Nonetheless, hostility toward homosexuals in this former Belgian colony is strong, marked by the proselytism of Christian missionaries in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (the population is seventy-five percent Catholic, twenty percent Protestant). In 1992, the most virulent anti-gay delegate at the General Conference of the United Methodist Church was Reverend Kasongo Muza from the DRC, who declared: “We do not want our culture to be contaminated by a disease.” But homosexuality was not imported into Congolese culture; there is evidence that it is indigenous. In certain Mbo tribes, for example, it is traditional for a homosexual to play a part in the initiation rites of boys.
Cameroon
According to Article 347 of Cameroon’s penal code, homosexuality is illegal and punishable by six months’ to five years’ imprisonment, and the punishment is doubled if one of the participants is under the age of twenty-one. It is often said in Cameroon, as in much of the rest of Africa, that homosexuality was imported from elsewhere, in this case introduced by German, then French colonizers; this is not true, however. As early as 1914, German ethnographer Günther Tessman discovered evidence of sodomy as a tradition among the Fang culture; these relations were supposed to bring material benefits to the dominant participant.
The reality of life for Cameroon’s homosexuals is poorly documented, but the evidence that exists suggests that it is very bad. Cameroon is in fact one of the countries where legal and judicial corruption is the most common; and of the hundreds of individuals each year who are arrested, tortured, and even executed without a fair trial by paramilitary units, it is highly likely that a disproportionate number are homosexual. However, despite these odds, a handful of courageous gay activists from Cameroon participated in the ILGA’s 1999 world conference.
—
Pierre Albertini
Bleys, Rudi C.
The Geography of Perversion: Male to Male Sexual Behaviour Outside the West and the Ethnographic Imagination, 1750–1918
. London: Cassell, 1996.
Delaney, Joyce, and Catherine McKinley, eds.
Afrekete: An Anthology of Black Lesbian Writing
. New York: Anchor Books, 1995.
Epprecht, Marc. “Africa: Procolonial Sub-Saharan Africa.” In
Gay Histories and Cultures
. Edited by George E. Haggerty. New York/London: Garland, 2000.
Hyam, Ronald.
Empire and Sexuality: The British Experience
. Manchester, UK: Manchester Univ. Press. 1990.
Kenyatta, Jomo.
Facing Mount Kenya: The Tribal Life of the Gikuyu
. London: Secker & Warburg, 1938.
Murray, Stephen O. “Gender-Defined Homosexual Roles in Sub-Saharan African Islamic Cultures” and “The Will Not To Know: Islamic Accommodation of Male Homosexuality.” In
Islamic Homosexualities: Culture, History & Literature
. Edited by Stephen O. Murray and Will Roscoe. New York: New York Univ. Press, 1997.
———, and Will Roscoe.
Islamic Homosexualities: Culture, History & Literature
. New York: New York Univ. Press, 1997.
———, eds.
Boy-Wives and Female Husbands: Studies of African Homosexualities
. London: Macmillan, 1998 [notably the English language translation of the article by Gunther Tessmann, “Homosexualities among the Negroes of Cameroon and a Pangwe Tale” [public domain in German], 1921.
Towles, Joseph.
Nkumbi Initiation: Ritual & Structure Among the Mbo of Zaire
. Tervuren, Belgium: Musée royal de l’Afrique centrale, 1993.
—Africa, Southern; Africa, Western; Anthropology; Islam; Maghreb.
AFRICA, SOUTHERN
While individuals who were exclusively homosexual were rare in precolonial times, it appears that homosexual practices have existed in the region of Southern Africa since ancient times. Ethnologists have determined that “homosexual marriage” existed among Zulu warriors (which was supposed to give them a sense of solidarity with one another) as well as in societies where the male-to-female ratio was unbalanced (in particular as a result of polygamy among the elite), as was the case with the Kololo-Lozi of western Zambia. Moreover, in Angola, transvestite “sodomites” were endowed with positive magical powers by neighboring societies. Starting in the fifteenth century, such behavior was considered scandalous by the region’s European colonizers, be they Portuguese, Dutch, or British. It was also discovered that some slaves from the region maintained these behaviors when they were transported overseas; they were among those condemned to be burned at the stake during the Spanish and Portuguese
Inquisitions
in Latin America. In the nineteenth century, the reinforcement of colonization in Southern Africa, as well as the prevalence of missionary activities in the area, underlined the colonizers’ homophobia and their consideration of homosexuality as taboo, at the price of often-noted paradoxes: firstly, many colonizers (among them Cecil Rhodes) were themselves homosexual; and secondly, the mining industry developed by British colonizers in the region resulted in large concentrations of male workers, thereby fostering homosexual practices among the black populations.
This period of the homosexual taboo in Southern Africa has only recently ended. It was during the mid-1990s that the homosexual question became a very important political theme, due to the policy of recognizing gay and lesbian rights adopted by the country of South Africa at the end of the apartheid era. South Africa’s progressive advances at this time created tension among neighboring states, as well as outbursts of sometimes extremely violent homophobia. But these advances also launched a continent-wide debate on homosexuality and homophobia, and its commensurate relationship to democracy (or lack thereof). These discussions initiated a new way of thinking on the subject as a result. Sheila Lapinsky, a well-known lesbian activist and African National Congress (ANC) member in South Africa, was the first to demand the acknowledgment that the homophobia of the Rwandan bishops not be separated from their terrible compromise during the genocide.
South Africa
Apartheid provided a great example of the ties that exist between homophobia and racism. If Afrikaners in South Africa were generally more racist than the British (who abolished slavery between 1833 and 1834), both shared the same good old homophobic sensibilities that were Protestant in origin. Afrikaner legislation condemned male homosexuality in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, followed by British legislation in the nineteenth century. It is known that the British victory in the Boer War (1899–1902) led, paradoxically, to further empowering the Afrikaners, who during the twentieth century dominated the Union of South Africa since its creation in 1910. South Africa officially adopted the apartheid system in 1948 when it enacted a number of harsh segregationist laws (including making interracial marriage illegal); in 1957, it adopted homophobic legislation in the form of the Sexual Offences Act, forbidding sodomy, homosexual intercrural coitus, mutual masturbation, and all homosexual acts in public places or “private areas where there are more than two people.” Until the 1980s, South African police often raided reputedly “gay” private parties in order to uphold the Act; in 1966, one party in particular with some 350 guests received a great deal of media coverage. In 1967, and again in 1985, there were movements to criminalize all forms of homosexuality, private or otherwise, including lesbianism (which was never illegal, even if it was often clandestine). Regardless, the legislation of 1957 was rigorously applied well into the final years of apartheid. The apogee of legal proceedings against male homosexuals occurred in 1991, when 476 proceedings resulted in 324 convictions. As for the South African
army
, it subjected soldiers accused of homosexuality to various types of aversion therapy, which could include electrical shocks and chemical castration, until the 1980s.
Afrikaner homophobia had very deep religious roots: for the Boers, apartheid was founded on the Biblical “Curse of Ham,” in which blacks are “cursed” to be servants; similarly, the forbidding of homosexuality was based on an ancient source, specifically the Biblical condemnation of
Sodom
as well as the writings of St
Paul
. It was also linked to the Boer population’s Anglophobia, as Britain was viewed as a country of decadent morals. It also shared some similarities with homophobia as it was expressed by the Nazis: for example, both considered homosexuality not only a sign of biological
degeneracy
(a serious pathology that compromised the survival of a threatened, dominant race), but also a gravely asocial attitude in that it had little regard for the barriers and separations erected by the state; the fact that certain white homosexuals were more apt to associate with non-whites made them even more
criminal
. In order to staunch any political or legal progress either by homosexuals or non-Afrikaners, the platform of the National Party, which dominated the political scene in South Africa at the time, was based on Afrikaner populism, which was hostile to the mixing of social classes, urban culture, and intellectuals, and played up the confusion between homosexuality and
pedophilia
. It also encouraged political splits within the newly forming gay community. For example, the Gay Association of South Africa, the first South African gay association founded in 1982, was almost exclusively composed of whites and claimed to be “apolitical,” meaning it refused to condemn apartheid. It was not until 1988 that an anti-apartheid homosexual association formed: the Gay and Lesbian Organisation of the Witwatersrand (GLOW), a multiracial and political association hostile to all forms of
discrimination
.
From that moment, a radically new political context emerged in South Africa, marked by the liberation of Nelson Mandela from prison in 1990, the abolition of apartheid laws in 1991, and finally the election of Mandela to the Presidency of the Republic in 1994. Concurrent to these political strides, progress was also made by the country’s gay and lesbian community. The first ever Gay Pride in South Africa, and in fact on the whole African continent, was organized by GLOW in 1990. Gay and lesbian visibility increased, as did the number of areas where they could congregate; suddenly it was possible for groups like LILACS (Lesbians in Love and Compromising Situations) to flourish. The gay community, more and more conscious of itself, began to demand equal rights, based on the model that black ANC militants had honed over the decades. It is thus that the 1996 South African Constitution affirmed (the first in the world to do so) the equality of all of its citizens, “regardless of their race, sexual identity, gender,
family
situation, social or ethnic origins, skin color, sexual orientation, age, eventual handicaps, religion, beliefs, culture, language and birth” (Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, Bill of Rights, Law Number 108 of 1996). This document is of capital importance because it takes precedence over all other laws as a last resort: for example, the National Coalition for Gay and Lesbian Equality refers to it when lobbying for the repeal of older laws. The Constitution is also invoked in order to obtain certain other legal advances for gays and lesbians, notably relating to non-discrimination,
employment
law, and matrimonial law. In 2006, same-sex
marriage
became legal in South Africa when the Civil Unions Bill was enacted, becoming the first country in Africa to do so. Due to progressive legislation such as this, morale among gays and lesbians in South Africa is high, as a black participant of Pride of Johannesburg noted in 1994: “I’m nothing more than a little drag queen; but you know what? Since I’ve heard speak of this constitution, I feel free inside.”
Such constitutional protection does not, however, signify the end of homophobia in South Africa; it survives among white conservatives and Christian and Muslim lobbyists who did everything possible to prevent the introduction of the equality clause in the 1996 Constitution. Homophobia can also be found among certain black South Africans sensitive to the “pseudo-ethnic” idea that homosexuality is an element of “non-African” culture imported by colonizers. This is what friends and defenders of Winnie Mandela affirmed in 1991, when she was tried for having kidnapped and murdered a fourteen-year-old adolescent whom she claimed she was “saving” from the homosexual advances of a white clergyman: outside her trial, a banner read “Homosex is not in black culture.” And when Barney Pityana, Chair of the South African Human Rights Commission, was confronted by the idea that “the freedom of sexual orientation is not African,” he responded: “If you are correct, then the repression of minorities, corruption, and the violation of human rights are fundamentally African.” Finally, despite legal advances, gays and lesbians are not immune to the high level of violence that continues to plague South African society. (customs not being as advanced as the law).
Zimbabwe
As is often the case, one of the effects of colonization in what was Rhodesia (a British colony from 1895 to 1920), along with widespread Christian
proselytism
, was the consideration of conjugal, monogamous heterosexuality as the only legitimate means of sexual relations. The territory endured the harshness of homophobic Anglo-Saxon laws even beyond its independence in 1965 and its later decolonization when it was renamed Zimbabwe in 1980. It should be noted, however, that British colonization itself, through its development of a mining industry populated almost exclusively by male workers, created conditions ripe for homosexual behavior, in which “marriages” took place between older workers and younger ones who were referred to as “the wife”; the same appears to have existed among the women left in the villages, in “mother-baby” partnerships. (The same phenomenon occurred in South Africa.)
Since its independence, Zimbabwe has not changed its harsh laws regarding homosexuality, a crime which can result in prison sentences of up to ten years. In 1989, a gay and lesbian group called Gays and Lesbians of Zimbabwe (GALZ) was established, composed of both whites and blacks, and it was not long before it clashed with Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe, who, during the 1990s, revealed himself to be one of the most homophobic heads of state in the world. His anti-gay stance has many origins: Christian catechism learned from missionaries as a youth; the influence of Kenyan leader and ethnologist Jomo Kenyatta who, as early as 1938, affirmed that homosexuality was completely unknown to African populations; and an open hostility towards South Africa’s recent political and social evolution and, more precisely, Nelson Mandela who, at Mugabe’s expense, became the biggest political personality in the region of Southern Africa as a result of the end of apartheid. In 1995, not satisfied with refusing GALZ to have a booth at the Zimbabwe International Book Fair in Harare, Mugabe felt it appropriate to explain his position in the following way: “Lesbians and gays are inferior to dogs and pigs; they deserve no rights. They represent a form of Western
decadence
that has no real ties to authentic Zimbabwean culture.” This statement, which aroused considerable emotion around the world, expresses rather well the mental state in which homophobes find themselves, in this case confusing the natural with the historical and native traditions with missionary practices. While Cecil Rhodes’ sexual orientation is of no doubt, we know today that homosexual-like relations existed in the Shoa and Ndebele populations before the arrival of colonizers. Historian Marc Epprecht uncovered evidence that, since the beginning of Rhodesian colonization, simple villagers who had never had contact with Westerners were condemned for homosexuality; and research by psychologist Marc Carlson revealed that homosexuality as a tradition is present in 122 tribes in Zimbabwe.