‘African Homosexuality’ Imagined: Doing Sexuality in Contested Spaces

Men and women’s sexual identities are inextricably intertwined with societal and cultural norms related to gender. By exploring evidence from case studies looking at women’s sexualities in Mozambique and Lesotho, we can see how societies and cultures normalize and educate women about their sexuality. These studies raise interesting questions about how we can think about sexualities in Africa, how some conceptions of African sexualities have been affected by the dominance of Western discourse, and how we might begin to “rethink sexualities in Africa” as proposed by the title of a new book published by the Nordic Institute.

During her time in the northern region of Mozambique, one Danish anthropologist observed that unlike her own experiences learning about women’s sexuality in a European, Christian context, sexualities were openly discussed and expressed in Mozambique society. A woman’s sexuality was something of her own, part of her personality and identity as a woman, not defined in relation to, or ‘opened up’ by men. Although these women were bound by the heterosexual norms and cultural expectations of having a husband and children and playing the roles of wife and mother, she discovered that there was a space for women to have same-sex relationships where the lines between friendship and lover were blurred.

In discussing sexualities in the African context, it is important to mention a debate that has arisen around the question of whether or not homosexuality is ‘un-African’. Prominent political figures including Winnie Mandela and Robert Mugabe, have argued that homosexuality is a foreign, western concept and the absence of a translation for the word “homosexuality” in some African languages proves that it is ‘un-African’. On the other hand, it has been argued that an overall lack of visibility and space differentiating homosexuality from heterosexuality rendered it invisible to some Africans. In addition to Stuart Hall’s insights into the history of power and discourse between the ‘west’ and the ‘rest’, it has been suggested that we need to critically rethink sexualities in Africa as neither of these arguments has addressed the complexities surrounding identities and discourse in post-colonial Africa. (Hall, 1992 and Mohanty, 1991)

The women in northern Mozambique and Lesotho are examples of same-sex relationships and sexualities located outside of the “heterosexual norms in Africa.” These relationships were socially and culturally accepted in Mozambique, and were celebrated by women and their husbands in the Lesotho context, maybe because they existed alongside women’s heterosexual relationships and were not disruptive to the gender power system. However, we must hesitate to label these relationships as homosexual relationships, especially in the Lesotho context where the women themselves did not identify themselves as lesbians or homosexual because “homosexuality is not a conceptual category everywhere… and the kinds of sexual acts it is thought possible to perform, and the social identities that come to be attached to those who perform them, vary from one society to another” (Kendall, 1997: 3). While we can acknowledge that the word homosexual has multiple interpretations and its definitions, all of these interpretations and meanings of the word function within the western discourse around sexuality, if only because the word is an English word. I would suggest that maybe it is not homosexuality (read: same-sex or non heterosexual behaviors and relationships) that is ‘un-African’ but that it is Western constructs of sexualities and homosexuality, located within a dominant western discourse and applied to sexualities in the African context, that is ‘un-African’. This debate is connected to larger debates addressed by Stuart Hall and Chandra Mohanty about how the power of discourse has been used to impose western (cultural and societal) norms on the Third World. (Hall, 1992 and Mohanty, 1991)

Although the word homosexuality may not be useful in understanding sexualities in the African context, I do not wish to imply that homosexuality (per a western construct of the word) does not exist in Africa. African queer and homosexual identities are emerging as politicized identities in contested spaces. Instead, I wish to offer a possible explanation for why some may see the construct of homosexuality as ‘un-African’. I would also like to urge African feminists and queer theorists to examine and analyze how Africans understand and construct their own sexualities while working within an African discourse.
By Althea Middleton-Detzner

Bibliography

Hall, S. (1992) Chapter 6 (pp. 276-330) “The West and the Rest: Discourse and Power” in Hall, S. and Gieben (eds.) Formations of Modernity London: Zed Books.

Kendall, K. (1997) “Looking for Lesbians in Lesotho” Scottsville: University of Natal Drama Department.

Mohanty, C. “Cartographies of Struggle, Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism” in Mohanty, Russo, and Torres, (eds.), (1991) Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Arnfred, Signe (ed.) “Rethinking Sexualities in Africa” (2004) Nordic Africa Institute

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