Wandia Njoya and Africa and the politics of sex

[Guest guest]

The Politics of Sex

by Wandia Njoya

http://zeleza.com/blogging/african-affairs/politics-sex

When I was young and attending church meetings, seminars and all manner of

forums designed to reign in on teenage libido, there was a church elder who used

to say that when a young man approaches a woman's parents to declare his

intention to marry their daughter, he is essentially telling the parents that he

wants to have sex with her. I never understood what he meant, but I didn't

really try to, given that the elder was known for making controversial

statements. I didn't understand till now.

African countries have been on the news recently for the increasing violence

being meted out on homosexuals. The more striking events were the proposed

legislation in Uganda rendering homosexuality a capital offence, and the recent

episode in the Kenyan coastal town of Mombasa where a crowd accosted and

battered two men to prevent an alleged wedding from taking place. These

regrettable events have been used to depict Africans as conservative,

anti-progress, violent and backward. Those who would not go that far still

admonish Africans worldwide for being homophobic and hiding behind the lie that

homosexuality is not African. However, the truth is that incidents of violence

against same-sex partners have risen only recently, particularly since the issue

of marriage was brought into the equation by different foreign and local

interests.

Many Kenyans have always known people of homosexual orientation or areas

frequented by them, but there was little persecution with violence targeted at

them. In fact, same-sex relations were visible and well known especially in

areas frequented by tourists, which is why the episode in the tourist town of

Mombasa becomes all the more ironical. And even now with the church and media

whipping up emotions about a purported homosexual invasion, readers' comments in

the local dailies show that many Kenyans wonder why there is so much fuss. For

them, the relationship between two adults is none of their business if that

relationship is consensual, and they wish that that energy was put into pursuing

pedophiles and rapists. Granted, disinterest is still not acceptance of same-sex

couples, and is probably aided by gays remaining in the closet, but it is far

much better than dragging people out of their homes, beating and arresting them.

It is probably because of this apparent public disinterest in same-sex couples

that the West, the religious groups, the media and the politicians, whom I

consider the culprits of the rising homophobia, have pulled out the card which

they know will get people incensed: that of marriage. That is where the wisdom

of the church elder I mentioned comes in. To announce marriage, regardless of

the partners, is to ask society to give explicit legitimacy to a sexual

relationship, which is proved by Zuma's argument that with his multiple

marriages he was better than men who had illicit affairs. However, his marriages

did not prove that he was a better man; instead, they opened to the world a

window into his rabidly active sexual life. And our suspicions that his

marriages were more about sex than family were proved by revelations about his

daughter born outside marriage, after which he hastily attempted to close the

window he opened by accusing the world of peering into his private life which

was irrelevant to his public duties. Tiger Woods, anyone?

Therefore, to associate marriage with same-sex relationships is to bring them

out in the open and to force people to deal with them. However, the issue of gay

marriage is not being used to discuss the status of LGBTI people; rather it is

being used by the various interest groups to achieve their own ends. Even the

LGBTI community in Kenya has not put marriage on the table. From what I have

seen on the websites I have visited, they are asking for acceptance, empowerment

and access to medical services, which, to many Kenyans, are pressing issues.

The issue of same-sex relationships is yet another way that the West perpetuates

control of African societies by painting them as backward and in need to adopt

the Western position on sexuality. As I have said in some of my other blog

entries, controlling attitudes to and expressions of intimacy is a powerful tool

in perpetuating dominance. It was done before when the West condemned rites of

passage and African traditional expressions of intimacy through dance and song

as backward, and the same is being done now.

The very idea of identity by virtue of sexual orientation is, in my opinion,

unAfrican. There was no concept of homosexuality in Africa, just as there was no

concept of heterosexuality. That is not to say that there were no same-sex

intimate relationships in Africa; it is to say that how they were defined and

lived and what they implied in Africa was different from in the West. This is

evident in the fact that, for example, many physical gestures of closeness

amongst members of the same sex such as holding hands, or forms of dressing,

which are sexually neutral in Africa, are interpreted as sexually intimate in

the West. One also need remember that in many African communities, traditional

fashion has men wear braids and what would be considered dresses or skirts in

the Western world. n colonialism placed a schism in male and female

clothing and now the West baptizes the blurring of the separate fashions as

cross-dressing. This is just another way in which colonialism suppresses certain

African cultural expressions, repackages them and then imposes them on the very

societies they suppressed them in.

Sexuality in Africa is largely considered an intimate affair, and even

anthropologists say that Africans find it difficult to discuss cultural

performances such as traditional erotic dances, songs and discourses with

scholars because these are not discussed in public. Sexual relationships with

the opposite gender were assumed between married couples by virtue of their

social roles as parents and members involved in the posterity of the community,

but there was no explicit interest in their sexual orientation, neither were the

married individuals called " heterosexual. " If those values are being challenged

now, that is one thing, but saying that Africans are homophobic or that

homosexuality did not exist in Africa is another and is misleading.

Naturally, both sides of the sexuality divide in the West - the human rights

activists and the conservative evangelical churches - are not interested in the

African people or their world view of sexuality, and are guilty of exercising

hegemony in the continent. Hence the accuracy of Zambian Rev. Kapya Kaoma's

description of the Western involvement in the issue of gay rights as " Culture

Wars. " Western human rights activists, for instance, erroneously assume that

African societies traditionally share the same hostility towards homosexuals as

that in the West, which is not true. The same applies to the diaspora, for while

Black communities in the US have not accepted same-sex marriage, they are still

more sympathetic towards LGBTI people; hence the gentrification of urban Black

neighborhoods by the richer, white LGBTI community which caused the friction

captured in the 2003 documentary Flag Wars. Just as in the case of women's

emancipation, there is something to be said about the interaction of race with

the oppression of the LGBTI community.

On the other extreme are the conservative evangelicals who, as Rev. Kaoma has

pointed out, are actively involved in imposing the agenda of a supposed invasion

of same-sex marriage as a threat to the African family, when one would consider

AIDS and poverty the real threats. This group has funded civil wars, polarized

African countries on the basis of religion and influenced unfortunately

oblivious African clergy who have no understanding of politics in America or the

cultural politics of American Christianity.

The Western actors in the current drama are not without partners in Africa. The

African evangelical churches have swallowed the bait of making homosexuality

take precedence over more pressing social issues that burden African society.

This is partly because besides being a tool of control, sexuality is a cheap way

to rally the troops because speaking about it excites emotions and does not

require the sustained and critical thinking needed to address complex

socio-political issues. It is also interesting to note that the evangelical

contempt for Muslims suddenly disappears when it comes to sexuality. One

therefore sees African evangelicals joining Imams in whipping communities into a

frenzy with regards to homosexuality, as they did in Mombasa, or with regards to

sex education in schools and use of condoms in HIV prevention. While one should

not excuse violence against the LGBTI community, one cannot also ignore links

between homophobia and the spread of the influence of conservative and racist

Christians in Africa.

Meanwhile, the Kenyan media revels in the whole drama and often tries to push

the issue to incite a reaction from the public. For instance, when Archbishop

Tutu visited Kenya a few years ago to discuss South Africa's experience with the

Truth and Reconciliation Commission, he was met at the airport by reporters who

wanted to know his take on the Anglican church's position of ordination of gay

clergy. It is embarrassing that young reporters excited by their recent

acquisition of microphones and cameras would subject such an esteemed person in

Africa to such treatment, which Tutu deflected by saying that he was coming to

Kenya for another purpose.

At another instance last year, the Kenyan media repeatedly reported of the

likelihood of a showdown between the Archbishop of Canterbury and Kenyan clergy

over the ordination of gay clergy for at least two weeks before the Archbishop

arrived for his visit. They sought interviews from various clergy in Kenya, but

the excitement and furor they sought was not forthcoming, and to their

disappointment, the Archbishop's visit went on without any drama.

Perhaps the worst incident of media carelessness was the report of a Kenyan gay

couple that got married in the UK. The story was carried on the front page of

the dailies but did not solicit the outrage that was apparently expected. So the

media sank to even lower depths when they visited the families of the men in

rural Kenya and not only shocked the families with the news, but also asked for

comments. Kenyans were outraged by the bad manners of the journalists. This led

the couple to appeal to the media to leave their parents alone.

It was the collaboration between the media and the clergy that resulted in the

episode in Mombasa. According to a chronicle of the events by Nzioka, they

are the ones who announced and spread the rumor that a gay wedding that was to

take place. Again, given that this is not a community that is unfamiliar with

LGBTI communities, it was important a wedding to be brought into the picture for

the public to be sufficiently irked to commit the violence. And not

surprisingly, the Western media did not print these revelations because they

were not as interesting.

The final major actor in the theatre surrounding the trials and tribulations of

the African LGBTI community is the politicians. Like the clergy, politicians

find sexuality an easier issue to use for rallying people to their side and to

avoid being accountable for responsibility to provide leadership and social

services to the citizens of their countries. And for some African countries like

Kenya, homophobia is part of the tradition of using hatred to entrench political

power. On the other hand, it is ironical that politicians criminalize consensual

relationships while remaining silent on the Zuma-esque behavior of African

leaders that is based on the exploitation of women.

That said, while Africans tolerate homosexuality, they do not recognize LGBTI

members in most social institutions, as is seen from the aversion to gay

marriage. But right now, marriage and ordination of gays are not on the table,

and the issues raised by the communities so far would find consensus among many

people. If or when the marriage and ordination do come up, it is up to Africans

to thrash out the issue according to how they understand it, and hopefully both

sides will agree to respectfully disagree without calling each other names and

blowing each others' position out of proportion. But we cannot do that if we do

not understand the African political landscape in which the violence now is

taking place.

[Guest guest]

The Politics of Sex

by Wandia Njoya

http://zeleza.com/blogging/african-affairs/politics-sex

When I was young and attending church meetings, seminars and all manner of

forums designed to reign in on teenage libido, there was a church elder who used

to say that when a young man approaches a woman's parents to declare his

intention to marry their daughter, he is essentially telling the parents that he

wants to have sex with her. I never understood what he meant, but I didn't

really try to, given that the elder was known for making controversial

statements. I didn't understand till now.

African countries have been on the news recently for the increasing violence

being meted out on homosexuals. The more striking events were the proposed

legislation in Uganda rendering homosexuality a capital offence, and the recent

episode in the Kenyan coastal town of Mombasa where a crowd accosted and

battered two men to prevent an alleged wedding from taking place. These

regrettable events have been used to depict Africans as conservative,

anti-progress, violent and backward. Those who would not go that far still

admonish Africans worldwide for being homophobic and hiding behind the lie that

homosexuality is not African. However, the truth is that incidents of violence

against same-sex partners have risen only recently, particularly since the issue

of marriage was brought into the equation by different foreign and local

interests.

Many Kenyans have always known people of homosexual orientation or areas

frequented by them, but there was little persecution with violence targeted at

them. In fact, same-sex relations were visible and well known especially in

areas frequented by tourists, which is why the episode in the tourist town of

Mombasa becomes all the more ironical. And even now with the church and media

whipping up emotions about a purported homosexual invasion, readers' comments in

the local dailies show that many Kenyans wonder why there is so much fuss. For

them, the relationship between two adults is none of their business if that

relationship is consensual, and they wish that that energy was put into pursuing

pedophiles and rapists. Granted, disinterest is still not acceptance of same-sex

couples, and is probably aided by gays remaining in the closet, but it is far

much better than dragging people out of their homes, beating and arresting them.

It is probably because of this apparent public disinterest in same-sex couples

that the West, the religious groups, the media and the politicians, whom I

consider the culprits of the rising homophobia, have pulled out the card which

they know will get people incensed: that of marriage. That is where the wisdom

of the church elder I mentioned comes in. To announce marriage, regardless of

the partners, is to ask society to give explicit legitimacy to a sexual

relationship, which is proved by Zuma's argument that with his multiple

marriages he was better than men who had illicit affairs. However, his marriages

did not prove that he was a better man; instead, they opened to the world a

window into his rabidly active sexual life. And our suspicions that his

marriages were more about sex than family were proved by revelations about his

daughter born outside marriage, after which he hastily attempted to close the

window he opened by accusing the world of peering into his private life which

was irrelevant to his public duties. Tiger Woods, anyone?

Therefore, to associate marriage with same-sex relationships is to bring them

out in the open and to force people to deal with them. However, the issue of gay

marriage is not being used to discuss the status of LGBTI people; rather it is

being used by the various interest groups to achieve their own ends. Even the

LGBTI community in Kenya has not put marriage on the table. From what I have

seen on the websites I have visited, they are asking for acceptance, empowerment

and access to medical services, which, to many Kenyans, are pressing issues.

The issue of same-sex relationships is yet another way that the West perpetuates

control of African societies by painting them as backward and in need to adopt

the Western position on sexuality. As I have said in some of my other blog

entries, controlling attitudes to and expressions of intimacy is a powerful tool

in perpetuating dominance. It was done before when the West condemned rites of

passage and African traditional expressions of intimacy through dance and song

as backward, and the same is being done now.

The very idea of identity by virtue of sexual orientation is, in my opinion,

unAfrican. There was no concept of homosexuality in Africa, just as there was no

concept of heterosexuality. That is not to say that there were no same-sex

intimate relationships in Africa; it is to say that how they were defined and

lived and what they implied in Africa was different from in the West. This is

evident in the fact that, for example, many physical gestures of closeness

amongst members of the same sex such as holding hands, or forms of dressing,

which are sexually neutral in Africa, are interpreted as sexually intimate in

the West. One also need remember that in many African communities, traditional

fashion has men wear braids and what would be considered dresses or skirts in

the Western world. n colonialism placed a schism in male and female

clothing and now the West baptizes the blurring of the separate fashions as

cross-dressing. This is just another way in which colonialism suppresses certain

African cultural expressions, repackages them and then imposes them on the very

societies they suppressed them in.

Sexuality in Africa is largely considered an intimate affair, and even

anthropologists say that Africans find it difficult to discuss cultural

performances such as traditional erotic dances, songs and discourses with

scholars because these are not discussed in public. Sexual relationships with

the opposite gender were assumed between married couples by virtue of their

social roles as parents and members involved in the posterity of the community,

but there was no explicit interest in their sexual orientation, neither were the

married individuals called " heterosexual. " If those values are being challenged

now, that is one thing, but saying that Africans are homophobic or that

homosexuality did not exist in Africa is another and is misleading.

Naturally, both sides of the sexuality divide in the West - the human rights

activists and the conservative evangelical churches - are not interested in the

African people or their world view of sexuality, and are guilty of exercising

hegemony in the continent. Hence the accuracy of Zambian Rev. Kapya Kaoma's

description of the Western involvement in the issue of gay rights as " Culture

Wars. " Western human rights activists, for instance, erroneously assume that

African societies traditionally share the same hostility towards homosexuals as

that in the West, which is not true. The same applies to the diaspora, for while

Black communities in the US have not accepted same-sex marriage, they are still

more sympathetic towards LGBTI people; hence the gentrification of urban Black

neighborhoods by the richer, white LGBTI community which caused the friction

captured in the 2003 documentary Flag Wars. Just as in the case of women's

emancipation, there is something to be said about the interaction of race with

the oppression of the LGBTI community.

On the other extreme are the conservative evangelicals who, as Rev. Kaoma has

pointed out, are actively involved in imposing the agenda of a supposed invasion

of same-sex marriage as a threat to the African family, when one would consider

AIDS and poverty the real threats. This group has funded civil wars, polarized

African countries on the basis of religion and influenced unfortunately

oblivious African clergy who have no understanding of politics in America or the

cultural politics of American Christianity.

The Western actors in the current drama are not without partners in Africa. The

African evangelical churches have swallowed the bait of making homosexuality

take precedence over more pressing social issues that burden African society.

This is partly because besides being a tool of control, sexuality is a cheap way

to rally the troops because speaking about it excites emotions and does not

require the sustained and critical thinking needed to address complex

socio-political issues. It is also interesting to note that the evangelical

contempt for Muslims suddenly disappears when it comes to sexuality. One

therefore sees African evangelicals joining Imams in whipping communities into a

frenzy with regards to homosexuality, as they did in Mombasa, or with regards to

sex education in schools and use of condoms in HIV prevention. While one should

not excuse violence against the LGBTI community, one cannot also ignore links

between homophobia and the spread of the influence of conservative and racist

Christians in Africa.

Meanwhile, the Kenyan media revels in the whole drama and often tries to push

the issue to incite a reaction from the public. For instance, when Archbishop

Tutu visited Kenya a few years ago to discuss South Africa's experience with the

Truth and Reconciliation Commission, he was met at the airport by reporters who

wanted to know his take on the Anglican church's position of ordination of gay

clergy. It is embarrassing that young reporters excited by their recent

acquisition of microphones and cameras would subject such an esteemed person in

Africa to such treatment, which Tutu deflected by saying that he was coming to

Kenya for another purpose.

At another instance last year, the Kenyan media repeatedly reported of the

likelihood of a showdown between the Archbishop of Canterbury and Kenyan clergy

over the ordination of gay clergy for at least two weeks before the Archbishop

arrived for his visit. They sought interviews from various clergy in Kenya, but

the excitement and furor they sought was not forthcoming, and to their

disappointment, the Archbishop's visit went on without any drama.

Perhaps the worst incident of media carelessness was the report of a Kenyan gay

couple that got married in the UK. The story was carried on the front page of

the dailies but did not solicit the outrage that was apparently expected. So the

media sank to even lower depths when they visited the families of the men in

rural Kenya and not only shocked the families with the news, but also asked for

comments. Kenyans were outraged by the bad manners of the journalists. This led

the couple to appeal to the media to leave their parents alone.

It was the collaboration between the media and the clergy that resulted in the

episode in Mombasa. According to a chronicle of the events by Nzioka, they

are the ones who announced and spread the rumor that a gay wedding that was to

take place. Again, given that this is not a community that is unfamiliar with

LGBTI communities, it was important a wedding to be brought into the picture for

the public to be sufficiently irked to commit the violence. And not

surprisingly, the Western media did not print these revelations because they

were not as interesting.

The final major actor in the theatre surrounding the trials and tribulations of

the African LGBTI community is the politicians. Like the clergy, politicians

find sexuality an easier issue to use for rallying people to their side and to

avoid being accountable for responsibility to provide leadership and social

services to the citizens of their countries. And for some African countries like

Kenya, homophobia is part of the tradition of using hatred to entrench political

power. On the other hand, it is ironical that politicians criminalize consensual

relationships while remaining silent on the Zuma-esque behavior of African

leaders that is based on the exploitation of women.

That said, while Africans tolerate homosexuality, they do not recognize LGBTI

members in most social institutions, as is seen from the aversion to gay

marriage. But right now, marriage and ordination of gays are not on the table,

and the issues raised by the communities so far would find consensus among many

people. If or when the marriage and ordination do come up, it is up to Africans

to thrash out the issue according to how they understand it, and hopefully both

sides will agree to respectfully disagree without calling each other names and

blowing each others' position out of proportion. But we cannot do that if we do

not understand the African political landscape in which the violence now is

taking place.