Homosexuality predates colonialism. It is homophobia that’s new
- Colonialists recast themselves as saviors in the conversation of homophobia in Africa; a stance that attempts to absolve them of the role they play(ed) in spreading this homophobia.
- Decolonization must factor this.
We see and acknowledge the support and allyship from some of our white brethren towards gay people on the African continent. We are however sensitive to the ways in which this support can exclude certain things from the conversation.
Many times when white people and former colonial countries refer to homosexuality on the continent, it is often from a lens of casting Africa as “unprogressive,” “close-minded,” further feeding the narrative of whiteness as “evolutionary” without taking into account the era of colonialism and how it in many ways created and bolstered the current homophobia many gay Africans experience.
There is a recasting that is happening of colonialists as “saviors” quick to render a hand to as always “close-minded” and “monolithic” Africa, a recasting that is more than just worrying, also incredibly dangerous. It is important for us to approach every conversation with context and understanding, homophobia in Africa is no different.
Ancient Egypt we know had drawings that depicted same-sex relationships. In South Africa, we know of “mine marriages,” which men working in mines and away from their wives and families entered into with other men. There are so many examples of same-sex relationships pre and during colonial times and we won’t dwell on that in this post.
We want to talk more about colonial structures and how they distorted African perceptions of gender and sexuality.
This article by Marc Epprecht on Jstor reveals how anthropologists on the continent working in the sixteenth century recorded same-sex activity mostly from a derogatory and condescending perspective, and how by the twentieth century, there was nearly no mention by anthropologists of same-sex activity.
A lot because of their own biases, Europeans and Americans by then viewed homosexuality as unnatural and this led to them deliberately hiding and ignoring same-sex relationships on the continent.
The aim has always been for whiteness to protect itself and present itself as devoid of flaws. In this study, Epprecht writes about this when he says, “What kind of civilizing mission was it that abetted ‘unnatural’ and ‘odious’ behaviors in the very people it was supposedly protecting?”
More than just hide though, imported colonial laws criminalized homosexuality, and many of the laws which remain today against homosexuality on the continent are directly colonial laws or advanced from them as precedents.
Homophobic terms in several African countries came first from the vocabulary of English — what this means is that many indigenous African languages did not have homophobic terms as part of their lexicon until the English language.
The goal we must understand by these colonial powers then remains the goal today as well. It is to uphold white superiority. During colonial times, this took form in distancing whiteness from homosexuality, something it believed to be “unnatural,’ by viewing Africans who practiced it as inhumane and describing them as “beastly.”
Now, we must understand that it takes form in the proximity and allyship of whiteness to homosexuality which for all it’s good attempts to then recast Africans as “obstinate,” and “pigheaded” on the subject from the onset which really isn’t the case while presenting white people as having been and perpetually progressionist.
Decolonization is incomplete and exclusionary if it doesn’t include decolonizing the colonial and racist structures that have influenced current African perceptions of gender and sexuality.
Many times people misinterpret the conversation around the legacy of colonialism and homophobia to mean that queer Africans are struggling for acceptance in a society that would rather keep us out: this is not the case, it is in fact the opposite.
The rudimentary goal of conversations like this is awareness. The knowledge that whatever narrative exists today about the existence of homosexuality on the continent as “foreign,” is false, the consciousness of the racism and white superiority that was instrumental in constructing this narrative, and the commitment to a work on decolonization that includes decolonizing gender and sexuality as well.
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