Decolonising "African values": The future of LGBTQ+ pride and rights

October marks Pride Month in South Africa. Historically, Pride in this country and, more broadly, the rest of the continent has been used for political advocacy, protesting against discrimination and political persecution, and reaffirming LGBTQ+ people's rights. In the spirit of "leaving no one behind", this year, our Pride agenda should include radical solidarity with LGBTQ+ people in other African countries who face a growing anti-rights movement specifically targeting LGBTQ+ and other sexually diverse and gender-diverse people.

In 2023, the African Commission of Human and Peoples' Rights (ACHPR) stated that sexual orientation was not an "expressly recognised right" in the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights, despite the fact that the Commission has in many instances derived and advocated for other rights not expressly recognised in the African Charter and has even adopted resolutions urging African states to protect sexual and gender minorities from violence and discrimination. The ACHPR doubled down by claiming that the protection and promotion of sexual and gender minority rights was "contrary to the virtues of African values."

Alarmingly, the ACHPR made these remarks amid the alarming increase in criminalising legislation and discrimination targeting African LGBTQ+ persons. In 2024, Amnesty International announced that 12 African countries had weaponised legal measures to target LGBTQ+ people, demonstrating the systematic and institutional violence experienced by LGBTQ+ persons across the region.

As an independent expert body within the African Union, the ACPHR is entrusted with recognising, preserving and protecting the rights of all Africans. Yet, the ACHPR's statements reject the philosophy of the African Charter upon which the body was founded. Significantly, its open rejection of African LGBTQ+ persons' rights align with beliefs and attitudes held by a long list of African leaders who have publicly rejected and espoused harmful stereotypes of LGBTQ+ people and, in many cases, enforced laws limiting their rights and freedoms.

Just late last year, Burundian president Évariste Ndayishimiye stated, "If you want to attract a curse to the country, accept homosexuality." Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni and former Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe similarly called homosexuality both anti-African and unpatriotic, describing homosexuality and the promotion of LGBTQ+ rights as "un-African" and even as a "white disease." Museveni further urged African leaders to push back against "the promotion of homosexuality," announcing that "Africa should provide the lead to save the world from this degeneration and decadence, which is really very dangerous for humanity."

Considering the long history of human rights violations committed by and under these leaders, their supposed moral panic should be critiqued rather than accepted as a truth across the continent. For the last few years, anti-LGBTQ+, anti-rights and anti-gender attitudes have proven exceedingly profitable for many African leaders, including those mentioned.

CNN and other media outlets have written exposés on the role of US non-profit and religious organisations, including Family Watch International, The Fellowship Foundation and World Congress of Families, in driving anti-LGBTQ+ activities and legislation in Africa, including the Kenyan Family Protection Bill and the Ghanaian Promotion of Human Sexual Rights and Family Values Bill. Foreign interests are financing African anti-LGBTQ+ and anti-rights movements, which contradicts the "un-African" and "virtues of African values" tropes espoused by many African leaders and the ACHPR.

If anything, anti-LGBTQ+ activities in Africa align with colonial interpretations of sexuality and gender. European powers' criminalisation of same-sex relationships was a colonial strategy for protecting their interests and maintaining political legitimacy. Rejecting homosexuality as anti-African, therefore, indicates compliance to coloniality – meaning attitudes, behaviours, ways of knowing and being, and values that rationalise and maintain colonial dominance. Forced heteronormative gender norms are a lesson taken from the settler colonial rulebook, wherein the hierarchal valuing of human beings and their relationships follows colonial theories of human exceptionalism and the human desire for mastery over both the human and non-human.

The political strategy of homophobia is also specific to social exclusion as a mode of achieving and maintaining elite power. Ideologically, recent homophobic and, more generally, anti-rights and anti-gender statements are part of an overarching system of power and control through the regulation of gender and sexuality. Homophobic messaging and homophobia are old political strategies in the pursuit of political clout and power. And in the age of social media, political clout is currency.

In addition, anti-rights groups are advocating against the sexual and reproductive autonomy of many women and girls, alongside that of LGBTQ+ people, as observed in The Gambia earlier this year, where attempts were made to repeal laws banning female genital mutilation. Hence, violence against sexual and gender minorities is not separate from the violence perpetrated against women and girls.

The truth is that patriarchal social norms, which are dominant and diverse across many African societies, depend on unequal and exploitative male authority, which leads to gendered forms of oppression that impact everyone. This is significant in the current climate of feminism founded on gender-essentialist politics, which ultimately uphold patriarchal norms that are a persistent threat to women's rights.

At present, many institutions and policies in Africa are based on a coloniality of being that is revisionist and that perpetuates epistemological, legal and, in some cases, physical violence. This violence infringes on the rights and freedoms of African LGBTQ+ persons, women and girls, and soon enough, everyone who is in the way of this pursuit of domination.

We need African institutions and policies to adopt decolonial frameworks and principles, particularly those that rebuke the coloniality of being, knowledge, sexuality, gender and power. This begins by rejecting the sub-categorisation of Africans based on their identity and instead prioritising the preservation of Africans' human rights, dignity and integrity. This Pride Month, we must acknowledge and protect the pluralities of being on the continent, which is truly a remnant and reflection of African values.

 

This op-ed was originally published on AfricLaw

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Lesego Sekhu
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