The colonial origin of homophobia in Africa
Text taken from the amnesty International Report "When love becomes a crime. The criminalization of relationships between people of the same sex in sub -Saharan Africa" (2013), published on the website Gaychristianafrica.org in October 2019, freely translated by Giacomo Tessaro
The historical context of criminalization
Often, when discussing LGBTI rights in Africa, African culture and tradition are invoked as an argument against sexuality "Western" it is homosexual, but in reality homoerotic sexuality and unconventional gender identities have a long history in sub -Saharan Africa; Instead, it is the laws that punish them often a western legacy.
Nonetheless, in the last ten years many African politicians, as well as many religious figures of different confessions, have defined LGBTI identities "Not african", thus gaining the support of conservatives. Often i media they are used to attract hatred and fear towards lGBTI people, And in some countries The progress in the protection of human rights are followed by violent tail strokes, which aim to deprive even more the lGBTI people of Their fundamental rights, in the name of the "Popular will": LGBTI people can, for example, be denying access to medical treatment.
Homoerotic sexuality and transgender identities have always existed in African societies, like everywhere in the world. In some areas of Africa, certain conceptions of "sex" preceding colonization seem to have allowed a certain tolerance towards homosexual relationships; In addition, the marriage between women was reviewed among more than forty ethnic groups throughout southern Africa, Benin, Nigeria, Kenya and South Sudan.
A rock painting found in Zimbabwe, dating back to more than two thousand years ago, portrays sexual relationships between men. We know that Zulu, Haussa and Yoruba companies accepted men who did not conform to gender standards, many of whom had sexual relations between them. At the Shona, traditional healers attributed sexual orientations and unconventional gender identities to the possession by spirits; However, "owned" people were not criticized, and often they were respected. The Shona language contains words like murumekadzi (man-donna), who designates a man who acquires the role of a woman, e mukadzirume (woman-man), who designates a woman who acquires the role of a man: in both cases, this generally implied having an "heterosexual" relationship with another man or another woman. In the north of Uganda the Langi knew men called mudoko dako, who were treated like women and could get married to other men. Always in Uganda, the long tradition of homosexuality in the kingdom of Buganda is known.
In any case, if the differences in sexual orientation and gender identity, in certain regions of Africa and before colonization, were tolerated (at least to a certain extent), the colonial powers then imposed their point of view and their own rules in the field of sexuality and gender.
The Africans were induced by the colonial powers, and by the religions they led with them, to consider contempt and fear towards those who expressed a sexual orientation or an unconventional gender identity as a sign of progress and civilization. Some researchers believe that the Europeans who wrote of Africa, despite having observed homosexual relations, then denied their existence: there was no place for all this in the colonial models that Africans had to follow.
The colonial era
Most of the colonial powers have imposed, in their respective regions, criminal codes that punished certain sexual behaviors, laws that do not originate in local customary law; On the contrary, they were conceived and imposed precisely because those regions were considered by the colonizers of the shelters for the "Crimes against nature", that the European powers wanted to suppress from their new companies.
Usually the laws that in colonial Africa punished the consenting relationships between people of the same sex were inspired by the codes of the colonial powers, based on the predominant Christian moral rules. In the United Kingdom, the first laws against homosexuality have become part of the common law since the Middle Ages, with the aim of protecting the "Christian principles" of society, who established that sexuality was intended exclusively for procreation: it was originally forbidden to have sex without intention to procreate, as well as having with non -Christian people. THE "Carnal relationships against the order of nature" they were considered an offense not only against the body and spirit of the individual, but also towards the whole society. Today, if the former colonial powers have abolished these conceptions, the ancient laws have left many traces in the criminal codes of sub -Saharan Africa.
England and Wales abolished the laws that punished the consensual relationships between people of the same sex in 1967, and this was unable to touch African countries, who gained independence between the 50s and 60s. Uganda and Kenya, who were respectively a protectorate and a colony of Great Britain, still have laws that punish i "Carnal relationships against nature with another person" and "The outrage to modesty". The Ugandan law was further exacerbated in 1990, and today provides for life imprisonment as a maximum of the penalty for every person who "ENTERS a fARNING rELATIONSHIP against nature with another person".
Since 2009, the Ugandan government has attempted on several occasions to approve from Parliament a bill aimed at further extending the penalties for people "Guilty of homosexuality".
France decriminalized homosexuality in 1791, but in its colonies, in particular in Cameroon, it has always imposed laws against sodomy, to better control society. These laws continue to be applied with a disturbing frequency. Basile Ndjio, professor at the University of Douala, who conducted various research on discriminatory behavior, explained to Amnesty International because, in his opinion, violent intolerance towards people and the lGBTI community is thus widespread, Deeply rooted in the colonial past of Cameroon: "On the historical level, before the colonial era, which deeply changed the imagination and African practices in the field of sexuality, most of the traditional African societies were characterized by tolerance and opening. Contrary to what is usually thought, western colonization brought homophobia [in Africa], and not homosexuality, which was already part of our societies. The colonial administrations, with their laws against sodomy, They did only put into practice the moralist vision of the Church, which considered the relationship between people of the same sex an expression of cultural primitivism, and led Africans to adopt a 'modern' sexuality, that is to say 'heterosexual' "".
The Netherlands, starting from the seventeenth century, have imposed Roman-Dutch law in the southwestern part of southern Africa, and also provided for penalties for homosexual relations. These laws were kept even after the arrival of the British, which in 1806 became the new colonial power [of the region].
South Africa was the first country In the world to explicitly prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation, in its constitution issued in 1996; In 1998, he abolished all the anti -infoomy laws. However, the government still has to work a lot to effectively protect LGBTI people from violent attacks they are victims of.
Original text: When a crime. The Contexte Historique de la Criminalisation des Relations Entre Personnes de même sexe en afrique subsaharienne
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