HEART OF LAVENDER:
IN SEARCH OF GAY AFRICA
By Eugene J. Patron
Harvard Gay and Lesbian Review, Fall 1995.
(published here with permission)
We will never know if Lucy was a lesbian. The discovery of the
famous skeleton in Ethiopia in 1974 by Dr. Richard Leaky was the
clearest proof to date of human evolution beginning on the African
continent. Carbon dating revealed that Lucy lived some 3 to 3.7
million years ago. Yet, whether she ever lusted after other female Australopithecines is a secret that will remain hers for
Lucy is not the only one with secrets. The recorded knowledge
of sexuality in African societies is far from encyclopedic. Little
more than anecdotal attention has been paid to departures from
procreative sexual practices in traditional cultures. The issue
of individual desires rarely makes it into a body of anthropological
literature dominated by analysis of the collective. At best, homosexuality
is allocated little more than a footnote to any discussion of
sexuality in Africa.
If anthropologists and other researchers needed an excuse to avoid
the subject, they've only had to point to widespread denial of
homosexual practices by Africans themselves. Homosexuality is
often thrown on to the pile of unwanted debris and issues, such
as consumerism, attributed to the legacy of European and Arab
No where did such sentiment present itself as vocally as in South
Africa and the 1991 trial of Winnie Mandela and members of he
"football team," who were convicted of kidnapping and
murdering a 14 year-old boy. Defending herself both in court and
in the press, Mandela argued she was actually trying to protect
a number of local youths from the homosexual overtures of a white
Rachel Holmes, writing about the trial in DEFIANT DESIRE: GAY
AND LESBIAN LIVES IN SOUTH AFRICA, notes that, "the defense
case attempted to connect homosexual practice with abuse in terms
of it being an exploitation of the vulnerability of disadvantaged
people." Winne Mandela's supporters, no strangers to effectively
utilizing media attention, displayed for the cameras placards
declaring "homosex is not in black culture."
Today South Africa is the only country in the world to include
a sexual orientation clause in its Bill of Rights. Given the country's
sordid history of negating the human rights of millions of its
citizens, the recognition "that people's sexual nature is
fundamental to their humanity," as put by Archbishop Desmond
Tutu, is a remarkable turn around of events.
Still, the celebrated sexual orientation clause in the country's
interim constitution (to be voted upon in 1999 after the next
round of parliamentary elections), does not necessarily translate
into approval of homosexuality by the majority of the population.
The existence of the clause is very much linked to a camaraderie
among oppressed peoples under the apartheid regime, one fostered
by the socialist-idealism of the African National Congress. That
homosexuals were even invited into the family of the oppressed
by the South Africa liberation movement, is partially rooted in
the pragmatic recognition by the ANC of the gay positive stance
of many overseas anti-apartheid groups.
Perhaps it is because the South African liberation struggle lasted
so long, that the liberation movement was able to achieve a level
of maturity that recognizes the necessity of full and genuine
inclusion of all minorities in society. In neighboring Zimbabwe
this past August, the government of President Robert Mugabe threatened
to withdraw its financial support of the Zimbabwe International
Book Fair because of the inclusion of a booth by GALZ (Gays and
Lesbians of Zimbabwe). Moralizing about the need to protect societal
values from corruption, Mugabe's ensuing anti-homosexual comments
fit what Dr. Neville Hoad of Columbia University labels "the
homophobic strictures of European discourses which are mobilized
by anti-colonial agents in national liberation struggles."
The ensuing international outcry included statements from Nadine
Gordimer and Wole Soyinka supporting GALZ's right to free speech,
as well a motion filed with the United Nations by an American
human rights activist seeking to censure Zimbabwe for violating
the spirit of various human rights declarations. Not surprising,
the government played upon nationalist sympathies and helped feed
the populist notion of homosexuality as something being forced
upon Zimbabwe by external forces.
COMING OUT FROM BEHIND THE MASK
The growing body of evidence supporting a biological root to homosexual
behavior presents a strong case to argue that homosexuality is
to some extent innate in all races and cultures. Even if homosexual
desire is innate to a percentage of any population, the opportunities
for expressing such are clearly regulated by cultural boundaries.
Anthropologist Evelyn Blackwood, editor of THE MANY FACES OF
HOMOSEXUALITY, quotes from the work of her peers Ross and
Rapp to emphasize "the historical-cultural" construction
of sexuality. Sexuality's biological base is always experienced
culturally, through a translation. The bare biological facts of
sexuality do not speak for themselves; they must be expressed
socially. Sex feels individual, or at least private, but those
feelings always incorporate the roles, definition, symbols and
meanings of the worlds in which they are constructed.
Many traditional African cultures are based upon extended families
and clan structures, providing the needed replenishment of the
population central for subsistence. But a misconception widespread
in popular views of sexuality and even in anthropology, is to
place homosexuality in a position of opposition to procreation.
Homosexuality can indeed be viewed through an economic perspective
whereby a society must be able to afford the choice of an individual
not to have children. However, the idea that the economic interdependence
of members of an extended family or clan is a deterrent to homosexuality,
is an issue relating to behavior and not desire. Moreover, there
is anthropological evidence showing that a number of African cultures
exhibit a degree of accommodation of homosexuality.
Some of the best known work exploring homosexuality in Africa
is that of Evans-Pritchard and his studies of the Azande of present
day Zaire, beginning in the 1920s. Evans-Pritchard found repeated
examples of adolescents prior to the age of 17-18 serving as "boy
wives" to older men. They were expected to help their "father-in-law"
and "mother-in-laws" to cultivate the fields, build
huts and would often sleep with their father-in-laws.
According to Evans-Pritchard, "if a (Azande) man has sexual
relations with a boy he is not unclean. The Azande say, 'A boy
does not pollute the oracle.'" Moreover, the boy wife and
his father-in-law would often refer to each other "my love"
and "my lover."
Accounts of homosexuality in traditional African cultures often
find such practices accepted among adolescents, but discouraged
among adults. Tessemann, writing in the 1913 about the Fang people
of present day Gabon, states:
In adults such conduct is regarded as something immoral and unnatural,
simply unheard of. In reality, however, it is frequently heard
of that young people carry on homosexual relations with each other
and even older peoples who take boys...readily console them by
saying, "we are having fun, playing a game, joking."
Adults are excused with the corresponding assertion, "he
has (the) heart (that is, the aspirations) of boys," which
is, of course, by no means flattering to them.
Evans-Pritchard and Tessmann's findings, along with those of many
other researchers, read as mixed messages when one is trying to
draw a line between what sexual practices various African societies
will and will not accept. The heterosexual/homosexual split so
entrenched in western societies becomes even harder to peg to
African cultures when one is dealing with cases of gender display
that are out of sync with an individual's biological sex.
In traditional Zulu culture women are the spirit diviners. As
females, able to give birth, it is through their bodies that spirits
may cross from one world to another. However men who display female
gender characteristics are also allowed to be spirit diviners.
Moreover, a man who becomes possessed, no matter what his gender
identity, is considered a woman. While not conclusive, such may
well relate to the widespread belief in southern Africa that homosexuals
are in fact hermaphrodites.
Probably the best documented cases of homosexuality in Africa
are among the mine workers of South Africa. Living in all male
compounds and separated from girlfriends and wives for months
at a time, it is very common for adolescent boys to visit these
compounds and provide sexual service to its inhabitants. Such
can be thought of as situational homosexuality, based upon the
extenuating circumstances of an all male setting.
Yet far less consideration has been given to those miners and
their partners who admit to enjoying sexual contact with other
men beyond obtaining sexual release in the absence of women. Writing
in DEFIANT DESIRE, Linda Ngcobo and Hugh McLean interviewed
twenty African men who have sex with other men about gay sexuality
in the townships around Johannesburg.
"A skesana is a boy who likes to get fucked,"
explains Ngcobo, himself one of the first black gay men in South
Africa to publicly declare his homosexuality. "An injonga is the one who makes the proposals and does the fucking."
Much of the sex between miners and those who service them is "thigh
sex", a relatively accepted sexual practice between members
of the same sex in many African cultures.
Yet the authors argue that anal sex is far from unknown. Moreover,
the definition of what constitues "sex" for African
men who have sex with other men, is anal penetration. "Remember
that skesanas who 'play with each other' even to the point
of orgasm, do not consider this to be sex. Sex happens when amanjonga
wa kwabo baba-ayinela, when their injongas penetrates
Corresponding to the large scale migration of men in Southern
Africa seeking work, is the close relationships and support networks
developed by women. Again the situation specific explanation of
these relations, exhibited both emotionally and sexually, must
be considered along with other evidence.
In exploring the "mummy-baby" relationship between adolescent
Basotho women in Lesotho, Judith Gray found that not only were
young girls "gradually socialized into adult female roles
and relationships by slightly older and more experienced girls,"
but that "sexual intimacy is an important aspect of these
relationships." Over time as the women grow older and start
to raise a family, the sexual nature of these relations lessen,
but the support network formed and the deep emotional attachment
among women remain.
The fact that close physical and emotional relations between women
often have a significant place, even after heterosexual relations
have begun, suggests that the growing recognition of bisexuality
in pyscho-sexual studies may find support in studies of non-western
societies. As one Mosotho woman said about the physical side of
these relationships: "It's not wrong. It's just another side
HEAR NO EVIL, SEE NO EVIL
What could be said of many cultures around the world is that they
have little problem with homosexuality; it is homosexuals that are not tolerated. When President Mugabe calls on "churches
and other custodians of human rights," to help Zimbabweans
"observe their culture and traditional values," homosexuality
is catapulted beyond being an issue of sexual practice. The supposed
dos and don'ts of morally proscribed behavior are of course rooted
deeper in earthly struggles for power then in heavenly sanctity.
Invoking the authority of the Catholic church to protect traditional
African culture, is one of the many strange twists in the history
of how European exported systems of belief and governance became
rooted in the continent. When asked about homosexuality, a Ghanaian
born editor of an African affairs publication was quick to blame
the existence of that kind of behavior on missionaries and its
prevalence in missionary run schools. Such perception, very widespread
throughout Africa, is directly related to the mixed message colonialism
brought; missionaries who came to save souls alongside of armies
that came to steal the land and everything on it.
The very denying of indigenous homosexuality among African cultures
plays into the hands of racism. Historian Wayne Dynes, in the
introduction to a list of 84 references to homosexuality in Africa,
notes that "Europeans have often held that 'sodomy' is a
vice of advanced, even decadent civilizations. The Africans, being
innocent 'children of nature' must be exempt from such corruption."
The notion of Africans being "innocent children," of
nature, corresponds to European views that African sexual practices
were primal and largely devoid of emotionally constructed associations.
Likewise, homosexuality has also been vilified in western thought
as being incompatible with intimacy and true romantic notions
of love. As viewed from a defensive position, the ascribing of
homosexual behavior to Africans and people of African descent
can be regarded as doubly denying the emotional component of their
sexual lives. It is not surprising then the popular view both
in Africa and the African Diaspora that homosexuality is seen,
as reported by Dynes, "a 'white vice' forced on healthy people
to drag them down."
Black Nationalism in Africa and elsewhere, paired with Afrocentrism,
has tended to perpetuate the notion of homosexuality is removed
from the "true" African experience. As with so much
else relating to Africa, the issue is informed and influenced
by attitudes outside of the continent as much as with those views
of Africans themselves.
In the United States, homosexuality is often viewed with hostility
by African-Americans when placed in the sphere of a civil rights
struggle. Homosexuals are seen as undeserving claimants to the
same civil rights victories African-Americans have struggled for.
A posting on NET NOIR, an African-American interest section of
America Online, reflects the aforementioned:
I am utterly insulted, that the gay movement has degraded the
struggles of minority groups in America, especially Blacks, by
comparing their struggle to ours. Despite what pop psychology
and many liberal whites may want us to believe, sexual orientation
is a choice. The Black community has enough problems, do not further
our problems by forcing us to accept the lifestyle. Let's work
on keeping crack, crime, illiteracy, and gay lifestyles out of
New York based African-American lesbian activist, Jackie Bishop,
explains the consequences of such attitudes as "being de-raced.
In being a lesbian, I'm not Black."
Bishop points to Black Nationalism as being essentially misogynist
and homophobic. Homosexuality is regarded as an external influence
which weakens the link between African-Americans and their African
roots. And issues such as homosexuality are thought to deflect
attention from what should be the primary issue above all else;
The popular idea of a lost "pure" Africa which existed
prior to colonialism is an exclusionary one, built as much around
Judeo-Christian ideals as traditional African ones. Yet the persuasiveness
and influence of such a concept is extensive. Discussing the experiences
of a gay man from Nairobi with a member of a university African
Studies department, the professor proceeded to dismiss the man's
homosexual orientation as a product of the "breakdown of
the traditional family structure" in the post-colonial urban
environment of Africa.
Who gets to speak of the "traditional family structure"
in Africa, who best represents a "pure" African perspective
on life, is an ongoing power struggle not unlike the battle over
"family values" in the United States. In both cases,
reality based on history is being swept aside in favor of easily
salable constructions of nationalistic and racial identity. The
disheartening result, according to Jackie Bishop, is that "We
(as people of African descent), still have yet to really reconstruct
our history. We need to uncover and re-create our own stories."
There are at best a handful of openly gay social and gay rights
groups in Africa, but to what extent homosexuals in Africa should
organize along the models of western gay organizations is a pertinent
question. Nearly twenty years ago Sylvanus Maduka, a Methodist
minister in Nigeria, on hearing of a "gay church" in
the United States contacted the offices of the Universal Fellowship
of Metropolitan Community Churches. He then proceeded to establish
an MCC church in Imo state, hiding nothing of MCC's mission to
welcome all peoples --- including homosexuals.
According to the Reverend Kavar who used to administer World Extension
for MCC churches, there are more than 20 MCC churches in Nigeria,
as well as MCC churches in 16 other African Countries. "What
Maduka established are mostly villages churches serving husbands,
wives and children. They are subsistence farmers and receive very
little from the government. MCC helped them build a clinic. Nothing
about MCC's focus on serving gays and lesbians is hidden from
them. It's not an issue. Asked about the sexuality of his congregates,
Maduka once said, 'if you want us to be homosexual we will be;
it doesn't matter to us.'"
Reverend Kavar admits to reading between the lines in Maduka's
letters to him, trying to determine if Maduka himself was gay.
But the answer is largely immaterial. The non-judgmental inclusion
MCC offered all people answered the needs of those Maduka sought
Idealism which may seem fanciful in the West can be down right
practical when faced with the poverty of choices someone like
Maduka faced. Cycles of war and famine in Africa have created
the terrible impression, even among African themselves, that the
people of the African continent cannot afford to be humane to
one another. Yet to deny anyone their dignity and rightful place
in African society for reasons of ethnic background, sexuality
or race, is to continue to rob Africa of its complete humanity.
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