Media headlines are stuffed with unhealthy information about LGBTQ+ individuals throughout the African continent as of late. They’re insulted by public officers, attacked and killed by police and vigilantes, and denied entry to justice and dignity. Usually, these adverse phrases and actions are justified as being half and parcel of “African values.”
Nonetheless, the idea of pan-Africanism ought to, actually, embrace African individuals in all their variety—even love them.
As a political philosophy and undertaking rooted within the perception within the unity, frequent historical past, and shared goal of the peoples of Africa, pan-Africanism stands for self-determination and whole liberation. It’s also a dedication to carry African individuals inside and past the continent right into a deeper connection. The extent of connection required to attain these targets is just potential with love and solidarity. Acknowledging the existence of queer and transgender Africans, and their rights for honest therapy and security, are literally important for African liberation.
Anti-LGBTQ+ insurance policies and actions are on the rise within the continent. Uganda and Ghana have toughened their legal guidelines to persecute not solely LGBTQ+ individuals however anybody advocating for his or her human rights. There’s concern that Kenya, Senegal, Burkina Faso, Mali, and others might additionally toughen their legal guidelines. What’s frequent throughout these radical adjustments is the assertion by public figures that homosexuality or something exterior of the gender binary is “un-African.”
Within the title of preserving “African values,” some African policymakers and leaders are legitimizing violence and abuses towards sexual and gender minorities. Within the title of safeguarding African values, African leaders are constructing a cultural heritage of hatred, exclusion, and hostility towards fellow Africans. Within the title of sustaining African Values, youngsters are being kicked out of their households and communities; ladies are raped due to their perceived sexual orientation; safety forces arrest and torture LGBT individuals in detention; persons are being brutally murdered with impunity just because they love otherwise; voices are being silenced by shutting down civil society organizations.
However this isn’t a solution to protect African values—fairly the alternative.
Love is a pan-African subject. Some politicians and different influential persons are projecting a warped model of pan-Africanism once they declare that being LGBTQ+ is “un-African.” These claims gas worry and violence, inspiring authorized adjustments that quantity to state-sanctioned homophobia and transphobia. However when influential figures declare that being queer is “un-African,” they’re denying historic and anthropological proof of sexual variety and practices in African societies.
Actually, individuals who declare to be representing pan-Africanism, a motion born as a rejection of Western imperialism, mirror an inherited view of queerness from colonial legacies, with anti-LGBTQ+ insurance policies rooted within the European imperial undertaking. Actually, most of the up to date representations of gender and sexuality have been launched to the continent by colonialists. It’s this Eurocentric imaginative and prescient that’s now reproduced by individuals claiming pan-Africanist values with their slurs and assaults on queer and trans Africans.
There are Africans who love individuals of the identical intercourse. All of them worry for his or her lives in a continent the place they totally belong. Their existence is legitimate, similar to another human being. Love is a pan-African subject. The concept of a “homophobic continent” can and needs to be challenged by reimagining pan-Africanism from the attitude of affection for future generations.
African queer individuals or queer people who find themselves Black or of African descent are not any much less deserving of liberation from persecution and of self-determination. In that regard, they want equal safety below the legislation, not new or particular rights. As a substitute of instructing a stereotype-driven picture of Africa as unable to acknowledge gender and sexual variety, pan-Africanist proponents and establishments ought to affirm various identities and converse up when African LGBTQ+ persons are denied their basic human rights to freedom of expression, privateness, and security.
