterlife of Colonialism, New York, New York University
Press: 195–218.
25 Here, I depart from the standard queer critique that the state should get
out of the business of legislating intimacy. While I acknowledge the many
problems of state-sanctioned intimacy, I am also wary of approaches that
alienate the state, approaches that may not be appropriate or possible in
a space such as Kenya.
26 To be fair, the sentence might be complete and coherent, but my disbelief
at its naked heterocentrism forces me to read it as incoherent. This is
what is properly called an ‘interested’ reading.
27 See Wairimu Ngaruiya Njambi and William E. O’Brien (2000) ‘Revisiting
“woman–woman marriage”: notes on Gikuyu women’, NWSA Journal,
12(1): 1–23.
28 Even non-identity based categories, such as men who have sex with men
(MSM), threaten the family, as Andil Gosine (2009) explains in ‘Monster,
womb, MSM: the work of sex in international development’, Development
52(1): 30:
The transgressions of the MSM are many. He breaks legal codes

forbidding sodomy and homosexuality, undermines the institution
of the heterosexual marriage through his participation in sexual
acts that undermine it (since many, if not most MSM, are married
men), and he disrupts hetero:homosexual frameworks, through
his refusal to perform or attach himself to a fixed sexual identity.
These practices are all requirements of dominant Euro-American
forms of sexual regulation. Indeed, what is particularly interesting
about development work conducted in the name of protecting the
MSM (or protecting society from him) is its emphasis on protecting
key features of Euro-American sexual regulation practices: the
288
heterosexual couple, the public declaration and reification of

identity and state-mediation of sexual practice.
29 A draft of the bill is available at http://www.mzalendo.com/Bills.Details.
php?ID=40.
30 Caroline Njung’e (2009) ‘Kenya marriages face drastic makeover’, Daily
Nation, 1 May, accessed 7 January 2010.
31 Mutua (2010).
32 Reproductive Health Matters (2007) ‘Legislating against sexual violence in
Kenya: an interview with the Hon. Njoki Ndungu’, 15(29): 150.
33 Michel-Rolph Trouillot (1995) Silencing the Past: Power and the Production
of History, Boston, MA, Beacon Press: 70–107.
289
29
Nhorondo – mawazo yetu:

tracing life back: our reflections
– life story
Zandile Makahamadze and Kagendo Murungi
We are old friends. We met at the first African International

Lesbian and Gay Association (ILGA) conference in 1999, in
Johannesburg, South Africa. We came from different backgrounds
but ultimately have the same purpose; our futures became woven
as we went on to build what has become a life-sustaining family
friendship. Our story begins at the point of our meeting, with the
issues and circumstances that led us both to be in Johannesburg
that September 1999.
Zandile Makahamadze is the ex-chairperson and advocate for
women’s involvement and programmes at Gays and Lesbians of
Zimbabwe (GALZ), and Kagendo Murungi is the founding Africa
programme officer at the International Gay and Lesbian Human
Rights Commission (IGLHRC). It is our hope that our shared
lessons from the past 15 years as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender
and gender non-conforming (LGBTGNC) African activists will
increase the visibility of US-based activism and specific formative
moments in organising on the continent. We also seek a grounded
sense of unity with fellow activists and initiatives in Africa and are
inspired to participate in the creation of resources for the sustained
development of versatile movements.
The mid-1990s marked our entry into the realm of social justice
activism for African LGBTGNC liberation. Our entry points were
different, Zandile then having been based in Harare, Zimbabwe, and
Kagendo in New York, US. Zandile became involved with GALZ
through the process of exploring her sexuality and was active with
290
29 TRACING LIFE BACK: OUR REFLECTIONS
the organisation from 1997 to 2002. Kagendo, having joined the

IGLHRC contingent to the UN Fourth World Conference on Women
in Beijing, China, was one of the organisers of daily activities at the
lesbian tent at the NGO forum in Huairou, China, and subsequently
took a job at IGLHRC, where she served alternately as a staff
member and consultant between 1996 and 2003.
Zandile served as a board member and Africa regional
representative at the ILGA from 1999 to 2002, while Kagendo
served on the International Grants Panel of the Astraea Lesbian
Foundation for Justice between 1996 and 2001. We both have
a history of involvement in Uhuru-Wazobia, an African LGBT
organisation based in New York, of which Kagendo was a founding
member, and with Liberation for All Africans (L4AA), an ad hoc
committee of African LGBTGNC people and allies in New York.
Past work
Kagendo: Why did you join GALZ and what was the impact of
your participation as a black lesbian?
Zandile: Where I grew up you were either a woman or a man
and had to be married to the opposite sex. I didn’t fit into those
categories so I was always curious and wanted to find out more
about myself. I discovered GALZ in 1995, by coincidence at the
Zimbabwe National Book Fair. President Mugabe had referred to
homosexuals as ‘lower than dogs and pigs’ and called for them to
be banned from the fair. Circumstances prohibited me from join-
ing GALZ until 1997. I was in a very violent situation, living with
the father of my two children who had raped and impregnated
me with my first child at 14. No one could take care of me and this
man forced me to live with him. I was dealing with a lot of trauma
from being raped and abused mentally, physically and psychologi-
cally. In 1995, the Zimbabwe Women Writers offered me a full-time
job, which helped me financially to get out of my situation, and
two years later I was involved with GALZ. I joined because l was
looking for people who identified like me in terms of my sexuality.
It was very exciting because that’s what I had been looking for.
I made a difference for other women, by making the place more
accommodating, comforting and enjoyable. But it wasn’t easy
because GALZ had its own ways of operating; it didn’t really
291
welcome black lesbians or women in general. It had its own judg-

ments, which proved to be stressful when l got more involved
with the organising. I consoled myself by saying, ‘I am here now,
it can’t get any worse.’ I knew what l wanted and was going to get
it despite not having support. Keith Goddard, the head of GALZ,
was a white man and maybe it was hard for him to embrace lesbi-
ans because his views were like most straight men.
Prior to the IGLHRC, had you worked with any lesbian, gay,
bisexual, transgender (LGBT) organisations?
Kagendo: At Rutgers University I had been a member of student
organisations like the Women of Colour Collective, with Cheryl
Clarke as our advisor, and a student-staff person at the Center
for Women’s Global Leadership. I was also blessed to have had
Abena Busia as my thesis advisor. These teachers exposed me to
Black and African feminist theory, African women writers, lesbian
poetry and global gender rights organising, so I had a strong
identity as an African feminist.
My undergraduate thesis was on representations of African
lesbians in literature by African women writers. I struggled to
find evidence of African lesbians and the first documented gay
African I found was Simon Nkoli, in an IGLHRC newsletter. I
also managed to find a statement by an African lesbian from
Mozambique who had testified before the UN in the late 1980s.
In 1995, when I went to the UN Fourth World Conference on
Women in Beijing as part of IGLHRC’s contingent, I became even
more politicised on African lesbian issues, as a coalition of lesbian
organisations from around the world lobbied the UN to recognise
discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation within the con-
ference platform for action. I then took a position at IGLHRC and
began to learn how to apply a human rights approach to LGBT
liberation on the continent.
Were there specific strategies that you brought to GALZ and
did you have support from any regional or international allies?
Zandile: The strategies that I implemented were from my life
experiences. Part of it was also the knowledge I got in GALZ
during my early days as an executive member, as well as a vice-
chairperson and then chairperson.
I attended my first ILGA conference in South Africa in 1999,
292
and was nominated as a board member to represent the African

region. This was my first exposure to international lesbian and
bisexual women’s workshops. I gained more knowledge and ideas
about strategies for women’s involvement. I also learned ways of
lobbying international alliances to find support within Zimbabwe
because our platform as GALZ wasn’t working. We wanted to
reach out to other organisations and work together. Some organi-
sations started to inform us about public demonstrations they
were holding. My work resulted in the increase of women’s partici-
pation and inclusion of women’s programmes in GALZ.
What challenges did you face in your work to establish the
IGLHRC Africa programme as an African located outside the
continent?
Kagendo: In founding the Africa programme I had inherited
a couple of folders containing materials mainly from southern
African LGBT organisations and letters from African lesbian
and gay individuals scattered about the continent. A lot of LGBT
groups outside southern Africa were organised as HIV/AIDS
organisations and even ‘gay and lesbian’ organisations seemed
predominantly gay. No real continental network existed yet, so I
had to build bridges.
Since the most visible writings about African homosexuality
at that time were anthropological texts by white men, I began to
collect these writings along with writings from Sister Namibia and
other colleagues in Africa and created a bibliography for research
on issues of homosexuality and LGBT rights in Africa, which we
circulated to university libraries and LGBT allies in the US.
I prioritised reaching out to African women’s, HIV/AIDS,
human rights and development organisations throughout Africa
in an effort to build support for LGBT African issues, even though
a lot of times their responses made me feel like a spectacle, when
they did respond.
Why did you move to the US and did that change your rela-
tionship to organising in Zimbabwe and with international LGBT
organisations?
Zandile: My life was threatened because I was so involved in les-
bian/bisexual women’s rights advocacy. Not realising how much
l was endangering myself and my family, I attended events as
293
GALZ’s chairperson and gave public speeches that non-gay peo-

ple attended. Many people knew of my direct involvement, and
wanted to silence me. I relied on public transportation, so they
followed me everywhere, shouting profanities, telling me to quit
GALZ or else they would get physical. Strangers called on my
phone, verbally abusing me with all these threats. I had to change
my residence three times to avoid harassment. When my home
was attacked I immediately decided to leave the country. I was
doing this work as an individual, but my family was also paying
the price. I didn’t want them to keep paying the price, so I left.
I was living in Waterfalls with my girlfriend when we got
attacked, and we went to the police to file a report. The officers
refused to take our report; they said that they knew we were les-
bians, and told us that they already knew where we lived. They
accused us of causing these attacks on ourselves and said they
weren’t going to waste their resources by letting us make a report.
I asked them how we were causing these attacks, and they said it
was because of how we lived our lives. They also said that if we
lived like everybody else, whatever was happening would stop.
They asked why we were sleeping with women, and also said
because of that they were not going to protect us since we were
instigating these attacks.
Without protection it became impossible to remain in an unsafe
country; I finally visited my sister and her husband and told them
about my decision to leave Zimbabwe. I asked them if they could
take care of my children since l couldn’t depart with them. They
agreed and made arrangements for them to continue schooling. I
resigned my job and went to the Netherlands ILGA conference in
2002. I was heartbroken that my family was now apart and I knew
that it was going to take time for us to reunite.
My decision also affected my relationship with GALZ. I was
still willing to work with the organisation as an active member
outside the continent. I had proposed several ways to Keith, who
had originally agreed, but all of a sudden he changed his mind. I
was shocked because l didn’t know how the change came about.
When I contacted other GALZ members they didn’t respond. I
then realised that they didn’t want to have anything to do with
me, and was hurt. I felt so abandoned by this organisation and all
that I had done for it.
294
As an African regional representative, I wrote a resignation

letter to the ILGA. The secretary general, Kursad Kahramanoglu,
was very supportive and told me that I didn’t have to resign. I
told him that I needed to step aside and focus on rebuilding my
life and then return later. I contacted several organisations in the
USA, but l realised that their politics were more advanced than
mine. They were in the stages of lobbying the government, while
I was still struggling to be recognised by the Zimbabwean gov-
ernment. I decided to focus on myself, with my life, and without
certain worries.
Did you encounter difficulties because of your African identity
while working as a staff person at an international LGBT human
rights organisation?
Kagendo: It was mind-boggling managing all the contradictions I
faced. In the context of human rights advocacy, the people whose
rights are being advocated for are cast as the content providers
(African LGBT victims) and the advocates are cast as the authori-
tative producers of knowledge from that content (white and/or
male citizens of the US or Europe). In this paradigm, to be an
African immigrant human rights advocate is self-contradictory.
As a staff person at a US non-profit, I was compensated for
my movement work. I didn’t realise how challenging it would
become to generate resources to maintain a tangible ongoing
relationship to LGBT organising in Africa as an African in the US
working outside the non-profit industrial complex.1
How do you view your role in the African LGBT movement as
an African in the US?
Zandile: In their eyes we don’t exist, but we can play a very vital
role when it comes to African LGBT issues. I remember in 2007
we went to the South African consulate in New York to protest
against the rape and murder of two South African lesbians in
Soweto because of their sexual orientation. We had to protest
about how wrong it was that these women had been tortured and
killed and yet South Africa is the only African country that legal-
ises same-sex marriages. I would like to do something more than
just react to what is happening.
What were your experiences as an immigrant in international
human rights advocacy?
295
Kagendo: As an immigrant, movement building was central to

everything that I did. There were times when this felt at odds
with human rights advocacy as far as it privileges lobbying gov-
ernments, regional and international bodies. While protective
legislation is critical, I kept witnessing LGBT lobbyists from the
continent facing tremendous repercussions including being mur-
dered in isolation upon return to their local communities.
I have no doubt that my movement-building approach as an
African immigrant in the US at that time helped direct critical
resources to activists and organisations in Africa and supported
the growth of regional networks. My work at IGLHRC along with
my US location led to my term on the international grants panel
at the Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice.
Present reflections
Kagendo: Based on your history, why is it important for you to
have been included in a queer continental publication like this
one and what do you think the impact of your visibility will be?
Zandile: The higher authorities in Africa don’t acknowledge our
existence as LGBT people, so if they hear our views they will look
deeper into history and realise that we have always existed in
Africa. The publication will be authentic to our existence. It also
strengthens those who are going through similar struggles.
As Africans it’s important to our work, it also gives hope to
many activists. We can’t stay in the closet anymore, neither can we
be silent about these injustices. We can’t let people abuse us. They
have to know that we have a right to be.
What do you feel should be prioritised in advocating for
change in the African region?
Kagendo: Cultural production is critical because as Africans part
of the process of colonisation was the attempted destruction and
erasure of our cultures. Part of what was made invisible is the
legitimacy of different family structures and sexualities within
our traditions. Since bigots and opportunists use ‘culture’ to
erase our existence, part of decolonising ‘culture’ means creating
our own dynamic culture by participating in productions like
this publication, which are documenting contemporary African
296
voices on gender, sexuality and liberation. Bringing together

more instances of documented African experience and analysis is
very important. Creating channels for LGBT African activists to
share analysis and strategise without the intrusion of any external
‘expertise’ on our lives is essential.
Did you have any help when you sought asylum and what
have your main sources of support been as an immigrant?
Zandile: I did source a lot of support and am very grateful to
have had your personal support throughout this process. Upon
my arrival I was helped by a couple in San Diego with room and
board. I tried to seek asylum there but couldn’t find an attorney
to help me. You, Kele and Nguru Karugu from Uhuru-Wazobia,
an African LGBT group in New York, sent me some money, which
enabled me to relocate to Chicago where another Uhuru-Wazobia
member tried to help me to seek asylum, but was unsuccess-
ful. You also asked a staff person from IGLHRC’s asylum pro-
ject to send me a Zimbabwe asylum information packet. Some
Uhuru-Wazobia members wrote me letters of encouragement,
including Kelebohile Nkhereanye, who used to call me as well
as send messages. I contacted Pradeep Singla from the Lesbian
and Gay Immigration Rights Task Force, who referred me to
my attorney Heather Bertz from the Lesbian and Gay Refugee
Advocacy Project. I was in contact with Anjana Suvarnananda
from the Astraea Foundation, who referred me to her friend in
Connecticut who was going through a divorce and needed some-
one to care for her 18-month-old son. After three weeks I relocated
to Connecticut to take care of him and started my asylum process.
I will always appreciate Heather for advocating for me, as well
as all those who helped me. My family has been a big source of
support throughout my struggles and my eldest sister has always
been my source of inspiration. She and my friend from Belgium
helped me buy a ticket to the US. My sister, her husband and
family as well as my children helped me to stay stronger. They
encouraged me to believe in myself.
What price did you pay working as an LGBT African activist in
isolated and possibly hostile environments?
Kagendo: There were many sacrifices related to the need to be
adaptable and creative for the sake of balancing the personal with
297
the political in the fast-changing, highly charged climate of fight-

ing for LGBT rights in Africa.
As a feminist, it was important that my experiences along with
the documented needs and growing knowledge base of LGBT
Africans inform the directions and strategies in my work. At one
point I found it strategically necessary to use an alias in my work.
This sort of autonomy in our self-identification is essential for
our own sense of protection and peace of mind as LGBT African
activists and should be a standard in research, documentation
and advocacy on these issues.
At another point I chose to identify by my first name without
my surname to symbolise my taking the responsibility of my
visibility on myself without implicating my family. I confronted
the appearance of being a lone lesbian African activist by claiming
the Africa Southwest Asia Network (ASWAN), which appeared
on my business cards along with my first name for a strategic,
community-identified visibility. I think I was also wrestling with
a battle-weary feeling of unbelonging and seeking ways to engage
with my co-workers and the broader movement about what
experiences and knowledge legitimately inform the strategies we
choose in our work.
Have you been active since you have been in the US and can
you share any examples of victories and challenges in your work?
Zandile: I have managed to advocate for my asylum case, which
was granted a year after my arrival. You and I participated in
Uhuru-Wazobia; it didn’t last long because I was interested in
activism and the space was for social networking. We also formed
Liberation 4 All Africans and worked out a plan of action to pro-
test against the ongoing rapes and killings of South African lesbi-
ans. We were able to advocate for the South African consulate in
New York to receive our letter of grievances, in which we asked
the government to intervene and bring the culprits to justice. Lots
of individuals and some organisations came out in full force in
our support.
What role have others played in helping balance your place in
the movement?
Kagendo: We had formed Uhuru-Wazobia, a continental African
LGBT support and advocacy group, in New York in 1995, and I
298
was able to seek refuge and solace there while building commu-
nity. The group was made up of mostly gay men, a small group of
lesbians and a few gender non-conforming and transgender peo-
ple. The recurring internal ideological clash was between those
who wanted to be more politically active and those who wanted
to remain a social support space. My most grounding relation-
ships were with the feminists in the group, who helped sustain
and develop my political analysis, the few men who understood
the necessity for organising for gender equity and my fabulous
transgender and gender non-conforming folks who kept pushing
the boundaries and redefining gender.
A handful of gender non-conforming people formed L4AA,
an ad hoc committee to address a spate of rapes and murders
of lesbians in South Africa in 2007. The committee expanded to
include None On Record, Less AIDS Lesotho and IGLHRC. L4AA
co-organised a rally outside the South African consulate in New
York with the Audre Lorde Project and a large group of trained
activists of colour.
Why do you think it’s so difficult to qualify for funding as a
queer African activist in the US and how do you think this affects
our ability to work in relation to the continent?
Zandile: It is difficult because of the standards set by the funders.
They need to understand that we have nowhere else to go for fund-
ing, we are here, and we are also Africans. We should qualify for
something so that we can advocate. Our limited funds should be
considered as a high priority because we want to fight for the same
issues we have been fighting for while in Africa. There is a limita-
tion to what can be done without funding. Financially we have
nothing, we can’t keep on taking away from our basic necessities.
For our work to be successful we should do it with an open heart,
not with reservations. For example, anti-gay legislation in Uganda
and all state-sponsored homophobia throughout the continent
need to be challenged. We don’t have the resources to protest about
such injustices, but every issue needs a voice. The voice becomes
stronger when it’s coming from all corners of the world.
Do you feel like you agree with the current LGBT African
struggles as opposed to the struggles in the US? How do you
advocate in both movements?
299
Kagendo: Aside from all the general similarities of walking in the

world as Africans, we are ultimately fighting for the same thing:
to de-stigmatise our existence and popularise our struggle in our
communities for the sake of equality, justice and peace. We’re
working to create autonomous resources for change, develop
new ideologies and empower ourselves. I feel that while we have
similarities, we haven’t compared notes yet. Our everyday chal-
lenges may be different, depending on individual class positions,
for example, but the philosophical and ideological challenges we
face are the same. I think the big obstacle is that we haven’t had
a chance to reveal the actual substance of ourselves to each other
and exchange ideas directly to discover how much we share in
common, identify and understand what is really different, and
discover a whole new set of resources with which to move for-
ward jointly.
When I think about how I advocate in both movements, the
main way that I’ve always advocated is by finding different ways
to be visible, to make sexual orientation visible, to make gender
identity visible, advocating for the right to dissent, the right to
advocate, the right to self-determine and to continue to fight tooth
and nail for direct connections between Africans in the diaspora
and Africans on the continent.
Practical tools
Kagendo: What do you think the link is between spiritual practice
and social change?
Zandile: The two interlink because spiritual practice advocates
for social change. Spirituality always considers the well-being of
others and also becoming better people. Society has set itself up
to ensure it has the final say; it punishes those who don’t abide by
its social ‘norms’. This approach affects anyone who doesn’t fit its
categories of normal. That’s why we advocate for change so that
society will change its ways.
I sustain myself as a spiritual being through following the
Christian beliefs with which I was raised. I read the Bible and
pray. I also try to live in harmony with myself, as well as my
surroundings. I hope that one day we are all going to embrace
each other and be non-judgmental.
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How did you stay grounded and focused in your initiatives as

an advocate for human rights and social justice?
Kagendo: I realised in a conversation with one of my spir-
itual teachers, a Ugandan Buddhist monk named Bhante
Buddharakkhita, that for many years I hadn’t been breathing. In
doing human rights work, you have to react to so much negative
energy every day.
When I started doing that work, my self-care was out of
balance with my work since I was working sometimes 16-hour
days because I was overwhelmed by the sheer volume, violence
and urgency of the cases and the knowledge that my community
was under attack. I realised that I had to work an eight- to nine-
hour day and build relaxation and movement into my weekly
schedule or I was going to keep burning out at shorter intervals.
The thing that really hit me when I started meditating is that
you can’t possibly advocate for someone else’s justice when you
don’t have peace in your own mind. So meditation and studying
the Dhamma is part of my practice of staying mindful, focused
and grounded, and telling stories is also part of it.
How have you healed from personal and political crisis over
the past 15 years, and have you found networks of support for
yourself both in Zimbabwe and the US?
Zandile: I have healed myself by acknowledging that I did my
best to create changes in Zimbabwe’s LGBT movement and also
through sharing my struggles with family and friends. I wrote
short stories, and drew self-expressive sketches about these strug-
gles. I was able to get counselling during the asylum process,
which was a great step forward. Counsellors helped me to replace
maladaptive behaviour with new habits. I networked and got sup-
port from others, mostly from you, Kagendo and Kele. You both
restored my faith in the movement and made me realise that there
are other things to focus on rather than being angry. My sister vis-
ited to strengthen me; I mostly called and emailed her to talk about
my crisis. She taught me to meditate and take long walks for health
reasons. My family was the most powerful tool; they helped me
come to terms with my struggles. My partner Davita and the kids
love me and that’s the cream that tops it up. I am still working on
better and healthier ways of furthering my activism.
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How have you grown as an advocate of change considering

your experiences and accomplishments over the past 15 years?
Kagendo: Possibly the main thing I’ve learned is a true sense of
responsibility to myself, my family (birth and chosen), country
and continent and as a citizen of the world. There is a sense in
which my personal development occurred alongside the growth
of the LGBT African movement so that the movement’s coming
of age has marked different stages of my adulthood. Through
my changing relationship to advocacy I became more and more
proactive in structurally supported ways, either by shifting the
structure or building a whole different structure. I learned to
always apply my lived experience in my approaches to the work,
and that utilising the same techniques without trying any new
ideas won’t fundamentally change the movement in ways that we
want. I learned that I had to keep finding ways to bring my own
experiences to the work and make myself visible in African libera-
tion: my movement and my passion.
I have learned that it is important to detach in order to regain
perspective when bitterness or frustration takes root because that
internalised anger too easily becomes self-destructive, feeding
isolation and fear. One of my spiritual teachers, a sangoma named
Prudence Mabele, always reminds me that it’s not a matter of
evil people versus good people but rather negative energy versus
positive energy, both of which can be accessed by anyone.
Another of my teachers, Jacqui Alexander, taught me that if the
suppression of our spirituality was involved in the process of our
colonisation and enslavement as African people then spirituality
must be part of our liberation movements as well.
If you’re breathing, conscious and mindful enough you can
choose what energy to direct in response to anything external
that occurs. I learned that it’s important to take time away from
the intensity of the work and spend time with trusted friends,
get enough rest, meditate, take long walks on the beach, swim,
dance and create art. I have to remember that I’m a daughter,
sister, cousin, aunt and grand-aunt and I need to give energy to
understanding my role and responsibilities as a whole person.
Have you had access to spaces and resources to develop your
activism and learning as a queer African activist in the US?
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Zandile: I had to find help on my own, especially from friends

and family. My friends Lauren and Carol informed me about
educational programmes where I acquired a high school diploma,
and was able to get a government grant for an associate’s degree
programme. I will be graduating at the end of this year. I am still
working on international publication.
What mechanism did you use to cope with the isolation and
lack of access to resources?
Kagendo: One of the biggest ways I’ve coped with isolation is by
finding tools to overcome my own sense of fear when it arises,
a fear that would keep me from continuing to push myself and
other Africans to fight for equality. At different points you get
tired of pushing endlessly and receiving the same kind of igno-
rant backlash, knowing that it’s coming from the state, the media,
religious institutions, and even your own family. So I committed
myself to using video to document my existence and that of all
my communities.
As for inaccessible resources, I think we’ve been really creative
as a community over the years, from personal loans to and from
friends including yourself, to fundraising parties, and a couch to
sleep on when the need arises. These expressions of the resources
we generate from our own labour always challenge me to rethink
the definition of movement resources because money itself is just
another form of energy that is exchanged. This conversation with
you is opening my mind to just how much of a critical resource the
work we’re doing right now in interviewing each other is for me.
When you look back, is there something that you might have
done differently?
Zandile: Maybe I could have tried highlighting differently the
importance of lesbian and bisexual women’s issues to gay men in
Zimbabwe. I could have asked for gender-sensitive workshops; it
might have been easier to bring awareness that way, than when
everyone is criticising you.
I wish I had better ways of communicating with the African
region, and being more connected with them while in Zimbabwe.
Probably they could have had better outcomes of their plights;
but because of limited funds and resources it was very hard to
communicate with them.
303
I also wish I had had more information about the asylum

process before coming here; it would have been less stressful for
me.
When you look back, is there something you wish you could
have done differently?
Kagendo: I’ve really been thinking about it and I realise that I
would do it all over again because this work has made me who
I am. It has transformed my life through intense joy, tremendous
pain and endless soul searching. I welcome it as part of my des-
tiny and understand the experiences of this work in the context of
all the events in my life since I was born.
Before I got into international LGBT human rights advocacy,
I was studying social documentary production. It’s not a regret
but I wish I had found a way to keep this practice in my life
throughout that time. Keeping a video diary of my experiences
would have been cathartic and viewing it might have nurtured
a better balance between my work and my personal creative life
and kept me in touch with a medium that I love.
Note
1 For a definition of the ‘non-profit industrial complex’, see http://www.
incite-national.org/index.php?s=100.
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30
Tell the sun not to shine – fiction

Diriye Osman
It was Eid and I had no one to celebrate it with. I needed a sign

to point me either east or west. The sign came as a leaflet through
my letterbox. It was an invitation to Eid prayer at Peckham
mosque. The sign pointed south so I headed there.
At the mosque, everyone was in their Eid best. The Asian
and Somali men wore their best khamiises in grey and white.
The Nigerian men were dressed like sapeurs – shirts the colour
of flamingos, shoes made from crocodile leather. The Asian and
Somali women wore their best garbas and jilbabs in grey and black.
The Nigerian women were dressed like beauty queens – dresses
the colour of Fanta, shoes with clear heels. The children all ran
around with Nike ticks and leaping Pumas on their backs.
I went to the taps outside to perform ablution. An Asian kid in
a dove-grey khamiis guided me.
‘Go like this,’ he said, washing his hands and wrists three
times. I noticed he had bite marks on his toffee-brown wrists. I
copied him.
‘Go like this,’ he said, rinsing his mouth three times. I noticed
his bottom lip was purple and fat like a plum. I copied him.
‘Go like this,’ he said, drawing water into his nose and then
blowing it out three times. I noticed his nose had a cut the colour
of pastrami across its bridge. I copied him.
After ablution, it was time to pray. ‘Go,’ the boy said. So I went.
I placed my shoes by the door. The mosque smelt of feet, cologne
and samosas. The carpet felt like moss and the walls were white.
A chipped chandelier hung from the ceiling. The men sat near the
imam’s podium. There was a partition for the women at the back. I
crouched next to a man with jheri curls. He had six toes on his left
foot. When he wriggled his toes, the sixth one didn’t move.
305
‘Eid Mubarak, my brother,’ he said.

‘Eid Mubarak,’ I said.
‘I hope you find peace,’ he said, sensing my sadness.
‘I hope so too,’ I said. I wondered if his sixth toe gave him a
sixth sense.
The imam called out, ‘Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar!’ Everyone
stood up and raised their hands to their ears. Even though the
imam’s back was turned to me, I recognised his voice instantly. It
was Libaan. He was wearing an egg-white khamiis and skullcap.
His baritone was still as smooth as water.
As he said, ‘Allahu Akbar’ once more, I remembered the first
time we’d met. He had come from Somalia to spend the summer
with us in Nairobi. I was 14, he was 18.
The loudspeaker crackled as he now recited Surah Al-Fatiha.
His voice swooped and dived like a kite around the Arabic
syllables.
I remembered him towering over me. His skin was dark like
Oreos. He had two gold teeth. He introduced me to cigarettes. I
would choke on the smoke and he would say, ‘You’ll get there,
kid.’ Now I smoke 20 a day.
After Al-Fatiha, he recited Surah Lahab.
I remembered giving him my bed and sleeping on the floor. We
would stay up late and he would tell me about being a goatherd
in Somalia. I told him about my school in Nairobi and how
everyone there called me a refugee. ‘Next time,’ he said, ‘I’ll come
to your school and beat them up.’
When he said, ‘Allahu Akbar!’ we all bowed.
I remembered the first time I saw him naked. He was sleeping
and his bed-sheet had slipped down, revealing his buttocks. My
heart pounded. I leant closer. I wanted to touch him but was
terrified. I sat next to him on the bed and he didn’t wake up. I
touched his buttocks with trembling fingers and ran out of the
room. When I came back he was still sleeping. I squeezed his
buttocks gently and ran out of the room. When I came back he was
still sleeping. I tried to finger him but he jumped up and said, ‘For
fuck’s sake! I’m trying to get some sleep!’ I ran out of the room.
My face heated up now as he stood up and said, ‘Allah hears
those who praise him.’ I said, ‘Praise be to you, our Lord,’ in a
low tone.
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30 TELL THE SUN NOT TO SHINE
I was afraid he’d tell my parents. But instead the next day he
had offered me a Malboro. We snuck out of the back of the house
and smoked in silence. When we were done he ruffled my hair
and smiled a gold-toothed smile that said, ‘Let’s not mention this.’
I couldn’t look him in the eye.
Now he boomed ‘Allahu Akbar’ and the whole congregation
prostrated. He said ‘Allahu Akbar’ again and we prostrated once
more.
Instead of going to bed that night Libaan had lowered himself
onto my mattress and slid his hand under my blanket. His
hand gripped my penis. I was hard. His movements were slow,
deliberate. His palms felt as smooth as buttermilk. He smelt of
cigarettes and cherry bubblegum. He stroked me until my thighs
were moist, throat dry. When I came, he wiped his hands on his
trousers and crawled back into his bed. I went to sleep, satisfied
and scared and hopeful.
Libaan called out ‘Allahu Akbar’ and began reciting Surah
Al-Fatiha.
The next day we’d played football with the neighbourhood
kids. Libaan kept passing me the ball. Every time he did this, he
smiled a gold-toothed smile that said, ‘Nothing happened.’ He
was trying to dodge a life of complications. But at night, he would
place his hands, lips, tongue inside my world of complications.
We would catch strokes until it was time for morning prayers.
And then we would go about our day, wondering if the previous
night ever happened.
As the prayer came to an end, Libaan drew his face to the right
and said, ‘Asalamu aleykum wa Rahmatullah’ and then to the left and
did the same. We followed suit.
On the night before he returned to Somalia we lay together
on my dirty mattress. I pressed his palm on my lips. He kissed
my collarbone. We were desperate to prolong the moment. In the
moonlit room I could see him smiling a gold-toothed smile that
said, ‘Nothing even matters.’ As the time for morning prayer came
he whispered in my ear, ‘Tell the sun not to shine.’ I whispered,
‘I will if you promise to stay.’ He boarded a plane to Somalia the
next day.
Now he turned around and gave a lecture but I wasn’t listening.
All I noticed was his belly, which was round like a basketball. All
307
I noticed were his cheeks, which drooped like a bulldog’s jowls.

He still had two gold teeth but the rest were black. His beard had
been hennaed until it resembled a bush on fire.
‘May Allah bless you and your family on this joyous day,’
he was saying. ‘May you find peace and comfort and a sense of
fulfilment. Amin.’
‘Amin,’ the congregation said before getting up and heading for
the door. As people filtered out I felt an urge to speak to Libaan.
I wanted to tell him that I once dated an Irishman named Simon.
I wanted to tell him that I saw his face whenever I made love
to Simon.
I wanted to tell him that my parents disowned me when I came
out to them.
I wanted to vomit these words out.
But before I could, a woman in an ink-black jilbab and a young
boy dressed in a khamiis walked up to Libaan. He hugged the
woman and lifted the boy onto his shoulders. That’s when he saw
me. He tried to smile a gold-toothed smile that said many things:
‘Not here, not now,’ ‘I’m sorry,’ ‘I’m scared.’ But before he could
do it, before he could break my heart a million times over, I did
what I knew best.
I ran.
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31
What’s in a letter?
Valerie Mason-John
Using Western labels to identify a queer sensibility is problematic

when we try to place the same labels onto the continent of Africa.
You cannot look through a Eurocentric lens at Africa and begin
comparing. For example, same-sex relationships in Africa often
look different to what they look like in North America or Europe.
Most Africans do not have the luxury to leave a heterosexual
culture and set up home as two men or two women openly living
together in a same-sex relationship. What we may deem to be
bisexuality can look different in African countries. It is common
for women or men to stay in a heterosexual unit while in a
same-sex relationship, not because they necessarily want to, but
because if they were to set up home with their lover, they could be
attacked, at worst killed, or lose all financial subsistence.
But it is also important to acknowledge that there are African
men and women who have created their same-sex communities
and do live with their partners discreetly. Ironically, while many
of us in the West have the choice to be out or in the closet, it is the
same West, specifically England, which introduced homophobic
laws in many of our African countries. The Malawi couple who
threw a party in December 2010 to celebrate their engagement
were under threat of 14 years in prison due to an archaic British
law on unnatural acts and gross indecency.
Homosexuality is illegal in at least 37 countries on the African
continent. In Uganda,1 lawmakers are trying to introduce an
anti-homosexuality bill that has often been called the ‘Kill the
Gays Bill’. If passed, this bill would mean that someone found
guilty of aggravated homosexuality would receive the death
penalty, and any other homosexuality offence would mean life
imprisonment. It is therefore impossible to discuss, lesbian, gay,
309
bisexual, transgendered and intersex issues within the same

context as in the West.
The immediate concern in many African countries is often about
survival, how one can manage to survive in such a hostile climate.
The immediate concern for us in the West is same-sex marriage
and transgender rights. In countries such as Australia, America,
the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Denmark and a few
others, where there is some tolerance of same-sex relationships,
labels have been a defining part of that culture. These explicit
labels, I believe, have been a result of many people having the
opportunity and courage to come completely out of the closet.
These people can wave a banner, be on television, speak on radio
and shout out loud about what their sexuality or gender is and not
fear for their lives. This is not the case in Africa. Those who come
out of the closet often put their life and family at risk.
I am a second generation African born in England. Although
I have visited my country Sierra Leone, and have enjoyed the
underground queer community, I can hardly speak of it. I am
calling it queer, but in actual fact it is called a gay community, and
there are far more men out of the closet than women.
I have grown up with labels all my life. The first I remember
was orphan, the second, wog, the third, nigger, fourth, coon, and
then it became a bit of a blur. The first queer label put upon me
would have been when I was aged seven. I was called a tom boy,
and I loved it, was proud of it. It meant I could do anything as
well as or even better than some boys. I was a better goalie than
most boys of my age, and could climb trees just as high as any
boy, and do some of those dare-devil games boys did. I could
walk hand in hand and arm in arm with my female friends.
I knew clearly from the age of eight that I never wanted a man near
me. I didn’t know what it meant then. But after a black male tried to
ram his penis inside me, I knew I didn’t want it near me again. Of
course I had boyfriends as a teenager, but I never had sex with them.
I wasn’t interested. I was having too much fun with my mates.
When I was 13 I fell in love with a girl who sat in front of me
at school. I prayed to God to stop me thinking such evil thoughts.
Somewhere I had learnt that this was bad, but I had also learnt
that if a boy kissed you and touched your breasts at the same time
you could get pregnant. So I had a lot to relearn.
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31 WHAT’S IN A LETTER?
I fell in love aged 18 for the first time with a married woman.
I entered into a relationship with her while she stayed in her
marriage. I lived in the marital home, with their daughter, and it
was at this point I needed to start exploring.
My best friend clocked on and took me to my first lesbian
club. It was her way of telling me what I was. But when I entered
the bookshop Gay’s the Word in London and I saw the word
lesbian on the book shelves I felt repulsed. It was like someone
was saying I had a disease. The word looked so clinical on all the
books that stared back at me. I had an aversion to the word, and
could not identify with it. And why should I? The word lesbian
derives from a patron god called Lesbos, a whole Greek island
was named after him. Admittedly this was where Sappho was
born, but the fact remains, we are Lesbians because Sappho was a
Lesvian from Lesvos, just like all the other inhabitants of Lesbos
who are Lesvians (the V is pronounced as B in English). And so
my gut was right; I don’t want to be named after a man.
I went to Leeds University in the mid-1980s, and this opened
a door to separatism, feminism and left politics. I soon became a
dyke – I liked that term. It resonated, and later I learnt that dyke
derived from the American word ‘bulldyke’, and that the word
probably came from the African American culture because the
word appeared in blues songs of the 1930s, for example Bessie
Jackson’s 1935 recording of the song ‘BD Blues’.
For me the word dyke meant I was up front and in your face
about my sexual politics, and I was not going to compromise and
wear butch clothes. I could be as femme as I wanted and still be
a dyke. There were many of us, and of course it confused the
heterosexual community as well as some of the lesbian and gay
community. How could we want to sleep with women and wear
dresses or fancy clothes? We must be bisexual.
Interestingly, white lesbians coined the term ‘lesbian chic’
during the mid-1990s, but I had been chic in the 1980s. Many black
lesbians had always been chic; they had known no other because
in black communities in the UK you had to look good on the
streets, whether you were butch or femme or indeed heterosexual.
The black lesbian and gay community in London was most
definitely different from the mainstream white lesbian and gay
community in the 1980s and 1990s. We listened to reggae, ragga,
311
lovers and dub. We dressed up and rarely down, and we created

our own clubs, which were black only. Some of us were tired of
being refused entry to gay clubs, and did not want to spend the
whole night listening to white music.
The lesbian separatist movement also caused a division
between black and white women. The call to curfew all men was
not welcomed by the black lesbian community. Our black brothers
and fathers were already being regularly hassled on the streets by
the police. To bring a curfew against all men would just exacerbate
the racism against black men on the streets. It would be inevitable
that black men would be singled out if a curfew was introduced.
However, while at university I was a separatist for a while,
lived with women and only ever socialised with women. At
the centre of my life was a lesbian separatist politic. Then black
lesbian separatism confronted me, and I felt torn. I had already let
go of some great male friends, and now I was to let go of white
women. This was too limiting for me, I think because I had been
transracially placed in foster homes and orphanages and had
grown up with white carers.
Once I left university and moved to London I became more
immersed in the black women’s scene and began thinking about
my dyke identity within a black British context. In 1982 the late
Audre Lorde wrote her autobiography Zami: A New Spelling of My
Name. Some black British women ditched the labels lesbian, dyke,
butch or femme, and took on the new label ‘zami’. Audre Lorde
had finally given African-Caribbeans a name for their sexuality. In
those days I was passing myself as a Caribbean due to the stigma
of being African from the continent, but zami didn’t really work
for me. I liked it but I was happy with my dyke label.
I soon became aware of how attached I was to the labels: black,
woman, dyke and feminist. My whole life centred around these
labels. They were fixed and dictated how I felt, what I thought,
what I ate and who I socialised with. There was a thought police
in the community, and to be a dyke I had to be vegetarian and
have left politics. To be a black dyke I had to stop socialising
with the enemy – white people – and only date black lovers. So I
became aware of how limiting my life was becoming.
During the late 1990s I became exposed to queer politics.
‘Queer’ was initially reclaimed by predominantly white
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lesbians and gay men as a self definition. ‘Queer politics’,

which was typified by activist groups such as ACT UP and
Queer Nation, developed out of anger against the strategy of
gay assimilation into mainstream society, which had still failed
to win basic rights.
The early 1990s witnessed a wave of queer politics in the
UK, with men and women organising together. Separatism was
beginning to lose its attraction among the younger generation,
and a new lesbian and gay identity was being formed. I was
supposed to be liberated. I could go out, pack a dildo down
my pants and go out cruising gay men for the night, and have
‘raunchy sex’. And I could still have my lesbian politics and not
be classified as bisexual. ‘Bisexual’ was a dirty word once upon a
time among the lesbian community, and you hid it or suppressed
it through fear of being ostracised in the community.
Queer politics was perhaps the end of the lesbian police, those
academics who wrote papers about how lesbians should have sex
and who stated penetrative sex was aping heterosexuality. Queer
was the beginning of a new lesbian identity within the white
communities that many of us black lesbians were part of. Queer
politics were liberating for many and it is not surprising that in
the UK we began to see a whole drag culture develop.
Drag culture was fun. I could dress up, go on a Diane Torr
workshop2 and learn how to imitate or impersonate a man. Then,
everything became serious and some of my mates and lovers
were taking it one step further: they could take hormones and
experiment with being a male. Some happily transitioned while
others flirted with the idea.
Terms like lesbian and dyke began to fall off the agenda. They
were restrictive and the community was beginning to discuss
gender. The lesbian and gay community included trans men
and trans women, and people still wanted to socialise and do
politics together. Separatism was becoming something of the
past, and some of us were dating trans men. How did that define
us? Which category did that put of us in? When your friends or
lovers become men you have to make a world where you can all
happily exist. The women and men who were transitioning began
to create the spaces for all of us to co-exist. Queer seemed the most
appropriate label for all of us.
313
The younger generation, kids in their teens, are happily

identifying as queer. The teens I work with tell me that queer
means different. You can be lesbian, gay, bi, tri, trans and het and
be queer. I feel like queer has gone full circle. As a child growing
up in the 1960s and 1970s, queer meant different, odd. It was a
word adults used to describe people who didn’t live conventional
lives. So I was very much aware of queer as a child. The two
elderly women who had lived together for years, the man who
had been single all his life, the man who was effeminate, were all
queer, including the famous Dame Edna Everage.3
I began identifying as a Buddhist during the mid-1990s,
but soon realised I had just let go of a bunch of labels and had
attached myself to yet another. I didn’t want to be defined by a
label. I wasn’t a package that could be put up on a shelf and sold.
I just wanted to be me. When someone asks is she or he gay, is that
person trans, is this person queer, or are they intersex, these labels
and the answers to these questions tell me very little because
within them there is much fluidity and flexibility. What does ‘he’
mean or ‘she’ mean? They are not fixed, but we try to fix them,
and I wanted to unfix myself.
Up until now the most fluid of labels has been queer, I think
because it embraces all sexual identities. But then of course there
is a danger of forgetting those of us who are oppressed within the
queer label. So queer sits comfortably with me for now in terms
of defining a lifestyle – but I am more than a lifestyle or, indeed,
a sexuality.
No label does it for me. And does it matter? Who are we
defining ourselves for? The authorities? The census? Why are
labels so important? Once upon a time I was in the category of gay
and lesbian, then it changed to lesbian and gay, then lesbian, gay,
bisexual, then it became lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered,
and today it is lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered and
queer. Labels like zami, mati, which came out of the African-
Caribbean culture, never made it onto the mainstream list. But
for some black women they were first lesbian, dyke, womanist,
woman loving women, zami, mati, afrekeke. The younger black
generation seemed to have embraced the label queer, and the
ageing politicised too. But of course some are still holding onto
the old labels.
314
In 50 years will the letters SD, and H, be added to the

mainstream list? What’s in these letters? Sexual deviant and
heterosexual. Not sure I will live long enough to find out, but if I
do I will definitely be curious with what’s in a letter.
Notes
1 theGrio (2010) ‘Ugandan anti-gay pastor airs gay porn in church’, 18
February, http://www.thegrio.com/news/ugandan-anti-gay-pastor-airs-
gay-porn-in-church.php, accessed 10 December 2012.
2 Diane Torr is known for her man-for-a-day workshops. She is an
educator, drag king expert and male impersonator.
3 Dame Edna Everage is a TV character created and performed by the
Australian comedian Barry Humphries.
315
32
Does the label fit?

Liesl Theron
Introduction to cisgender
I would like to start by introducing ‘cisgender’. Defining cisgen-
der is to attribute the term to people who are conforming or agree
with the gender assigned to them by society, matching their gen-
der identity with their sex at birth. The term cisgender is mostly
known and used in the transgender community.
Trans through the eyes of scholars, feminists

and others
Transgender, transsexual and gender non-conforming people face
oppression in the most tangible way, being on the peripheries of
our gendered society. Living in an invariable struggle to validate
their existence, and many times being rejected by their loved ones,
transgender people constantly face marginalisation. Some femi-
nists critique transsexual people where on the one hand female-
to-male (FTM) transsexuals are portrayed as seeking to escape
oppression and gain (male) privileges, and on the other where
male-to-female (MTF) transsexuals are never fully accepted into
womanhood – as their appropriation of femininity is only an act.
These notions stem from the approach that a gendered experience
or identity can only be allocated to a given sex (Butler 2004: 9).
Butler goes on to say that this kind of feminist thinking is ignorant
of the risks, discrimination and humiliation trans people endure
in their day-to-day lives, from public harassment, lack of access
to services and opportunities, to loss of employment and more
severe forms of discrimination such as violence and hate crimes.
316
32 DOES THE LABEL FIT?
‘Thinking Sex’ (Rubin 1999 [1984]) is often seen as one of

the foundational texts in queer studies, as Rubin integrates the
politics of organising sex and sexual identities and behaviours in
society with the hierarchical systems of accepted practices. This
value system of approval of sexual behaviour by ‘ranking’ sexual
activity in groups, classes or hierarchies, whether by conservative,
liberal religious, secular feminist or patriarchal sectors, finds
itself under the critical eye of Rubin’s interrogative lens. In
Rubin’s theory, five ideological formations are used by societies
to regulate sex and bodies in addition to sexual essentialism.
Intrinsically, transsexualism and transvestism are found at the far
edges of all these models, beyond the margins of inclusion. Rubin
argues that feminist thought about sex is profoundly polarised
and has resulted in many struggles between sub-groups within
the larger feminist debate. Sexual liberation has been and will
always be claimed as a feminist goal.
In the same light Wilchins argues (2004: 125) that feminism as
a ‘movement founded to counter the marginalisation and erasure
of women – ends up in the paradoxical position of installing its
own margins and erasures’. Various individuals have sought
shelter and support from the women’s movement and feminists,
only to later find that their identity as stone butch, transsexual
men and women, cross-dressers, intersex, queer youth and
many other ways of self-identifying are the grounds for their
exclusion (Wilchins 2004: 125). Similarities of antagonism towards
trans people have been found in recent queer, LGBTI, women’s
and feminist spaces in South Africa and the region. Matebeni
(2009) concurs with this view in her account of the feminist
politics evident during a feminist leadership seminar held by
the Coalition of African Lesbians (CAL) in Mozambique in 2008.
Trans men and masculine-identifying people who were present
at the meeting said that they endlessly joined the struggle for
women’s rights and LGBT visibility and fight continuously for the
issues of the marginalised, yet receive no support or recognition
from feminists. It became apparent that African feminism needs
to revisit its way of working and offer new solutions to women’s
movements and feminisms in our continent. ‘A clear take-away
from the gathering is that the notion of feminism is still both
problematic and contentious’ (Matebeni 2009: 8).
317
During events such as at the CAL institute, and at workshops

and in informal discussions, it is easy to fall into the trap of
imposing on trans people how they should be defined. Without
any knowledge or experience of their lives, we dare to set the
boundaries of their transition (Cook-Daniels, 1998: 1). Loss of
community is a real concern, both for the transitioning person
and the partner (Cook-Daniels, 1998: 1), who in the case of male-
identifying trans persons is often a mixed-orientation dyad where
the FTM’s orientation is heterosexual and his female partner
defines as lesbian (Brown 2009: 3).
Dangers of homonormativity
Heteronormativity reinforces the ideology of the binary system,
where one of two opposites is the only possibility for identity
formation. Men/women, heterosexual/homosexual are embedded
in such a society. Furthermore, it is based on the assumption that
heterosexuality is the only desirable option (Steyn and van Zyl
2009: 3). With this creed goes the appropriate behaviour of the
bodies ‘trapped’ in it, living their daily lives in this either/or world.
In August 2007 a woman in Umlazi, KwaZulu Natal was stripped
naked and her shack burned down, to ‘punish’ her for not conform-
ing to rigid gender norms and the expectations of womanhood
– she was wearing trousers. She was not lesbian, nor trans. Too
little was said and written by women’s organisations, LGBT organi-
sations and feminists about this. It did not receive much media
coverage either. This incident occurred shortly after the murder of
Salome and Sizakele, two lesbians who were tortured, raped and
murdered because they dared to transgress the expected sexuality
norm. Women’s bodies are the site of heteronormative control and
‘nature’ or ‘natural’ becomes the tool to organise normativity (Steyn
and van Zyl 2009: 3–5). Vulnerable and minority groups are on the
receiving end of the invisible power of patriarchy.
The danger of heteronormativity to vulnerable groups
and minorities is evident as much as I want to argue that
homonormativity leaves a direct threat to transgender, transsexual
and gender non-conforming people. The ‘acting straight’
phenomenon is one of the ways to exclude transgender and
transsexual people; many trans people succumb to the pressure
318
to act straight, resulting in self-hate and eventually internalised

genderphobia (Wilchins 2004: 17) among gay and lesbian people.
The classic expression of some gay and lesbian folk who do not
want to affiliate with queer events, such as Pride marches or
festivals due to the ‘drag queens who are “over the top” and will
make us all look like that’ syndrome, just shows how embedded
transphobia is within gay and lesbian communities. The dismay
coming from a butch woman or dyke towards an FTM translates
into the same inner transphobia which reveals itself as a sneering
remark that trans men are betraying womanhood and that they
will lead to the false impression that ‘all lesbians want to be men’.
Trans people are often excluded from activities and programmes
run by LGBT organisations, which conveniently follow the trend
of reporting on the diversity of their constituency to donors in a
politically correct manner without any understanding of trans
issues among their staff and volunteers (Wilchins 2004: 29; Smit
2006: 286, 287). Namaste argues (2005: 51–54) that transsexuals and
transgenders are silenced within the gay and lesbian communities
unless they agree to the ideologies or promote gay and lesbian
agendas.
The lack of trans services programmes in LGBTI organisations
is balanced by the (finally) new trend among donors: long-awaited
transgender funding. In the past two or three years, more and
more (of the limited LGBTI donors) have realised and explicitly
decided to fund transgender organisations, programmes and
initiatives. This has led to the more opportunistic organisations
scrambling for much needed funds by developing new
transgender projects and programmes in a very short period. This
is commendable. However, one still needs to weigh up the impact
of ad hoc, haphazard programmes for transgender constituents
juxtaposed against no programming at all. Naturally, one does
not want to criticise the newly found enthusiasm for transgender
programmes at LGB(TI) organisations, yet one must wonder how
good they can be if they are (only) financially motivated. Will
these programmes be developed, implemented and managed
by transgender people? Will transgender people receive skills,
training and guidance on how to run these programmes? Are
there top management transgender staff employed at these
LGB(TI) organisations? Do they have trans board members?
319
Looking for transgender role models, when

there ain’t any
Lesbian and gay people worldwide have over the years been
blamed for claiming trans role models and personalities in their
history making. It is no different in South Africa. In one of the
earlier works on the subject, Defiant Desire: Gay and Lesbian Lives
in South Africa (Gevisser and Cameron 1994) one reads about the
story of Gertie Williams, which dates back to 1955. The chapter
was written using extracts from historical newspaper and maga-
zine clippings. In these Williams related a strong desire to be seen
as a man, mentioned praying to God every night to be merci-
fully changed into a man so as to avoid the risk of an operation,
and said that no pain would be too high a price. Williams also
abandoned dresses and make-up, declaring to family members
she would have no more use for them: ‘I wanted to be a man,
and nothing was going to stop me’ (Chetty 1994: 131). Although
this material was directly quoted from the Golden City Post of
1956, when the current language around transgenderism had not
emerged, the authors in 1994 did not think to add any footnotes,
recognising or acknowledging the possibility of a trans identity.
This is why Smit (2006: 283) righteously mentioned: ‘much of
South African trans history would have to be reclaimed…’.
In December 2006 South Africa became the fifth country in
the world, and the first on the continent, to allow people of the
same sex to marry. It was a huge accomplishment for LGBT
activism and equal rights for queers in South Africa. As much
as this was celebrated, including among transgender South
Africans and their partners, the new Civil Union Bill and its
implementation with regard to the old Marriage Act of 1961 did
not make provision for a number of transsexual people. Trans
couples, in any combination of their sexual orientation, could
now marry, regardless of whether they defined themselves as
same sex or heterosexual. The problem involved couples who
were previously married under the Marriage Act as heterosexual
couples where one partner had decided on transition. Regardless
of the amount of love the two persons declared for each other
and their intention to stay together, they were forced to get
divorced in order for the trans partner to reregister his or her
320
documentation at the Department of Home Affairs. This proved

to be a very traumatic experience, as Christelle explained: ‘all the
dignity your relationship is provided with is taken away’ (Judge
et al 2008: 337).
The gender and gender identity of trans people and their partners
are often pronounced as having multiple dimensions (Lenning 2008:
86, 87), which at times is confusing, complex and needs time to self-
analyse. Besides time to adjust, the two parties in the relationship
need to negotiate and discover what they are willing to compromise
about and what will not be acceptable (Lev 2004: 289).
It is also important to acknowledge that relationships where one
partner comes out as being trans are challenged with uncertainty
(from both partners) at many levels. Keketso confirmed this
(Theron 2009: 156) when she acknowledged her confusion when, as
a heterosexual woman, she was first attracted to her partner. It was
difficult for her to say she was lesbian, she could not get her head
around it until, after a while, she learned he was trans and about
to transition to male. Things then began to fall into place for her.
Sexual orientation is not only a concern for the heterosexual
partners of masculine-identifying trans people; lesbians also
scrutinise their orientation (Cook-Daniels 1998, Mason 2006,
Lenning 2008, Brown 2009). Redefining or questioning one’s
sexual orientation is complex. Some lesbians are well established
and ‘out’ in their communities and are challenged by many
prejudices, with an accompanying sense of loss of community
(Cook-Daniels 1998, Lev 2004, Brown 2009, Theron 2009). As
the male-identifying trans partner’s transition progresses and
he becomes well adjusted in society as male, it challenges and
stigmatises the lesbian partner who wants to continue claiming
her lesbian identity. One lesbian noted that being with an FTM
changed her identity from being a lesbian to the partner of an
FTM (Cook-Daniels 1998). Two years after that relationship
(with a trans man) ended, there were still lesbian activists and
friends who did not accept her back as a lesbian. Even after
she started dating her current partner, who is lesbian, ‘we had
many questions to answer explaining about her not being trans
and to verify that I am actually a lesbian’ (Theron 2009: 160). It
is a constant challenge for lesbian partners not to lose their own
identity as lesbians, while not outing their partners as trans. This
321
challenge requires ongoing sensitisation and training within the

lesbian community and beyond. ‘I can’t figure out how to be
“out” without jeopardising his right to be out/not out when he
wants to, because he passes most of the time now’ (Cook-Daniels
1998). Kayt relates a similar challenge (Cameron 1996: 106) when
hanging out with lesbian friends, who might end up asking if
she is seeing someone. It is hard to talk cryptically, avoiding
pronouns, and friends do not expect a major educational session
on a social evening out. And it feels too complex to her, being a
lesbian to say she is with a ‘he’.
In many cases the lesbian partner was not only out as a lesbian
in her community but also known for being active as a volunteer
or activist. Having to shift an identity in its totality not only
erases a history of her activism and community participation, but
may also lead to devastating emotions such as depression (Cook-
Daniels 1998: 1).
Becoming the partner of a transgender person

In 2009 I did my honours research focusing on the female cis-
gender partners of masculine-identifying trans people. One of
the key focuses of this research was to determine whether the
sexual orientation of the cisgender female partner of a masc-
uline-identifying trans person, or their understanding thereof,
had shifted. I will not delve here into the nuanced detail of the
research outcomes, but will instead illuminate the intricacies
of what the female cisgender partners experienced by looking
at their responses when asked how they defined themselves
before they entered into the relationship with their masculine-
identifying trans partners.
I interviewed eight female cisgender partners of masculine-
identifying trans persons from different ethnicities, language
groups, and cultural and class backgrounds. Four women were
black, of whom two were Xhosa, one Zulu and one Tsonga. Of
the four white women, three were from an English upbringing
and one was Afrikaans. They ranged in age from 25 to 53 at the
time of interview. Although only one partner has indicated they
preferred a pseudonym, I have decided to allocate pseudonyms
to all females and their trans partners.
322
Three partners used a variety of ways to describe themselves

on a bisexual continuum. Of the two heterosexual women, one
said she was ‘heterosexual with a past’ and two of the partners
described themselves as lesbians. Two of the couples were
married, one with the lesbian partner and one with the bisexual
partner. The couple where the cisgender partner was bisexual
were married according to the old Marriage Act, whereas the
other couple utilised the civil union.
Does the label fit? LGBTIQD

A person’s sexual orientation is understood to predict the gender
to which a person will feel attracted. Becoming the partner of a
transgender person radically complicates the cisgender partner’s
experience of their sexual orientation because being in a cisgender
–trans relationship challenges gender norms and sexual identity
expectations, queering both heterosexual and homosexual spaces.
Although the group of cisgender partners of masculine-
identifying trans persons I interviewed were all female, they
represented a whole array of sexual orientations. Sexual
orientation and identity are complex and people sometimes refer
to themselves outside the categorisations of lesbian, bisexual
or heterosexual offered by mainstream discourses on sexual
orientation. It becomes apparent that the definitions or labels
accepted and used by academia and the organised LGBTI sector are
not necessarily the descriptions people use when self-identifying,
even where that language is available to them. Individuals also
find different ways to manoeuvre sexual orientation or identity
around experiences of bisexuality.
Within the interview material, claiming labels to identify
themselves in terms of sexual orientation, and therefore partner
choice, proved to be an ongoing process of manoeuvring and self-
negotiation. For some interviewees, especially those who were
more politically minded, it became a layered process even before
their relationship with a transgender person.
The interviewees had very diverse and complicated ways of
thinking about their sexual orientation. None of the interviewees
described a change in their own sense of their sexual orientation,
but their understanding of what gender can encompass and
323
mean did evolve during their relationships with their partners.

The research findings also show how the perception of sexual
orientation is concerned with sexual norms, based on bodily
realities. Although strong arguments persist that gender is a social
construct, the negotiations of most cisgender female partners
in navigating their sexual orientation was hinged on (their
understanding of) their trans partners’ bodily composition.
The notion of being bisexual is based on the assumption that
there is a two-sex binary of sexual orientation. Busi reflected on
her bisexuality in exactly that way. However, before she was in
a relationship with her trans partner, Busi constructed her own
notion of bisexuality:
I came to the realisation that what had attracted me to my

previous partners had not been first their gender or whatever,
it had been the self. I had either been attracted to a personality
trait or one thing or the other and then … how we had sex, but
sex usually comes after the attraction.
Starting on this research, I anticipated finding at least some cisgen-

der female partners sharing a shift, insignificant or more obviously
experienced, in their sexual orientation. Conspicuously, though, at
the point at which they were being interviewed, no one expressed
any difference from the way they had identified their sexual ori-
entation before they met their trans partners. As mentioned above,
some challenges and (self) negotiations took place, which brought
them to the point of realisation that although their understand-
ing of sexual orientation had broadened, they had in fact not
shifted their own sexual orientation. Strikingly, most of them had,
however, expressed some shift in the way they generally viewed
sexual orientation, gender and gender identity. This manifested
itself in different ways for different female cisgender partners.
Because Lebogang was confused by the fact that she started dating
a female-bodied person, while refusing to see herself at any time as
a lesbian, she did experience some shifts in understanding gender
through the realisation that although her partner was (currently)
female-bodied, he was transitioning to male. She managed to com-
pare herself, as a heterosexual woman who was in a relationship
with a female-bodied person, with a lesbian through the lens of
324
physical body and biological sex. When she realised that he was
‘no more a lesbian’, a shift occurred in her understanding about
the construction of transgender identities, which also removed, to
her relief, her own identity as a lesbian.
Amanda also thought through the transition’s effect on her sexual
identity and expressed her sexual orientation based on the body of
her partner: ‘I mean because he would go for surgery if it was viable
… and then that would take me back to being with a man?’
Susan conflated gender identity and sexual orientation when
I asked her in the interview about any shift in her own sexual
orientation. She did not experience any shift in either the way she
viewed gender (roles or identity) or her own gender expression
(or roles):
I’ve never seen the major line between male and female. There
is no difference to me. If you’re useless in plumbing, then
you’re useless in plumbing. It doesn’t make you ‘not a man’. I’m
a terrible cook, but that doesn’t make me even less of a woman.
So, gender as such hasn’t changed for me in any way at all.
Busi also expressed a different understanding about being bisex-

ual. Her identity did not shift, but she gained much more knowl-
edge of the whole kaleidoscope of gender/s and orientations,
which broadened her mind. Where she previously described
bisexuality based on only two sex options being available, she
subsequently felt that bisexuality was a description which did not
fully encompass all the varieties in-between of people who were
‘available’ to fall in love with. She notes, ‘It’s really changed, you
know, the geography of my sexual orientation quite a lot.’
On many different occasions Nosizwe had spoken about
the ever-growing LGBTIQ acronym and concluded that in the
perceived opinion of other lesbians, she might have to add the
letter ‘D’ – for Disappointment.
325
Conclusion
I used two lenses to look at the well-named LGBTI alphabet soup.
With the first lens I scrutinised the way feminists, scholars and
LGB look at T. The second lens magnified how female cisgender
partners of masculine-identifying trans persons grappled with
identifying their sexual orientation before they entered their rela-
tionships with their trans partners. These two viewpoints raise
serious questions as to whether the LGBTIQ label is useful and
how far the acronym will be extended before it reaches its expiry
date.
References
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in sexual-minority women’s relationships with transsexual men’,
International Journal of Sexual Health, 21
Butler, J. (2004) Undoing Gender, New York, Routledge
Cameron, L. (1996) Body Alchemy: Transsexual Portraits, San Francisco, Cleis
Press
Chetty, D. (1994) ‘Lesbian gangster: the Gertie Williams story’, in Gevisser,
M. and Cameron, E. (eds) Defiant Desire: Gay and Lesbian Lives in South
Africa, Braamfontein, South Africa, Ravan Press
Cook-Daniels, L. (1998) ‘Trans-positioned’, Circles Magazine, June: 16–22,
http://www.forge-forward.org/handouts/Transpositioned.html, accessed
27 June 2009
Gevisser, M. and Cameron, E. (eds) (1994) Defiant Desire: Gay and Lesbian
Lives in South Africa, Braamfontein, South Africa, Ravan Press
Judge, M., Manion, A. and De Waal, S. (eds) (2008) To Have and to Hold: The
Making of Same-Sex Marriage in South Africa, Johannesburg, Fanele – an
imprint of Jakana Media
Lenning, E. (2008) ‘This journey is not for the faint of heart: an investigation
into the challenges facing transgender individuals and their significant
others’, unpublished dissertation, Western Michigan University
Lev, A.I. (2004) Transgender Emergence: Therapeutic Guidelines for Working with
Gender-Variant People and Their Families, New York, The Haworth Clinical
Practice Press
Mason, M.E. (2006) ‘The experience of transition for lesbian partners
of female-to-male transsexuals’, dissertation, Alliant International
University, San Francisco
Matebeni, Z. (2009) ‘Feminising lesbians, degendering transgender men:
A model for building lesbian feminist thinkers and leaders in Africa?’,
paper delivered at the Gender Justice and Body Politics conference, Cape
Town
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Namaste, V. (2005) Sex Change, Social Change: Reflections on Identity,

Institutions and Imperialism, Toronto, Women’s Press
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politics of sexuality’, in Parker, R. and Aggleton, P. (eds) Culture, Society
and Sexuality: A Reader, London and Philadelphia, UCL Press
Smit, E. (2006) ‘Western psychiatry and gender identity disorder (GID): a
critical perspective’, in Shefer, T., Boonzaier, F. and Kiguwa, P. (eds) The
Gender of Psychology, Cape Town, UCT Press
Steyn, M. and Van Zyl, M. (eds) (2009) The Prize and the Price: Shaping
Sexualities in South Africa, South Africa, HSRC Press
Theron, L. (2009) ‘SOFFA perspective’, in Morgan, R., Marais, C. and
Wellbeloved, J.R. (eds) Trans: Transgender Life Stories from South Africa,
Auckland Park, South Africa, Fanele – an imprint of Jacana Media
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Angeles, Alyson Books
327
33
Human Rights and Legal
Implications of the Same Sex
Marriage Prohibition Bill, 2011
for Every Nigerian Citizen
A briefing Communiqué for His Excellency, the President of

the Federal Republic of Nigeria & The Senate and the House of
Representatives of the Federal Republic of Nigeria
An analysis prepared by Nigerian civil society organizations,

human rights organizations, feminist and women’s rights groups,
social health workers, social and economic justice activists and
NGOs
This is the third time a Bill prohibiting same sex marriage is intro-
duced by the Nigerian parliament. The proposed law is titled
”Same Sex Marriage Prohibition Bill, 2011”, however, it goes well
beyond the title to criminalise every Nigerian person(s), indi-
vidual and group who may be suspected of any trace, exhibition,
association and or characteristic of same sex relationship, friend-
ship, association or gesture.
It is very important when Bills are proposed by members of
parliament that all Nigerians look closely into them to see what
implications they would have for every Nigerian, irrespective
of gender, sex, religion, creed, culture, sexuality, tradition,
origin, ethnic group and political opinion. Often, when laws are
introduced, most Nigerians do not understand their provisions
and implications for their daily lives as citizens of Nigeria. Civil
society organizations in Nigeria have a duty to inform and
educate the citizens, as well as lawmakers, about oppressive and
dangerous implications in potential legislation.
328
33 THE SAME SEX MARRIAGE PROHIBITION BILL, 2011
The proposed Same Sex Marriage Bill 2011 was passed by the
Senate on the 3rd reading on 29th November, 2011. It also passed
through a first reading at the House of Representatives on 7th
December, 2011. This analysis seeks to analyse and highlight its
grave implications on the daily lives of every Nigerian.
With this bill Nigeria and Nigerians will be shown to be
untrustworthy and incapable of upholding and domesticating
international treaties and conventions which they have signed
and ratified. From the perspective of foreign investors, the
inability to uphold international agreements raises the question of
whether their investment and personnel can be safe in the hands
of such [an] untrustworthy partner. At a time when the country is
on a drive to attract direct foreign investment, this bill also stands
as a threat to the economy.
According to the 2010 UNGASS (United Nations General
Assembly) report on Nigeria, 3.6% of the population is
comprised of people living with HIV/AIDS – i.e. more than
5.5 million people. The bulk of the support to curb the spread
of the virus and support those already infected or affected
is coming from international donors. Many of the people
living with HIV/AIDS are heterosexuals and if organizations
geared to help them are barred, as in this bill, this will have a
catastrophic effect on stopping the rate of new infections and
helping those already infected.
It is worth noting for all Nigerian citizens that the proposed
bill aims at:
a) prohibiting any form of de facto cohabitation between two

individuals of the same sex or gestures that connote same sex
relationship directly or indirectly. If this bill becomes law male-
male or female-female holding of hands, touching each other,
making eye gestures, hugging or any display of affection will
be evidence for conviction and 10 years imprisonment.
The Bill also aims to:
b) restrict the right to freedom of expression;
c) restrict the right to freedom of association;
d) restrict the right to freedom of thought, including the freedom
of conscience and religion;
e) target human rights defenders who speak out for the human
329
rights of individuals and communities, as well as advocates for

sexuality, reproductive rights and the right to health;
f) and, ultimately, target the rights and safety of persons who
either identify as lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transgenders,
or, who simply do not fit conservative gender roles and
stereotypes, as well as anybody who is related to them or
sympathetic of them;
g) promote widespread social control, intrusive to individual privacy.
h) Finally it targets any legal defense and representation for
persons or groups involved in in any real or perceived same-
sex related case.
Thus if the proposed legislation is passed into law Nigeria
would violate many of its obligations under our own constitution,
our own laws, and, international human rights law.
Violations of international human rights law which would
result from the bill, include of Article 22 (freedom of association),
Article 19 (right to freedom of opinion and expression) of the
ICCPR (International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights).
Similarly they would violate Article 9 (freedom of expression),
Article 10 (right of free association), Article 11 (right of assembly),
Article 12 (right of residence) and Article 8 (the right to have one’s
cause heard and to a defense – including by the counsel of one’s
choice) of the African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights
(ACHPR). Since the ACHPR was adopted into Nigerian law in
1983, the provisions of this bill violate our own national laws also.
Of principal concern for all Nigerians is that Sections 5 and 7 of
the revised and final copy of the bill reach far beyond its scope to
attack freedom of assembly and speech, among other rights. The bill,
as currently revised, is extemely likely to encourage discrimination
against all individuals regardless of their sexuality, and in fact
constitutes an incitement to violence, ill-treatment and torture.
Specific sections for concern to all Nigerians
SECTION 4 (2) of the proposed Bill

In a very tactile society as ours, where people of the same sex
frequently hold each other’s hands, wrap their arms around each
other’s waists, embrace each other warmly, it will be difficult,
if not impossible to know when such actions are a display of
330
amorous relationships or expressions of human intimacy and

affection that are devoid of any sexual intention. This provision of
the bill opens up the possiblity for witch-hunting and vindictive
accusations which could impact on every Nigerian, and create a
climate of fear and repression.
SECTION 5 of the proposed Bill

The prohibition of “gay clubs, societies and organizations,” and
of any person involved not only in registration, but even in sus-
tenance and meetings, registration, participation even in private,
directly or indirectly, and the further prohibition of publicity, pro-
cession, and “public show of same sex amorous relationship” may
potentially affect anybody and any group; for example:
a) Any Muslim or Christian women’s rights group teaching

the Qu’ran or the Bible could be targeted as a “lesbian
group” and persecuted by those who do not appreciate
women understanding for themselves the liberatory potential
in religious texts. In general, any women’s rights group could
be easily targeted by those who do not support women’s
empowerment.
b) Any member of any same gender organization, even students
in same gender schools and clubs (like the boy scouts or girl
guides), could be targeted by anyone holding a grudge against
members of the group or opposing the aims of the group.
c) Any person who does not fit the conservative understandings
of traditional or social norms of his or her community, such as
an unmarried person in his or her 30s or 40s, or even a woman
who happens to be in trousers could be easily accused of being
gay or lesbian.
d) Section 5 could also be a powerful tool in the hands of
unscrupulous politicians and aspirants against their political
opponents and thus undermine the electoral process and
the democratic development of the country. For example,
any politician or candidate could be maliciously accused of
privately supporting either same sex amorous relationships
or gay societies or of being gay. And whether proved or not in
court, even being accused under the law would likely ruin that
person’s political career.
331
e) Any journalist, newspaper, radio, or television station

reporting objective information related to gay issues could
easily be accused of promoting publicity of same sex amorous
relationships. The bill could be easily used as a tool of
censorship for political purposes.
f) Any human rights, civil rights, women’s rights or health
advocacy group, including those working on HIV/AIDS
prevention, could be accused of indirectly supporting same sex
amorous relationships just by applying international human
rights and health standards. Groups doing controversial work
on any topic could be attacked with the excuse that they also
support gay rights or promote same sex sexual relations. This
law could potentially affect a wide variety of civil society
activists and/or organizations in the country.
g) If this bill became law, nobody could even advocate against
the human rights implication of the law itself without being
found guilty of indirectly supporting same sex amorous
relationships. This would be an inherent contradiction for a
democratic system.
h) Under the proposed law no lawyer or paralegal will be able
to offer legal representation or support and in fact such
a lawyer or paralegal personnel could be criminalized for
representation, defense or support of any case perceived to be
same sex related.
SECTION 7 of the proposed Bill

Rather than simply defining marriage as an act between one man
and one woman, Section seven’s sweeping inclusion of any two
people of the same sex living together allows anybody to be tar-
geted, even when they do not have any sexual relationship at all.
a) Many people in Nigeria share their housing for economic

reasons. If two roommates are of the same sex they could
be accused by anybody with whom they have a personal or
public dispute of “living together as husband and wife” and
be prosecuted under the law.
b) Their relatives, friends or visitors could be accused of indirectly
supporting in private a same sex amorous relationship just by
visiting them.
332
SECTIONS 1(3) and Section 2(2)

Section 1(3) and 2(2) states that even if there are valid same sex
marriages or civil unions entered into outside Nigeria, they will
not be recognised in Nigeria. This may be aimed at non-Nigerians
– it would clearly discourage same-sex partners from visiting or
working in Nigeria (or investing in Nigeria). But there are also
Nigerians living in the diaspora who are married to same sex part-
ners or planning to do so. Many talented Nigerians live in the dias-
pora openly as gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transsexuals. They
contribute positively to the development of their country of resi-
dence but are afraid to come and contribute to the development of
our motherland because of fear of victimization. Nigerian LGBTIs
living in the diaspora do not want to be isolated from home, fam-
ily and childhood friends – this bill would virtually enforce that.
Furthermore, criminalizing same sex relationships will force
many Nigerian Lesbians, Gays Bisexuals and Intersex (LGBTI) to
leave the country and become refugees and asylum seekers in other
countries. This also affects Nigeria by contributing to brain drain.
In summary, the implications and effects of the bill, will
go far beyond the prohibition of same sex marriage (which is
discriminatory in itself), and will result in widespread human
rights violations, censorship, impediments to open and democratic
process, fear, repression and the break up of family relationships,
as well as the loss of talented and patriotic individual[s] – for
all Nigerian citizens irrespective of their sexuality. In fact, even
though this Bill is still only potentially law, there are increasing
reports of people being harrassed, intimidated, discriminated
against and physically aggressed, on the basis of their actual or
perceived sexuality already.
In recogniton of this, we make an Urgent call for action to His
Excellency, the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria,
members of the Senate and House of Representatives of the
Federal Republic of Nigeria.
We, the undersigned members of Nigerian civil society
organizations, human rights defenders, women’s rights activists,
media advocates, social health workers, and concerned Nigerians
hereby ask His Excellency, The President of the Federal Republic
of Nigeria, and Distinguished members of the Senate and House
of Representative to:
333
1. Withdraw immediately the proposed Same Sex Marriage

Prohibition Bill, 2011 due to its implications for gross human
rights violations of all Nigerans irrespective of their sexuality
and the likelihood that it would bar Nigeria from the community
of democratic nations.
2. Take measures to stop extrajudicial actions taken by law
enforcement and other state agencies which are human rights
violations – including all those directed against individuals
who may be (or are suspected of being) LGBTI.
3. Ensure that law enforcement and other state agencies address
and stop individual and mob action aimed at or resulting in the
intimidation, inhuman and degrading treatment of people and
individuals on the basis of the actual or perceived sexuality.
4. Take immediate measures for consultation with the human rights
commission, civil society and stakeholders in the preparation,
review and amendment of all proposed legislation to consider
their implications for human rights and democratic process.
5. Uphold democratic principles and parliamentary procedures
for ensuring balanced and diversified debate from all sectors –
ensuring no shortcuts of process.
6. Take into account the report of the Integrated Bio-Behavioral
Surveillance Survey (IBBSS)-2007 conducted by NACA which
further stresses the importance of integrating Men who have
sex with men (MSM) into HIV/AIDS programming in Nigeria
(which based would become criminal if this Bill was [passed]).
List of Organisations and Individuals who are signatories.

APPENDIX
CONTENTS AND CRITIQUE OF EACH CLAUSE OF THE
PROPOSED BILL
A BILL FOR AN ACT TO PROHIBIT MARRIAGE OR
CIVIL UNION ENTERED INTO BETWEEN PERSONS OF
SAME SEX, SOLEMNIZATION OF SAME AND FOR OTHER
MATTERS RELATED THEREWITH by the Senate of the Federal
Republic of Nigeria as follows.
Clearly the new bill is totally unnecessary because since
same-sex sexual conduct between consenting adults is already
prohibited and criminalized under the Criminal Code, the Penal
334
Code and various Shari’a Penal Codes, consequently, same-sex

marriages are already unlawful in Nigeria.
It is also unnecessary, because there has not been any demand
for same sex marriage in Nigeria.
The proposed law will violate several fundamental human
rights enshrined in the 1999 constitution.
35(1) Every person shall be entitled to his personal liberty and no person
shall be deprived of such liberty...
Although several countries have chosen not to allow same
sex marriage by defining marriage as the union between a man
and a woman, Nigeria would be the first country in the world to
prohibit same sex marriage with criminal provisions.
If this law passes, every Nigerian could be at threat, or liable
under the law, whether they are in real same-sex relationships or
merely perceived to be so, or even know others who are in same-
sex relationships.
1. Prohibition of Marriage or Civil Unions by Persons of Same

Sex.
1(3) A Marriage Contract or Civil Union entered into between persons
of same sex by virtue of a certificate issued by a foreign country shall
be void in Nigeria, and any benefit acruing there from by virtue of the
certificate shall not be enforced by any court of law in Nigeria.
The scope of these provisions is unclear. Since same sex
marriage is not allowed by the legal definition of marriage,
clearly any same sex marriage however celebrated is legally void
and there are no legal consequences and effects. Therefore, these
provisions are redundant.
The provisions concerning the prohibition to recognize same sex
marriage validly contracted abroad are unnecessary also. Under
international private law, the obligation for state parties to the Hague
Convention of 14 March 1978 on Celebration and Recognition of
the Validity of Marriages to recognize same sex marriage validly
celebrated abroad is highly disputed and rejected so far. In any case,
Nigeria has not signed that convention: this means that Nigerian
authorities have full jurisdiction with regard to the definition of
marriage under domestic law. Nothing in sections 49 and following
of the Marriage Act 1990 makes possible the recognition of a
marriage celebrated abroad which is contrary to domestic law.
335
2. Solemnization of same sex marriage in places of worship.

(1) Marriage or civil union entered into between persons of same sex
shall not be solemnized in any place of worship either Church or Mosque
or any other place or whatsover called in Nigeria.
(2) No certificate issued to persons of same sex in a marriage shall be or
civil union shall be valid in Nigeria.
This provision violates article 18 of the ICCPR, as it would
restrict the right to freedom of religion of those groups that might
choose to bless same sex union, even if no legal consequences
are attached to such unions. This has been the case of several
Christian churches and Jewish temples in several countries, and
the state prohibition clearly interferes with such a freedom.
The exception of article 18(3), with reference to the protection of
morals, does not apply in this case: the interpretation of the Human
Rights Committee to the notion of morals, General Comment
no. 22 (1993) on article 18 clearly states that the notion of morals
“derives from many social, philosophical and religious traditions;
consequently, limitations on the freedom to manifest a religion
or belief for the purpose of protecting morals must be based on
principles not deriving exclusively from a single tradition” (8).
Finally General Comment no. 22 explains that the right to
freedom of religion must be interpreted broadly, precisely because
article 18 recognizes the exercise of such right “either individually
or in community with others and in public or private” (4).
This provision is therefore unconstitutional under the
Nigerian Constitution as it violates article 38 that recognizes
the freedom of religion, and constitutes the basis for separation
between state and churches. It also violates Article 8 of the
African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights and therefore
also Nigerian domestic law.
3. Recognized Marriage in Nigeria.

Only marriages contracted between a man and a woman shall be recog-
nized as valid in Nigeria.
Again this replicates existing law and is therefore redundant.
336
4. Registration of Homosexual Clubs and Societies.

This provision raises the most serious concerns in terms of viola-
tions of human rights obligations by Nigerian authorities under
the ICCPR, the African Charter and the Nigerian Constitution.
4(1) The Registration of Gay Clubs, Societies and organizations, their
sustenance, processions and meetings are hereby prohibited.
The prohibition of LGBTI organizations to be registered
under Nigerian law, especially in the light of the criminal offense
introduced by paragraph 1 of section 4, is contrary to Article 10
of the ACHPR (which is domesticated as Nigerian law), and
Article 22 of the ICCPR which reads:
1. Everyone shall have the right to freedom of association with

others (…).
2. No restrictions may be placed on the exercise of this right
other than those which are prescribed by law and which are
necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national
security or public safety, public order (ordre public), the pro-
tection of public health or morals or the protection of the rights
and freedoms of others. (…)
As explained above, the exception of the protection of morals

is not acceptable according to the Human Rights Committee in
Toonen, where they concluded that the derogation to the right
to privacy could not be justified in the name of the protection
of public health, in particular to prevent HIV/AIDS spread. The
Committee argued that the ban on same-sex sexual conduct might
have an impact on HIV/AIDS education and prevention, causing
in fact the spread of the disease among certain stigmatized groups.
Similarly, the provision would violate article 10(1) of the
African Charter establishing that “[e]very individual shall have the
right to free association provided that he abides by the law”, as well
as the Resolution on the Right to Freedom of Association (1992)
that was later drafted by the African Commission on Human and
Peoples’ Rights stating that:
[t]he competent authorities should not override constitutional

provisions or undermine fundamental rights guaranteed by the
constitution and international standards;
337
2. In regulating the use of this right, the competent authorities

should not enact provisions which would limit the exercise of
this freedom;
3. The regulation of the exercise of the right to freedom of asso-
ciation should be consistent with State’s obligations under the
African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights.
For the same reasons, this provision would be unconstitutional

constituting a violation of article 40 of the Nigerian Constitution.
4(2) The public show of same sex amorous relationship directly or indi-
rectly is hereby prohibited.
As already indicated, Section 4 breaches article 19 and 22 of the
ICCPR by criminalizing any activity directly or indirectly related to
LGBT issues or same sex amorous relationship. The restriction is
so severe that it reaches activities carried out and thoughts as well
as opinion expressed in private.
The gravity of this violation is certainly confirmed by several
reports issued in the past 10 years, starting from 2001, by the
U.N. Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the
right to freedom of opinion and expression. The reports highlight
and criticise cases of censorship, restriction and criminalisation
of rights to freedom of speech, as well as abuses, attacks and
restrictions by state authorities against LGBTI advocates or
individuals whose behaviors do not conf[o]rm to conservative
social norms and expectations of acceptable gender or sexuality.
The criminalization of any form of expression and association
related to LGBTI rights therefore exposes all human rights
defenders operating in the fields of sexual rights, health rights
and LGBTI rights. Abuses, especially of LGBTI human rights
defenders have been extensively reported by the Special
Representative of the Secretary-General in the past 10 years.
This Bill would increase that abuse. It would result in a situation
contrary to the Resolution on the Protection of Human Rights
Defenders in Africa (which Nigeria has signed) and would expose
the Nigerian authorities to the scrutiny of the Special Rapporteur
on the Situation of Human Rights Defenders established by the
African Commission on Human Rights.
Section 4 will also have a significant impact on social rights,
such as right to sexual health and HIV/AIDS prevention. General
338
Comment no. 14 of the Human Rights Committee, on the Right

to the Highest Attainable Standard of Health recognizes that
the principle of non-discrimination of Article 2(2) “proscribes
any discrimination in access to health care” on grounds of,
amongst other things, health status (including HIV/AIDS) and
sexual orientation (Article 12 of the International Covenant on
Economic, Social and Cultural Rights – ICESCR). The right
to the best attainable state of physical and mental health is also
protected by Article 16 of the African Charter, and thus also in
Nigerian domestic law.
As repeatedly underlined by the U.N. Special Rapporteur on
the Right of Everyone to the Enjoyment of the Highest Attainable
Standard of Physical and Mental Health, discrimination and
stigma would certainly restrain the access to health and sexually
transmitted disease prevention for all Nigerians, irrespective of
their gender and sexuality.
Finally, these provisions in particular might seriously
endanger the lives of all Nigerians who are real (or perceived
to be or simply accused of being LGBTI); exposing them to
increased risk of degrading, inhuman and cruel treatments
and punishments, torture, extrajudicial executions, arbitrary
deprivation of their liberty. It is precisely because of incidents of
human rights violation against LGBTI defenders that the Special
Rapporteur’s report states that “discrimination on grounds of
sexual orientation and gender identity may contribute to the
process of dehumanization of the victim.” The fact that even
private forms of expression, speech and association would be
subject to the scrutiny of the criminal law promotes rigid social
control, even by non state actors, as well as the concrete risk of a
political use of this legislation
5. Offences and Penalties

(1) Persons who entered into same sex marriage contract or civil unions
commit an offense and are liable and are each liable on conviction to a
term of 14 years imprisonment.
(2) Any person who registers, operates or participate in gay clubs, socie-
ties and organization, or directly or indirectly make public show of same
sex amorous relationship in Nigeria commit an offense and shall each be
liable on conviction to a term of 10 years imprisonment.
339
(3) Any person or group of persons that witness, abets and aids the
solemnization of a same sex marriage or civil union, or supports the
registration, operation and sustenance of gay clubs, societies, organiza-
tions, processions in Nigeria commits an offense and shall be liable on
conviction to a term of 10 years imprisonment.
The fact that the bill explicitly confines the jurisdiction with
regard to the application of the law does not mitigate the
seriousness of the human rights violation and the concerns about
a wider social control and abuse that constitute the reasonable
consequences of the enactment of this law.
2. Interpretation
“Civil Unions” means any arrangement between persons of the same
sex to live together as sex partners, and shall include such descriptions
as adult independent relationships, caring partnerships, civil partner-
ships, civil solidarity pacts, domestic partnerships, reciprocal beneficiary
relationships, registered partnerships, significant relationships, stable
unions, etc.
The bill is unnecessary to prohibit same sex marriage in
Nigeria: section 27 of the Marriage Act 1990 already implicitly
defines marriage as the union of a man and wife, whilst all the
Criminal and Penal Codes of Nigeria already make same-sex
sexual conduct non-permissible.
“Same Sex Marriage” means the coming together of persons of the
same sex with the purpose of living together as husband and wife or for
other purposes of same same sexual relationship.
The proposed definition of same sex marriage goes far beyond
the notion of same sex marriage as accepted in those countries
that have legally recognized the marriages between persons of the
same sex. This definition actually refers to any form of same sex
relationship, including de facto cohabitation of same sex couple.
This is inconsistent with international and foreign legislation, case
law and legal literature.
This provision clearly violates the ICCPR. Although the Human
Rights Committee has established in Joslin v. New Zealand[1] that
the ICCPR does not recognize a fundamental right to marry for
same-sex couples under article 23(2), in Young v. Australia[2] the
Committee itself recognized that different treatment between
unmarried same-sex and different-sex couples may constitute
340
a breach of state parties’ obligations under the prohibition of

discrimination of article 26, which includes discrimination on the
basis of sexual orientation. As a consequence, the ban introduced
by the bill, by reaching out to any form of cohabitation between
individuals of the same-sex, is contrary to ICCPR Article 26.
Also, because the bill bans the intimate and emotional choices
of consenting adults, it is extremely intrusive of the privacy of
those persons whose behaviors do not conform with conservative
gender and social roles. Such a definition of same sex marriage and
the provisions that follow go far beyond the boundary established
in Toonen and violates Article 17 of the ICCPR and, consequently,
the constitutional provision of article 37. Furthermore, in practice,
the Bill also would implicate the likelihood or simple resemblance
of such choices (by defining same sex marriage as “other form of
same sex relationship for the purposes of cohabitation as husband
and wife”).
By criminalizing any form of same sex relationship the bill
does not protect family and traditions as required by Article 18 of
the African Charter, but rather jeopardizes individual dignity and
security, respectively protected by articles 5 and 6 of the Charter.
It also clearly withdraws protection from LGBTI people and their
families who under Articles 5(2) and 5(3) may find themselves
imprisoned for 10 years if they do not denounce family members
who are LGBTI.
This intrusiveness into the private sphere in fact promotes
stigmatization against individuals and groups already at risk of
marginality, exposing them to violence and abuses both by local
authorities and non state actors. Both the U.N. Special Rapporteur
on Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions and the Special
Rapporteur on the Question Of Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman
or Degrading Treatment Or Punishment have, over the past years,
extensively reported on how discrimination, marginalization
and the failure of states to protect gays, lesbians, transgenders
and other groups that do not fit with “sexual norms” have been
the cause of killings by non state actors and state authorities, as
well as tortures and other abuses by state authorities. They have
thus held governments responsible for the violation of article 6
and 7 of the ICCPR. Similar conclusions have been argued by the
Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women, Its Causes and
341
Consequences, as well as by the observations of treaty bodies,

such as the Committee against torture in its interpretation of the
Convention against Torture (CAT) in the past 10 years.
[1] Communication No. 902/1999, UN Doc. CCPR/C/75/D/902/1999

(1998).
[2] Communication No. 941/2000, UN Doc CCPR/C/78/D/941/2000
(2003).
http://bit.ly/U8xQQB
342
34
Deconstructing violence towards

black lesbians in South Africa
Zethu Matebeni
Introduction
The claim to a black lesbian identity in South Africa, and in the
African continent as a whole, is an important but contested claim.
The lesbian category, as an identity and a social and political
group, highlights sexuality and gender as well as the interplay
between these and other identity categories such as race, nation
and class. This interplay, I argue, recedes and resurfaces in the
ways in which the lesbian category is made to ‘disappear’ through
various forms of injustice, the use of language and through vio-
lence in contemporary South Africa.
South Africa is well known for its high rates of violence
generally and towards women in particular. As a group of women
(I take Monique Wittig’s (1993) arguments seriously here) or
female-bodied persons, black lesbians have been increasingly
framed as victims of specific forms of crime and sexual violence
perpetuated on their bodies – what certain groups have termed
‘corrective’ or ‘curative’ rape. Undoubtedly, violence against
lesbians is part of a broader scourge of violence towards women.
Even though it may seem difficult to separate anti-lesbian violence
from broader violence against women, there are differences
between the two. Lesbians are targets of violence because of their
sexual orientation, gendered expressions and identity. Moreover,
they are considered to be transgressing and disrupting gender/
sex norms. By suggesting and positioning sexuality independent
of men and reshaping gender structures, lesbian sexuality and
343
gender challenge dominant sexual and gender orders. Masculine

or butch lesbians are targeted because their visible masculine
traits disrupt the gender hierarchy by symbolically claiming
male privilege (Gontek 2009, Gunkel 2010). Femme lesbians, who
remain ‘invisible’ in society as they are deemed ‘heterosexual’,
are violated because they invert their feminine attraction and
eroticism to other women, and not men. Regardless of where
one fits within the lesbian paradigm, the mere existence of black
African lesbians, in particular, remains contested.
In various, often violent ways black lesbians in South Africa,
even with the progressive pro-gay rights laws, live under harsh
conditions that attempt to ‘do away’ with their sexual subjectivities.
The form of corrective or curative rape mentioned earlier is one
such example. In the next sections I address the ways in which
this language of rape and sexual violence has contributed to the
branding and framing of black lesbians as ‘special’ victims of
widespread rape and sexual torture towards women in South
Africa. This is a complex and difficult position to take because on
the one hand, as presented earlier, lesbians are attacked because
of their perceived and real disruption of the gender and sex order.
On the other hand, by framing black lesbians as special victims of a
form of rape, the language of corrective rape locates black lesbians
in the townships of South Africa outside the wider gender, class,
sexuality and racial struggles of social justice in South Africa.
The language of rape as ‘corrective/curative’

Black lesbians living in the townships (and thus presumed ‘poor’)
in South Africa have been increasingly seen as victims and sur-
vivors of what has been termed curative or corrective rape. This
victim narrative of black lesbians is a problematic, limited view
of how we as black lesbians experience the fullness of our lives.
The concepts of curative/corrective rape arise out of lesbian and
feminist activist circles in South Africa (Muholi 2004, Mkhize
et al 2010). One of the first published pieces of activist research
to introduce the term curative rape, entitled ‘Thinking through
lesbian rape’ by Zanele Muholi (2004), credits Donna Smith, the
then CEO of the Forum for the Empowerment of Women (a black
lesbian organisation in Johannesburg) for defining the phrase.
344
34 DECONSTRUCTING VIOLENCE TOWARDS BLACK LESBIANS
Muholi’s (2004: 118) piece referred to the testimonies of 47 lesbi-

ans in the Gauteng area, the majority of whom had been ‘raped
explicitly’ because of their sexuality or gender non-conformity.
Many others had been assaulted or had survived rape attempts,
various forms of abuse and abduction. Among them less than half
had reported their experiences to the police and many had little
faith in the police or the criminal justice system.
Organisations working with black lesbians in South Africa
continuously report numerous cases of black lesbians experiencing
curative/corrective rape because of their sexual orientation and
identity (Muholi 2004, Bucher 2009, Mkhize et al 2010). Curative
rape is defined as the ‘rape of women perceived of as lesbian
by men as an ostensible “cure” for their (aberrant) sexualities’
(Muthien 2007: 323). The term has become synonymous with
the ‘poor’ black lesbian experience in the township. Outside
the notion that this term limits this kind of experience only to
a certain class of black lesbians, there are a number of reasons
why I suggest that it presents a problematic reading of violence
towards lesbians. According to police records and accounts of
crimes in South Africa, corrective rape does not exist. All rape is
recorded and categorised the same way. In a documentary film
investigating rape and lesbians in South Africa, a police official
states when asked about the phenomenon of ‘corrective rape’
(Schaap and Gim 2010):
What is corrective rape? I’m not sure what corrective rape is. As
far as we are concerned – corrective rape is not a problem here
in South Africa. Based on the way the crimes are reported – if
somebody reports a crime of rape, it is investigated as rape. We
don’t have a phenomenon or a crime category called corrective
rape that will be able to tell you that this is reaching alarming
proportions…
Vishnu Naidoo, South African Police Service spokesman
Strategically, the use of such a term has been effective in activist

circles as it captures and highlights the extent of injustices and
violence perpetrated on black lesbians because of their sexualities
and identities. Beyond such circles, it remains unclear how use-
ful the deployment of this term has been. The language of rape
as curative in this regard, I argue, does more harm than good
345
to black lesbian groups. Marking certain groups as victims of a

special kind of crime can make them vulnerable to unintended
further victimisation. Knowing that a victim has experienced
curative rape immediately identifies her as lesbian, a category
many (including certain institutions) still treat with disdain. In
this sense, this language and terminology can unintentionally
work against what it set out to do.
Describing the intention and action of the perpetrator as
curative can mean, or be misinterpreted to mean, to implicate the
victim as ‘deserving’ of the crime. Such language positions her
(all cases of such reported rapes are women) as being cleansed of
something that is unwanted, abnormal and outlawed in society.
Through corrective/curative rape, lesbians then become cured
and normalised. In the twisted mind of the rapist, taking claim
over a woman’s body through a violent process of ‘teaching her to
behave like a woman’ (Reddy et al 2007: 10) only makes sense as
a way of advancing patriarchal gains. There is nothing corrective
or curative about rape. On the contrary, rape is very damaging,
it ‘causes anger. It destroys and wrecks lives. It causes divisions
and it damages an innocent soul’ (Reddy et al 2007: 11). Seen
from the vantage point of the survivor or victim, such terms can
be offensive and debilitating. The use of such language (or the
reading of violence as curative) suggests an elevated status for the
perpetrator who is seen as ‘curing’ and ‘correcting’ for the good
of the dominant culture, while stigmatising and branding the
survivor. Thus the blame shifts from the perpetrator to the victim,
who is seen as having transgressed societal norms.
Without getting trapped by the use of language, let us consider
the possible ways in which terminology can assist us in achieving
its intended functions. Phumi Mtetwa’s (2011) latest welcome
contribution in Amandla offers an alternative to how the term
corrective can be used in our society. Mtetwa inverts the term
correct by redirecting it away from lesbians (or rather in relation to
rapes committed on lesbian bodies) and to homophobes. Her piece
‘Correct the homophobes’ leaves the term ‘correct’ permanently in
inverted commas throughout to show her own ambivalence to it.
She does not shy away from problematising the term in this piece
and further challenges those who are against homosexuals, and
those who are yet to join the struggles of all the members of our
346
society, to be correct. She argues that they must ‘correct’ their ways
by directing our society towards social transformation and justice
and not towards damaging individual lives.
The use of this term may have been effective at one time, but
I suspect it might have reached its expiry date. Recently a group
of activists who are members of civil society organisations in the
national task team on violence towards lesbian, gay, bisexual
and transgender people in South Africa have had to battle with a
number of questions relating to the use of the term corrective rape.
Among many questions, we had to consider the reasons a separate
category of rape was developed when it was and remained
unrecognised as such. Additionally, we had to interrogate the
usefulness of labelling rape in this way. These questions have
only been partially answered by a call to do away with the term
altogether. The response to that has been to find a replacement
term that similarly captures corrective rape. Currently, this group
has proposed that violence and rape should not isolate specific
groups or individuals. Instead, violence should be thought of in
its broad sense while also being specific about who is targeted.
It is hoped that the move to finding alternative language or
terminology about violence towards LGBTI people will capture
both their sexual subjectivities and gender non-conformity.
Finding new terminologies and language that highlight
various forms of violence and injustice is essential but also
time-consuming. Experience from deploying the term curative
rape has shown that terminology can hurt the same people it
was designed to help while also excluding some within similar
groupings. Above all of this, it is important to guard against
contributing to forms of patriarchy that aim to blind and silence
us through violating our bodies and through the use of language,
while advancing patriarchal gains.
The erasure of lesbian identity

Many of us rely on the justice system for justice. However, there
remain a significant number of cases that go unreported or under-
investigated for a number of reasons. In Muholi’s piece (2004)
most of the women she talked to never reported their cases to the
police, and many of the reported cases remain uninvestigated.
347
For many black lesbians justice is deferred or not obtained even

when they know the perpetrators and continue to live among
them. This troubling reality is one sign of how black women
receive short shrift from the criminal justice system. Even when
cases make it to court, we are often reminded of how flawed and
limited the justice system can be. The effects of this can be felt in
very personal (and therefore political) ways.
To illustrate this I will make reference to one of the few well-
publicised cases, that of Eudy Simelane, a 31-year-old black
lesbian and national soccer player murdered by four young black
men in her township. Unlike with many other murders of a black
lesbian woman, Eudy’s case may be regarded as highly successful
as it reached court and there has been a conviction. In similar
cases, arrests of the perpetrators have been unimaginable for
various reasons, including no police investigation, claims about
lack of evidence, a lack of material resources to follow up on cases
and various other delays and limitations.
Like many activists, I followed this case and many others very
closely, particularly inside the court. It is to the court proceedings
of Eudy Simelane’s case to which I refer in this section. It is the
events of the proceedings on 12 February 2009, a cold Thursday
morning in Delmas, that have left me and many others baffled,
not knowing how to make sense of the role of the court and the
judiciary in parts of South Africa.
Delmas court, about 80km from Johannesburg in the East
Rand, is known for the Delmas treason trial,1 one of the longest-
running political trials in the legal history of South Africa. This
was the site of the prosecution of the celebrated gay rights icon
and anti-apartheid and AIDS activist Simon Nkoli, together with
the then prominent ANC-aligned political leaders. It may be said
that like the treason trial, Eudy Simelane’s case was political.
Outside the court was a group of more than 150 angry protesters,
mainly young black (lesbian) women. There were a handful of
white women, mainly from outside South Africa. Young black
lesbians had come from as far as Durban and Cape Town to
show solidarity in yet another case of what has been increasingly
understood as ‘hate crimes towards black lesbians’.
The trial was scheduled to begin at 10am, but due to delays,
it had been postponed. A crowd had gathered outside the court
348
singing and protesting against this delay and what some activists
called ‘delayed justice’. Many of those in the crowd had been in
Delmas the previous day, too, but were all sent home 15 minutes
after arrival because one of the accused had been summoned
to another trial in a different court for a series of other crimes.
Turning up at court only to be subjected to yet another delay was
described by some of the protesters outside the courtroom as
being ‘drawn up and down, called to court every now and then
and then justice delayed’. Emotions ran high as many of those
in the crowd regarded it as a very personal case. For some, the
outcome of the case would determine how and when they could
utilise the everyday public spaces in their communities, whether
they could walk safely in their streets or be able to go to a park.
Eudy’s murder had taken place in KwaThema, a township well
known in the past for being accommodating to gay and lesbian
people and which had generated many politicised groups of
gays and lesbians. For residents in KwaThema, such a murder
challenged their own sense of safety and suggested that their
township was not as safe as they had imagined it to be. For the
many black lesbian protestors outside the court, Eudy’s murder
implied that the streets of the township were not safe for black
lesbians. Their unmasked visibility outside this court was in one
way a reclaiming of their space and demand for justice; they were
willing to face the four accused head-on inside the court.
It was accused number four, Mpiti, whose statement rattled
many of us in the court. Reading his statement, Mpiti seemed
relaxed. He pleaded guilty on the counts of murder, robbery with
aggravated circumstances and being an accomplice to attempted
rape. Part of his statement included the following: ‘Eudy recognised
Themba (another co-accused). Themba gave me the knife and said
I “must do something” as she recognised him and could see who
he was. He confirmed that she knew him and Themba said “she
will get us arrested”, so I “must do something…”’
Upon cross-questioning after reading his statement, Mpiti
claimed that he did not know the deceased before killing her,
that her identity was revealed to him only after his arrest: ‘I was
informed after my arrest of her name and where she is from. I was
told she was a Banyana Banyana soccer player. I also heard about
her sexual orientation, while I was in custody.’
349
By this time all of us paying attention to the court proceedings

had already noted what the judge chose to miss. Mpiti had
acknowledged that his co-accused (Themba) had been recognised
by Eudy. Later, he claimed not to have known Eudy prior to killing
her. It is also undoubted that Eudy was a well-known figure in her
township. It is not common for a young black women who plays
in the national soccer squad to go unnoticed by her community.
It is similarly uncommon for members of our societies not to see
forms of gender expression that challenge popular gender norms.
Not only was Eudy a well-known community figure, people
recognised her as a lesbian and a ‘butch’ lesbian.
It was the judge’s intervention that angered many of us
in this court. The prosecutor had proceeded, questioning the
accused about his knowledge of Eudy’s sexual orientation.
Judge Mavundla quickly interrupted this line of questioning and
authoritatively stated: ‘There is no significance of the victim’s
sexual orientation in Mpiti’s crime.’ The prosecutor, forced
to withdraw his line of questioning, exhaled and, seemingly
defeated, sat down.
The unjust protector

Judge Mavundla’s assertion during Mpiti’s cross-questioning was
a disturbing and damaging intervention from the highest person
in the court of law. His intervention made sexual orientation and
identity an invisible and insignificant part of Eudy’s life and the
lives of the many people in the courtroom. He denied common
knowledge that Eudy was known by the perpetrators and many
others in the community to be a lesbian. Judge Mavundla fore-
closed the possibility that Eudy was targeted specifically because
she was a lesbian, an important factor that makes many lesbians
feel vulnerable and unsafe in their communities. Mostly, I want to
argue, the judge committed a serious injustice by silencing sexual
orientation and identity, silencing it also as a motivating factor in
the murder. Through his power and position, he committed a pain-
ful and further violation of many lesbians and of Eudy’s family.
The judge’s failure to recognise the importance of sexual
orientation and the multiple identities of the victim illustrates
what Amartya Sen calls a ‘solitarist approach to human identity’
350
(2007: 4–6). Thinking that any person or victim of crime possesses

only one identity during that crime limits the possibility of seeing
the myriad of identities found within each individual. It is a flaw
not to recognise that Eudy was a young, black lesbian woman
in the township without the means to feel protected in her own
community while providing for her family. Instead, during
this case, we were made to listen endlessly to how Mpiti was
a young unemployed man, a struggling father of a small baby,
a partner who couldn’t take care of his girlfriend, a son whose
ill mother needed him; the list was endless. In short, Mpiti was
a victim of circumstances that led him to criminal behaviour,
circumstances that were beyond his control. At the same time, we
were prevented from seeing Eudy’s multiplicities and interwoven
identities. She was only to remain unnamed, faceless, without
identity and just ‘the deceased’.
As Sen puts it, ‘in our normal lives, we see ourselves as
members of a variety of groups – we belong to all of them’ and
all of the time (my addition). The same person can, without
any contradiction, occupy different subject positions. Thus,
asserting that sexual orientation has ‘no significance’ was not
only an undesirable moral or ethical judgement, but it was also
a limited description or a ‘solitarist approach’ (Sen 2007: xii) to
understanding and describing the many ways people live their
lives. Therefore, to rob an individual of the multiplicity and
intersectionality of her identities is problematic. It is problematic
because we inhabit the world with a myriad of identities and
associations. These do not cease even in the case of murder or
violence (Sen 2007: xii). Thus, when a case is being dealt with, at
least at the level of the court, it is expected that all the reasons a
violation took place would be taken into account. Therefore, by
his intervention, the judge foreclosed the opportunity to explore
the multiple reasons2 a violation and murder occurred.
The judge was wrong, but it may not have been entirely his
fault. As Sally Kohn (2001: 225) argues, society:
generally is premised on a hierarchy of social classes – based

on race, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, wealth,
education level and so on. This social hierarchy transfers to the
legal realm … those accused of offending someone above them
351
in social status are likely to be handled more severely than

those offending someone below them.
Given the socially unequal, heteronormative and patriarchal

society we live in, it is not entirely surprising that our lives as
middle- or lower-class black lesbian women, even in the context
of the court, a progressive constitution and a human rights dis-
course, will remain in the lower ranks of the social hierarchy or
even unrecognised.
Efforts at redress have been numerous, including a call
for appropriate legislation to facilitate the legal proceedings.
However, what is paramount is sensitising the primary sources
of justice. From the moment the victim enters a police station or
is seen by a member of the police force, her experience with the
different ranks of the justice system should not deter her from
seeking further help. The point of entry into the justice system
should be sensitive about the victim’s subjective experiences
of violation. It is through such added efforts that our lives and
experiences as members of race, class, gender and sexual identity
formations will cease to disappear.
Notes
1 Simon Nkoli was arrested in 1985 and charged with treason. He was in
detention for alleged terrorist activities together with 21 other activists.
The Delmas treason trial was one of South Africa’s most protracted court
cases, ending in 1988 with Nkoli’s acquittal.
2 I am indebted to Sarai Chisala for this insight and for her illuminating
arguments.
References
Bucher, Nathalie Rosa (2009) ‘South Africa: law failing lesbians on
“corrective rape”’, Inter Press Service (IPS), 31 August, http://ipsnews.net/
print.asp?idnews=48279, accessed 27 July 2010
Gontek, Ines (2009) ‘Sexual violence against lesbian women in South Africa’,
Outliers, A Collection of Essays and Creative Writing on Sexuality in Africa, 2
(Spring): 1–18
Gunkel, Henriette (2010) The Cultural Politics of Female Sexuality in South
Africa, New York, Routledge
Kohn, Sally (2001) ‘Greasing the wheel: how the criminal justice system hurts
gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people and why hate crime laws
won’t save them’, N.Y.U. Review of Law and Social Change, 27: 257–80
352
Mkhize, N., Bennett, J., Reddy, V. and Moletsane, R. (2010) The Country We
Want to Live in: Hate Crimes and Homophobia in the Lives of Black Lesbian
South Africans, Pretoria, HSRC Press
Mtetwa, Phumi (2011) ‘“Correct” the homophobes’, Amandla: South Africa’s
new progressive magazine standing for social justice, 20 (July/August): 20–1
Muholi, Zanele (2004) ‘Thinking through lesbian rape’, Agenda, 18(61):
116–25
Muthien, Bernedette (2007) ‘Queerying borders: an Afrikan activist
perspective’, Journal of Lesbian Studies, 11(3): 321–30
Reddy, V., Potgieter, C.-A. and Mkhize, N. (2007) ‘Cloud over the rainbow
nation: “corrective rape” and other hate crimes against black lesbians’,
HSRC Review, 5(1): 10–11
Schaap, Jeremy and Gim, Beein (2010) ‘Female athletes often targets for rape:
E:60’ (video documentary), http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/e60/news/
story?id=5177704
Sen, Amartya (2007) Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny, London,
Penguin Books
Wittig, Monique (1993) ‘One is not born a woman’, in Abelove, H., Barale,
M.A. and Halperin, D.M. (eds) The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader, New
York, Routledge: 103–9
353
35
Zanele Muholi’s intimate archive:

photography and post-apartheid
lesbian lives
Kylie Thomas
The ones who fear me think they know who I am.

Minnie Bruce Pratt1
This paper focuses on the work of South African black lesbian

photographer Zanele Muholi and raises the question of how
experience that is deemed unspeakable can enter representation.
If we always read images through ‘codes of connotation’, through
what Roland Barthes terms the ‘studium’ of our knowing, how is it
possible to overturn ways of seeing that render lesbian subjectiv-
ity invisible?2 And if lesbian subjectivity is made visible through
suspending the structures of recognition, what are the political
implications of occupying such an ‘outlaw’ position? How does
being beyond recognition open or close the field of political possi-
bility? My reading of Muholi’s portraits that constitute her ‘Faces
and Phases’ series explores how her photographs work with the
ambiguities of ‘passing’ – passing away, passing between states
of gendered being, and passing through the prohibitions against
making lesbian experience visible and mourning lesbian loss. In
this way this chapter argues that Muholi’s most recent body of
work ‘queers’ both the conventions of memorial photography and
her own earlier representations of lesbian subjectivity.
Zanele Muholi is one of a handful of black women artists
who figure prominently in the visual art field and her work has
been shown both in South Africa and abroad. She is certainly
the most visible black lesbian artist in South Africa and has
received numerous awards for her work. Her photographs have
354
35 PHOTOGRAPHY AND POST-APARTHEID LESBIAN LIVES
also generated a great deal of controversy. In August 2009, South

Africa’s Minister of Arts and Culture, Lulu Xingwana, walked out
of an exhibition that contained several of Muholi’s photographs
on the grounds that they were ‘immoral, offensive’ and worked
‘against nation-building’.3 This has placed Muholi’s photographs
at the centre of a national debate about homophobia, freedom of
expression and queer experience.4 I will return to the significance
of Xingwana’s comments later in this paper in my discussion of
the tactics Muholi employs in her photographs of black lesbians
who have been subject to ‘corrective rape’ and who have died of
AIDS-related causes or who were murdered as a result of hate
crimes. I read these images as works of mourning that invoke
conventional tropes of memorialisation to circumvent precisely
the socially normative prohibitions so dramatically performed
by Xingwana in her role as an authorised voice of the state. The
paper offers an analysis of the transformation in Muholi’s mode
of working that occurs when she addresses the question of how
to represent loss. In particular I trace how her current work
draws on the conventions of memorial photography in order to
secure a place for queer subjects within representation. At the
same time I show how this complex working with and against
the ‘structures of recognition’ signals a departure from her earlier
and more narrow conceptualisations of lesbian subjectivity.5 In
order to do this I begin by describing some of the ways in which
her photographs can be understood as engaged in the task of
‘differencing the canon’, before turning to a reading of her most
recent series of portraits, ‘Faces and Phases’. The work of South
African feminist theorists Desiree Lewis and Pumla Dineo Gqola
and curator and artist Gabi Ngcobo has drawn attention to how
Muholi’s photographs render the complexity of lesbian lives
visible.6 However, this brave and politically necessary task is
not the sum of her work. The import of her current photographs
lies in how they both lay bare and contest the ways in which
the lives of queer subjects are made invisible and their deaths
ungrievable. ‘Faces and Phases’, I argue here, works at the limit
of the speakable, and Muholi’s photographs mark that limit even
as they pass beyond it.
355
Disrupting visual codes

In Encounters in the Virtual Feminist Museum, Griselda Pollock pre-
sents an approach to the history of art that embarks on the work
of what she terms ‘differencing the canon’.7 She swiftly lays to rest
the notion that the canon is quite ‘differenced’ enough already by
noting that ‘[n]ot only have we had to struggle and still struggle
on to ensure equity in the representation of all women as well as
all men in our cultural archives, but now our very struggle is being
written out of history, brushed off as a passing irritant.’8 Pollock
begins her reflections on the place of women in the history of art,
in the museum and in the archive, by relating her encounter with
a series of postcards that depict The Three Graces, a neoclassical
sculpture by Antonio Canova. She notes how the prevalence of the
female nude in the art museum is so naturalised that we no longer
see its strangeness, and as longstanding signifier of Western art the
naked female form becomes a placeholder for women in art – the
place of ‘woman’ in the museum, a stony limit point for feminist
art practice and theory. Her book goes on to produce ‘a virtual
feminist museum’ through a constellation of images exhibited in
what she terms ‘rooms’ at the beginning of each of her chapters,
all of which unsettle and recalibrate the archive of art history.
Pollock’s work reminds us that ‘Archives matter. What is included
shapes forever what we think we were and hence what we might
become. The absence of women’s histories in world archives has
defined a vision of the human on the pattern of a privileged mas-
culinity.’9 Pollock’s approach to reconfiguring how we think about
visual culture is suggestive and her archival feminist aim resonates
with the work of Zanele Muholi in several ways. Muholi’s project
is also an archival one and is concerned with many of the same
issues of visibility and invisibility that have consumed feminist
scholarship since the 1970s. In her artist’s statement which appears
in the catalogue for the ‘Innovative Women’ exhibition, she writes:
‘As an insider within the black lesbian community and a visual
activist, I want to ensure that my community, especially those
lesbian women who come from the marginalised townships, are
included in the women’s “canon”.’
A cursory survey of Muholi’s work thus far reveals the intensity
of her commitment to producing a visual archive of black lesbian
356
experience. Her photographs have appeared in group exhibitions

since 2002, her solo exhibition ‘Visual Sexuality’ was held at the
Johannesburg Art Gallery in 2004, and since 2006 she has been
represented by Michael Stevenson, a commercial art gallery in
South Africa. She has held four additional solo exhibitions there:
‘Only Half the Picture’ (2006); ‘Being’ (2007); ‘Faces and Phases’,
first exhibited as a series in 2009; and ‘Indawo Yami’ (2010). Her
exhibitions in Europe and North America include solo shows
in Vienna and Amsterdam. In 2007, together with white South
African lesbian photographer Jean Brundrit, Muholi facilitated a
series of photographic workshops ‘to gather diverse opinions and
diverse lesbian experiences in South Africa’ with eight aspiring
photographers.10 While the artist is now firmly positioned within
the commercial art world, she continues her work with the
Forum for the Empowerment of Women, an organisation that she
co-founded, and to teach others to take photographs.11
Muholi’s photographs open new spaces of representation
in South African visual culture but follow in the tradition of
feminist/lesbian art-making practices established over time by
artists such as the US-based Judy Chicago, Cindy Sherman,
Laura Aguilar and others. In her oeuvre there are numerous
works that proclaim their transgressive, disruptive stance, and
these are perhaps the images that are easiest to categorise, easiest
to dismiss – as some critics have – as ‘not very good art’ that
nonetheless makes an important political point.12 Some of the
images in Muholi’s book Only Half the Picture and some that
appear in her more recent ‘Being’ series are among those that
invoke conventional tropes of lesbian/feminist representation to
contest the bounds of what is considered proper for women and
for art. ‘Dada, 2003’, a black and white photograph of a bare-
breasted black woman strapping on a dildo, her face beyond the
frame of the image, the 2005–06 ‘Period’ series and the 2009 ‘LiZa’
series can all be read as testing the limits of propriety in art and as
a straightforward claiming of a visual space for embodied black
lesbian experience. And through these works Muholi’s project can
be said to be aligned with the mainstream feminist position that
Pollock articulates in Encounters in the Virtual Feminist Museum.
For in this conceptualisation of the production of a new form of
feminist archive that makes the experiences of women visible, it
357
is of course necessary that the women who are represented are

recognisable as women. Muholi’s project, one that she articulates
on her website as ‘mapping and archiving a visual history of black
lesbians in post-Apartheid South Africa’, also engages and affirms
a particular form of identity politics in order to lay claim to a place
within an existing order of representation.
At the same time, Muholi’s concern with securing a place for
lesbian experience within ‘the women’s “canon”’ signals that
what constitutes lesbian subjectivity is by no means decided. Her
words testify to the ontological insecurity of the category of being
that is ‘lesbian’ in a context where corrective rape is practised
as a way to ‘restore’ lesbians to womanhood. Bringing the work
of Zanele Muholi into conversation with the feminist position
Pollock articulates also opens a way to consider what the limits
of ‘differencing the canon’ might be. What happens when radical
and disruptive forms of subjectivity seek to enter representation?
Does the canon hold? Does the archive seize up, prohibit entry?
What kinds of silences remain?
Light writing in dark times

Muholi’s first monograph, Only Half the Picture, carefully works
with the aesthetics of the body, a complex holding of traumatic
histories encoded in skin together with a celebration of lesbian
desire and the promise of pleasure. Through Muholi’s lens black
female bodies are resignified; framed as the subjects of and for
lesbian desire, they make visible an erotics of longing, of sexual
intimacy and of community. At the same time, many of the pho-
tographs carry resonances of photographs of black female bod-
ies drawn from a long history of racist iconography and which
map the continuities of black female oppression over time. In the
cracked toenails of the women in ‘Triple III’, for instance, there are
signs of hardship, in the dark markings along the outer edges of
the thighs of the reclining figures there is a shadow of darkness,
of violence, bruises or stains.13 Read in conjunction with the other
photographs in the ‘Triple’ series that portray the interlocking legs
and buttocks of three women and that bring to mind the erotic
nudes of Edward Weston or Imogen Cunningham, the ambiguities
of ‘Triple III’ are largely erased. Its erotic dimension comes to the
358
fore. The pose of the three women speaks of the stillness of sleep
and shows the protective tenderness of bodies curved around one
another. And yet there is something disturbing about the arrange-
ment of these bodies on the floor. They are shown to be resting on
a strip of carpet, its detail in the foreground so close-up it becomes
a strange terrain and then fades to merge with what appears to be
a stone floor that extends behind them. The marks on the limbs of
these women evoke the history of slavery, summon photographs
of the bodies of those killed in the Rwandan genocide, provide a
visual echo of the legs of schoolgirls who have been tear-gassed
and who run from the police in Soweto in South Africa in 1976.
The larger context of Muholi’s book, one that includes photo-
graphs of women after being raped, raises the question of how it
is possible to read black lesbian desire outside of the violence of
both the past and present. I want to say that inside the frame of
‘Triple III’ there is no fear, only kinship, intimacy, love. But if this
is so then fear is just beyond the borders of what is made visible
here and haunts this beautiful assemblage of bare forms. Here, as
in the works that form part of her series portraying lesbians who
have been subject to hate crimes that I discuss below, Muholi is
masterful in her portrayal of the vulnerability of the human body
and the complexity of embodied experience.
In ‘Ordeal, 2003’, there is a line of fury that runs through the
arm of the woman who crouches at the edge of an enamel basin
scrubbing her hands into a blurred frenzy, moving so fast and
so slick with water they appear unskinned.14 At the centre of the
photograph in which everything else remains still these hands
are rendered unrecognisable, a pulpy mass, an internal organ
exposed to the air, an aborted foetus or placenta. Something that
cannot be washed clean.
This is the first of a series of photographs in Only Half the Picture
that depict the survivors of hate crimes. It is followed by a double-
page spread of a case-number, a crumpled piece of lined paper
depicted against a black ground, issued by the South African Police
Service in Meadowlands, Soweto. Handwritten on the page are the
details of a case – the date of the incident, the name of the inspector
assigned to the case, a phone number and an official stamp. There
is also a line that reads ‘ATT. Rape + Assault G.B.H’ [Grievous
Bodily Harm]. The photograph that appears overleaf casts light
359
on why this hastily written case-number should be accorded so

much space. ‘Hate Crime Survivor I, 2004’ is a closely cropped
portrait of a woman visible from her waist to just above her knees.
The vertical lines of her hospital-issue pyjama pants angle slightly
in towards the centre of the photograph and draw the viewer’s
eyes to her slender wrists and hands which are positioned on
her lap, her curved finger and thumb forming a dark hollow, a
point of entry into her body, a metonym for the violated parts of
her we cannot see. Around her wrists are three identifying tags
that signify her in-patient status but here also read as manacles,
handcuffs. And suddenly her striped clothing resembles a prison
uniform, and the posture of her body holds the echo of countless
images of incarcerated men who stand with their heads bent,
their hands and feet bound – a stance of guilt. The implication is
that in spite of the indisputable archival evidence represented by
the photograph of the case number that immediately precedes
this image, lesbians who are raped are often not believed and are
treated as criminals both inside and outside of the justice system.
The juxtaposition of these two photographs makes visible the ways
in which those who are subject to rape are also often accused of
having brought violence on themselves. The concept of corrective
or curative rape is often read as premised on the idea that lesbians
have done something wrong to begin with and that rape is that
which will set things right, restoring the natural order. Muholi
articulates how rape is used to punish and correct lesbians in
South Africa: ‘Curative rapes, as they are called, are perpetrated
against us in order to make us into “real” and “true” African
women – appropriately feminine, mothers, men’s property.’15
Yet as Muholi’s photographs show, understanding the psychic
mechanism that underlies curative rape as an act that restores the
order of patriarchy through affirming relations of power between
men and women is to grant a kind of sense to senseless acts of hate.
Her series depicting survivors of hate crimes shows how the act of
curative rape is fundamentally tied to a desire to murder.
One of the most painful photographs in Muholi’s oeuvre is
‘Hate Crime Survivor II’. It appears alongside the photograph
of the ‘criminal/survivor’ and powerfully undoes the flawed
and fatal logic that seeks to blame lesbians who are raped. In a
hospital ward on a high bed covered with a white sheet is a figure
360
under a heap of dark bedclothes. In fact it is only the caption that

accompanies the photograph which renders the figure legible –
without the single line that tells us that what we are looking at
is a person, a ‘survivor’, there is no way to know for certain that
the shape on the bed is a human form. The camera angle renders
the bed enormous and foreshortens the figure so that the person
appears shrunken, barely there. The photograph portrays how
the human form is overcome by the trauma of psychic collapse.
Here the effect of rape is shown to be ontological erasure, the
annihilation of subjectivity. The person who we know to be there
but whom we cannot see has not been made ‘woman’ but has
been altogether unmade as a subject.
‘Aftermath, 2004’ portrays a woman standing, and in this
sense contrasts the collapsed figure on the hospital bed on the
preceding page.16 However, the large scar that extends down the
length of this woman’s thigh signifies that there can be no easy
moving beyond the trauma of rape. The scar is a sign of a much
older wound but serves here as an outer manifestation of her
more recent physical and psychic wounding through corrective
rape. The scar itself, an elongated teardrop, an opening into her
body now closed, like the curled hand of the woman depicted
in ‘Hate Crime Survivor I’, serves as a metonym for her violated
vagina. There is something unbearable about the positioning of
this woman’s hands. They seek to shield her, to protect her, in this
instance from our gaze as much as from the traumatic memory of
attack, but at the same time they are passive, they are hands that
speak a history of defeat. If there is a punctum here it is not the scar
that we cannot fail to see, but the light as it catches the thumb of
this woman, her curled fingers, the vulnerability of her being that
is encoded in her hands.
Muholi’s hate crimes series asks us to think differently about
how we understand sexuality and subjectivity, and this is not
restricted to thinking what lesbians are or might be. They show
us that to be lesbian is not to perform desire in a way that
transforms/queers an underlying essential being that is ‘woman’.
Instead they show, through laying bare the painful way in which
the corrective rape of lesbians restores absolutely nothing at all,
the emptiness at the centre of the fiction that animates all forms
of gendered being.17
361
Queering the archive

The ways in which Antonio Canova’s sculpture of the three graces
might be read as pregnant with lesbian/transsexual desire is sur-
faced in a photographic work by British artist Della Grace/Del
LaGrace Volcano.18 The black and white photograph shows three
women, naked but for their jackboots, standing in the pose of The
Three Graces with their arms around one another and their heads
shaved, their bodies scarified, pierced and tattooed. I first saw
LaGrace Volcano’s reworking of the sculpture in Parveen Adams’
book The Emptiness of the Image and Adams’ reading of the pho-
tograph is a provocative one. For Adams the image disturbs the
conventional modes of representation of woman to such an extent
that she argues: ‘These women are beyond recognition.’19 She goes
on to explain:
Recognition is a process that may be looked at from two sides.

Women who are recognised as such are recognised by a rigor-
ous template of definition. If we do not recognise, in this pho-
tograph, these women, it is not because they are recognised as
something else. It is rather because the structure of recognition
has been suspended.20
What Adams draws attention to here is the way in which LaGrace

Volcano’s photograph inaugurates a way of looking that undoes
our gendered gaze. The transgressive power of the image lies in
the fact that we cannot simply substitute ‘woman’ for another rec-
ognisable category of being – whether that is ‘lesbian’ or anything
else. Adams’ reading provides a way to account for the absence of
LaGrace Volcano’s The Three Graces from Pollock’s virtual feminist
museum. Her analysis of how the photograph works to suspend
the structures of recognition raises the question of what it means
to be positioned outside the realms of the legible. And this returns
us to the significance of the archive, which, as Pollock notes:
is pre-selected in ways that reflect what each culture considered

worth storing and remembering, skewing historical record and
indeed historical writing towards the privileged, the powerful,
the political, military and religious. Vast areas of social life and
huge numbers of people hardly exist, according to the archive.
362
The archive is overdetermined by facts of class, race, gender,

sexuality and above all power’ [my emphasis].21
Indeed, the archive produces these ‘facts’ as much as it holds

them and seeks to secure them. The archive is also (and I think
this is the sense in which Zanele Muholi employs the term) a site
of struggle for legitimacy. A certain kind of entry into the archive
will mark queer lives as deviant, perverse and criminal. Another
mode of entry, one that Muholi’s work seeks to find, is that which
will guarantee visibility within the social that is not at the same
time a form of erasure. Central here is the question of what the
archive itself demands – what are the conditions of entry into the
archive of legibility? If ‘the archive is the law of what can be said’,
what is the place of outlaw subjects who are not merely beyond or
outside the law but who signify the law’s very undoing?22
It is in a space of suspension, a kind of limit zone between
recognition and invisibility, that Muholi’s most powerful
photographs are situated. The ways in which Muholi carefully
forces the boundaries of the archive’s frontier is the subject of the
remainder of this chapter. I explore how, through a process that
literary theorist Ross Chambers terms ‘genre-hijacking’23 and that
I draw on and recode here as ‘passing’, Muholi’s work performs
a complex negotiation of the limits and possibilities of and for
queer subjectivity within representation.24
Mourning and/as masquerade

Ultimately, Photography is subversive not when it frightens,
when it repels, or even stigmatizes, but when it is pensive,
when it thinks.
Roland Barthes25
In Camera Lucida, Barthes defines his concepts of the studium and

the punctum, key terms for thinking about how photographs are
read. Most photographs belong to the studium, that which I have
learned to see by acculturation and that which cannot really
reach me. And then there are those photographs that arrest my
gaze, photographs that disturb the studium of my knowing, pho-
tographs that wound me, photographs that I love. This element
within the photograph is animated through the particularity of
363
my gaze. It is this Barthes terms the punctum: ‘The second element

will break or (punctuate) the studium. This time it is not I who seek
it out (as I invest the field of the studium with my sovereign con-
sciousness), it is this element which rises from the scene, shoots
out of it like an arrow, and pierces me.’26 Barthes’ concepts of the
studium and the punctum set up a method of reading photographs
that illuminates how all readings are cultural – but at the same
time legitimate a deeply subjective mode of response. The concept
of the punctum allows Barthes (not to mention all those who have
followed in his wake) to cast his emotional, poetic responses to
photographs as a theory. I draw on these concepts here to grant
a kind of legitimacy to my readings of Muholi’s photographs. At
the same time I am struck by how thinking her work in relation to
Barthes’ influential terms casts light on the implications of ‘queer-
ing the gaze’ beyond gay and lesbian studies. In other words it is
not simply that Barthes’ method offers a productive mode of read-
ing Muholi’s photographs, but Muholi’s work shows that reading
with and for the punctum can be understood as a mode of queer
reading, an openness to ways of seeing that disrupt the heteronor-
mative patriarchal hegemony that limits and structures our gaze.
In Camera Lucida, Barthes writes of how ‘to give examples of
punctum is, in a certain fashion, to give myself up’.27 To reveal the
ways in which I am affected by a photograph is to be exposed,
describing what I see is an act that ‘outs’ me, one that positions
my intimate self in a public sphere. ‘Giving myself up’ before a
photograph is also to occupy a subject position beyond or outside
of my own. What might the minister have seen had she stayed
to look at Muholi’s photographs? The incendiary quality of the
works Xingwana did and did not see lies in how they make
possible a space for us to acknowledge our own (queer) desire, I
want to argue, in how they provide an entry point into an intimate
archive, one that is embodied, one that is formed through love.
There is a second punctum that Barthes identifies as he studies
the photographs that move him and attempts to identify the secrets
of photographic affect. That punctum is time. Photographs make
visible the passage of time and they mark our inability to halt its
passage. This relation between photography and time is central
to understanding how photography, and portrait photography in
particular, is linked to mourning. In Camera Lucida Barthes reads
364
Alexander Gardner’s 1865 portrait of Lewis Payne, a young man

who was photographed in his cell while awaiting execution for
attempting to assassinate Secretary of State W.H. Seward: ‘The
photograph is handsome, as is the boy: that is the studium. But the
punctum is: he is going to die.’28 Barthes quickly comes to see that all
photographs make visible our being-towards-death. ‘I read at the
same time: This will be and this has been; I observe with horror
an anterior future of which death is the stake. By giving me the
absolute past of the pose (aorist), the photograph tells me death
in the future.’29
The photographs that make up the ‘Faces and Phases’ series
exploit the relation between photography and mourning to great
effect. All the photographs in the series are shot in black and
white, almost all the subjects face the camera, ‘returning’ the
viewer’s gaze, most are half-length portraits, and several depict
only the head and shoulders of the subject. Each photograph
is captioned with the name of the person portrayed, the place
in which they were photographed, and the date the image was
taken. The uniformity of the images indicates that they form part
of a single body of work. The seeming regularity of the series
also serves another end – it operates as a visual sign of a shared
experience, of a community of being, and is a common practice in
photography that aims to memorialise.
Muholi’s artist’s statement for ‘Faces and Phases’ overtly articu-
lates her desire to assert black queer presence in contemporary
South Africa and frames that desire in relation to the ever-present
threat of violence, both discursive and material: ‘It is important
to mark, map and preserve our mo(ve)ments through visual
histories for reference and posterity so that future generations
will note that we were here.’30 In her description of the work
she intends the series to perform Muholi writes: ‘Historically,
portraits serve as memorable records for families and friends
as evidence when someone passes. Faces express the persons,
and Phases signifies the transition from one stage of sexuality
or gender expression and experience to another.’31 Here Muholi
uses the term ‘passes’ in the sense of ‘passed away’ or ‘to die’. An
analysis of the work ‘Faces and Phases’ performs also reveals how
‘passing’ operates in another way through these photographs
that make visible the passing away of lesbians as a result of hate
365
crimes and AIDS-related diseases and a form of passing between

fixed gendered positions. These portraits simultaneously permit
these lesbian lives to pass into an archive of mainstream visual
representation through their ‘hijacking’ of the generic conven-
tions of memorialisation. Ross Chambers has developed this idea
in relation to the work of gay writers who have testified to their
experiences of living with and dying of AIDS. ‘Genre-hijacking’
makes use of established generic conventions to speak what
culture has deemed unspeakable. In the case of Muholi’s work in
South Africa, what is unspeakable is both lesbian desire and loss.
‘Faces and Phases’ mobilises the conventions of memorial portrait
photography to open a space for mourning and at the same time
queers that space by juxtaposing images of the dead with multiple
portraits of living queer subjects.
The question of what is at stake in this act of passing marks the
fine line between passing as a strategy of survival, a mechanism
that allows one to appear, and passing away, becoming invisible
as a queer subject through one’s entry into the realm of the legible.
This invisibility can be psychic, a metaphoric loss of subjectivity,
and can take material form through the threat of murder that
affects lesbian being everywhere in South Africa today. Muholi’s
artist’s statement draws attention to the portraits of those who
have died but at the same time positions them among the
portraits of the living. Here the presence of the dead signals the
precarious position of the living and the living remind us of the
subjectivity of the dead:
‘Phases’ articulates the collective pain we as a community

experience due to the loss of friends and acquaintances through
disease and hate crimes. Some of those who participated in this
visual project have already passed away. We fondly remember
Buhle Msibi (2006), Busi Sigasa (2007), Nosizwe Cekiso (2009)
and Penny Fish (2009): may they rest in peace. The portraits
also celebrate friends and acquaintances who hold different
positions and play many different roles within black queer
communities – an actress, soccer players, a scholar, cultural
activists, dancers, filmmakers, writers, photographers, human
rights and gender activists, mothers, lovers, friends, sisters,
brothers, daughters and sons.32
366
Positioning the portraits of the dead among those still living

implies solidarity with the dead, a community that traverses
the boundary between life and death. The rhetorical force of
this pairing of the living and the dead powerfully refuses the
dehumanisation of black lesbians that led to the deaths of the
women memorialised here. This positioning which insists on
the relation between the living and the dead also means that
we necessarily read each portrait in the series as haunted by the
possibility of violence, rape and murder.
The photographs in the series of women who have died –
Busi Sigasa, Penny Fish and Nosizwe Cekiso – make use of the
recognisable codes of the obituary form but read in relation to the
other portraits in the series these codes are undeniably queered.
Witness the juxtaposition of ‘Nosizwe Cekiso, Gugulethu, Cape
Town, 2008’, and ‘Gazi T Zuma, Umlazi, Durban, 2010’. What
results is a form of queer memorialising that makes lesbian lives
and deaths visible without sacrificing their queerness. It is the
particularity of these deaths as lesbian deaths that Muholi will
not allow to pass even as they ‘pass’ into the memorial structures
of recognition. The photographs that make up ‘Faces and Phases’
negotiate the line between passing and death, visibility and
invisibility. For in these images what we see is not ‘woman’ and
yet we cannot recognise these subjects as lesbians either, for a
moment, in looking, the fixity of our gendered look cannot hold.33
‘The structure of recognition has been suspended.’34 All that is
thought to separate black lesbians from ‘human’ subjectivity is
simultaneously present and absent here. The photographs insist
on the particularity of the black lesbians they portray at the
same time as they insist on their sameness – to other women, to
other embodied subjects, to the human. Through these ‘straight’
portraits we bear witness to queer lives. Muholi’s photographs
move us through and beyond our perceptions of what lesbian
subjectivity might be and at the same time challenge us to
reconceptualise the bounds of what is thought to constitute the
human. Must the passage between invisibility and visibility
entail giving up queerness? In their complex defamiliarising of
the conventions through which we recognise the human, the
portraits that constitute ‘Faces and Phases’ suggest this does not
have to be so.
367
Muholi’s photographs claim a place for queer subjects in the

field of visual art. Through this act of ‘claiming’, her work testifies
to the complexity of queer experience in post-apartheid South
Africa and at the same time constitutes a demand for political
recognition. Muholi’s photographs, which bear witness to the
experiences of lesbians who have been subject to hate crimes, as
well as some of the responses her work has generated – like that
of Xingwana – illuminate that this demand has yet to be met.35 The
inclusivity of the South African constitution is often the starting
point for debates about gay and lesbian rights in the country;
however, as many of Muholi’s photographs show, to be queer is
still to be subject to multiple, and often violent, forms of erasure.
This essay appeared in a slightly longer form in the journal Safundi in

2010.
Notes
1 Pratt (1990: 114).
2 Barthes (1981: 26).
3 Van Wyk 2010. For the media statement see Xingwana (n.d.). It is also
instructive to read the minister’s statements on art that does promote
nation building. See, for instance, her address (Xingwana 2009) at the
launch of the Moral Regeneration Month.
4 I employ the term ‘queer’ to open a way of thinking about sexuality
and subjectivity that crosses and seeks to undo the bounds between
categories of identification such as ‘gay’, ‘lesbian’, ‘straight’, ‘bisexual’
and ‘intersex’.
5 I draw the phrase ‘structures of recognition’ from psychoanalytic theorist
Parveen Adams (1996). The term implies socially constructed ways of
seeing and modes by which one becomes recognisable as a subject, as
well as the psychic dimension of the operations of the gaze.
6 Lewis (2005), Gqola (2006) and Ngcobo (2006).
7 Pollock (2007: 13) and also Pollock (1999).
8 Pollock (2007: 13).
9 Pollock (2007: 12).
10 A selection of photographs by the participants at the workshop,
a description of the project and some of Jean Brundrit’s own very
interesting photographic work which, like Muholi’s, engages with lesbian
experience, (in)visibility and the archive is collected in Brundrit 2008.
11 For more information about Muholi’s visual activism, see her projects on
her website www.zanelemuholi.com.
12 See the critiques levelled at Muholi’s early work by reviewers such as Smith,
and reprinted in Muholi (2006: 90–1); and Hogg, cited in Lewis (2005: 17).
368
13 The image can be seen on the Michael Stevenson Gallery website (Muholi
2005).
14 See this and other images at Muholi (2005).
15 Muholi (2009a: 19).
16 For other readings of this photograph, see Lewis (2005) and Gunkel (2010).
17 The key text for thinking gender as performative remains Judith Butler’s
Gender Trouble which asks, among other things, how ‘language itself
produce[s] the fictive construction of “sex”’ (Butler 1990: xi).
18 Della Grace is now Del LaGrace Volcano, a gender-variant visual artist.
See www.dellagracevolcano.com.
19 Adams (1996: 123).
20 Adams (1996: 138).
21 Pollock (2007: 12).
22 Foucault (2002: 145).
23 Chambers (2004: 29). See also Chambers (1998) for an excellent study of
how writing the experience of living with and dying of AIDS tests the
boundaries of autobiographical writing.
24 Natasha Distiller’s essay ‘Another story’ (2005) offers a critical reflection
on the limits of and for lesbian experience within representation.
Interestingly, Muholi refers to Distiller’s argument in her discussion of
her motivation for producing ‘Faces and Phases’ and states: ‘I wanted
to resist the heterosexual representation of lesbians through portraits’
(Muholi 2009a: 26).
25 Barthes (1981: 38).
26 Barthes (1981: 26).
27 Barthes (1981: 43).
28 Barthes (1981: 96).
29 Barthes (1981).
30 Muholi (2010).
31 Muholi (2009a: 27).
32 Muholi (2010).
33 For a representative selection of images, see Muholi (2009b and 2010).
34 Adams (1996: 138).
35 See, for example, the recent incident at the United Nations Human Rights
Council in Geneva where South Africa’s representative Jerry Matjila
objected to the inclusion of sexual orientation in a report on racism as to
do so would be to ‘demean the legitimate plight of the victims of racism’
(Fabricius 2010: 3).
References
Adams, Parveen (1996) The Emptiness of the Image: Psychoanalysis and Sexual
Differences, London, Routledge
Barthes, Roland (1977) Image, Music, Text, Glasgow, Fontana
Barthes, Roland (1981) Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography, New York,
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Brundrit, Jean (2008) ‘A Lesbian Story: an Exhibition Project by Jean Brundrit’
369
Butler, Judith (1990) Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity,
New York, Routledge
Chambers, Ross (1998) Facing It: AIDS Diaries and the Death of the Author, Ann
Arbor, University of Michigan Press
Chambers, Ross (2004) Untimely Interventions: AIDS Writing, Testimonial and
the Rhetoric of Haunting, Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press
Distiller, Natasha (2005) ‘Another story: the (im)possibility of lesbian desire’,
63: 44–57
Fabricius, Peter (2010) ‘SA fails to back efforts at UN to protect gays’, Cape
Times, 23 June: 3
Foucault, Michel (2002) The Archaeology of Knowledge, London, Routledge
Gqola, Pumla Dineo (2006) ‘Through Zanele Muholi’s eyes: re/imagining
ways of seeing black lesbians’, in Zanele Muholi: Only Half the Picture.
Johannesburg: STE Publishers: 82–9
Gunkel, Henriette (2010) The Cultural Politics of Female Sexuality in South
Africa, New York, Routledge
Lewis, Desiree (2005) ‘Against the grain: black women and sexuality’, Agenda,
63: 11–24
Muholi, Zanele (2005) ‘Only Half the Picture: 29 March–29 April 2006’,
archived exhibition announcement and images, Michael Stevenson, Cape
Town, http://www.michaelstevenson.com/contemporary/exhibitions/
muholi/muholi.htm, accessed 5 July 2010
Muholi, Zanele (2006) Zanele Muholi: Only Half the Picture, Johannesburg, STE
Publishers
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lesbians in post-apartheid South Africa’, self-published essay, http://www.
zanelemuholi.com/ZM%20moh_final_230609.pdf, accessed 14 December
2012
Muholi, Zanele (2009b) ‘Faces and Phases: 9 July to 8 August 2009’, archived
exhibition announcement and images, Brodie/Stevenson, Johannesburg,
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5 July 2010.
Muholi, Zanele (2010) ‘Faces and Phases’, artist’s statement and images,
Michael Stevenson, Cape Town, http://www.michaelstevenson.com/
contemporary/exhibitions/muholi/facesphases.htm, accessed 5 July 2010
Ngcobo, Gabi (2006) ‘Introduction’, in Zanele Muholi: Only Half the Picture,
Johannesburg, STE Publishers: 4–5
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of Art’s Histories, London, Routledge
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and the Archive, New York, Routledge
Pratt, Minnie Bruce (1990) Crime Against Nature, New York, Firebrand Books
Van Wyk, Lisa (2010) ‘Xingwana: homophobic claims “baseless, insulting”’,
Mail and Guardian, 5 March, http://www.mg.co.za/article/2010-03-05-
xingwana-homophobic-claims-baseless-insulting, accessed 18 June 2010
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za/speeches/minister/2009/11Jull09Speech.html, accessed 2 July 2010
Xingwana, Lulu (n.d.) ‘Statement by Minister of Arts and Culture Ms Lulu
Xingwana on media reports around the innovative women exhibition’,
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371
36
The portrait – fiction

Pamella Dlungwana
Jabu stands, heads and shoulders, with her father, in a portrait

that hangs in the lounge. They look like siblings, actually, her
father fit and older and Jabu lean and younger. The only differ-
ence is the degree of hair and hairlessness on their faces. Her
father has a beard, it’s hard and black, it could be bushy and thick
but the way it catches the sun makes it hard and scratchy looking.
I’ve just decided Jabu is a she; we’ve not had this madness before.
Silly, really, when you factor the reality that we’ve been dating for
three months now. Jabu has simply been Jabu. In Zulu Jabu has
managed to avoid the discomfiture that we’ve just experienced at
the Pick ‘n Pay.
‘Savings or cheque ma’aam?’ the cashier asks.
This question is met with a vacuous silence, a fumbling
through Jabu’s pockets and a scratching of the head by me.
‘Cheque please,’ is Jabu’s short but firm reply.
On our way to the car I want to ask what the cashier meant by
her question, why Jabu answered her and didn’t correct her at first.
The silence I thought we’d left in the check-out queue has followed
us into the car and all the way into Jabu’s flat at the Berea.
I stand there, between the fridge and the sofa, in Jabu’s lounge,
staring at the portrait of father and daughter, father and son, and
ask myself over and over, what I aim to do with this discovery.
Jabu spends the rest of the afternoon in bed; she’s suddenly not
feeling well. I unpack the groceries solo, the portrait on the wall
boring holes into my back. Father and daughter, father and son,
monitoring my every move.
I peek into the bedroom before I leave; Jabu is asleep, I think. I
lock and post the key under the door. The neighbours are cooking
dinner, beans and beef, maybe. I should be home cooking mush
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36 THE PORTRAIT
and mush for my family too. The walk from the Berea to the train
station is obese with men and women, boys and girls. Women in
dresses, long skirts, short skirts, in combinations of blouse-shirts-
vests and headwraps and braids and wigs and afros. Men in
pants, shorts, Bermudas and golf shirts, tees and vests, short hair,
cornrows and dreadlocks. Men in thick shoes with big footprints in
the sand and women in dainty heels and sandals and cute sneakers.
Jabu’s hair is soft, cornrowed neatly and like her father’s beard
it shines in the sun. Jabu wears pants, clam diggers and short
shorts with basketball tops and sweaters. In clam diggers her
calves are like beach boulders tucked into blue-black flesh and
her feet peek out from masculine Nike slops and Air Jordans. I’m
relieved that her hands aren’t calloused paws and remember that
they are big, in the way the rest of her is generally big. I love Jabu
before I love her and him together, before I wonder why we never
take off our tops when we have sex.
I walk faster to the train, going through the inventory of my
mother’s freezer. I’ll cook chicken and rice; I’ll make a quick curry,
maybe fish. I’ll use some of that curry paste my sister bought.
I get to the train station late. I’m the only person in school
uniform. The train is full, it’s the sardine can I’ll rip open later,
spilling fish onto a clean white plate to gut and debone it better.
Men smell, they have a heavy odour. A fat man pinches me against a
pole, his arm extended above my head. His armpit is in my face and
his belly presses against my ass. I assume he has deodorant on but
there’s a sweaty meatiness about his scent; his armpit is breathing
directly into my nose. Jabu always smells fresh; Calvin Klein bottles
sit proudly in her bathroom. I spray some of it on my blazer once a
week. I sniff myself between classes when I miss Jabu; it feels a bit
like if I were to turn I would find Jabu standing behind me.
I stare at the fat man’s face and suddenly his moustache starts
growing in my direction, long hairs spaghetti reach for me. I feel
sick and wonder when we’ll reach Thembalihle station. I need to
get home to cook tinned fish and rice and watch my family eat it.
At eight Jabu calls. She wants to know if I got home safe, her
tone is flat, anaesthetised of any emotion. I’m fine, I got home ok.
Cool, then. Bye. Bye.
I go to bed early and can’t fall asleep. The image of Jabu as I left
her in bed follows me and I don’t know what to ask when we meet
373
again. The portrait hanging in her lounge is hurtling towards me

like Mr Fat Tum’s hairs did on the train home.
In the morning I expect to get Jabu’s call. It doesn’t come. I
don’t have money, my mom’s forgotten to leave us lunch money
again and I don’t have a cell phone. I don’t know if I’ll see Jabu
in the afternoon and so drag my feet as I prepare to leave the
house. Her sister calls just minutes before I leave. I must go to
City Hospital on my way to school. Jabu’s not well. She hangs up.
The hospital is a block from my school. I jump off the train and
walk right past my school, even though I’m running 15 minutes
late and the gate is closed and the elders I’m meeting along the
way are giving me strange looks. The hospital’s ground floor has
a receptionist; she’s seen me here before. I’ve spent a few days on
the lobby, waiting to see my aunt who has asthma. We’ve chatted
on all those occasions.
‘Is your mom not well again?’ she asks.
‘No, she’s fine. I’m here to see a friend,’ I reply, rushing past
and pressing the lift closed. I avoid her questions, if my aunt
falls sick again I don’t want this woman telling tales. I’m hiding
Jabu. I’ve never hidden Jabu before. Am I hiding Jabu or avoiding
answering questions about ditching school? I don’t have an
answer to that. I’m alone in the lift but the many me’s staring back
don’t look too proud.
Jabu is in a female ward, a ward for women. The walls are
a curious pastel pink. The nurses at the nurses’ station curtly
inform me of the visiting hours. I tell them I’ve brought a patient
toiletries. When they ask who it is I’m visiting I give them Jabu’s
name. Both nurses look at each other then at me and tell me how
to find Jabu.
‘The patient has cut her breast … something like a razor.
Yeah, with a razor, I think. It was a smooth cut. No accident. The
pictures we’ve taken of her breasts show other cuts, along the
armpits and the breasts themselves. This is not the first time. The
scars on the patient’s…’
City Hospital is no University Hospital. It’s semi private, there
shouldn’t be so many people in lab coats standing around Jabu’s
bed. There shouldn’t be people talking around Jabu, about Jabu.
I am hesitant to walk, though: it’s not visiting hours, Jabu and
I aren’t family. She’s sedated, she’s bound by medication and
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36 THE PORTRAIT
she can’t speak. I lean hesitantly against the doorframe, silently

hoping the whole scene disappears, that Jabu be fine, at lectures
at ML Sultan and not lying in bed being analysed.
The talk of pictures taken of the patient at admission the
night before continues. These strangers have seen Jabu’s breasts.
They have a folder full of pictures of them somewhere in the
hospital premises. I imagine them passing these pictures around
later, casually tossing them from one person to the next as they
pontificate on why any sane person would mutilate themselves
so. So engrossed in their little enclave are they that my presence
still hasn’t been noticed.
Jabu turns slightly; he’s been awake all this time. He’s been
awake whilst these seven or eight lab-coat-wearing, gossip-
starved academics have been poring over his file.
‘Hi, excuse me. May I speak to him alone, please?’ It comes out
like that, like I’ve practised it for hours, like it’s something I get to
say often. They look at me, in my uniform, with my backpack. I
must be the sister, one of many. They clear out, sort of. They stand
aside, let me in and I’m standing at Jabu’s bedside.
It can’t be that bad, I want to offer. I don’t know why but that
idea dies in my throat. I have no idea what it must be like, good or
bad. I stand there, like a jelly mould, inanimate and purposeless.
‘I hate English,’ Jabu manages. He lifts his hand and reaches for
mine. We are locked like that a while, our hands clasped together,
my school bell ringing in the background. His hands are bound
in bandages much like the type he keeps on his bedside table. His
thumb rubs at the centre of my hand, we chuckle.
The medical gossip squad exits stage left. I set my bag on the
floor, grab a chair and spend the rest of the morning talking to
my partner.
375
37
Seeing beyond colonial

binaries: unpacking Malawi’s
homosexuality discourse
Jessie Kabwila
Introduction
The debate on gayness and lesbianism, usually referred to as
homosexuality, is mainly polarised between two competing dis-
courses that are largely colonial in origin. On one side, there is
the minority voice, speaking through legal structures, cautiously
fighting for homosexuality to be legalised, advancing arguments
that are mainly steeped in the human rights discourse. On the
other, there is the majority, louder voice, vigorously rejecting this
call and spearheaded by churches, traditional leaders and gov-
ernment officials. What this chapter looks at is the predominant
lack of indigenous and home-grown ownership in the arguments
advanced by either camp. Using my participation in Malawi’s
constitutional review process, reactions to the ‘Malawi Gay and
Lesbian Society’ email on the Chancellor College listserv, the
Malawi Daily Times captions of Minister of Information Patricia
Kaliyati and Nyasa Times articles on the Malawi Gay Rights
Movement, I argue that given the level of hiv and aids1 that
Malawi is facing, and the imperial, parasitic and vulture character
of the human rights discourse, 21st century Malawi has to own
this discourse. The decision whether to legalise or keep homosex-
uality illegal in Malawi needs to be made on Malawian and indig-
enous terms. Postcolonial Malawi needs to have this conversation
on decolonised terms that neither follow the prescriptive and
colonising human rights discourse nor the essentialised Malawian
376
37 UNPACKING MALAWI’S HOMOSEXUALITY DISCOURSE
culture discourse that ends up being a proxy for the Western colo-
nial discourse of Western and Eastern organised religion and class
elitism. The discourse needs to spin on an axis that:
Accepts and values difference, diversity and openness of voice

Interrogates the pros and cons of legalising it for the daily life
of the majority and average Malawian across class, gender, sex,
ethnicity and other categories
Determines how homosexuality as a category engages with
whatever we define as being a Malawian
Defines and traces historically what sex and homosexuality
mean to Malawian citizenship from precolonial times to date,
accounting for the changes.
Approaches anchored on polarised binaries will only prob-

lematise and increase tensions in Malawi. On the one hand are
arguments steeped in political expediency that often bastardise
the concept ‘culture’, employing colonial and imperial products
such as Christianity and Islam. They construct a hegemonic form
of cultural essentialisation. On the other are Western voyeuris-
tic and Darwinian concepts that exoticise Africa, Africans and
African sex. They portray legalising homosexuality as yet another
Western discovery, a gift to the dark and primitive continent and
proof of an African modernity.
Since this chapter mainly draws from print media sources,
it starts by giving an overview of the coverage of print media,2
focusing on the years 2005 to 2007.3
Homosexuality in Malawi’s print media

In general, the Malawian reaction to homosexuality as reported in
the media has been negative, ranging from intolerance to outright
homophobia. Compared to 2003 and 2004, the year 2005 saw a
significant increase in the public media of debates on issues such
as homosexuality, cross-dressing and transvestism.
The Malawian media, especially print and radio4 (television is not
widely in use), treat homosexuality, transvestism and cross-dressing
differently. Homosexuality is the issue that is mostly debated. The
discussions mainly centre on its morality and most submissions
377
oppose it on the altar of religion and culture. Transvestism is rarely

discussed while cross-dressing is often not linked to homosexuality
or transvestism. The kind of cross-dressing that is visible in the
Malawian media is the one that happens during traditional functions
such as weddings, funerals, initiation rites and entertainment
gatherings that might be indigenous or cosmopolitan or a mixture.
There is also an increase in popular artists taking on female stage
names such as Anne Matumbi. TVM, Malawi’s television station,
has even run documentaries on boys who dress like women to
entertain. When these musicians are asked why they do this, they
report that it is for commercial reasons; it makes them more famous
than others and weaves a sense of intrigue and suspense around
them, thereby enhancing their sales. The Malawian media feature
men dressed like women and vice versa at weddings and even
during funerals for some ethnic groups but this is not treated as a
practice indicative of sexual ‘deviance’ or homosexual tendencies.
All in all, the media imply that transvestism is absent in Malawi as it
is not even discussed. Cross-dressing is portrayed as a practice that
is not linked to sexuality, sexual identity or identity issues but as a
tool of entertainment that either sex can practice. Homosexuality, on
the other hand, is generally seen as a new menace, an alien ‘sin’ that
needs to be rooted out very fast before it spreads and contaminates
Malawians. Discussions on homosexuality in the public media
sometimes spill over into the online discussion forums of the
University of Malawi.
The Chancellor College listserv

Early in 2005, the listserv of Chancellor College, the main constit-
uent college of the University of Malawi, carried a posting from
the ‘Malawi Gay and Lesbian Society’ said to be based in South
Africa. It outlined their legal status and stated that they planned
to table their request for legalisation in the next constitutional
review, scheduled to take place later in the year. I was interested
to monitor the response to this issue for three reasons: as a par-
ticipant in the constitutional review process; a feminist academic
activist who has seen the card of culture, ethnicity, gender, region-
alism played in her struggles against patriarchy,5 especially on
issues concerning violence against women;6 and as an activist and
378
the president of a union which had a member who was gay and
who was constantly verbally persecuted.7
I was interested to see how ‘learned’ Malawians were going to
react to this issue which had been thrust into their faces. I wanted
to see if the discussion would be investigatory, condemnatory,
participatory and/or dismissive. It was an issue that made several
rounds in the senior common room8 but now the homosexual
community9 had put pen to paper and prompted a response.
What followed were views that cited religion and culture as
grounds for legitimising the largely homophobic stands. To start
with, the responses threw everything in – gays, lesbians and
paedophiles were all lumped into one boat. Comments ranged from
labelling homosexuality non-Malawian, non-human and illogical,
some even invoked Zimbabwe’s President Mugabe: calling a
homosexual person a thing, labelling homosexuality something that
is not even done by animals, in effect, branding it subhuman. The
Bible and Qu’ran were quoted, in a bid to prove that homosexuality
is not a human act. Two emails were direct verbal attacks on the
member of staff widely believed to be gay and explicitly expressed
disdain for the person and anyone ‘who does what he does’. Other
emails labelled the practice as something understandable when
done by prisoners, but not by free Malawians. The operative word
that was used to link this practice with the prison was matanyula,
a derogatory term that refers to men who participate in anal sex.
One of the emails lamented why any man would not want to sleep
with the numerous beautiful women while another expressed joy
that the more gay men there were, the more women there would
be available to him. In general, heterosexuality was labelled as the
norm, anything outside it portrayed as an anomaly and therefore a
deplorable and unfortunate mishap and disease.
The makwerekwere card

This reaction reminded me of the way I experienced Batswanas’10
reaction to hiv and aids in 1994 to 2003. This reminded me of
my experiences as a makwerekwere11 in Botswana, where I was
an expatriate teacher for eight years, before I returned to be a
lecturer in African feminist literary theory at Chancellor College,
University of Malawi.
379
When hiv and aids gained visibility in Botswana, the public

opinion of Batswana interviewed on Botswana Television (BTV)
and local radio stations cited this disease as a foreign one, brought
in by makwerekwere. A good number of foreigners used to be
castigated and it was very common to hear locals call for them
to be sent back to their homes because they were peddling this
horrible disease. What is interesting is that categories of race and
nation were applied in this castigation. White and light-skinned
Africans, especially those from well-to-do African countries like
South Africans, were not part of the makwerekwere peddling hiv
and aids; it was dark African ‘others’ from poor countries like
Zimbabwe, Malawi and Mozambique who were the main targets
of this blame game. I experienced this first hand. My contract to
teach at Moshupa Senior Secondary School required me to take
an hiv and aids test and I knew a good number of African black
expatriates who had been declared jobless and sent packing home,
after testing positive. I was infuriated at the clearly racist character
of this policy, especially when I found out that a fellow expatriate
teacher, a white Englishman, was not being asked to take this
test. I decided to register my disgust with my employer, the
Teaching Service Management. This Englishman, who happened
to be a friend and neighbour, agreed to accompany me as he was
flabbergasted at the difference in our treatment when we had the
same employer and were teaching the same students. We were
told to our faces that it was government policy that the test be
taken by ‘black’ (read black African as Euro-western and African
Americans were not required) expatriates.
So when I got home and heard arguments that labelled
homosexuality un-African, a foreign and vile importation, the
resemblance of how I had been suspected of peddling hiv and
aids, mainly because of my geopolitical origins, came to mind.
There was a striking resemblance in the way I had seen Batswana
and now Malawians ‘foreignise’ a practice they found negative
and hurtful, and which they did not approve of, as if all bad
things are imported and the indigenous is perfect and good. The
blame-the-foreigner syndrome did not stop there.
380
A disease brought by foreigners

In an article entitled ‘Malawi government reaping peanuts from
tourism’ (Jomo 2006), Patricia Kaliyati, the then minister of infor-
mation and tourism, went on to ‘bemoan’ the ‘problem’ of homo-
sexuality that she said was rampant in Chintheche Inn and was
fast infecting Lake Malawi’s resorts (Jomo 2006: 1). She quickly
played the culture card: ‘Our culture does not condone homo-
sexuality. These tourists when they come they should be learning
our culture not introducing to us a bad culture like homosexual-
ity, that is uncalled for in Malawi’ (Jomo 2006: 1). She went on to
blame tourists who splashed out money on young Malawians in
return for homosexual favours.
On the 25 January 2007, the leading print media houses in
Malawi ran a headline that captured minister Kaliyati closing
yet another tourist resort on the basis of it being connected to
homosexuality and drug abuse. The article went on to explain that
she had gone on to lambast senior chiefs who had approached
her, begging the minister to open the tourist resort because it
was their main livelihood. In this article, there was no report of
current or future plans for the minister to engage with the chiefs
and people of this community. One wonders why, given the belief
in her culture she attested to earlier, a culture that prides itself on
communality, that the honourable minister did not sit down and
discuss this issue with the community and the chiefs12 instead of
resorting to the top-bottom approach and using her state power
and status to arbitrarily close the resort. She behaved like a
colonialist who ‘came, saw and conquered’, going on to prescribe
what was good for the people and what should happen. Through
Kaliyati, the government demonstrated that when it comes to
homosexuality, it does not engage with the people concerned in
order to understand the issue before taking a stand.
The parliamentary take

The same minister had spoken out about homosexuality earlier
while she was part of a gender training workshop in August 2006
in which I was participating. This was a joint Scottish Executive
and British Council initiative to empower Malawian female par-
liamentarians, by linking them with civil society on gender issues.
381
She was one of the participants although she did not attend the
whole workshop or the particular session in which I brought up
the issue of homosexuality. The day before she issued her tirade
about homosexuality, I had introduced the issue of sexuality and
how important it was that female leaders were well informed
before they rushed to say anything to the media so that they
would not have to retract their views when research to the con-
trary surfaced. I cited the Mary Nangwale saga13 as an example
to illustrate that public political speeches by female politicians
are more scrutinised for accuracy than those made by male ones.
I used the way professionals had reacted to the gay and
lesbian email on the listserv discussed earlier, I asked how they
as parliamentarians would handle such an issue. A good number
reacted in the usual ‘homosexuality is a sin’ manner. But as the
discussion went on some, an MP for one of the constituencies in
Lilongwe, for example, wondered why the homosexuals did not
come out to fight for their sexual rights, why they were writing
anonymous letters. I pointed out that some of the contributory
factors were that homosexuality is a crime in Malawi and the
ostracism and stigma it carries.14 I found that when one presents
the facts obtaining on the ground, the parliamentarians open
up and ask questions to understand this issue better. Some of
them even give examples of gay and lesbian people they know,
citing historical examples of such people they were told of by
their grandparents. At the end of the discussion, some of the
parliamentarians appreciated my presentation. The general view
was that much as they can ask and open up about the issue, the
bottom line is they cannot endorse that which infuriates and is
seen as taboo by their constituency and party leadership. At the
end of the day, they carry the views of the people whose votes they
depend on for their jobs. I still emphasised that they, as individuals,
need to read into this issue and take an informed position.
Minister Kaliyati’s comments on homosexuality came a day
after this session and I used her apparent failure to distinguish
homosexuality from paedophilia to emphasise the point I had
made in the previous training sessions. Kaliyati had homogenised
and lambasted the practitioners of both, calling for their arrest
wherever they were found in Malawi. Kaliyati was not the
first politician to call for the arrest of homosexuals. She was, of
382
course, taking her cue from President Mugabe of Zimbabwe,

who in 1993 angered some participants at the Zimbabwe book
fair by ‘flamboyantly branding gay people as “worse” than dogs
and pigs’ (Grundy 2006: 1) and went on to call for their arrest
in Mutare, Zimbabwe. Mugabe went on to argue that same-sex
marriages were a threat to mankind and condemned churches
that blessed gay unions (Grundy 2006: 2). His speech was
applauded by Anglican priests in the audience and Zimbabwe
is heavily Anglican. Mugabe’s views found a home among the
clergy of Zimbabwe and Malawi.
The Henderson rejection

The religious voice of Malawi is very audible in the debate about
homosexuality. In order to appreciate the weight that this voice
carries, it is important to know the religious composition of
Malawi. Malawi has a population of about 18 million. Muslims
and Christians account for 93 per cent of the population. There
are 7.9 million Christians (80 per cent), 1.3 million Muslims (13
per cent), 305,000 belong to other religions (3 per cent) and only
423,000 are either non-believers, African traditional religions
or atheists (4 per cent).15 While addressing homosexuality and
the issuing of condoms to Malawi’s prisoners, Pastor Gibson
Nachiye of the Deeper Life Church and Bishop Andrew Dube of
the Assemblies of God ‘issued a stern warning against legalising
homosexuality’ in July 2003, arguing that: ‘Homosexuality is a sin
before God, therefore, such acts as distribution of condoms would
only encourage immorality’ (Gmax 2003: 1).
The rejection of Bishop Dr Nick Henderson, who in July
2005 had been elected by the Lake Malawi diocese to serve as
its bishop but who was challenged by conservative members of
the Anglican Church, epitomises the reaction of the church on
homosexuality in Malawi. In September 2005, the Herald reported
that Bishop Malango had delayed the confirmation hearing of
Bishop Henderson, because of reports that he was gay, claiming
that Henderson’s support of gay rights was out of step with
African values. Malango was not alone is arguing that being gay
goes against African values. Bishop Nathaniel Yisa of Nigeria
argues that: ‘The bible refers to homosexuality and condemns
383
it outright. In traditional African society there is no room for

men who want to have sex with men. As for women who want
to have sex with women – to most people in the rural areas, it is
unimaginable’ (Grundy 2006: 2).
The argument that homosexuality or being gay is not African
is an issue I take up in an article in Feminist Africa (Kapasula
Kabwila 2006). I argue that regardless of whether one accepts or
approves of cross-dressing and homosexuality, what is clear is
that both practices have history and precedence in Africa. The
article challenges binary thinking and substantiates its stand by
providing evidence from documents on African literature, artefacts
and rituals from countries such as Ghana, Kenya and South Africa.
Indeed, there is a growing body of African research that illustrates
homosexuality as an indigenous, home-grown practice.
Legalise homosexuality – MHRRC’s plea

The argument for legalising homosexuality in Malawi is sparse but
noticeably growing. In an article, Frank Namangale (2005) reports
that the Malawi Human Rights Resources Centre (MHRRC) on 28
January 2005 put a proposal to the Malawi Commission to legalise
homosexuality in the country. The centre said it wanted this pro-
posal to be considered during the national constitutional review,
arguing that the penalties provided for in the penal code violated
the right of a person to freely choose his or her sexual orientation.
The argument that was further advanced by the centre is what is
most interesting: ‘[This is] a recognised international human rights
standard. Discrimination of persons in many forms is prohibited
and all persons are, under any law, guaranteed equal and effective
protection against discrimination on grounds of race, colour, sex,
including sexual orientation’ (Namangale 2005: 1, my emphasis).
The centre’s communications officer, John Soso Phiri, went on
to say Malawians should accept that there were gays and lesbians
in their community and they needed to be allowed to come out
in the open and live freely. This could not happen until the centre
‘open people’s minds’ (Namangale 2005:1, my emphasis) and that
was why the proposal was made.
384
The foreign gift syndrome

Starting with the MHRRC, the two words that are highlighted
above, ‘international’ and ‘open’, epitomise the problematic nature
of that view, whether you agree with the speaker or not. When one
is trying to reach out, to be understood by the Malawian nation – a
people who were colonised by Europe and who are battling vari-
ous forms of Western imperialism – a request for them to follow
international trends is asking for trouble. Given what usually hap-
pens to Malawians and Africans when they follow the lead of the
Western-driven international world, asking Malawians to make a
paradigmatic attitudinal change on an issue on the basis of what
is happening internationally is unwise, wrong and dangerous. To
start with, the use of the word ‘international’ anachronises and
infantilises Malawi, insinuating that Malawi is lagging behind
the times and it has no agency to chart its own path on this issue.
Phiri needs to remember that this is the exact trope that was used
to legitimise imperial acts like those of the slave trade and colonial-
ism, and the trend continues to this day. Phiri needs to remember
that the word ‘international’ connotes the West to many Africans
and Malawians. Not only is it insulting to tell me as a Malawian
to mimic the West, frankly, it is like asking me to follow the ways
of the person who bought the handcuffs that are chaining me.
Walter Rodney (1972) and Adu Boahen (1987) have convincingly
illustrated how the so-called ‘international’ giants are the ones to
blame for much of what Africa and Malawi are battling with.
The opposite of ‘open’ is ‘closed’ and when Phiri says the centre
wants to open people’s minds, it implies that their minds are and/
or were closed, waiting to be opened by people like him and the
likes of his centre. Such an approach is hinged on power dynamics
and insinuates that Malawian issues need to be engaged with the
yardstick of those who champion the human rights discourse that is
used by Europe and North America. In an interview with me (April
2007), Nkiru Nzegwu warned against engaging Africa in a manner
that did not regard it as an equal of other continents, a way that was
not respectful of its people, and which instead placed the West at
the centre of the world and made it the venue of and measurement
of knowledge. She gives the example of how European artists learnt
abstraction from African art. Instead of acknowledging that, they
385
turned around and labelled it tribalistic and primitive art. She goes
on to explain how the sophisticated African art that they came
across was labelled to mimic theirs or just glossed over. When one
takes into account such views, it is evident why Phiri’s views can be
problematic to the Africa of today, which is struggling to stand on its
own feet, facing so many ‘international’ obstacles in its bid to define
itself and decide its own destiny. When one looks at how the West
has benefited from primitivising and exoticising not only African
identities but African sexualities, Africans are justified in distrusting
a discourse that suggests, even remotely, that the international stand
on sexuality is to be paid attention to. The international includes the
Europe that in colonial times defined the African as the oversexed
man and woman (Salo 2001). The people of Africa and Malawi in
this case are battling an image of being anachronised16 by the West
as diseased, helpless and backward. Asking them to follow the
international is dignifying the racist portrayal of Africa by the West.
This issue of opening the mind of Malawians makes the approval
and/or recognition of homosexuality seem to be an issue prescribed
by the outside. It gives it the image of a gift that is coming from
an international, enlightened and selected few people, the biblical
three wise men of the East, or in this case, West. The historiography
of the West with Africa, not to talk of the present day problematics,
make it very difficult for Malawians to receive any ‘gift’ from the
West. The words of Nuruddin Farah in his book Gifts eloquently
illustrate the argument I am attempting to make here. Talking about
the European languages that have been argued to be a gift that can
unite Africans, Farah points out the reason for Africans mistrusting
so-called gifts from the West: ‘To know who I [an African] am and
how I have fared, you must understand why I resist all kinds of
domination including that of being given something’ (Ngaboh-
Smart 1996).
Racist labels
It is crucial that those arguing for the legalisation of homosexu-
ality avoid racist labels as that will only problematise the way
Africans read their cause. Richard Kirker, the general secretary of
the small but vocal Lesbian Gay Christian Movement, had this to
say when reacting to the split that came about when the American
386
Anglican church appointed Bishop Gene Robinson: ‘Personally,

I’d rather see a split within the ranks of the Anglican community
than for people of principles to bow to the demands of homopho-
bic Africans.’
What exactly is meant by the label ‘homophobic Africans’?
What if Akinola (the Archbishop of Nigeria) had been European
and white, would it have made a difference? Is the problem
homophobia or the epidemic capital of the owner of the
homophobia, to quote Steven Gregory (2007)? Such a statement
races the discourse, thereby aggravating the situation.
Engaging with homosexuality on Malawian

terms
If we examine the stands taken by those for and against legalis-
ing homosexuality, it is evident that most of the arguments are
externalist in nature. Malawi needs to examine this issue on
Malawian terms. Instead of rushing to talk of culture as if it is a
pure concept, we need to reach within ourselves as a people and
find how sex is defined and has been defined before colonisation,
and the role that sex and sexuality play in the Malawian param-
eters of citizenship and personhood. How do we define deviancy
in sex? Is homosexuality an issue amongst us now or not? How
is it linked to the hiv and aids we are battling? Our agenda and
priorities should be based on what we feel, think, believe in and
stand for with each other and collectively. Unless the identity
‘Malawian’ does not exist anymore, we need to be sure that the
debate on this issue is owned and participated in by Malawians in
their diversity instead of anchoring it to heterosexual hegemony,
Christianity and Islam.
The first reality to accept in Malawi is that although we have
prisoners that we give condoms to we say homosexuality is
not Malawian. Surely the condoms are not for blowing up as
balloons, and Lucius Banda’s submissions of 13 May 2007 attest to
the presence of homosexuality in prisons. Evidently, we need to
recognise that reality instead of moralising and prescribing what
we think sex is and should be in Malawi. We need to interrogate this
moralising and prescriptive trope that runs through the arguments
of those who are against the legalisation of homosexuality.
387
We need to ask ourselves if Malawian culture defines and

polices sex the way Christianity does. I am asking this knowing
how ‘Malawian culture’ has been quoted in the discourse on
prostitution, single mothers and unmarried women in feminist
literary theory. A good example is the way definitions of ‘loose
women’, ‘stray women’, ‘outside children’ and ‘bastard’ have
come up and been debated (Kalipeni and Zeleza 1999). In
Kabwila-Kapasula (2007), Nzegwu illustrates how women’s
sexuality in postcolonial Africa has been policed in matters that
it was not in precolonial Africa. Using the example of her Igbo
society, Nzegwu (2006) illustrates how the Christian definition of
loose morals and children born out of wedlock is used to police
and socially ostracise women in postcolonial Igboland, unlike
in precolonial times. When one goes into an African community
today that has adopted the colonial definition of ‘good woman’,
which is often modelled on Victorian ideals and was used to
police European women’s sexuality (Pateman 1989), it is easy to
buy into the way Western categories are being normativised. It
is easy to buy into categories like ‘bastard’ and ‘prostitute’, yet
this was different before the Victorian-driven colonialists came
to Igboland.
If homosexuality is to be rejected on the basis of it being alien,
we can only do that after we have examined how we defined
homosexuality before the coming of colonialism and its attendant
identities, processes and institutions. We need to investigate our
Malawian past, if ever it is possible, and then verify if we truly
did not have homosexuality. Then again, how many things do
Malawians do today that they did not do before? The issue of
homosexuality needs to be unravelled and interrogated by us
as people today, taking into account our yesterday. We need to
weigh and see how we as a people have felt and feel about it.
We need to ask ourselves how we define sex, if sex as an act
has and is ever defined in diversity. It is important to examine
our different communities in their various versions of matriarchy,
patriarchy, patri- and matrilocality, and see what weight is given
to sexual intercourse and how that intersects with citizenship in
the village and urban setting. We need to know if the way one has
sex affects the definition of who is a Malawian or not. We need to
unpack the interface between the way one has sex with access to
388
resources and citizenship. In my literary studies of Malawi and

the SADC region, I have yet to see proof of a community that
sanctions a person, disqualifies them from being a member of the
village or community on the basis of how they have sex.
Conclusion
It is important for Malawians to be engaged on their issues as an
equal with other nations. We need to avoid privileging colonial
logic and Eurocentricity in the conceptualisation of our problems
and solutions. Those arguing for the legalisation of homosexual-
ity need to engage with Malawi as a mature, independent and
knowledgeable nation. They should not present homosexuality
as an issue that the whole world has woken up to while Malawi
lags behind. In an interview with the author, Nzegwu empha-
sises that any society and especially an African one, given its
historicity, needs to be engaged with respectfully, as an equal. It
needs to be approached with an attitude that reads it from the
inside, not one that passes prescriptions and says ‘I have come
to tell you what to do’ (Kabwila-Kapasula 2007: 174). Malawi
needs to use its home bearings to find a solution to problems of
its home because, east, west, north or south, home is best. It is
imperative that Malawi wears homegrown glasses to see homo-
sexuality beyond colonial binaries of religion/culture and human
rights. The homosexuality discourse needs to be grounded in
homegrown and owned discourses.
Notes
1 This paper adopts Zillah Einstein’s stand on not capitalising letters that
attain a hegemonic presence on others (1996) and applies this to not
capitalise hiv/aids, in a bid to emphasise that while hiv/aids is real in
Africa, it does not define the people of Africa. It is a way of illustrating
that they are living their lives heroically in the face of such a chronic
disease. Life is going on and Africa is not a story of squalor, victimhood
and dependency, as the Western media would have us believe.
2 The modern state of Malawi has a population of about 18 million and
gained its independence in 1964. Its low literacy levels and economic
challenges make the radio the most extensively used form of media.
Literacy rates are 49.8 per cent for women, 76.1 per cent for men,
compared with Zimbabwe where the figures are 87.2 per cent for
women and 94.2 per cent for men (UNICEF (2007) The State of the World’s
389
Children).
3 I returned to Malawi in 2003 after working as an expatriate teacher in
Botswana for eight years.
4 Malawi’s main radio station is the Malawi Broadcasting Corporation
(MBC), and the main newspapers are The Daily Times and The Nation.
5 The hegemonic force that works in various forms, including physical,
ideological, institutional and processes, advocating the creation and
maintenance of male dominance at individual and/or collective levels.
This power is used by men of any age, race, class or religion to dominate
women.
6 I initiated a project to fight violence against women in the university
(UNIMA) and saw how hegemonic forces such as patriarchy
masquerade, reinvent and mutate themselves, especially when under
attack. This is a university where a fellow feminist academic activist
(Professor Isabel Phiri) had to leave after doing some research that
exposed the prevalence of various forms of violence against women in
the campus I teach in.
7 I was the president of the Chancellor College Academic Staff Union
(2004–06) and in our battles against the administration for visionary
leadership and with the government over salaries, I had seen first hand
how capitalism protects its own and fights ferociously when attacked to
protect profits, inventing categories of ethnicity, gender and age.
8 A place where academic staff and their spouses meet and socialise, and
discuss academic and other issues. Its membership includes university
teaching staff from the lowest in rank to the highest, from staff associates
to professors.
9 I believed the email came from the underground homosexual community
of Malawi. This was debatable as the email stated that the members of
the association were in South Africa and this made some people doubt its
authenticity. I put the subterfuge down to fear of being identified given
the legal status of homosexuality.
10 People of Botswana are called Batswana.
11 A derogatory term referring to black African foreigners in Botswana. I
employ a subject-centred approach to its spelling, the spelling that I, the
Chichewa/Shona Mukwekwere living in Botswana owned, to authchonise
and contextualise the term.
12 I am well aware that the role and definition of Malawian chiefs has been
very influenced by colonialism, multiparty politics and the so-called
democratisation of the neocolonial state. I employ the precolonial
definition of chief in Malawi.
13 The handling by the media and political system of the parliamentary
debate on the first female inspector general of the Malawi police.
Another example is the media’s treatment of Vera Chirwa’s bid to run
for president. She was labelled as too old when she was the same age
as Bingu wa Mutharika, then president of Malawi. There are so many
examples that evidence the gender bias in political leadership globally
and in Malawi.
390
14 Some of the parliamentarians and fellow civil society members did

say they were disappointed by my choosing to discuss the issue of
homosexuality, with one pointedly lamenting that this time, I had gone
too far in my radicalness.
15 This is based on Reverend Dr Chakanza’s paper on ‘Religions Percentage
of Population – Country Overview’ (2004).
16 A term used by Fanon (1963), Boahen (1987) and McClintock (1995) to
refer to the way the West cast Africa as a dark, backward and helpless
place. Coming to it was seen as going back in time, while going to
Europe was seen as going to light, development and to the world.
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392
38
The Movement Building Boot

Camp for Queer East African
Activists: an experiment in
revolutionary love
Jessica Horn
Memory
Recordar: To remember. From the Latin re-cordis, to pass back
through the heart.
Eduardo Galeano (1991), The Book of Embraces
Here, at the end of a soul-shaking experience of the MBBC with

its emotional mountain tops, and emotional valleys, co-creating
new ways of understanding self, and politicising debates on
everything from bodies, to economies, to loss…. Seeing now
so clearly that queer Africans are at the cutting edge of African
progressive social movements, and that feminist solidarity
gives air to this work.
Personal diary entry, 28 March 2011
Of all the activist spaces I have engaged in since my days as a

feisty feminist teenager, I have never been in a space as personally
and collectively transformative as the Movement Building Boot
Camp (MBBC) for Queer East African activists.1 The MBBC was a
year-long learning process organised by Fahamu and UHAI – The
East African Sexual Health and Rights Initiative – in 2011, with
the aim of nurturing new leadership among lesbian, gay, bisexual,
transgender and intersex (LGBTI) activists by exploring and devel-
oping a deeper theoretical and political base for activist work. This
formal mandate of movement building was given wings by the
393
will of these two organisations to genuinely shift activist energies

in the region, allowing for the creation of a maverick, passionate
and experimental training methodology and a reflexive learning
community. In practice, something electric was born between us
in the MBBC process; something profound shifted in our ways of
doing and structures of feeling. The experience was as momen-
tous, in the view of one lesbian participant, as ‘the moment that I
realised that I was beautiful, and I was queer, and I was African,
and had a consciousness’. So what was the MBBC?
This essay represents an act of retrospective analysis. It is
a provisional attempt to understand the unexpected space,
languages, community and transformative energy we found
ourselves collectively creating in the MBBC. It is necessarily
subjective, in that it is my memory and my understanding of
what occurred, punctuated with resonances and reflections of
others involved. It includes moments of re-membering experience
(literally, the act of putting the body of my emotions back
together), and engaging a theory that we lived through practice
in creating the MBBC space. I write this acknowledging that it is
vital that we engage what I have called elsewhere the ‘politics
of the process’ (Horn 2009) in our work given that we spend
the majority of our time in the doing, and not necessarily in the
briefer moments of victory or achievement. In feeling my way
back through the MBBC process, I am also constantly engaging
the broader significance of the space that we created and
methodologies that we developed in the landscape of an NGO
based on human rights and social justice. For while we protest
shrinking funding for NGO activism, we also need to appreciate
the tremendous resources we do actually have at our disposal,
including the potential for inter-country learning processes and
on-site learning and exchanges in the comfortable surroundings
of hotels. How do we best use these learning possibilities that
we already have to meet the activist pedagogical imperative of
nourishing deep political transformation?
394
38 THE MOVEMENT BUILDING BOOT CAMP
Birthing ideas
In mid-2010 Hakima Abbas, an African feminist working for the
Pan-African social justice organisation Fahamu, approached me
with an idea to work on developing a curriculum for a training pro-
gramme for East African LGBTI activists. The idea was to create a
‘boot camp’, drawing on a military metaphor but applying it in the
sense of engaging our political development as activists with the
discipline seen in revolutionary movements. In Hakima’s words:
from the first idea, the MBBC was a collective process … it

came out of conversations with comrades where the feeling was
that there needed to be a re-injection of politics into the LGBTI
movement, and a holistic way of looking at that movement …
and a recognition that many of us are tired and that there are
great and wonderful ideas out there that are not being explored
because we are taking up a lot of space.
I understood the yearning, to use Amilcar Cabral’s phrase, for a

‘return to the source’, to re-embrace the value of rigorous politi-
cal thought and debate about our political visions and the meth-
odologies and ways that we engage and use power to instigate
change. With that intention, and tremendous latitude given by
the host organisations, I worked on the written curriculum.2 We
surveyed activists in the region to identify learning priorities,
and combined these with our own sense of key areas to explore
or introduce into African queer debate. One such area was well-
being, which we prioritised as an issue to explore in both political
and practical terms, as central to sustaining activism.
The learning process itself was to take place in two residential
sessions, each of a week and a half, with the months in between
dedicated to applying learning and ongoing discussions on key
issues through an email mailing list. In planning to actually create
the process, I was joined by fellow facilitators Phumi Mtetwa, a
South African queer, socialist feminist who has been active in
a range of intersectional struggles around sexual orientation,
race, class and gender as well as the student anti-apartheid
movement; Solome Nakaweesi-Kimbugwe, a feminist activist
and entrepreneur who has been a vocal ally for women’s, LGBTI
and sex workers’ rights; and Hakima Abbas. Together we formed
395
the core facilitation team. All core facilitators were African but
also, unintentionally, all were women and all firmly positioned
in feminist politics, although with a variety of perspectives
on this. Other facilitators joined during the process, including
Najia Sabeen, a Kenyan psychologist and energy healer, who
participated full-time for the second residential training. While
not all facilitators were queer-identified, all shared a solidarity
with queer struggle. In selecting participants, Fahamu and UHAI
chose LGBTI and sex worker activists, those who represented
what Hakima Abbas describes as ‘people who have not necessarily
been deeply entrenched in the NGO-isation of the movement but
have shown commitment in a broad sense to taking risks, making
things different, and who have a passion for people’.
Grounding
You can never forget who you are and where you stand in the
struggle.
Bob Marley and the Wailers, ‘So much things to say’
To deny the importance of subjectivity in the process of trans-

forming the world and history is naive and simplistic. It is to
admit the impossible: a world without people.
Paulo Freire (2005 [1970]: 50)
The MBBC learning space was initiated in residential training in

the green surroundings of a lodge outside of Nairobi, Kenya. On
the first day of the training we had organised a dialogue session,
with a few members of the facilitation team sharing their own
experiences and lessons from activism. The session was interest-
ing enough, but that evening we met as facilitators and shared
what was a common uneasiness about the power dynamic we had
created. Paulo Freire suggests that in a liberatory teaching prac-
tice, ‘[e]ducation must begin with the solution of the teacher–stu-
dent contradiction, by reconciling the poles of the contradiction so
that both are simultaneously teachers and students’ (Freire 2005
[1970]: 72). It is, of course, one thing to say, and another to make
happen in a learning space. East Africans are heir to a colonial
education system based on hierarchical obedience to an omnisci-
ent teacher – learning is by memorising, only speaking if asked to,
and with a fear of making mistakes. Obedience is often enforced
396
through corporal punishment, the literal enforcement of knowl-

edge hierarchies through physical violence. In addition, even
in our adult activist learning spaces we also tend not to deeply
consider the silent hierarchies of class, gender and language,
and how these play out in who engages and what we consider
to be ‘knowledge’, and who ends up speaking. As we reflected
as facilitators on the first evening, we realised that we had in fact
re-enacted the ‘teacher–student contradiction’. Although we sat
in a circle, we had very much sustained the vertical hierarchy of
‘knowledgable older activist who speaks versus younger activist
who listens’ that we had intended to subvert.
We opened the next day in a circle again, but now asking
everyone in the room the question, ‘How did you come to activist
consciousness?’ The next few hours were witness to a gentle,
deep – and at moments incredibly painful – mutual sharing of
realisations about evolving understandings of self, moments
when homophobia or gender norms were violently enforced,
political inspirations from parents or mentors, and the desire
to seek liberation from the brutality of marginalisation. We
allowed each other space to cry, space to run out and get air,
and the opportunity to hold and be held. From that point we
remained conscious, as facilitators, of the need to open space
for participants to engage us all as ‘teachers’ too, and share their
respective knowledges and wisdoms from their personal and
collective activism. This revised sharing circle helped establish
two critical axes of our learning community: co-creation and
embracing subjectivities.
In that moment of deep sharing we encountered a new
challenge as facilitators. We had felt the weight of pain in the
room, and had responded as best we could. However, we were
cognisant that we might not have the emotional resources to
hold it all throughout our time together, given all else we were
responsible for in keeping the process moving. We acknowledged
openly to participants that we had struggled to find an appropriate
counsellor who we felt we could trust to be non-biased. In
response a participant (who was himself a trained counsellor)
offered to show us a simple method of group support. He asked
us to form a circle, with each person standing behind another. He
then asked us to take note of the person we stood behind, and to
397
offer to be their ‘angel’, looking out for them during the process
and responding first if they were facing any difficulties. We also
each agreed to be looked out for by the person who was standing
behind us; they would be our angel. By offering this small
ritual, the participant not only gave us a practical framework to
manage the emotional landscape of the MBBC, he also actively
redistributed the responsibility of revolutionary love horizontally,
respecting each person’s need for care and their capacity to give
care to another. This created another foundational axis of our
learning community – mutual embraces.
Once we had situated our politics in the context of our own
life histories, we went through a layered process of situating
ourselves in what we knew of the history of oppressions and
liberations across the African continent, creating a visual timeline
with all of the key moments that we felt had contributed to
establishing – or shifting – power relations for us as Africans
and in each of our other class and gendered identities. Through
engaging political theory in sessions and evening reading groups,
watching films about activism across the world, and sharing
social movement culture such as the South African protest dance
of toyi toyi and poetry open mics, we located our activist politics
and actions firmly within existing lineages of struggle. And so
we constructed another axis of our learning practice – historicised
debate. This may sound self-evident as activist practice; however,
it is surprisingly absent in enough of the NGO-based activism we
have all experienced to be cause for concern.
The facilitation process: channelling flow

Seeing the classroom as a communal place enhances the likeli-
hood of collective effort in creating and sustaining a learning
community.
bell hooks (1994: 184)
I checked in at the boot camp as an individual who would

wait for a call for proposals. I came out a researcher, poet (and
check me out, I can write!), as an activist, armed with the Queer
African Manifesto. It is my time to give back to the people I
represent.
MBBC participant, reflection by Essy on her blog
398
As facilitators we worked to enter the MBBC residential and

online spaces open, actively listening and engaging with the
group as we began to learn about personalities, preferences and
politics and notice how different people interacted. We were also
open to each other, and the many different styles with which we
managed sessions and presented content. Participants joked that
we had ‘PowerPoint and non-PowerPoint sisters’, as we each
brought out different facilitation and knowledge-sharing styles.
We kept exploring a facilitation practice that was flexible enough
to punctuate discussions on the radical potential of open source
technology with choreography to Lady Gaga and Miriam Makeba
songs. The guest facilitators who joined for short sessions, includ-
ing a medical doctor, open-source software developers and an
activist working with political theatre, shared in that spirit of
radical teaching and facilitated in ways that were very much in
keeping with the rhythm of the process (in fact at one point, I
recall exclaiming that the MBBC process had been blessed by the
ancestors, as it was so clear that whomever engaged in it came
with the right energy for the space).
In the practice of co-creation, we formally drew in participants
to lead sessions. In a sexual health session, a male-identified sex
worker guided us through the art of safe sex, in an aesthetically
astounding demonstration of engaging a sexual partner using
condoms, lubricant and other tools of safe and pleasurable sex.
In another session, a participant facilitated a debate on the ethics
and power relations of public health research, opening space
to discuss issues such as HIV vaccine trials, which some of our
community members had participated in as research subjects.
In the MBBC process we also celebrated the power of eros – in
the sense that African American lesbian feminist Audre Lorde
(1989: 55) explores:
[t]he very word erotic comes from the Greek word eros, the
personification of love in all its aspects – born of Chaos, and
personifying creative power and harmony. When I speak of
the erotic, then, I speak of it as an assertion of the lifeforce of
women; of that creative energy empowered, the knowledge
and use of which we are now reclaiming in our language, our
history, our dancing, our work, our lives.
399
In true East African dancing tradition, we engaged in ample

provocative dance in between sessions and at the close of some
days (leading to an affectionate renaming of the boot camp as the
‘booty camp’), and we welcomed self-expression in the safe space
of our open mics where people spoke of queer love, desire and
sexual experiences. We all encouraged a participant and fabulous
Ugandan drag queen with music, jewellery and a floor to ‘do his
thing’, including in a closing celebration where other hotel guests
were present. To engage this power of eros in our learning space
was to meet ourselves as full human beings. It was a profoundly
political act of acknowledging desires that are otherwise censored
or forced into the shadows.3 As Hakima Abbas offers, ‘We were
flaming in our queerness, and it was liberating to be able to be
ourselves, to be fabulous, to walk and know that your brothers
and sisters have your back.’
We were not always loud. In fact there were many moments
where we made space for quiet. Every day of the residential
process had a reflective element, including meditation, yoga and
massage. We explored many practices of self-reflection that we
then shared in the group, including gathering together at the end
of the day to each share a thought on something that had inspired
us, and ending both residential trainings with everyone writing
affirmations to each other. And we had unexpected reflective
practices too. One morning I was caught up in finding medical
assistance for a participant, and so another facilitator (not known
for her monk-like qualities) had taken it upon herself to lead the
morning reflection. She had done it in the best way she knew,
by playing a song from the opera Farinelli, asking participants to
close their eyes and ‘feel the music’. It was as hilarious as it was
profoundly moving. With my eyes open I could see a room full of
primarily young queer Africans sitting in silence and beginning
to absorb the unusual and evocative sound of operatic Italian
melody. In all of these moments we shared our delicateness and
desire for stillness. As Kevin Everod Quashie (2012: 9) offers, ‘In
humanity, quiet is inevitable, essential. It is a simple beautiful part
of what it means to be alive.’
For me personally, it was a new experience to engage men
in this deep a facilitation process. While I was used to very
personal sharing among women in the feminist tradition of
400
embodied political consciousness raising, I had never facilitated

the development of safe space in mixed-gender groups. It
turned out not to be too great a mountain to climb, in that we all
worked to meet each other as we were (including in our varied
gender transgressions, male femininities, female masculinities
and trans identities). Some men also spoke to their experiences
as fathers and carers, as well as experiences of witnessing
domestic violence against their mothers, with acknowledgements
of women’s roles and inequalities in the family. However, and
perhaps expectedly, subtle patriarchies did present themselves at
moments. A memorable example was when one group worked
on mapping a woman’s body, and the men in the group could not
accurately locate all of the parts of women’s anatomy (it was not
the case for women in the group drawing a man’s body). In some
respects the flamboyance of gay men’s culture also manifested
more openly than lesbian cultural expression in the ways we
engaged and celebrated each other, and ways that we expressed
ideas of what it meant to be ‘queer’ (for example with many drag
queen but no drag king performances). These are, of course, all
learned hierarchies and very much part of the work of changing
consciousness and constructing new gender norms.
Queer ubuntu
Ubuntu … speaks of the very essence of being human. It is
to say, ‘My humanity is caught up, is inextricably bound up,
in yours.’ We belong in a bundle of life. We say, ‘A person is a
person through other persons.’
Desmond Tutu (1999: 31)
If I go inside the emotion that MBBC creates in my body, I know

that the magic of MBBC lay in the rich, and maybe even a little
unanticipated, sense of nurturing community. Creating commu-
nity is work. It takes emotional labour to listen and embrace each
other, as much as it takes political labour to explore disagreements
and hold each other with mutual respect. Creating community
also requires establishing clear ethical boundaries around ways
of being and doing in communal space. During the first residen-
tial process a number of women-identified participants reported
to facilitators that they were being harassed by a particular male
401
participant. We felt that this was absolutely unacceptable and

against the ethics of the space, engaged him and mutually agreed
that he would not continue with the programme. Another partici-
pant had been very non-engaged from the start. We spoke with
her as facilitators, and in the end she herself failed to attend the
second residential training. We were fine with the decision, know-
ing that political work requires individual will as well as active
choice, and that not everyone stays the journey. Participants also
took collective ownership of the process in different moments,
convening meetings to discuss how they were engaging and con-
tributing to sessions. As a facilitator, these were beautiful acts of
affirmation that the space was shared in its management and not
only in the content of what was being explored.
Host institutions and facilitators agonised over the ethics of
money. We are all distressed by the entitlement culture that has
emerged in NGO-based activism. On the first day of the residential
MBBC, some participants expressed disapproval that they would
not be receiving per diems, and that the training was not held in
a five-star hotel or close to urban nightlife. Representatives of the
organising institutions took time to explain their political choice
not to support the idea of being ‘paid to learn’, and the deliberate
choice to situate us in a place where we could connect to the natural
environment and focus on the work at hand. Participants accepted
the principles, and soon enough the debate on money shifted to
questions of economic justice for all. During the second residential
training, participants led sessions on cooperative economics
and starting collective businesses, a shift that we all noted as
groundbreaking. In both residential trainings we also woke up
early many mornings to jog, practice yoga and meditate outdoors.
Throughout the MBBC process we have devoted considerable
time to exploring theories of power and change that have
inspired various social movements in Africa, including Marxism,
feminism, Pan-Africanism and black consciousness, queer theory,
liberal human rights and anarchism. Participants established
reading groups and read critical texts. We determinedly worked
through the often difficult language of revolutionary theory. We
deconstructed biblical texts on homosexuality with the help of
theology-student-turned-grantmaker Happy Kinyili, and covered
issues of relevance to our communities from drug use to debates
402
on violence and non-violence as tools of struggle. In the best

tradition of transgressive thought, we also kept working to make
space for dissent, dialogue, contradiction and refinement. After
all, if political theory is meant to inspire movements, then it also
has to move.
One of the most politically rich processes was coming to
individual and then collective definitions of freedom. We began
by asking the following questions: Who am I? From that vantage
point am I free or not free? If I do not consider myself free, what
would it take for me to be free? We collated individual participants’
responses into a visual map, out of which a collective politics of
liberation emerged which fully embraced intersectionality. For all
of us, there would be no freedom separate from economic justice,
from a roof over all of our heads and a transformed position in
our society and the world economy. There would be no freedom
without the freedom of women, and of other constituencies
marginalised by normative power relations. Freedom for African
queer people, in our liberatory vision, requires engaging the earth
and environmental justice as much as it does laws on sexuality.
By recognising the complexities and hence diverse axes of our
own oppressions we were able to fully embrace the relevance of a
broad transformative politics that would make possible the basic
call for LGBTI equality.
I was constantly amazed and enlivened by the energies that
participants brought into the space. In the closing process of the
first residential training, a Tanzanian participant created his own
ritual of thanks. He had written words on individual cards that
were relevant to him and his life. As we stood in the circle he
handed a card to each of us, engaging us one by one with each
word, in a poetic narrative linking us to elements of his body,
soul, life history and survival. As he did so he wove a magical and
radical political connection between us. It was the expression of a
queer ubuntu: I am as you are. You are me. And I am you.
In another instance, a participant had offered to screen a
documentary about homophobia in East and Southern African
which featured some of the participants. We watched in
excruciating anger as some of our own friends were shown being
hounded by homophobic thugs, and expressed our outrage to
them as the film ended. In the film we also viewed footage from
403
the case of Malawians Steve and Tiwonge, arrested for allegedly

attempting to have an illegal same-gender marriage. And as
Tiwonge took the stand in the witness box, one of the participants
sitting next to me whispered quietly to himself, ‘That is me!’.
Again, a queer ubuntu: I am as you are. You are me. And I am
you.
Who, how, with what words…

Speaking, writing, and discoursing are not mere acts of com-
munication; they are above all acts of compulsion. Please fol-
low me. Trust me, for deep feeling and understanding require
total commitment.
Trinh T. Minh-ha (1989: 52)
The MBBC process was not without its difficulties from a pedagogi-
cal standpoint. There were indeed a number of serious conceptual
and process challenges, situated in large part in the context of how
we currently manage activist spaces. The first major challenge was
the question of who to include. Fahamu and UHAI intentionally
chose people who were not the ‘usual suspects’ of East African
NGO-based activism in a move to recognise the breadth of existing
activist leadership and new activist voices. This did create difficul-
ties for some participants, who had to navigate the politics of enti-
tlement in NGO-activist space and returned to jealousy and anger
from colleagues in their organisations and questions about who
chose them as representative of activism in their respective coun-
tries. Despite active efforts on the part of the organisers to have trans
inclusion, we initially did not have any transgendered participants,
(the participant who worked in a transgender organisation was not
trans-identified). During the second training one participant came
out as a trans man, an act in itself that demonstrated the fluidity of
gender identity and the potential for the gendered composition of
our space to shift. In the second residential process a trans woman
also joined us as part of the logistics and facilitation team.
The second major challenge was language. To begin with, the
teaching, texts and films were all presented in English. English is, of
course, a lingua franca for East and Southern Africans and as such
a ‘tool’ for enabling a collective conversation and the possibility for
everyone to participate in our space. However, it has its limits and
404
exclusions, including in the fact that not all participants speak the
same ‘kind’ of English (notably the English of academic theory).
Some participants were deliciously fluent in Kiswahili but could
not articulate the same texture of expression in English. Without
being asked, other participants immediately jumped in to act as
interpreters, translating what their fellows said from Kiwsahili into
English and in some cases vice versa.
Language was also complex in the sense of the terminology and
discourses that we used. In the MBBC space, differences in political
perspective meant that there were inevitable differences between
our languages of resistance and the languages we use to speak
about issues such as sexuality, power and change. And, indeed,
some of the debates we engaged in were precisely in the domain of
language, for example about self-identification as a human rights
defender and the notion that human rights are the most powerful
language through which to express dissent. The word ‘queer’ was
relatively new for most people in the group, and it took time to
become comfortable with and understand the political intention
behind the word and its relevance to our discussions around
opening up and challenging binary conceptualisations of gender
and sexuality. We even considered that if the term ‘queer’ was an
act of reclaiming an insult used against sexual and gender non-
conforming people in the UK and USA, then perhaps we should
reclaim the word shoga (a derogatory term in Kiwsahili for a gay
or lesbian person) and begin to articulate a shoga theory, grounded
in East African experience. In one exercise we divided people into
groups according to the African languages that they spoke and
then asked them to explore all of the terminology and expressions
for gender and sexual orientation, providing interpretations in
English. This was a fascinating exploration of the diversity and
similarities in gendered conceptions across East African languages,
which also considered the existence of concepts of same-gender
desire and the continuum of gender identity in many cultures.
As part of the work of developing a common yet diverse
language, we also welcomed the expression of other languages,
including African languages such as Kiswahili (spoken eloquently
by some of the participants, to the envy of others), the language of
dance, the language of visual self-representation and the language of
healing touch in the massage sessions, which also enabled different
405
kinds of ‘voices’ to be expressed, heard and responded to. We did not

have visually or hearing impaired people in the group, which would
have again pushed us to consider language, and probably would
have exposed the limits of our own linguistic dexterity.
Heartbeat
We need a revolution of the mind, we need a revolution of the
heart, we need a revolution of the spirit. The power of people
is stronger than any weapon… We need to be weapons of mass
construction, weapons of mass love.
Assata Shakur in d’bi young’s song ‘Revolution’,
played during the MBBC
None of what was created, shared or inspired in the MBBC could

have happened without passion, vibrant political commitment
beyond the ‘day jobs’ of NGO activism, formal facilitation or
participant roles – and certainly not without love. When I speak
of love I don’t mean love in the romantic sense of the word. I
mean love in the sense of a liberatory emotional energy; love as
the political-emotional connection that we develop between each
other that makes us wilfully want to contribute to sustaining each
other’s lives. It runs deeper than a surface identity politics, or the-
oretical political affiliation. Revolutionary love is what ultimately
keeps us together, makes us feel so committed to each other, and
manifests as a creative and replenishing breath in facing what can
be complex landscapes of compromise and loss.
This energy of revolutionary love was expressed evocatively
by a participant, Rena, on the final day of the residential training
process. In her words:
This day I shall appreciate all around me and breath out love,
breath in love. I want to appreciate all the pashas of the day. I
want to take one long last look of everything around and see
them in a way I have not for the past 12 days. I want to breath
deep the love they will breath out. Loving the movement. There
is always beauty behind the bridge.
Revolutionary love is also evident in the solidarities shown

during and after the formal MBBC training process, including
in economic and emotional support for participants who had
406
been evicted or whose houses were burnt down in homophobic

attacks, and organising around a case of police brutality against
the child of one of the participants. We have continued to be there
for each other online and in person, where possible, in marking
birthdays, expressing condolences for loved ones lost, linking
people to opportunities for growth and further learning, and in
joyful celebration of people’s achievements. On the MBBC email
mailing list, a participant shared the words of Mozambican libera-
tion leader Samora Machel that ‘solidarity is not an act of charity
but an act of unity between allies fighting on different terrains
toward the same objectives’. In the MBBC community and in full
embrace of our diversities we certainly sustain this solidarity,
with an overarching objective of reaching ‘destination liberation’.
Notes
1 Participants came from Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania.
2 The full curriculum, including additional texts and contributions by
MBBC facilitators and others, is available online at http://www.fahamu.
org/mbbc.
3 One of the facilitators, Happy Kinyili of UHAI, did generate a debate
about how queer activist space often becomes so overtly sexualised,
raising a fascinating garden of questions which she will no doubt explore
further.
References
Freire, Paulo (2005 [1970]) Pedagogy of the Oppressed, New York and London,
The Continuum International Publishing Group
Galeano, Eduardo (1991) The Book of Embraces, New York and London, W.W.
Norton
hooks, bell (1994) Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom,
New York and London, Routledge
Horn, Jessica (2009) ‘Through the looking glass: process and power within
feminist movements’, Development, 52(2): 150–4, Society for International
Development
Lorde, Audre (1989) ‘The uses of the erotic: the erotic as power’, in Sister
Outsider: Essays and Speeches, New York, The Crossing Press Feminist
Minh-ha, Trinh T. (1989) Woman, Native, Other: Writing Postcoloniality and
Feminism, Bloomington, Indian University Press
407
Quashie, Kevin (2012) The Sovereignty of Quiet: Beyond Resistance in Black

Culture, New Jersey, Rutgers University Press
Tutu, Desmond (1999) No Future Without Forgiveness, London, Rider
408
39
The most fabulous place on earth

– poem
A poem in many voices
Rena
I live in a world where laughter is the song of the day

laughter until we cry
smile until we have become smiling machines
embrace until the soul sweats
love unconditionally
I live in the world where family consists of all and friends are all
I live in a world every word spoken creates, restores, and loves
I live in the world of woman power, woman sweetness, woman
charm, women are the seducers, seducers of women
I live in a world that we have babies, don’t have them, marry, don’t
get married, fall in love with my fellow women, with men, with
me, with both women and men, with none. Yes I live in a queer
world and I love it
I live in a world where we embrace difference and I love to live in
this my world
Jessica
Against the amethyst evening of my world

we decorate sky, fearless
as we shine like fireflies
fall on lovers bathed in moonlight
raining laughter as they step
my world is radiance and sweat and love
raging rebellious through the hearts of its people
409
My world is movement
its soil, its family like roots
of a never ending vine
my world births shape shifting babies
boygirlgirlboyboygirlboygirlgirl
my world knows no rich or poor
only nourishment, it has no fury
only birdsong and drumbeats, the collective pulse
of a people breathing … out …
Nicole
I breathe in … in deep, deep down in my soul

in my soul where I love, where I yearn, where my passion resides,
my passion for Africa, for my femininity, for my freedom,
freedom to love, make love to, make love with,
to sing and dance rhythms of my soul and watch as those around
me admire, follow suit,
Looking at me
my BIG, BEAUTIFUL body
move, African, unique,
FREE YOURSELF
my comrades
I beg … let it go,
liberate your spirit
Go, go, go…
run into the world where all that matters is love,
loving, holding, embracing, rubbing, kissing, feeling
my world is love…
Jia
If queer is loving, then I must be queer,

for I love with passion,
unending devotion,
soaring madness.
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39 THE MOST FABULOUS PLACE ON EARTH
In this world, in her world, in their world, in my world…

I have been them and they have been me in many ways
just like now… I am them and they are me
We are all One

you are love
I am you
and if that is so,
then I must be love
divinely present,
presently divine,
queerly divine
If queer is loving,
then I am queer
Jay
I love me,
I care a lot
every evening I sit outside and look at the sky,
I look at the moon and stars,
and thank God for all the beauty on earth.
I always relate all this to the day I will ever be free
The day I will be me without anyone questioning me who I am.

The day I will be free from oppression.
The day I will exercise my rights fully.
I know I can’t do everything,

but I can do something
the way
I am
411
Essy
When she touches me, my heart misses a beat,

The feeling of her breast pressing on my chest feels like
The morning dew on my feet,
we communicate by looking into each other’s eyes,
Her soft, wet lips are the reason I wake up every morning
God loves me that’s why he brought her to me,
when we are together I am peace
like the river in the morning,
How can this love be wrong
if what I’m feeling is right?
Nicholas
Some people will try to make me

feel bad about being a gay
will try to convince me that
am incapable or inferior.
I don’t believe it.
This is my life,
and I can do anything
I want to do
I don’t have to
follow someone else’s
expectations of who I should be.
I’ll never let anyone convince me otherwise,
and never set limits upon myself,
because am a gay.
I can admire the same
qualities in myself
that I admire in other people.
Remember that am strong,
intelligent, and capable
Am dedicated to
any endeavour that I undertake
412
I am gay, and I have power

I can follow my dreams
and dance to the beat
of my own heart.
I don’t have to go
through life dangling
from the clouds
instead I can fly to
the stars and claim
one for my own.
Hakima
I live in the world where every body is a testament

to the defiant mockery of conformity,
is goddess herself.
Where no body is illegal
and I wonder if there is enough gold
to pay for his perfect form.
I live in a world where the sweet cry of my orgasm

is a warrior call to resistance
Where he/she become obsolete in the face of you/I
Where they cannot box
we
I live in a world where your eyes erupt my freedom-fighter-mother

instincts to cry
from the pit of my stomach
for a soul too beautiful for this world.
Where our child understands the power of love
and has too many answers for her textbook’s question
is ‘the baby a boy or a girl?’
413
I live in a world where labour is valued over capital

and all that you have is the spark in your eye
I live in a world
where your power is in the poetry of your smile
Pade
Doctors and counsellors

mentors, comrades and friends,
you are all artists by birth,
fighters and defenders of the LGBTQ,
so let your talented skills flow forth
and match to the world
head bold
Since you are like the Light to all of us,
our shining North Star
always makes our spirits soft,
and wash away our fears,
like the angel one drop of tears,
that cleans our souls…
Muhaari
I live in a place where others consider a forest,

I live in a place where others would fret at the shadows that come
alive,
I live in a place where a coloured necklace could become a poison-
ous snake
or a poisonous snake a coloured necklace,
I live in a place where the need for others to validate how I feel is
non-existent, a place where my internal locus of validation and
evaluation is all that matters,
I live in a Utopia, yes, I am an ogre, full of mystery
able and ready to transform to fit
without losing my identity.
414
Yet others think me ugly,

yet others still think me evil,
yet others ostracize and condemn me for who I am,
yet others think me a misfit, a misnomer, not worthy of their
approval,
yet I live, and love, and play and pray and prey, like everyone else.
Yes, my life is sweet, and my joy complete,

for I am an ogre,
comfortable in my forest,
happy to care and share,
here I am, here I will stay
no wonder what others say.
Dismus
I live in a world of mystery

where freedom is felt
religion does not discriminate
there is no privilege, no oppression
empowerment is ours
Barbra
I am. I am because,
I live, work, play as I wish,
Resilient queer African,
active
activist
Soloh
Darlings, darlings, darlings,

As I say to you all, be fabulous and live with each other
live in harmony as the world is chaotic
live as if freedom is the next second
to all my LGBTI friends,
415
to our partners,
to all our allies,
to our families,
to our neighbours,
we live and let live because we are living
for the departed Brothers and Sisters in our course, we are living for
you,
for the community, rise above all because we are who we are
be sassy, be fierce,
be what makes you glow
For freedom is seconds away
welcome to my LGBTI island of love and freedom
the most fabulous
place
on
earth
This poem was a collective contribution by the activists involved in the

Anglophone Movement Building Boot Camp in East Africa organised
by Fahamu and UHAI and discussed by Jessica Horn in Chapter 38 of
this volume.
416
40
Crimson waves – fiction

Hakima Abbas
There is blood. Why is there always blood in a coming of age?

Slowly, as the razor cuts through the skin, the crimson appears
first as a drop, then a trickle until a trickle is a pool and my head
feels light. But I wouldn’t say it is unpleasant. I started this deter-
mined, stubborn – you should know this about me, I am very
stubborn – but, now I am watching as if my hands, my motion,
this transformation, were happening to someone else. As if I am
watching from somewhere else. The pain has gone, my mind is at
ease. The determination still keeps me concentrated but from afar,
tired and light. Somehow I feel old as my ancestors. As if in water,
the sights and sounds around me are muffled. I am floating and
watching and remembering.
Remembering yes, because this has been a journey. And I have
started from the end, which is really only a beginning. So, let me
start from what everyone seems to want to know – who am I?
Well, I have many names, some more pleasant than others,
some more true than others, but I have learnt to feel nothing about
names. Who I am is not in my name or a name. But the world is
hell-bent on naming and defining. Where did we get this from?
This obsession with defining. Some say the wazungu gave it to us
with their ‘science’. That, before our subjugation, we were fluid;
that we embraced contradiction and complexity. But that sounds
like romantic hogwash to me. Surely the Avatar myth is also a
European construct of the primitive other. I laugh. Whatever the
case, we have certainly internalised this need to define, judge,
normalise, conform, and that is the Africa I live in. That is the Africa
that wants to know what I am. Constantly, the more unpleasant
question: what are you? I laugh. How can one even begin to answer
that question? What am I? I’ve learnt to ask it back. What are you?
417
I digress, and the thoughts are becoming cloudy. Somehow the

lightness is filling up. Heavy like a rain-filled cloud. I still float,
and yet there is a throbbing in my head. Just here on the right
side. A rhythmic pounding like waves crashing to the shore.
I have always thought that waves are such teases. They arrive
with perfect drama, with an arrogance, an impending doom, like
a woman walking tall or, better still, like a transwoman, pouting,
one eyebrow cocked, head down but looking straight at you,
swinging her hips under tight-fitting clothing and killer heels.
Just, just as she reaches you, close enough to touch you, she slowly
smiles. That is how I imagine the waves, but they are teases. They
enter the room, the shore, just like that. With style! With drums
beating, with crowds cheering. And then, at the climax, just as
they crash to prove their power… they retreat! What is that about?
But maybe I am being harsh on the waves. Maybe they are just
shy after all. And who am I to talk? Because I am not that kind of
shero. I am not that woman. Stubborn, certainly, and bold, only in
my own way. Otherwise, I am quite ordinary. Ordinary looking:
neither beautifully striking, nor pretty, not even ugly enough to
stand out, just plain. I dress, well, ordinarily – no bright colours,
tight clothes or high heels. I just couldn’t pull it off. I speak quietly
and cover my mouth when I laugh. Ordinarily shy.
Even my preferred name is ordinary. At least where I come
from. My name is Njeri. One of the many Njeris in Kenya,
especially in Thika where I live, where I come from, where
I’ve always been. The town is ordinary. My life is ordinary. It’s
interesting to think of my life. The only time I have really felt
alive was when I let the waves wash over me. Unabashedly,
unashamedly, alive.
I was young then. I still am. But, really then, a hopefulness
still gleamed in my eyes for everyone who cared to see. I had just
graduated from high school, I came third in my school district.
My father would have been proud of me. Only for the small
mistake that made me the only girl in a boys’ school. He refused
to understand or even look at me. He always averted his eyes
in disgust when I entered a room. But I didn’t mind so much.
Besides, I hardly saw the man. I had been in boarding school for
years. He and my mother had parcelled us all off as soon as we
entered secondary school. My two younger brothers were in the
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40 CRIMSON WAVES
same school as me and they didn’t seem to mind. Nobody really

did. I kept to myself, studied and got good grades. Sometimes
a new boy would arrive at the school and think it interesting to
harass me for a bit. They would call me ‘shoga’. Mostly I would
just shrug and keep walking. Because I knew I was not gay. I
am not gay. I am a girl who likes boys, which, in your world
of definitions, makes me straight, ‘normal’. But I didn’t bother
telling them. I would just shrug. I think they learnt to ignore me,
or tolerate me because it got boring. Or it might be because I got
a reputation after the assembly incident. Ha, I am giggling now,
remembering the assembly incident. I had forgotten.
One morning, like every morning, our dorm was woken by
the dreadful sounds of the older prefects banging on pots and
pans through the hall to make sure nobody was still sleeping.
Why waking into a new day should be brutal is beyond my
understanding, but… Anyway, this was a morning like any other.
Ordinary, you might call it. But, when I went to the sink to splash
the freezing water from the only tap for 40 boys onto my face and
to look at myself, briefly, fleetingly enough to make sure I didn’t
have toothpaste glued to my face, but not long enough to see the
painfully short hair and chiselled jawline I loathed so much, I
saw it. Or rather, I felt it. I felt the stubbly, but still soft, growth
on my chin. It was bad enough when my upper lip began to be
crowned with thickening feathers, but, this... the spread, like
a disease, of hair follicles on my face. Announcing impending
doom, like the waves. I looked closer into the cracked mirror,
finding the only two-by-four spot in the glass where you could
actually see a reflection, and confirmed that hairy stubble was
threatening to spread across my jawline and my face. I almost
cried. Standing there. Silent. Until I was nudged by the next boy
wanting to use the sink. I breathed in deeply. Swallowed hard
and pulled back my tears. Walking on the cold slabs back to my
bunk pulling my uniform over my head. Doing my tie, I asked
myself, like every morning, if it were not ridiculous for a girl to
be dressing like this. But this morning, my internal question was
not convincing, not even to myself. My heart heavy, I followed
the line of screeching, running boys towards the assembly hall. I
always wondered how boys, without yelling, because that would
be against the rules, could make so much noise. But this morning,
419
I didn’t care. I could hardly hear them anyway. I had drowned out
the sounds so successfully that I hadn’t heard the taunts. Behind
me on the flat benches we occupied to face the principal, a new
boy was whispering in my ear: ‘Patrick is a shoga, eh, Patrick,
you like fucking boys, eh.’ He laughed, looking at his pals for
their approval. ‘You don’t have to lie to me, I’ve seen you looking
at boys in the shower.’ His words were merely sounds, in the
cacophony of words around me. ‘Shoga!’
Then he spat. Rancid, vile, bile. I felt a pellet land directly
between my shoulders on my spine. My body jerked subtly. My
jaw locked. Sweat on my palms. I saw crimson as I gently shut my
eyes. My mouth dry, all my thoughts had evaporated.
I found myself rolling my shoulders and stretching my back,
before turning to face this boy. Rage. This was my first time. It
wouldn’t be my last. Before even I knew it, I had pounded that boy
bloody. His mouth, lips, nose, who knows, the source, the end, of
the blood. All I know is that I was straddling him and plunged
each punch into his not-so-long-ago-laughing face. Each punch
landing with a satisfying thud. 1–2–3–4, how many punches, I
am not sure. Like now, I was floating, from afar, watching the
bloodied scene. It took four older boys to pull me off him.
Inevitably, I was punished. Caned in fact. But, I didn’t mind so
much. Besides, I think the principal was soft on me because I had
never been punished before and was a good student. The lashes
landed softly, the pain pale in comparison to the throbbing bruises
of my hands where I had hit that boy. I don’t even know what
happened to him. I heard his parents transferred him to another
school after he was released from hospital. Poor boy, I almost feel
sorry for him now. I bet he didn’t see that coming! I laugh.
That is where I learnt to be quiet and go unnoticed. Where I
cried myself to sleep every time I was awoken to a new horror in
this/that body. Because it is different now, this body. Today will
be another step. A beginning. Ah, but I didn’t tell you about that
life, about the waves.
After my results came out and I was preparing to enter
university to study biology, my older sister, who was then married
and pregnant, invited me to visit her in Kisumu. We had always
got along, me and my sister. She looked after me when I was little,
defending me from the other kids in the neighbourhood and even,
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40 CRIMSON WAVES
as much as she could, from my father. I would spend hours in

her room watching her and her friends. It was fun. To my sister, I
was just her baby and still am. Sometimes, when she looks at me
lovingly, I see a sadness in her eyes. Not pity, because that would
be removed. But a sadness for us; for the world maybe. She took
my face in her hands once and told me that I was too beautiful
for this world and that I should forgive them for not being able to
understand. A single tear rolled down her cheek. ‘Don’t let them
get to you, do you hear me,’ she said firmly, strengthening her
grip on my chin before releasing me suddenly, and turning away
to wipe her eyes. Before I could answer, she was saying, ‘Twende,
let’s go,’ leading me out of the room for dinner. I miss her. It is
not the same now that she is married and has four children. I still
visit her and I love my nieces and nephews, they look just like her.
But a weariness has blanketed her face. She has ‘a good job and a
good husband’, so they say. Yet her spark has been extinguished.
I’m not sure from what. My sister never tells me about her life and
her feelings. When I ask, she says, ‘Hush, are you my age-mate?’,
rhetorically. So, I hush.
When I visited, she was pregnant with her first-born. Very
pregnant. And she looked beautiful carrying her oversized belly
around ungracefully. She would plod around the house, shoeless,
in a bra and a loose wrap tied below her waist to accommodate
her extended belly protruding firmly out like a watermelon.
When visitors arrived, she would simply throw on an oversized
t-shirt and waddle to the door muttering about how she told
everyone she didn’t want visitors, why could people not listen!
Then, in an instant, she would be smiling politely at whomever
arrived bearing gifts and good will.
I heard her arguing with her husband one night about me.
He was concerned about how she behaved in front of me. She
laughed loudly, raucously, at him. So he yelled that it was
inappropriate and that he didn’t want his wife behaving that way,
full stop! Only barely keeping herself from giggling, I heard her
say soothingly: ‘Don’t worry about Patrick, trust me, he doesn’t
even notice, don’t worry about Patrick.’ Her husband has always
looked at me suspiciously, but not much more than most men, so
I haven’t minded so much. Sometimes, when I take the children
out, he grunts, as if disapproving, but my sister ignores him, so I
421
do too. I have fun with those kids. The eldest reminds me so much
of my sister. Curious, quiet, stubborn and very intelligent. She is
my favourite. But of course, I don’t tell them that.
That month I spent with them was the first time I had
been to Kisumu. A melodious vibrancy overbears the tempered
melancholy that sits subtly in the city air, often stopping me in
my tracks. The heat can be excruciating so one of my tasks was
fanning my oversized sister while she slept or watched TV. She
was always complaining about the heat. ‘It’s so damn hot, in
this place. So hot, you’d think the devil had moved in next door.
Haiya, it’s hot.’ I laughed. I liked doting on her and the baby in
her belly. I was excited about the new life she was carrying and,
somewhere in the back of my mind, even excited about my new
life: the possibility of starting fresh at university in a place where
I didn’t know anyone and far away from my parents. Maybe there
I could be myself, the true self I longed to be. Kisumu seemed like
the first step towards that life and I embraced it.
One day, when I was out buying groceries for the house, I
stopped at a kiosk to buy sodas for my sister who, for some reason,
was drinking at least four Fanta Oranges a day. I kept telling her
it was bad for her, but she wouldn’t listen. At the kiosk, a young
man on his bicycle rode up to ask for a stick of Sportsman. As he
waited for his cigarette he looked at me. Curiously but without
the malice that I sometimes feel. He just stared. I got nervous
and looked away, asking the woman behind the metal grilles for
the sodas and clumsily lifting my bag to return the empty glass
bottles. The man was wearing only a pair of knee-length khaki
shorts. Though slim, the muscles on his dark skin were defined.
Every motion caused a ripple through his tendons and muscles
as if he were a biology experiment and I were observing every
stimulus create a response. I didn’t dare look at him, but watched
from the corner of my eye as he lit his cigarette and stood there
taking deep puffs. I was aware, through the dizzying smell of
freshly burning tobacco, of his smell. A deep scent of man’s sweat.
Not the smell of boys so familiar from my dorms, but the musty,
overwhelming scent of a man.
As if he had nowhere else to go or nothing else to do and as
if it were perfectly normal for him to still be standing there, I
could feel him watching me take my soda bottles and pay the
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40 CRIMSON WAVES
woman behind the metal grilles. Saying thank you quietly and
looking purposefully at the ground, I walked away. I could feel
him watching my every move. I felt clumsy and foolish, aware of
every part of my awkward body. I had taken only 12 steps, which
I had counted resolutely in order to keep my balance, when I
heard the metal clank of his bicycle. As the sound drew nearer, I
stuttered ‘Thir-t-t-een, four-four-t-een’, not even sure what I was
counting any more. ‘Psst,’ I heard. I have never understood why
men call out to women like that. Am I a cat? ‘Psst,’ he said again,
I assumed to get my attention. I didn’t turn around – stubborn
even in the tensest situations – but I gently slowed my pace until
I could smell him beside me. ‘Sasa,’ he said, casually greeting me.
‘Fit,’ I responded.
‘Where are you going?’
‘Home.’
‘You live around here?’
‘My sister does, I am visiting,’ I said hurriedly.
‘Ah.’
I didn’t know what else to say but I didn’t want the conversation
to end. I hadn’t yet looked up from the ground and I could feel
beads of sweat forming on my brow.
‘What is your name?’ he asked.
‘Why do you want to know?’ I said, sounding irritated. I just
hadn’t known what to say.
‘I was just curious,’ he said quietly, sounding deflated. I looked
up and saw for the first time the gentle questioning eyes and the
expectant hesitancy in his raised brow betraying the confidence of
his stately body. I softened.
‘I have many names. But I haven’t found one I like yet,’ I said softly.
He smiled, nodding faintly as if he understood.
I smiled back.
He had one foot on the pedal of his bicycle and used the other
to push it along. We walked like that side by side, silently, until I
was at my sister’s gate.
‘This is where I stay.’
‘Sawa, then, I will be seeing you.’
‘OK, bye,’ I said awkwardly, hoping that it was not really
goodbye. Fishing for something more to say, a way to make the
moment last longer, a way to see him again.
423
He pushed his bike forward and threw his other leg over the
saddle.
‘I have a name, by the way,’ he yelled back at me. ‘It is Omondi.’
I watched him cycle into the distance, his lean form obscured
under the golden dust he was lifting with his bicycle. Omondi.
As I entered the house, I exhaled deeply and realised I had
been holding my breath. ‘What is wrong?’ my sister called out,
sounding irritated.
‘Nothing,’ I called back.
‘Did you get the sodas?’
‘Yes, I’ll put them in ice.’
‘Good, it’s so damn hot in this place, I’m dying here,’ she said,
fanning herself vigorously in a futile motion as if beating the stiff air.
‘Omondi,’ I thought to myself.
The following week was excruciating. Every day, every hour,
every second, I wondered if I would see him again. I went to the
kiosk more times that week than was humanly possible. Even the
anonymous, emotionless woman behind the metal grilles started
looking at me suspiciously. I didn’t know what to do. How could
I find this man? Who was this Omondi? I couldn’t ask anybody
because I didn’t know anything about him and looking for an
Omondi in Kisumu, well, is like looking for a Njeri in Thika! I
drove myself mad conjuring up scenarios about when I would
see him next, what I would say, how I would behave, even what I
would be wearing! But there was no sign of him anywhere. And
I began to wonder why I wanted to see this man again. I didn’t
even know him and for all I knew he could be a psychotic killer.
But then I remembered those eyes. And I knew that all I wanted
was to be looked at like that again. To be enveloped in that cool,
non-committal body and held close in those gentle eyes telling me
for the first time by a grown man that I am visible and worthy of
tenderness. His eyes held promise.
And, as I say that now, my pessimistic self wonders how that is
possible, in one look from a 21-year-old stranger in Kisumu. But
I knew then, that that is how I felt it. The faint smell of lake in his
hair and clothes gave him a permanent landscape. Like a set, a
backdrop. And of course, as with every love, I gave him a theme
song too. But I’m jumping ahead. I finally did see him again. A
week later, he knocked on my sister’s door. Somehow when I
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40 CRIMSON WAVES
heard the uncouth thump at the door, I knew it was him. My heart
leapt as I stood over the sink where I had been washing dishes. I
heard my sister muttering to herself as she walked heavy-footed
to the door. Then I heard his voice, unsure: ‘Hello, madam. I, I
was wondering if there is someone who lives here. Um, my age?
You see I don’t have a name, but, well, we met last week. Um…’
My sister stood there looking down at him, frowning with her
eyebrows and her lips. Head tilted as if bemused. Watching him
curiously but irritated, her hands akimbo. I came bounding out of
the kitchen wiping my soapy hands on my jeans. ‘It’s OK, Chico,
it’s for me.’ And stepped in front of her to shield him from her
stare. I closed the door behind me, with her still standing there,
now also looking at me incredulously but saying nothing. After
a second, I could hear her muttering again, this time almost as a
giggle, breathing heavily as she carried her weight back inside.
‘Hi,’ I said.
‘Hi,’ he said. ‘Thanks for rescuing me, I am so glad you live
here, I had no idea what I would say!’ he blurted, breathing out
as if he too had been holding his breath since the last time we saw
each other.
He laughed, deeply, a mix of amusement, nerves and relief.
I laughed with him as we sat on the steps to the house. It was
suddenly so easy. We talked and laughed and joked and teased.
Well, he teased me, I can’t say that I really teased him. And we sat
there for what seemed like hours until the sky turned orange and
the mosquitoes took turns sucking at my flesh. ‘I should go,’ he
said softly, looking at me searchingly. He put his hand on my knee
and gazed ahead as if the horizon might hold an answer. ‘I would
like to see you again.’
‘Me too.’
‘Can I take you on my boat?’
‘When?’
‘Tomorrow?’
‘I would like that.’
We both laughed.
The next day I waited for that thump on our front door.
My sister hadn’t said anything about my visitor. She had just
looked at me with a half-smile on her lips and a question in her
eyes throughout dinner. I avoided her gaze but knew that my
425
half-smile responded to hers with all the answers she needed. So,
when the thump finally resounded throughout the house the next
day, I heard her laugh freely before shouting, ‘Your friend is here,’
waddling to the door.
I came out of the bathroom where I had been brushing my
teeth for the fifth time that day and heard her asking him: ‘So, do
you have a name, young man?’
‘Yes, madam, my name is Omondi,’ he said looking at his feet.
Once more, my sister laughed a full, unrestrained laugh,
looking Omondi up and down.
‘Hi,’ I said standing at the door.
My sister placed her hand on my shoulder and looked straight
into my eyes, again with that question. I looked at her as if not
knowing what she was asking. ‘What?’ She smiled. ‘Nothing.
Have fun.’ And then as if remembering something profound,
suddenly worried. ‘Oh, but…’ she said.
And then walked back into the house, asking me to follow.
‘Omondi, take a seat, I need to talk to Patrick.’
Omondi smiled hearing that name for the first time. I cringed,
wanting to interrupt, to say, ‘But no, that is not who I am. Patrick
is not my name.’ Instead I was led to the kitchen by my sister.
‘Patrick,’ she said severely.
‘Yes, Chico.’
‘OK, I don’t know how to have this conversation. And I
definitely didn’t think I would have to do it now and in a rush
like this. But anyway, look. You know the work I do. I tell you
what I see.’
I cringed, suddenly realising what she was about to talk to me
about. And stayed silent hoping she might not.
‘So, Patrick, do you know how to be safe?’ she said
matter-of-factly.
‘Hmm, yes,’ I said, though I wasn’t sure I did.
‘And, do you have, you know, do you have the equipment?’
‘Hmm, no,’ I said embarrassed. ‘But anyway, why are you
asking me this now Chico, what are you talking about?’ I said,
trying to divert the conversation.
‘Patrick,’ she said, looking at me dead in the eyes. ‘I’m not
stupid and this is important. I want you to listen to me. Nothing,
I mean it, NOTHING happens without being safe. Do you hear
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40 CRIMSON WAVES
me?’ she said firmly, slipping something into my back pocket.

‘This is life and death, Patrick, and you are my baby.’
‘OK Chico,’ I said, shocked by her insistence. ‘OK.’
‘Promise?’
‘Promise.’
She let out a deep sigh of relief. ‘OK, now go, your friend
is waiting for you,’ she said, leaning back onto the counter.
‘Remember what I said, Patrick. Always,’ she said, with her head
bent forward as if reciting a mantra, a prayer.
My heart felt heavy. I didn’t know if it was my sister’s warnings,
or the fact that I was suddenly aware of the possibility of sex. I
didn’t even know if it was possible. How could we do it? In my
head, my fantasies, well, it was like in the movies – a handsome
man, I’m a cute girl, one thing leads passionately to another, as
simply as it seemed. This possibility was new to me. Confused,
I suddenly panicked. What if he didn’t know that I, well, that I
had a boy’s body. Of course he knew, everyone knew, right? Then
I realised I was being silly. He was a man, of course, he didn’t
want to have sex with me, he thought I was a man too, didn’t he?
I hadn’t told him yet that I wasn’t, so he probably assumed, right?
So, we were going to hang out. Like friends. On his boat. Gosh,
Chico is so crazy, why did she scare me like that?
And that is what we did. We rowed out on his boat. Well,
he rowed, I sat prissily on the boat with my hands between
my knees. I offered to help but, winking, he said that it wasn’t
a job for me. I smiled silently, looking into the water. Watching
and feeling the waves carry us forward with every curl of his
forearms. Now it seemed as if the stimulus and response from
his body extended to the oars, the water, the waves, the boat, all
as one. Rhythmic, pounding. When we reached what seemed to
be the very centre of the earth, or at least the centre of the lake,
Omondi stopped rowing. He put the oars into the boat and lay
a blanket on the bottom, motioning me to sit. We sat and talked
and laughed, letting the boat rock us to and fro between nowhere
and elsewhere. I didn’t know why I was so comfortable, but
it felt delicious to feel lost, far from the realities of the shore. I
was aware of his body, his scent, his sweat, the delicate touches
between us. I was aware of his breath close enough for me to feel
him laugh. Aware of his toes touching mine. Aware of the breeze
427
carrying our laughter and shifting the distance between us. We

talked about nothing and everything. And nothing else mattered.
Then in a comforting silence, watching the clouds move swiftly
across changing skies, he pulled me softly towards him. I lay
under him as he looked questioningly with those hesitant black
eyes into mine. And, as if finding a truth, he smiled and brought
his lips forward to touch mine. I closed my eyes. This is where I
wanted to be. In this moment, at this time, this was the end and
the beginning. Gently he kissed my face, my neck, my mouth and
I sank into him, aware of the growing bulge in his shorts.
His hands began to search my body with a coarse urgency
that abruptly changed the rhythms in my soul. His change of
pace shook me from the intensity of being lost in his scent, touch,
energy. I opened my eyes and searched his face but he was too
busy looking for the buttons on my trousers. Feeling me watching
him quizzically he looked up and smiled. A superficial, fleeting,
barely appeasing smile. I watched as he pulled my trousers to
below my knees, as he unbuttoned his shorts. I watched as he
kissed me, hurriedly, before searching for his entry. His hand
caressing my chest was the only sign of the touch that brought
me here. And then he pulled me close in one slow thrust, the pain
shooting through my spine reaching the tip of my head. I held my
breath again, immobilised. Then I felt the wetness, the blood. And
slowly his grip loosened, he moved in and out, quickening his
pace, in and out, the pain blinding, but yet bearable. Confused, I
awkwardly tried to catch up to his movement, to ease to his touch.
Until it was over.
We lay there in the bottom of his boat. His arm and leg limply
slung across me, as he sunk into sleep, seemingly gratified. My
mind was blank. The motion of the water cradling my soul. Part
of me wanted to cry, part of me wanted to laugh. I wanted to
hold him and was at the same time repelled by his heaving body.
Then, opening my eyes suddenly as if struck by an epiphany, I
turned to kiss him. I found the answer. I kissed his lips, his cheek,
his neck, his earlobe. Kissed his eyes and his mouth, waking him
from his slumber. I ran my hands and fingers over the muscles of
his arms, his back, his neck. Slowly, gently, he rose. Opening his
mouth to mine, merging to my touch, mimicking the strokes on
my body. Our bodies sinking into one another’s movements until
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40 CRIMSON WAVES
we found ours. And then I held him to me, remembering for the
first time my sister’s caution. Too late. Too late. But still, this time
I wanted to do it right. Undressing and locking eyes with his, I
slipped the condom from my pocket, clumsily finding a way to
open it one-handed. We laughed and there I found the eyes that
I longed for. He looked at me as if he could see me whole and
met me with acceptance, warmth and desire. ‘Let me,’ he said
taking the packet and enveloping the condom over his penis with
one expert motion. I laughed again, unaware that I would, but
amused by my own ineptitude. He then lifted my shirt and circled
my nipples with his tongue. I could see his throbbing growing
stronger and thicker, and I sank into my own bliss. He began to
undress me, and, suddenly aware of self, I stopped his hand. ‘It’s
OK,’ he said, turning me slowly to the side. I let him meet me.
And the pain was bearable, the touch smooth, his kisses warm,
my body easing into his rhythm whose crescendo slowly rose to
a roar. Our waters fused, his waves crashing against my shore.
Unabashedly, unflinchingly, unashamedly. We laughed.
As we lay holding each other I wondered: did he experience
it as I did? Would he remember it as I would? ‘We should go,
it’s getting dark,’ he said, kissing me lightly, fleetingly. Putting
his clothes back on and handing me mine, I watched this boy,
wondering silently.
‘I’ll see you soon,’ he said, as we reached my sister’s house.
And the realisation that I would never see Omondi again washed
over me with resounding sadness. I kissed him, right there on
my sister’s doorstep, and mustered a smile before saying: ‘Thank
you.’ He faintly smiled back, touching my hair with the tips of his
fingers. And, there, I saw the heavy sorrow in his face, as if the
realisation had unfurled over his spirit as well. We stood there.
Fixed by the unattainable. Unable to freeze time. We stood there.
Our fingers meeting slightly as if by accident.
Sometimes I wonder about the possibilities, of me for me of
love of companionship of connection if it were all different. A
utopia where I can be fully embraced and embracing. It is a futile
exercise. My light has been long extinguished. I am not even sure
I would recognise the being of that time, that soul, if she fluttered
before me now. It’s only been six years since Kisumu. My sister
moved after Kathambi was born. I have never been back. But I
429
can sometimes smell the lake in the air, suddenly in the middle
of a conversation, or waiting for a matatu in town and I smile
somewhere inside.
And now. As I make my seventh circle. As my body weakens,
my sight blurs and my eyes shut, I smell the lake in the distance,
hear the waves crashing closer and closer and know that if I reach
long enough I will touch them.
430
41
African conversations on gender

identity and ICD classifications
This conversation began following the forwarding of a statement
by an advisor at the World Health Organization (WHO) on a
mailing list server which included the following on transsexual-
ism and the International Classification of Diseases (ICD): ‘A third
function of WHO is to establish and revise, as necessary, inter-
national nomenclatures of diseases. […] The 11th version of the
ICD is scheduled to be presented to the World Health Assembly
(WHO’s Governing Body) in May 2015. Although homosexuality
is no longer included, other issues that may concern us remain,
such as transsexualism as a mental disorder. How can we ensure
that we address the health care needs of transgender populations
without further stigmatising them? I hope that transgender peo-
ple and the transgender movement can help us in addressing this
challenge invoking the key human rights principle of participa-
tion – “nothing for us without us”.’ An email conversation ensued
between comrades of diverse identities in East Africa on gender
identity and ICD classification…
Audrey
Good morning everyone,
Transgender Education and Advocacy (TEA) will send a letter
requesting WHO to retain transsexualism in the ICD classifica-
tion. TEA does not see any reason to have it removed from ICD
or DSM-V.1
Furthermore TEA sees a gay-isation trend here: the current
issue is to have transsexualism removed as a mental disorder
(the classification of homosexuality as a mental disorder was
removed in 1990). So what if homosexuality was removed from
ICD and DSM? There is a difference between homosexuality and
431
transsexualism. There is no relationship whatsoever and it is rude

to associate these two issues.
By the way, remove it from ICD for what? What alternative do
you propose to have? Am glad some groups are talking of having
it as a medical condition, which is okay with some of us, but we
abhor the way cisgender LGB are handling this matter: having
transsexualism removed from ICD and DSM because homosexu-
ality was removed. I want to pass this information as a friend:
don’t jump into our issues haphazardly for the sake of being seen
to be working on T issues.
Please assist in reaching out to some individuals and organisa-
tions in making them see the sense of respecting T’s space. If the
LGB community want to help then let them follow our lead, but
not acting as our mouthpiece on such a sensitive issue as this. We
can’t manage to adequately get medical services for gender transi-
tion and then you find people trashing the only diagnosis we have
to get the little we have?
I think the best way to deal with mental disorder-related
stigma is to educate society about mental disorders, and not by
erasing mental disorders from the ICD-10 or DSM- IV. Why not
leave this issue to trans folks – we have our own thing and that
kind of thing.
Audrey – T36,000
Hakima
Dear sis,
I completely concur with you around the stigma with mental-
related disorder.
And I would like to suggest another way of looking at things,
if not at the world. In my world view, there are no binaries. I do
not believe that the form (e.g. gender, sexuality, etc) or content
(e.g. how these manifest physically, spiritually, intellectually, etc)
of our beings are linear, binary or able to be neatly categorised (I
know you are a scientist so you won’t like that at all). I think the
mistake we make is to try to create these binaries to understand
the world.
And we do it even in our movement: e.g. I am man, or woman,
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41 AFRICAN CONVERSATONS ON GENDER IDENTITY
or trans, or intersex. I feel that my gender, gender expression,

gender performance and gender identity are all much more com-
plex than what we understand by gender or sex or the interaction
between the two, e.g. the roles I play in my family, in the street,
in the sheets, how my body functions, how it doesn’t, what is
expected of me, what I fulfil, how I carry myself, etc and I don’t
believe that any two people of similar categorised gender identi-
ties have all of the same things going on (physically, spiritually or
by socialisation). Indeed, I think the biological myth of binaries
of sex is blown away by intersex folk – who again the domi-
nant world attempts to categorise (even the word ‘inter’ implies
between two things) – but who occupy a physical space of resist-
ance against these categorisations.
I know you don’t care about this part, sis, but the same is true,
in my view, about sexuality. There are many things that move us
sexually and there are many ways we express our sexuality that
may or may not have anything to do with what we do in bed with
ourselves, one or many partners. We have attempted to say we
are straight, gay and lesbian to avoid the good (but much more
complicated) fight of saying that sexuality is plural. I don’t think
men who call themselves gay are solely turned on by other men,
or that lesbians don’t have sex with trans men or that a gold star
lesbian can’t desire a gay man, etc.
This complexity/plurality of gender, sex, sexuality, identity (as
well as a lot of other categories of the world – some of which I strug-
gle more to see this way) is a political position which can allow us to
fight the good/complex fight as, what I would call, queers.
‘Queer politics is anti-assimilationalist, inclusive and diverse.’
‘Queer is not seen as a single way of being, but rather as a dissi-
dent stance with great respect and room for difference.’
As you will see, therefore, from this point of view the ideas
of gender identity disorder (or gender dysphoria) as categorised
for trans folks or, as I just saw somewhere, congenital disorder
(as suggested for intersex persons as a physical ‘disorder’) don’t
make much sense. I don’t think that 1) these are disorders or 2)
that there are cisgendered persons (when do I decide that my
identity ‘matches’ what is expected of my behaviour or role?).
Again, the more complex route for advocacy may not be the
one we choose, but maybe for the longer term of creating the
433
world we seek, it would be better. Or, maybe I’m just off the wall
and we can continue working from the same TIBLG framework!
Because, sister, I understand that I say this from the privileged
position of not having my gender choices oppressed daily and, as
you suggest, I would always take the lead from trans folk while
I walk in solidarity. And this is not to say that you and other
trans folk don’t daily suffer the oppressions of this binary world
and sometimes as we struggle we must fight within the exist-
ing framework/binaries to dismantle it (e.g. in regards to race, I
only understand this approach). Also, in the spirit of my political
African Queer anarchist position, I value our plurality of opinion,
so I hope my sharing was useful to get the mind juices flowing
and that we can continue to discuss.
Hakima
Barbra
Hi everyone,
I was thinking about this conversation when I was coming to
work today. I’m sorry if I jump up and down in my thoughts.
When I discovered I was trans, it was like a lightbulb moment.
I had been told all sorts of things, and mostly I was told I was gay
(or at that time: homo). I knew clearly that I wasn’t that, even from
a young age of 12. For me, when I heard that there was a diag-
nosed cause for my ‘pain’, it was an ‘Aha’ moment. I had some-
thing to tell people and I wasn’t alone, I wasn’t imagining things.
I think this discussion is sensitive because on one hand we
know (I presume) what a relief it must be to hear someone telling
you that what you’re going through is not your own doing, that
it is actually a documented ‘disorder’. But then again, the naming
of it as a disorder brings in so many other issues of ‘Am I crazy?
What will people think?’, and so forth.
While the cause for removing GID/GD from DSM-V or ICD-10
sounds good, I wonder what actual trans persons feel. I honestly
am not sure. I haven’t been treated as a mental case at all and I’ve
not suffered significant mental breakdown or depression or what
have you due to my ‘dysphoria’. However, by me being me, and
being ‘diagnosed as having GD’, I have been able to access hor-
mones and surgery and therapy.
434
Comparing transsexualism to homosexuality cannot happen.

Homosexuals don’t need hormones or surgery to be their true
self. For one to love another, you don’t need a doctor giving you
injections or modifying parts of your body. However, for a trans-
sexual to be who they truly are, these are real tangible things they
need. Sometimes I actually see why trans and intersex correlate:
because for them it’s not merely ‘I love this person, I’m attracted
to that person’, it is a physical, mental and social thing. Very tan-
gible! That’s how I see it. And that’s why I’m hesitant to join the
‘Stop Trans Pathologisation’ campaign. Because I am not seeing
them answer these questions.
I don’t want to be treated as a mental case, I want to be treated
as a person in need of certain medical attention that is specific to
me and my condition.
I stand to be corrected though.
Barbra
Your silence will not protect you ~ Audre Lorde
Julius
Hi all,
I do echo some of the thoughts Barbra has expressed. In my view,
there is a need to reflect deeply when considering individual
needs vis-à-vis collective needs. Often, different people who may
identify with a common situation will feel differently about the
situation and will even have different approaches to the situation.
The critical question for me is: does the individual have the right
to make choices and adopt approaches which will meet their per-
ceived need and give them the desired result?
Bringing my thoughts closer to the conversation in question,
I would be very hesitant to raise the ‘Stop pathologisation’ flag
without being very sure what the implications are for everyone
else who may not be standing in the same political and socio-
economic space as I am. To me, the word ‘disorder’ in itself would
not be a problem but how it is used, and if the use of it can give
people like myself access to the health care and medical interven-
tions they require.
At the risk of sounding pathological myself, I dare say there
is actually something ‘not quite right’ or ‘not quite in order’ with
435
either the way our bodies have been formed in utero (in the case
of intersex individuals), or the way they turned out to be (male/
female, in the case of trans individuals). How one chooses to term
that ‘not quite right’ body outcome is pretty much a personal mat-
ter, depending on the needs of the individual. However, when we
talk about medical tests, surgeries, hormone replacement therapy
(which in many cases is life-long and requires continued health
monitoring) and possible health risks, it may be quite impractical
to assume that we will interact with only those medical practi-
tioners who are comfortable to modify a body which has been
diagnosed to have no anomaly whatsoever. It is therefore in some
way a Catch 22 situation.
A gender or sex development disorder is certainly NOT an ill-
ness or mental sickness. It is simply that – a ‘body’ condition that
displays something ‘not quite IN ORDER’ for the individual who
is dealing with it, and requires some medical intervention NOT to
‘fix it’ per se but to turn it ‘right’ for the concerned individual. If
I am realistic with myself, this realisation opens more doors than
it closes – even in regard to self-determination and esteem. I say
this because if I say there is nothing OUT OF ORDER, then I have
subsequent questions that will haunt me, such as why then don’t I
possess the body that corresponds to who I believe I am – how the
heck did I get into this kind of body, which I hate with a passion?
Where did these breasts come from, which should not be there
and which I hate so much? Why am I growing this beard when I
should have and want to have a smooth ‘feminine’ face, etc?
Like Barbra, I stand open to other people’s thoughts but this is
my two pennies’ worth on the conversation.
Warmly,
Julius
Guillit
Hi all,
I’m really not sure where to begin with the ‘mental disorder’ thing.
First I do not stand corrected but I accept and respect people’s
opinions. I agree with Barbra and Julius, NOTHING IS OUT OF
ORDER, period. I want to share a story that shows how I believe
something is wrong with society, not with us as IT [intersex and
436
trans] people. I witnessed the cruellest discrimination and stigma

on 21 March 2012. I’m writing a story about it and hope all of you
in this list will chip in some ideas on what is the next step and how
to help this person get out of this lifelong humiliation.
I have witnessed how cisgender persons can stigmatise some-
one with silence and discrimination with a capitalist mindset. Eric
is an intersex person with whom I’ve recently experienced some
of the gender discrimination that he’s been facing all of his life. I
only experienced it for one day, but already I was traumatised. I
can’t imagine how he’s survived with it his whole life. After my
observation, I think some of Eric’s siblings might be gay and it’s
scary to them so they react to him with rage and ignorance.
Nothing is wrong with Eric; he was born fine with unique geni-
tals. However, his genital uniqueness has made his family and
neighbours try to kill him more than once, beat him and report
him to the police every time he talks to women because he’s not
taking up the role they believe he should play. The community
has turned against him, schoolchildren ridicule him in his home
area, questioning who he is while analysing him head to toe. This
is the magnitude of ignorance and society molesting IT persons.
I have also experienced some of these things, but not to that
extent. It was hard for me to love myself fully in the beginning
because of the way I used to feel. Knowing the G-man, wondering
why He let things like that happen to me. Religious people don’t
understand that being trans has nothing to do with whatever is
written in the Bible – hell, it’s not even in the Bible! Science and
medicine are classifying me as having a ‘mental disorder’.
The cisgender people don’t know and will never experience
their body and mind not coordinating. So since they do not
understand IT persons, the next easy step and way out is to call
it a ‘mental disorder’. Let’s start there – aaaha! – and use research
to judge people for who they are. They forgot to ask IT persons
how they feel and relate to their shitty social norms, and if they
want to fit at all. Who is normal anyways? What criteria make
one normal?
This might sound pathological but it’s not. I have to nip and cut
‘mental disorder’ out of the DSM-V and ICD-10, and even people’s
thoughts and ideas of classifying and labelling people without
their consent. I know I’m queer as they come, if it ever comes in
437
a package with a red ribbon on it. If the cisgender people must

have me identified, stamp a sticker on me, I’m it, trans boi and
part of both sexual and gender minority categories. Health care
is my right. I shouldn’t have to accept someone else’s label for me
to access it.
Classification, I do not need be in research labs to label myself
according to final results. Why do we feel the need to fit every-
thing in this world to scientific recommendations, forgetting that
nature and time are constantly changing us? Society does not
embrace any change without categorising and giving it a name
and without a tussle! Just so that it can be filed and accessed for
everyone to fit into their selfish social norms and patriarchal roles.
UP2 is working with a social worker with a hospital in Kayole.
She offers IT persons in the UP organisation refuge in seeking
medical services privately, thus avoiding doctors’ stigmatising
and judgment in examination rooms. The people giving trainings
in doctors’, nurses’ and social work courses should add gender
into their curriculum to sensitise medical fields on IT people.
And we should have posters in pharmaceutical institutions like
chemists saying, ‘It’s not a taboo to be born ambiguous whether
in mind or body. To be intersex or transgender is not an illness
but a condition.’
I agree with Hakima that gender is fluid and you can and
should be anything you want to be, without labels. But is this
reality? Do self-definition and fluidity even happen, with visible
stigmas brushing against each other during activities or events?
Most of us, even trans and intersex, still try to fit into the catego-
ries of ‘man’ and ‘woman’, ‘straight’ and ‘gay’ and other binaries.
We need to expand our own understanding and options for dif-
ferent ways of identifying and defining ourselves.
I will finish by mentioning that my emotions, thoughts, deeds
and making informed choices are what make me Guillit, and
changing my name has nothing to do with it. Come to think of it,
why do society and its patriarchal norms have to gender names?
But I feel the need and can relate to the name I chose for myself,
not like the imposed or given names that I force myself to fit into
like every other thing, including the DSM and ICD classifications.
I will design how to live and what is the best fit for me and
be part of bringing positive changes, whether benefiting me
438
personally or someone else. It won’t be easy but I will be in the

positive struggle for free choice, to love myself, and to make life
liveable for myself and others who the world is not designed for.
Science and the G-man may disagree but I will still craft my life
to suit me; time and death are the only limits I have, though man
is fighting to stop my dreams. We can only bring to life our dif-
ferences, learn from one another and build each other without
tearing each other down.
Solidarity,
Guillit
Notes
1 DSM-V is the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental
Disorders compiled by the American Psychiatric Association (APA), due
for publication in May 2013. It supersedes DSM-IV, which was published
in 2000.
2 Ushirikiano Panda (UP) is a Kenyan organisation whose mission is to
create safe spaces and increase the well-being of intersex and transgender
(IT) people in Kenya. The group is led by IT people themselves, and
strives to develop a country in which all citizens are free to determine
and express their own gender. Since this conversation, UP has changed
its name to Jinsiangu, which comes from the Kiswahili words jinsia
yangu, meaning ‘my gender’.
439
42
Remember me when I’m gone

Busisiwe Sigasa (23 December 1981–12 March 2007)
In April 2006 Busi was raped by a young man near her home. A
few months later she discovered she was HIV-positive. Busi was
already suffering from diabetes and although she was receiving
ARVs she was never really well and often struggled with her
days. Not only had she to come to terms with being raped and
HIV-positive, she had to live with seeing her rapist walk the
streets and even be faced with him at the HIV clinic. On 12 March
2007 Busi, who had been trying to work a few days a week, came
home and immediately went to her room to sleep. A few hours
later her mother came by and woke her up to take her diabetic
medication. Busi said OK, but she must have fallen asleep and
from then she never woke up. This is one of the many poems she
wrote and shared before she died, and is taken from her blog:
http://latifah.wordpress.com/.
Wrote stories for the nations to read

Stood without fear and told my story
I smiled and greeted without judging
I influenced positive living to the sick
I planted seeds of hope to the hopeless
I groomed and glowed the younger ones whose parents died
I created artistic designs with my hands
I crafted and drew beautiful pictures
I installed educational reasoning to some
I taught represented the minority to the majority
I made nations aware
I wronged some and made some happy
I survived against odds
440
42 REMEMBER ME WHEN I’M GONE
I swallowed my medication even as hard as it was it was sometimes

I did so to remain strong and to live my life regardless of my status
I fought for women to be taken into serious consideration by our
government
I wrote and said ‘my’ spoke word
I fought and showed many that there’s nothing wrong with being
diabetic, epileptic and HIV
I represented many of the HIV infected lesbian sisters
I told the truth never mind the judgements
I lived and I’m still living
I loved and prayed to my GOD
I prayed without hesitation, for, I believe/d
I was a big sister to my younger sisters
I listened to my mother’s teachings
I became friends with father
I’D DIE FOR MY FAMILY, I LOVED THEM SO!
I captured moments with my camera
I brought forth what was unseen to the nations through the power
of image, pen and paper
I struggled to make it life
I was taken for a ride by some whom i thought were friends
I showed my rapist how strong i was regardless that he poisoned
my blood with his HIV
I believed and prayed
I stood low and respected all regardless of their age, colour and size
I say along with others
I had a unique voice
I had a message to deliver and a vision to see
I tried, i fell and i never succeeded sometimes
I was patient while to some i was strange
I was loved by some and was hated by some, STILL i did my thing
I loved and appreciated beautiful women
I loved her more than life itself
Some would say…
I am full shit! but spiritually i was full
I was fed with GOD’s glory that’s why I praised HIM
441
I praised HIM more than i praised friends

I am my mother’s daughter
I made history and marked historical books of this world
SO………
REMEMBER ME WHEN I’M GONE!
FOR…without no doubt i’ll and i am in peace with my maker and
creator.
AMEN!
442
Index
Information in notes is indexed as Amadiume, Ifi 215, 216–17
123n4, i.e. note 4 on page 123. Amnesty International Senegal 264
Amory, P.D. 35, 43
Abbas, Hakima 1–5, 395–6, 400, Anderson, Benedict 115
417–30 Angola, homosexuality 224–5
Achmat, Zackie 85 art, representation of women 356
activists Artists for Recognition and
experiences 290–304 Acceptance (AFRA) 187
Kenyan women 186–200 Astraea International Fund for
lesbians 211–18 Sexual Minorities 236
movement building 393–407 Astraea Lesbian Foundation for
trans and intersex 54–68 Justice 291, 297
Adams, Parveen 362
Adeleye-Fayemi, B. 11, 16, 28n16 Baartman, Saartjie 120
affinity groups 25–6 Bahati, David 142
Africa Southwest Asia Network Bajun tribes 216
(ASWAN) 240, 298 Banks, Alicia 216
African Assembly for the Defence of Barry, Shelley 48–51
Human Rights (RADDHO) 264 Barthes, R. 116, 354, 363–5
African Charter on Human and Batchelor, Stephen 214
People’s Rights 210, 330, 337–8, Batliwala, S. 13
341 BBC 147
African Commission on Human and Berlant, Lauren 275
People’s Rights (ACHPR) 38 Bertz, Heather 297
African Feminist Forum (AFF) 16, Besigye, Kizza 158
17, 18 bisexuality, identity 324–5
African LGBTI, manifesto/ Blessing, Jennifer 109
declaration 52–3 Blessol, Gathoni 220–8
African statement on sexual Bop, Codou 265, 268
orientation and gender identity Botswana
209–10 HIV/AIDS 379–80
Africanness, sexuality 34–5, 36–7, human rights 258n2
44–5n4, 78, 80, 224–5, 380 LGBTI activism 64
Aguilar, Laura 357 transgender 110
aid, conditionality 82, 85–7, 92–4, Bourdieu, P. 254–5, 256
159–60 Brundrit, Jean 357, 368n10
AIDS see HIV/AIDS Burundi, LGBTI activism 56
AIDS-Free World 161 Busia, Abena 292
Alexander, Jacqui 81, 302 Butler, Judith 42, 255, 316, 369n17
all-sexual people 235–7, 242n3
445
Cabral, Amilcar 395 collective identities 13–14

Cameron, David 82, 86, 92 Collective of Islamic Associations of
Cameron, Edwin 85 Senegal (CAIS) 263
Cape Verde, homosexuality 258n2 colonialism
Catholic church, homophobia 274–5 and African identity 178–80, 225
Cekiso, Nosizwe 366, 367 homophobia 80–1, 85–6, 388–9
Center for Women’s Global political oppression 225–7
Leadership 292 Council of Imams and Preachers of
Central African Republic, human Kenya (CIPK) 275
rights 258n2 cross-dressing, Malawi 378
Centre for Popular Education ‘curative/corrective’ rape 212, 217,
and Human Rights (Ghana) 240, 344–7, 359–61
(CEPERGH) 162
Centre for Rights Education and Dagara, sexuality 214, 215–16
Awareness (CREAW) 274 Daily Nation 148–9
Chambers, Ross 363, 366 Dearham, Kaitlin 186–202
Chancellor College, University of democratisation 32–3, 44n1
Malawi 378–9 Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of
Chaponda, George 158 Mental Disorders (DSM) 134–5,
Chicago, Judy 357 431–9
Child Rights Advisory diaspora, human rights 235–42
Documentation and Legal centre disability rights 48–51
(The CRADLE) 274 discrimination, and sexual
Chimbalanga, Tiwonge 1, 87, 157, 404 orientation 38–9
Chirape, Skye 170 Distiller, Natasha 369n24
Christianity Ditsie, Bev 85
and colonial oppression 225 Dlungwana, Pamella 372–5
homophobia 274–5, 383–4 Donovan, Paula 161
cisgender Dosekun, Simidele 80
definition 316 Dubet, F. 257
transgender partners 322–5 Dubois, W.E.B. 178–9
Clarke, Cheryl 292 dyke, terminology 311
Clarke, Douglas 173–85
class economic violence 38–9
and queer activism 32–44 Edelman, Lee 276
and queer women 193–6 Einstein, Zillah 389n1
Clinton, Hillary 82, 88–9, 90n3 Eiseb, Silva Skinny Dux 62–3
coalition, NGOs 198–9 Ekine, Sokari 1–5, 78–91
Coalition of African Lesbians (CAL) Ekotto, F. 248
38, 317–18 Epprecht, Marc 42, 174–5, 258nn1-2,
Coalition on Violence Against 259nn4-5
Women (COVAW) 274 essentialism 24–5, 80–1
446
INDEX
Etaghene, Yvonne Fly Onakeme Gay and Lesbian Organisation of the

120–1, 122 Witwatersrand (GLOW) 236
ethnicity, and marriage 280, 288n23 Gays and Lesbians of Zimbabwe
evangelicals, homophobia 6, 89, (GALZ) 44n1, 175, 290–4
144–5 Gender Dynamix 55
Everage, Dame Edna 314, 315n3 Gender Education and Advocacy
Programme (GEAP) 187
‘Faces and Phases’ project 107–17, Gender Identity Disorder (GID)
169–72, 354–68 134–5, 431–9
Fahamu 393, 395, 396, 404 Gender Identity Strategic Workshop
family, Kenya 275–7, 278–84 (2008) 56
Fanon, Frantz 178 gender non-conformity 119–22, 203–8
Fanti, Asanda 170 Genet, Jean 110
Farah, Nuruddin 386 Gevisser, Mark 45n6
Federation of Women Lawyers- Ghana, gay rights 161–2
Kenya (FIDA) 274 Goddard, Keith 292
feminist movement gorjigen 262–3
friendships 19–21 Gosine, Andil 288–9n28
identities 317 Gqola, Pumla Dineo 355
feminist spaces 9–26 Gross, Sally 213
films, disability rights 48–51 Guardian newspaper 146–7
Fish, Penny 366, 367 Gueboguo, Charles 246–61
Flavrina 56–7 Guèye, Lamine 263
Fleetwood, Nicole 113
Ford-Smith, H. 28n19 Hassim, S. 14–16
Forum for the Empowerment of Hausa 224
Women 344, 357 Henderson, Nick 383
Foucault, Michel 274 Herzog, Hanna 199
Fred, Wasukire 7–8 heteronormativity
freedom, definitions 403 challenging 11–12, 22–4, 26
Freire, Paulo 396 definition 27n8, 187, 201n2
friendship, women 19–21 heteropatriarchy 81, 214
fundamentalism 39–41, 78–9 heteroreality 22
Fuss, Diana 182 heterosexuality, national 275, 284
HIV/AIDS
Gabon, homosexuality 258n2, 259n8 in Africa 389n1
Gambia, homophobia 79 Botswana 379–80
Gardner, Alexander 365 and homophobia 265–6, 379–881
Gay International 85, 88 and homosexuality 266–8
Gay Kenya 86–7 intersex people 204–5
Gay and Lesbian Coalition of Kenya and queer activism 41–2
(GALCK) 186–7, 188, 196–9 transgender women 131–2
447
Hoad, Neville 32–3, 273 Inter-African Union of Human

homonormativity 318–19 Rights 264
homophobia International Association of Athletics
African 78–90 Federations (IAAF) 119, 120
colonialism 80–1, 85–6, 388–9 International Classification of
and HIV/AIDS 265–6 Diseases (ICD) 134, 431–9
media 141–51 International Conference on AIDS
and religion 78–9, 165–8, 222, and STIs in Africa (ICASA)
262 (Dakar, 2008) 267
Senegal 262–71 International Covenant on Civil and
homosexuality Political Rights (ICCPR) 330,
and AIDS 266–8 336–8, 340–2
criminalisation 78–84, 205–6 International Covenant on
as foreign disease 381 Economic, Social and Cultural
and human rights 271 Rights (ICESCR) 339
Malawi 376–89 International Federation of Human
mathematical interpretation Rights 264
246–58 International Gay and Lesbian
and media 268–70 Human Rights Commission
as mental disorder 134–5, 431–9 (IGLHRC) 55, 89, 231, 239–40,
and race 176–7 267, 268, 290–6
as un-African 34–5, 36–7, 40, International Lesbian and Gay
78–90, 199, 224–5 Association (ILGA) 134, 236,
homosexuals, transphobia 123–38 290–5
hooks, bell 24–5, 398 intersectionality, feminist movement
Horn, Jessica 16, 17, 28n14, 393–408 24–5
human rights intersex people, rights 203–8
African sexuality 229–42 Ishtar MSM 188
and homosexuality 271 Islam, homophobia 263, 275
Kenyan gay women 191–3
same-sex marriage 336–42 Jacaranda Queen contests 175
sexual orientation 209–10 Jackson, S. 10
Human Rights Watch (HRW) 268 Jacqueline, Kasha 149, 171
Jammeh, Yahya 79
Icebreakers 86 Jinsiangu 439n2
icons 112–13 justice system, lesbian violence
identity 347–52
collective 13–14
labels 311–15, 323–5 Kabwila, Jessie 376–92
lesbian 347–50 Kaggwa, Julius 58–9, 203–8
transgender 316–26 Kahramanoglu, Kursad 295
identity politics 36, 42–3 Kaliyati, Patricia 381, 382
448
INDEX
Karuga, Nguru 297 activism 155–63, 290–304

Kassé, Mouhamadou Tidiane African narratives 78–90
262–72 colonial oppression 225–7
Kato Kisule, David 4, 6–8, 145, 147, and democratisation 32–4
148–9, 150–1, 160, 222 Kenya 186–200
Kenya labels 323–5
constitution 273 Malawi 1–2, 158
family 275–7, 278–84 manifesto/declaration 52–3
homophobia 157 movement building 393–407
law and policy 273–86 NGOs 186–200
marriage 284–6 segregation 35–6, 45n5
National Policy on Culture and struggles 220–7
Heritage (2009) 278–84 transgender activists 54–68
NGOs 186–200 transgender programmes 319
political oppression 226 Uganda 6–8, 141–51
Sexual Offences Act (2006) 274–8 lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender
Kenya Episcopal Conference 274–5 and gender non-conforming
Kenya Human Rights Commission (LGBTGNC), activism 290–304
258n1 Lesbian Gay Christian Movement
Khoe-San 212, 214–15 386–7
Kibunguchy, Enoch 277 Lesbian and Gay Immigration
Kikuyu 224 Rights Task Force 297
Kinyili, Happy Mwende 165–8, 402, lesbians
407n3 activism 211–18, 290–304
Kirker, Richard 386 black separatism 311–12
Kirundi language 224 ‘curative/corrective’ rape 212,
Kohn, Sally 351–2 217, 240, 344–7, 359–61
Kuria, David 86–7 defining 213
kyriarchy 80, 90n2 friendships 20–1
identity 347–50
labels Kenya 186–200
and identity 311–15 labels 311–15, 317
sexual orientation 323–5 photographs 107–17, 169–72,
LaGrace Volcano, Del 362 354–68
language, activists 404–6 violence towards 343–52
laws Lesbians, Gays and Bisexuals of
anti-homosexuality 79–80 Botswana (LeGaBiBo) 64
Kenya 273–86 Lesotho, homosexuality 215
Le Roux, Gabrielle 54–68 Lewis, Desiree 355
legislation, anti-homosexual 78–84 LGBTGNC see lesbian, gay, bisexual,
lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual transgender and gender
and intersex (LGBTI) non-conforming
449
LGBTI see lesbian, gay, bisexual, media

transsexual and intersex homophobia 141–51, 268–70
liberalism 32–3, 39–41, 44n2, 78 Malawi 377–8, 390n4
Liberation for All Africans (L4AA) men who have sex with men (MSM)
291, 298, 299 HIV/AIDS 42, 131, 265–8
Liberia, homophobia 79, 88 threat to the family 288–9n28
Lithur, Nana Oyeh 162 and transgender women 132
London, lesbian community 311–12 mental disorders
Lorde, Audre 217–18, 312, 399 and gender identity 431–9
and homosexuality 134–5
Maale 224 Meru 224
Mabele, Prudence 302 Metz, Christian 111
Macharia, Keguro 273–89 Mills, Scott 147
Machel, Samora 407 Min-ha, Trinh T. 404
Makahamadze, Zandile 290–304 Minority Women in Action (MWA)
makwerekwere 379–80, 390n11 186–200
Malawi mobilisation, Kenyan queer women
aid conditionality 160 198
homosexuality 376–89 Mogapi, Skipper 64–5, 110
LGBTI community 1–2, 87 Mohanty, C. 24–5
LGBTI rights 158 Moi, Daniel arap 230–1
media 377–8, 390n4 Monjeza, Steven 1, 87, 157, 404
Malawi Gay and Lesbian Society Moore, T.O. 179
378 Movement Building Boot Camp
Malawi Human Rights Resources (MBBC) 393–407, 409–16
Centre (MHRRC) 384 Msibi, Buhle 366
manifesto, African LGBTI 52–3 Mtetwa, Phumi 346–7, 395
Mark, David 82 Mugabe, Robert 44n1, 230, 291, 379,
marriage 383
inter-ethnic 280, 288n23 Muhame, Giles 143, 147
Kenya 284–6 Muholi, Zanele 107–17, 169–72,
same-sex 320–1, 328–42 344–5, 354–68
Mason-John, Valerie 309–15 Muiruri, Wanjiru 275
Massaquoi, Clarence K. 79 Mukasa, Victor 54–5, 66–7
Matebeni, Zethu 317, 343–53 Murungi, Kagendo 89, 120, 121,
mathematical interpretation, 229–43, 290–304
homosexuality 246–58 Mutharika, Bingu wa 1, 390n13
Matjila, Jerry 369n35 Muthien, Bernedette 211–19
Matumbi, Anne 378 Mutua, Makau 273, 284
Mauritania, homosexuality 259n8 Mwikya, Kenne 141–54
Mbugua, Audrey 123–40 myths, African homosexuality 34–5,
36–7, 44–5n4, 78–90, 199, 224–5
450
INDEX
Nachiye, Gibson 383 1 in 9 Campaign 16–17, 17–18,

Nairobi (Kenya), NGOs 186–200 28n15
Nakaweesi-Kimbugwe, Solome 395 Onziema, Pepe Julian 149
Namangale, Frank 384 Osaze, Ola 119–22
Namaste, V. 319 Osman, Diriye 305–8
Namibia Ossome, Lyn 32–47
gay rights 44n1 Otieno, Wambui 288n23
transgender activists 60–1, 62–3 Ouko, Robert 226
Nangwale, Mary 382
narratives, queer Africa 78–90 Pande, Brian 7
national heterosexuality 275, 284 participant observation 187, 201n1
National Policy on Culture and phallic symbols 248
Heritage (Kenya, 2009) 278–84 Phiri, Isabel 390n6
Ndashe, Sibongile 155–64 Phiri, John Soso 384, 385
Ndung’u, Njoki 274, 285 photographs, South African LGBTI
Ngcobo, Gabi 355 community 107–17, 169–72,
Niang, Cheikh 262–3, 268 354–68
Nigeria political struggles, social movements
anti-gay legislation 79–80, 82–4 39–41
Same Sex Marriage Prohibition politics, queer politics 312–13
Bill (2011) 328–42 Pollock, Griselda 356, 362–3
Nigeria Occupy Movement 84 Popoola, Olumide 95–106
Nikasimo, Mia 244–5 portraits
Njami, Simon 115 South African LGBTI community
Nkhereanye, Kelebohile 297 107–17, 169–72, 354–68
Nkoli, Simon 85, 229, 292, 348, transgender activists 54–68
352n1 postcolonialism, and queer activism
non-governmental organisations 32–44
(NGOs) pre-colonial sexualities 216–17
activists 404 Prevention and Research Initiatives
intentions 223 for Sexual Minorities (PRISM) 64
Kenya 186–200 ‘Proudly African & Transgender’
social movements 14 exhibition 54–68
Ntseane, Tlhalefo ‘Zeal’ 172 punctum 361, 363–5
Nujoma, Sam 44n1
Nyeck, S. 250–1, 253 Qemant 224
Nzegwu, Nkiru 385–6, 388, 389 Quashie, Kevin Everod 400
Nzema 224 queer, terminology 3–4, 27n7, 187–8,
368n4, 405
Ocampo, Luis 226, 228n3 queer activism
Odinga, Raila 157–8, 273 movement building 393–407
Okech, Awino 9–31 postcolonial discourses 32–44
451
queer politics 312–13 Sexual Offences Act (Kenya, 2006)

queer sexualities, as un-African 274–8
78–90, 199, 224–5 sexual orientation
queer theory, Western 173–84 and discrimination 38–9
labels 323–5
race sexual violence, South Africa 343–52
anti-lesbian violence 343–52 sexuality
and homosexuality 176–7 defining 69–77, 212–13
lesbian separatism 311–12 human rights 229–42
Rainbow Identity Association (RIA) Sezen, Beldan 122
110 Shakur, Assata 406
rape Sherman, Cindy 357
‘curative’ 212, 217, 240, 344–7, Shivji, Issa 223
359–61 shoga 405, 419
marital 276–7 Sierra Leone, human rights 258n2
Red Pepper 142, 144, 147 Sigasa, Busi 366, 367, 440–2
religion, homophobia 78–9, 165–8, Simelane, Eudy 109, 348–51
222, 262, 274–5, 383–4 Singla, Pradeep 297
Rich, A. 20–1 sisterhood, concept 18, 21–2
Robinson, Gene 387 Sistren 28n19
role models, transgender 320–2 Smith, Donna 344
Rolling Stone 141–51 Smith-Rosenberg, C. 20–1
Roseneil, S. 19, 28n17 social movements
Rubin, Gayle 317 development of 13–16
political struggles 39–41
Sabeen, Najia 396 Soldaat, Funeka 172
safe spaces 197–8 solidarity, women 21–4, 26, 28n20
Said, E. 176 Somé, Malidoma 215
Salley, Raél Jero 107–18 Somé, Sobonfu 215–16
Salo, E. 15–16 South Africa
Sam, Bernice 161–2 black LGBTI portraits 107–17,
same-sex marriage 169–72
Nigeria 328–42 democratisation 32–3, 44n1
South Africa 320–1 gender non-conformity 119–22
Segale, Betesta 110 homophobia 156–7
Semenya, Caster 119–22 lesbian activism 212–14
Senegal LGBTI activists 85
homophobic violence 262–71 marriage 320–1
media 268–70 non-discrimination 258n2
Senghor, Léopold Sédar 263 rape 217, 344–7, 359–61
Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG) sexual violence 343–52
6, 86 taxi violence 48
transgender role models 320–1
452
INDEX
spectacularisation 147 ubuntu 401–4

Stobie, Cheryl 215 Uganda
Strange Fruit The Real 236 anti-homosexuality bill 79–80,
suffrage movement, friendships 142, 144–5, 151, 151–2n3,
19–20 152n6, 158, 205–6, 309
Support Initiative for People with homophobia 141–51
Atypical Sex Development LGBTI community 6–8
(SIPD) 59 transgender activists 58–9, 66–7
Suvarnananda, Anjana 297 UHAI – The East African Sexual
Health and Rights Initiative 393,
tabloid press, Uganda 141–51 396, 404
Tekanyo, ‘TK’ 171 Uhuru-Wazobia 291, 297, 298
Theron, Liesl 316–27 United Kingdom (UK)
Third World Within (TWW) 243n4 aid conditionality 82, 86, 92–4
Thomas, Kylie 354–71 lesbian community 311–14
The Three Graces 356, 362 United Nations (UN)
Thuku, Harry 279 Fourth World Conference on
Timbo, Madam Jholerina Brina 60–1 Women (Beijing, 1995) 10,
Torr, Diane 313, 315n2 230, 231, 291, 292
training, activists 395–407 General Assembly 38–9
Trans Activist Movement Of Universal Declaration of Human
Namibia (TAMON) 63 Rights 191, 237
transgender United States (US)
cisgender partners 322–5 Black African community 234–6
identities 316–26 LGBT activism 290–304
as mental disorder 431–9 and LGBTI rights 83–4, 88–9,
perceptions of 316–18 235–42
portraits 54–68, 110–11, 169–72 queer theory 173–84
role models 320–2 Urgent Action Fund – Africa (UAF-
Transgender Education and Africa) 4
Advocacy (TEA) 431–2 Ushirikiano Panda (UP) 438, 439n2
transphobia 174–5
by homosexuals 123–38, 318–19 violence
transsexual nomenclature on sexual anti-lesbian 343–52, 359–61
orientation (TNOSO) 132–3 economic 38–9
transversal politics 42–3 homophobic 262–71
transvestism, Malawi 378 sexualised 37–8, 45n7, 217
Treblicot, Joyce 180–1 visual activism 170, 356–8
Trouillot, Michel-Rolph 285
Tutu, Desmond 401 Wako, Amos 284
Warembo Ni Yes campaign 200
Warinda, Nancy Lylac 69–77
453
Warner, Michael 275 World Health Organization (WHO)

Watusi 216 431
West, Shearer 114 World Social Forum (2007) 197
Western media, and Uganda World Social Forum (2011) 220–1,
homophobia 145–51 227
Western queer theory 173–84
Whelehan, I. 25 Xingwana, Lulu 355, 364
Wilchins, R. 317
Williams, Gertie 320 Yisa, Nathaniel 383–4
witch-hunts 39, 45n8 Yuval-Davis, Nira 36, 42–3
women
in art 356 zami 312
friendships 19–21 Zande 216, 225
genital excision 276–7 Zimbabwe
human rights 229–42 gay activism 290–4
Kenya 186–200 gay rights 44n1
political identity 14–16 homophobia 157
solidarity 21–4 Ziyanda 114
violence towards 37–8, 343–52, Zulu, Mbali 108–9
359–61 Zulu, Pinky 111, 112
Women of Colour Collective 292 Zuma, Gazi T. 367
Women In Law and Development in Zuma, Jacob 18, 28n15, 156–7
Africa (WILDAF) 161
World Conference on Women see
United Nations
454
As the double jeopardy of homophobia and transphobia, and Western
imperialism, threaten to silence the voices of African LGBTI people, the
Queer African Reader is a testament to the resistance and unrelenting
power of these communities across Africa and her diaspora. The col-
lection brings together academic writings, political analysis, life testi-
monies, conversations and artistic works by Africans that engage with
the struggle for LGBTI liberation.
The Queer African Reader aims to engage the audience from the per-
spective that various axes of identity – gender, race, class and others
– interact to contribute to social inequality. It includes experiences from
diverse African contexts and breaks away from the homogenisation
of Africa as a homophobic continent to highlight the complexities of
LGBTI lives and experiences through their own voices.
Contributions from across the continent explore issues of identity,
resistance, solidarity, pinkwashing, global politics, intersections of
struggle, religion and culture, community, sex and love.
A richness of voices, a multiplicity of discourses, a quiverful of arguments. African

queers writing for each other, theorising ourselves, making our movements visible.
This is a book we have hungered for.
Shailja Patel, award-winning Kenyan poet and activist, author of Migritude
All too often we read about African queers as monolithically victimised or as passive
recipients of modernity from the West. What a great antidote the Queer African
Reader provides to that narrative, with its diversity of styles, stories, memoirs, scholarly
theory, art, photography and deliciously combative polemics and petitions as rich as
the diversity of Africans themselves! Listen to the poetry, feel the passion – love, rage,
sadness, pride – admire the beauty, grow from the insights of Africans speaking directly
to us about their struggles to be true to themselves, to their families, their lovers, their
nations. This brave volume should be essential reading for all human rights activists far
and wide in Africa and the diaspora.
Marc Epprecht, author of Hungochani, Heterosexual Africa? and Sexuality and Social Justice in Africa
Cover photo: Thobe and Phila, Pietermaritzburg, KwaZulu Natal, 2012. © Zanele Muholi
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Queer

The Queer African Reader serves as an amazing anthology documenting

The Queer African Reader is a revelatory, path-breaking collection of

A richness of voices, a multiplicity of discourses, a quiverful of arguments.

All too often we read about African queers as monolithically victimised or

Pambazuka Press – www.pambazukapress.org

Pambazuka News – www.pambazuka.org

Pambazuka Press and Pambazuka News are published by Fahamu

Edited by Sokari Ekine

Fahamu Kenya, PO Box 47158, 00100 GPO, Nairobi, Kenya

Copyright © Editors and contributors 2013

The right of the authors and contributors to be identified as

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

ISBN: 978-0-85749-099-5 paperback

Cover photo: Thobe and Phila, Pietermaritzburg, KwaZulu Natal, 2012.

23 LGBTI-Queer struggles like other struggles in Africa 220

The journey of this reader began in January 2010 at a criti-

and organisations – flying into the country with little or no

persecution of an already fearful community seems to spread

our dissident stance, but we use it here knowing the limitations

the survivors and victims of multiple oppressions and to the

In this country, it is absurd that as the LGBTI community strives

simply as ‘expressing homophobia’ but as promoting sustained

but has always lived looking like a woman! One wonders if he

‘In sisterhood and solidarity’:

Africa is not new. These charges were evident in the aftermath

Queer and feminism converge insofar as both question the

As a result, choices have been made6 by individuals and organi-

arguing that while they retain a strong connection to feminist

It is very difficult to create and sustain feminist space in many

Some of the responses to challenging these labels were admit-

designed to excavate narratives and histories to counter dominant

clear about what is and is not a movement. For, it is somewhat

Batliwala’s concerns above reflect not only the imposition of the

Scholars writing from the perspective of ‘new social movements’

Several theorists have pointed out that attempts to disaggregate

The combination of theoretical and practical difficulties of

Hassim, while speaking specifically to the South African con-

inclusion in the state in a piecemeal and often de-politicised

Underpinning the inclusionary approach, according to Hassim, is

argues, therefore, that the reformist and transformatory goals are

Building feminist spaces

racism, classism and homophobia, converge to deny women

Men’s homorelational affiliation and preference have histori-

Importance was placed on friendship by earlier generations

male-dominated socialist movement (Roseneil 2002, Roseneil

The essential question is not whether these women had genital

of lesbian lives and history have been raised in several critiques

solidarity and sisterhood are deployed is limiting in fostering a

from which reprieve is sought. The binaries of man–woman,

notes that heteronormativity ‘not only establishes a heterosexual/

The history of women who – as witches, femmes seules, mar-

Queering18 feminist spaces

of itself but needs a sustained, ongoing commitment. Mohanty,

dead end for political feminism as a movement. Gender is seen as

13 A factor of the end of the cold war.

McClintock, A. (1995) Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the

of sex’, in Reiter, R.R. (ed) Toward an Anthropology of Women, New York,

Smith-Rosenberg, C. (1975) ‘The female world of love and ritual: relations