Africanizing the discourse on homosexuality: challenges and prospects

One of the most abiding accusations in the debate on homosexuality in Africa is that the whole enterprise is ‘western’ and that it lacks ‘a true African flavour’. For some, the insistence on the human rights of homosexuals is a Euro-American imposition, while others contend that the whole raft of terms used in the discourse is foreign. Thus, terms such as ‘queer’ and ‘LGBTI’ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex) are regarded as exogenous and as confirming the crisis which characterizes discourses on homosexuality in Africa. When this is added to the widely held perspective that homosexuality is ‘of foreign origin’, the contestation is deepened even further. Consequently, there have been efforts by some scholars and activists to Africanize the discourse on homosexuality in Africa. These have included the quest to use African terms for homosexuality and exhortations to deploy African epistemologies in discourses on homosexuality. This article seeks to examine the background issues and assess the gains and losses in the quest to Africanize homosexuality discourses. It analyses the politics of these discourses and highlights their underlying assumptions and tensions.