Several countries across the African continent are passing laws not only criminalising homosexuality but threatening LGBT people with the death penalty or life imprisonment if their sexuality is exposed. The picture is not uniformly grim – South Africa, Angola, Mozambique, and Botswana have made encouraging strides on protecting LGBT rights – but out of 69 countries around the world criminalising same-sex relations, 33 are in Africa. And new terrifying legislation is being introduced.
Blaming the colonial legacy has been the default position of many western liberals pointing to legislation on the statute books of African countries dating back to British, French, or Portugal rule. However, this fails to explain why laws against homosexuality have been retained in former colonies while the colonisers repealed their laws decades ago.
Also, while some blame the colonial legacy for anti-LGBT legislation, many African politicians argue that it is the notion of LGBT rights which is the western, colonial import. An attempt to corrupt African family values and religious beliefs. They claim the United States and Europe are pressuring them into supporting and tolerating sexualities they refuse to countenance.
So – why are some African countries becoming more intolerant of homosexuality? What are the more recent factors behind some new dreadful legislation? And how to halt the torture of LGBT people by police forces including forced, intimate, ‘examinations’?
Here are factors that are more directly relevant to what is beyond doubt a deteriorating situation:
- American conservative evangelical organisations have spent millions taking the “culture wars” against LGBT people into Africa. An associate of one of these organisations actually drafted Uganda’s so-called “Kill the Gays” bill
- Putin and Kremlin backed propaganda delivered via social and mainstream media have sought to present Russia as an ally with African countries in the fight against, as Putin puts it, western values that run contrary to “human nature” and family values
- Whereas some African countries have thrown off old colonial anti-sodomy laws, though rather belatedly (Angola and Botswana in 2019), other African leaders have used anti-LGBT rhetoric to mask failures in domestic policy by presenting LGBT rights as a “western gay agenda” they are fighting courageously
- African leaders have been presenting LGBT people as “un-African” and a “white disease” for years – those terms were used by the long-time President of Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe
- The growth of Islamist ideology in Muslim countries since the collapse of the Soviet Union has snuffed out any hint of tolerance towards LGBT people. A decade ago, it was hoped the Arab Spring might improve the situation but spring turned rapidly to a long winter.