‘I would be beheaded’: Islamist insurgency flares in Mozambique
This week, we start in Kenya, where mixed-race children from alleged rapes by British soldiers seek justice and support. Next, we visit Uganda, where Mark’s struggle with sexuality and religion forces him to live a double life. Finally, we stop in Mozambique, where there are rising concerns about the worsening security situation.
But first, in Namibia, on June 21, 2024, a high court declared two colonial-era laws criminalizing same-sex acts unconstitutional. This landmark ruling is a major victory for Namibia’s LGBT+ community, who have faced discrimination and lived in fear of arrest for years.
According to a survey by Afrobarometer, Namibia is the third-most tolerant country homosexuality in Africa, following Cape Verde and South Africa. However, in May 2024, the Namibian parliament passed a bill, not yet to be signed into law, that defined marriage as “between persons of opposite sex”. This led to an increase in hate crimes against the queer community, resulting in six reported deaths. Additionally, queer Namibians have experienced discrimination in healthcare, discouraging many from HIV testing and treatment.
This situation is why the recent ruling by the court is a welcome development for queer Nambians, who can now feel more secure and equal under the law. Friedel Dausab, the Namibian LGBT+ activist who brought the case to court, described the moment as a great day for Namibia and adding, “It won’t be a crime to love anymore.”
As Namibia joins Angola and Botswana in decriminalizing same-sex acts, the progress of LGBT+ rights across Africa remains uneven. South Africa is still the only African country that has legalized gay marriage, while same-sex acts remain illegal in over 30 African countries.
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Reuters
One person killed, over 200 injured in Kenya anti-tax demonstrations
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‘I would be beheaded’: Islamist insurgency flares in Mozambique
From our site
I sang in the choir, frequented a gay bar and it landed me in prison
Editor’s note: This story was published in collaboration with FairPlanet as part of the Dual Life Project, which showcases how LGBTQIA persons in Africa are often compelled by society to lead dual lives.
On a Sunday night in 2016, 20-year-old Mark is dancing at Ram Bar, a gay bar in Kampala. He raises his hands and swings his hips to the music of Sheebah Karungi. Earlier in the morning, Mark was doing the same thing but using different music for a different audience and with a different motive. He was praising God, unashamedly in church.
For the longest time, Mark knew who he was: A queer Christian. He had reconciled his sexuality and his faith. Whenever the conversation came up at church or within his family circles, he was a little bothered but overall unfazed. He had perfected the art of segmenting his life into two. To him, every queer person in Kampala lived that way. Mark knew when to switch his queerness on and when to switch it off.
“I feel like one day it is all going to come out into the light,” he says. “So however much I hide it, I feel like one day, I’m not gonna be able to hide it as much as I have all this time.”
The many “incidents” like his grandmother seeing an explicit picture on his phone, or one of his ex-boyfriends inadvertently outing him to his sister or even the numerous times his parents got a phone call from school about “an incident” had helped him develop both a coping mechanism and confidence that left him pretty much unscathed.
The ever-changing lens on gender diversity in South Africa
“‘If we had to make ourselves, we would all have been perfect men – or women.’ When we got into town, they spotted two of their friends who had been in exactly the same position but now have had their sex change operations. They are sisters Muriel and Sharon (formerly, Peterson) and were on their way to buy air tickets.”- Drum Post, September 1965
Without digging into the archives, it’s easy to believe that this era is the first time in history that LGBTQIA+ visibility in South Africa is making headlines. Growing up without elders and icons that represented me, I latched onto any semblance of diversity that I found in the Western media.
As activists, archivists and researchers work to reframe history, audiences like ourselves are astounded to discover the generations of gender diverse South Africans, who were always a trending topic in the media. From pre-colonial records to Apartheid and Post-Apartheid South Africa, the media’s lens on queerness and transness is everchanging. What is a constant is the existence and resilience of people of diverse gender and sexual identities.
Age-old biases that claim LGBTQIA+ experiences are ‘un-African,’ Western innovations are far past their expiration date. Earlier this year, Minority Africa’s Cassandra Roxburgh exposed the colonial influences of the constructs of transphobia and homophobia, which continue to prevail in contemporary society.
Around the world
HumAngle
She Was Sexually Abused As A Child, Now She Can’t Bond With Men
At just eight years old, a commercial motorcyclist hired to take Catherine to school sexually assaulted her on many occasions. The motorcyclist would place her in front and put her brother and another boy in the back seat while conveying them to school somewhere in Adamawa, North East Nigeria.
It was in that way he was able to assault her. Once, she wore a pair of pants to school as underwear, and the bike man rebuked her as it protected her in some way from the situation.
“He threatened me not to tell anyone about it,” she remembers.
The abuse was a relentless nightmare that happened for over a year until the motorcyclist stopped conveying them to school. At the time, she was too young to fully comprehend the horror she was enduring. But now, as a grown woman, the traumatic memories linger, refusing to be silenced.
CNN
The British Army trains in Kenya. Many women say soldiers raped them and abandoned children they fathered
Seventeen-year-old Marian Pannalossy cuts a striking figure wherever she goes in Archer’s Post, a small town 200 miles north of Nairobi. She lives alone and is light-skinned in a place where mixed-race people are a rarity and therefore ostracized.
“They call me ‘mzungu maskini,’ or a poor white girl,” she told CNN at her single-room house, a tremor in her voice. “They always say ‘Why are you here? Just look for connections so that you can go to your own people. You don’t belong here. You’re not supposed to be here suffering.’”
Marian believes that her father was a British soldier, but she has never met him. She does not even know his name.
Marian is among a group of mixed-race children whose mothers say they were conceived after rape by British soldiers training in Kenya. Her mother, Lydia Juma, was among hundreds of Kenyan women who filed complaints with the UK military over the years, as documented by Kenya’s human rights body.
“I don’t know why God is punishing me. I don’t understand,” Juma said through tears in a powerful 2011 documentary, ‘The Rape of the Samburu Women.’
CNN
Woman mayor killed in Mexico just hours after election of first female president
The woman mayor of a town in western Mexico was shot dead Monday, authorities said, just hours after the country elected its first female president in a race marred by deadly attacks on candidates.
Yolanda Sánchez Figueroa, mayor of Cotija in Michoacán state, was walking from a gym back to her house with her bodyguard when they were shot by people in a white van, the state attorney general said in a statement.
Both Sánchez Figueroa and her bodyguard later died in hospital, it said, adding that an investigation has been launched.
Confirmation of Sánchez Figueroa’s death came hours after Claudia Sheinbaum won a landslide victory to become the first female president of Mexico, marking an achievement in a country known for its patriarchal culture and widespread femicide.
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The New York Times
More Women in Africa Are Using Long-Acting Contraception, Changing Lives
Methods such as hormonal implants and injections are reaching remote areas, providing more discretion and autonomy.
On a busy day at the Kwapong Health Centre in rural Ghana, Beatrice Nyamekye put contraceptive implants into the arms of a half-dozen women, and gave eight or nine more a three-month hormonal injection to prevent pregnancy. A few sought condoms or birth control pills, but most wanted something longer lasting.
“They like the implants and injections best of all,” said Ms. Nyamekye, a community health nurse. “It frees them from worry, and it is private. They don’t have to even discuss it with a husband or a partner.”
The bustle at the Kwapong clinic is echoed all over Ghana, and across much of sub-Saharan Africa, where women have the world’s lowest rate of access to contraception: Just 26 percent of women of reproductive age in the region are using a modern contraceptive method — something other than the rhythm or withdrawal methods — according to the United Nations Population Fund, known as UNFPA, which works on reproductive and maternal health.
But that is changing as more women have been able to get methods that give them a fast, affordable and discreet boost of reproductive autonomy. Over the past decade, the number of women in the region using modern contraception has nearly doubled to 66 million.