2021 has had many ups and downs, advances and setbacks, wins and losses. As a community, African LGBTI+ people have had to fashion new ways to advance community safety in an environment of increasing neo-liberalization, state surveillance, and crackdowns.
As the year dawned, there was a lot of optimism around putting an end to the coronavirus pandemic. However, this optimism has been resoundingly dashed, with even more virulent strains popping up and prompting more disruptions to daily living. The unscientific approach to the pandemic response that saw governments put property rights and profits over public well-being has not made things better. The opposition of Western countries to demands for vaccine patents waivers, paired with their hoarding of vaccines, has created global vaccine apartheid that only serves to worsen the crisis.
The pandemic has had a severe toll on queer Africans. A survey by the African Queer Youth Initiative, published in January, found that 86% of queer youth reported experiencing financial difficulties due to the pandemic, with 70% saying they either lost their job or saw a reduction in their income. In addition, about a third reported having their human right violated, with 71% of this group saying they suffered an invasion of their privacy, 66% reporting harassment, and 33% reporting unlawful arrests/detention.
It is under these conditions that LGBTI+ Africans have had to organize and have indeed suffered setbacks as well as won victories, from successfully overturning colonial-era queerphobic laws to expanding community structures.
Here are some of the key moments of the year.
There is Power In The Documentary
2021, like 2020, has seen an even expanded effort by LGBTI+ artists to tell our African stories through our mediums. From novels and poetry, plays and paintings to film, there is an explosion of queer art in Africa. LGBTI+ Africans are documenting and celebrating, pushing the envelope, and defying the demonization narrative that LGBTI+ people currently suffer in mainstream media depictions. They are doing this even as their efforts have come under increasing attack and censorship.
In October, the Kenya Film Classification Board (KFCB) banned I am Samuel, a 52-minute documentary that follows the life of Samuel, a gay man living in Nairobi, through a five-year period. The documentary explores Samuel’s relationship with his partner, Alex, and his relationship with his parents, who are rural farmers and wish to see him settle down into a heterosexual marriage. It is not the first time the KFCB is trying to censor a queer film. In 2018, they also censored Rafiki, a movie about two women who fall in love amidst family pressure. Despite these crackdowns, more documentaries were released this year.
The Initiative for Equal Rights released Equal In Dignity, a short documentary exploring the experiences of transgender people within the Nigerian healthcare system. In addition, there is Power in the Collar, a documentary about Chantel, a 27-year-old lesbian, queer rights activist, and theologian in Botswana, was also released.
These efforts underscore the understanding by community organizers, activists, and artists that this form is essential to painting ourselves in our image. It is a way of recording our struggles, wins, and setbacks. These works also serve as meeting points that cut across our varying cultures to unite us in solidarity with one another and engender conversations on how best to further community organizing.
Breakthrough In HIV Research
The year saw record advances in HIV biomedical research. With the promise of mRNA technology, several HIV vaccine candidates were in play. However, these did not all pan out. In August, Johnson and Johnson announced that it was suspending its large-scale clinical trials in South Africa after its vaccine candidate proved to provide very little protection. However, Moderna’s vaccine candidate, having shown wild success in animal trials, is set to advance to large-scale human trials across eight different African countries.
In addition, a new monthly injectable drug was approved for use in the treatment of HIV-1. This means that it would now be possible for some people who have HIV to opt for a once-in-a-month injection instead of the daily pill. However, the drug is wildly expensive, and it remains to be seen if action would be taken to make it accessible to the poor and if this accessibility would be provided to the global south.
Ghana’s War on LGBTI+ Ghanaians
Dear queer Ghanaians,
You are valid
You are valued
You are loved
You matter#QueerGhanaianLivesMatter #GhanaGetsBetter #TogetherWeBuild #StopSpreadingHate#BornFreeAndEqual pic.twitter.com/5JPO44K2bp— LGBT+ Rights Ghana (@LGBTRightsGhana) April 6, 2021
The advances of activists and organizers in creating more community spaces in Ghana have spurred a backlash that has snowballed into the so-called Promotion of Proper Human Sexual Rights and Ghanaian Family Values bill. It is a private members bill in Ghana’s parliament with sweeping new punishments and stipulations for “eradicating” LGBTI+ people in Ghana.
On the 22nd of February, the President of Ghana, Nana Akufo-Addo, ordered the immediate shutdown of an LGBT+ community center in Accra. Heavily armed police, accompanied by National Security operatives, stormed the premises forcing the center to close. The center had opened less than a month earlier, sparking controversy and a spike in violent attacks against community members. In March, the Ghananian police arrested 22 community members for allegedly participating in a lesbian wedding. The detainees, however, say it was a birthday party. In May, this was followed by more arrests, this time of 21 activists who met in Ho to share insights on how to document and report human rights violations against LGBT+ Ghanaians. The activists were charged for “unlawful assembly” and detained in prison for more than three weeks before being released on bail. The charges were later dismissed for lack of evidence. But this was only the start. In June, the Speaker of the Parliament of Ghana, Alban Bagbin, sent out a memo assuring anti-LGBTI+ groups that efforts were being made to introduce queerphobic legislation in parliament. And true to that word, in August, the Promotion of Proper Human Sexual Rights and Ghanaian Family Values Bill was introduced in parliament. The Bill is pushed by a civil society group, the National Coalition for Proper Human Sexual Rights and Family Value (led by Moses Foh Amoaning), and the World Congress of Families, a right-wing US evangelical group that promoted anti-LGBTI+ legislation in Nigeria and Uganda.
The Bill drew strong condemnation from the international community and has spurred an outpouring of support for the Ghanaian LGBTI+ community from all over the continent. However, activists and community organizers quickly allied with progressive sectors of civil society to mobilize opposition to the Bill.
Backlash All Over Africa
The backlash against LGBTI+ people is not peculiar to Ghana. In Senegal, hundreds of protesters joined the Place de LA Nation demonstrations organized by And Samm Jikko Yi, a virulently queerphobic civil society organization. They were calling for parliament to enact more laws criminalizing LGBTI+ Senegalese. In addition, a group of lawmakers introduced a bill that will significantly lengthen prison sentences for those convicted of LGBT+ activities.
In Kenya, homophobes set fire to the shelters of queer refugees in the Kakuma refugee camp, leading to 22-year-old Chriton’ Trinidad’ Atuhwera’s death and leaving another gay man, Jordan Ayesigye, with severe burns.
In Cameroon, police cracked down on LGBTI+ people with arrests and arbitrary detentions. For example, two trans women, Shakiro and Patricia, were arrested while having lunch in a restaurant and charged for “attempted homosexuality.” They were denied bail and held in prison for months without bail until a judge finally convicted them, sentencing them to 5 years behind bars and a fine of 200,000 CFA francs each. However, the Douala Court of Appeals ordered their release pending the outcome of their appeal case.
The Initiative for Equal Rights (TIERs) released its yearly human rights violation report in Nigeria. The report, a collaborative effort between TIERs and other advocacy organizations, recorded human rights violations across 27 out of 36 states, with Lagos, Abuja, and Benue having the highest recorded violations. These violations are, of course, the ones that were able to be documented. Unfortunately, many LGBTI+ Nigerians cannot report the violations they suffer, especially when a family member commits these violations or when they happen in rural areas. The report also recorded a spike in the number of ‘kito’ cases as deteriorating economic conditions leave LGBTI+ people subject to more violence. (Kito cases are instances where people lure and pursue LGBTI+ persons on dating sites with the intent to kidnap, extort and/or even kill them).
South Africa, one of the few countries that protect LGBTI+ people in its constitution, has seen increasing violence against LGBTI+ people, prompting LGBTI+ activists and organizations to call on the government to do more to condemn queerphobic violence and protect LGBTI+ South Africans. In January, the South African Department of Home Affairs announced plans to amend and update the country’s identity laws to accommodate intersex and transgender persons.
Signs of Hope and Progress
These levels of persecution denote the ongoing fight for queer liberation in Africa. The backlashes are themselves reprisals against the perceived gains that queer activists and organizers are making in their struggle for a safer Africa. And they are met with more intensification of queer rights advocacy.
In October, to commemorate the 31st anniversary of Africa’s first Pride event in 1990, the Gauteng City-Region Observatory published a report mapping how the continent has changed for LGBTI+ people. The reports utilized data from the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association (ILGA World) and three iterations of GCRO’s Quality of Life (QoL) survey. The report showed that over these three decades, ten new countries had repealed their discriminatory laws to allow LGBTI+ individuals to express their sexualities and identities publicly.
Angola enacted a new penal code that decriminalized homosexuality in 2019 and introduced sweeping discrimination protections. That law came into effect early this year, making Angola the ninth African country to introduce employment protections for LGBTI+ workers.
In Botswana, the community won a monumental Supreme Court battle that overturned the country’s colonial-era queerphobic laws. In 2019, a High Court had unanimously ruled that sections 164 and 165 of the Penal code, which criminalized same-sex sexual relations, impaired the “right to dignity” and was discriminatory. The government, unsatisfied with this ruling, appealed. Last month, the Supreme Court of Botswana unanimously decided to uphold the High Court’s ruling.
These gains result from a dedicated struggle to fashion the African continent into a home where queer people are safe, where we can rest free of attacks from the state. There is yet the need to deepen this struggle to bring about true decolonization and usher in queer liberation. We have to be even more intersectional in our work, centering trans voices and the struggles of the poor. Queer people face the brunt of capitalist disregard for human life. We face disproportionate levels of poverty, homelessness, and lack of education and gender-affirming healthcare. As we fight to deepen our gains, we must also commit to a wholesale transformation of Africa into a place where even the most vulnerable among us are elevated to a life of dignity. As the 2010 Nairobi African LGBTI+ Manifesto declared, we must be “committed to ways of being which allow for self-determination at all levels of our sexual, social, political and economic lives.”
Only through such a comprehensive, humane political framework will we be able to leverage on our decades of struggle to usher in a continent queer Africans can proudly call home.
This special report was written by Ani Kayode Somtochukwu, an award-winning Nigerian writer, biomedical scientist, and Queer Liberation activist. His work interrogates themes of queer identity, resistance, and liberation and has appeared in The Enkare Review, Protean, The Rustin Times, Gertrude, Bakwa, and Plenitude Magazine, among others. He was awarded the 2021 James Currey Prize for African Literature and is the Central Committee Chair of the Queer Union for Economic and Social Transformation (QUEST9ja), a revolutionary socialist collective organizing for queer liberation in Nigeria
