In transition: self-expression in recent African LGBTIQ narratives

ABSTRACT

There is a long tradition of multiple sexualities in Africa, but it is a tradition that has been violently interrupted by Western colonialism. Neocolonial extension of these prohibitions shapes the ongoing struggle for rights among LGBTIQ individuals and communities throughout the African continent, with variations from country to country. As with other such social movements, the arts reflect and reinscribe strong prejudices or contend with them, and in the process presage a broad but tentative growth in the tolerance of diversity. Homosexuality is still outlawed in 34 African countries, yet it has never been vilified in 13 others. This essay will survey a selection of African fiction and films that take differing positions on these controversial social movements. Whereas a Western model for LGBTIQ rights rarely seems appropriate in African contexts, it is clear that Africans are offering new ways of being queer that challenge essentialism while giving the lie to those who deny the existence of “non-normative” African sexualities.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. The so-called “Gay International” that purportedly imposes a neoliberal agenda on countries dependent upon the West's globalized capital; Daniel Vignal, Chris Dunton, and Dennis Altman offer important examinations of this critique.

2. Possibly an allusion to K'Naan's song, “Until the Lion Learns to Speak”.

3. Cf. Farah, Nuruddin. Gifts. Roggebaai: Kwela, 2001; Farah, Nuruddin. Maps. New York: Pantheon, 1987; Farah, Nuruddin. Secrets. New York: Arcade, 1998; Farah, Nuruddin. Sweet and Sour Milk. London: Allison & Busby, 1979; Farah, Nuruddin. Sardines. London: Allison & Busby, 1981; Farah Nuruddin. Close Sesame. London: Allison & Busby, 1983.

4. Among the lesbian films they discuss are: Domittila (Nigeria 1996), Girls Hostel (Nigeria/Ghallywood 2001), Women's Affair (Nigeria 2003), Mr. Ibu and Keziah (Nigeria 2010), The Corporate Maid (Nigeria 2008), Sexy Girls (Nigeria 2009), Before the War (2007), Beautiful Faces (Nigeria 2004), Last Wedding (Nigeria 2004), Emotional Crack (Nigeria 2003), Supi Supi: The Real Woman to Woman (Ghana 1996), Women in Love I and II (Ghana 1996), My School Mother (Nigeria 2005), Girls Cot (Nigeria 2006), Rude Girls (Nigeria 2007); there are comparatively fewer gay films for them to mention: End Time (Nigeria 1999), Reloaded (Nigeria 2009), Law 58 (Nigeria/Ghallywood 2015), Hideous Affair (Nigeria/Ghallywood), Men in Love (Nigeria 2010), and Dirty Secret (Nigeria 2010).

5. And yet, as of February of 2017, there were still only 526 views of this 8-minute oral presentation of the paper. During her reading, the room is hardly attentive, with a great deal of whispering on-going.

6. Shoga Yangu and Popobawa are, as of 2011, the only two Tanzanian films that discuss same-sex practices, and transgender representations have been restricted to “male actors who dress up as women in popular comedies, rather than actual discussions of the issues facing transgender people and transsexuals living in Tanzania” (Claudia Böhme 68). The film originally titled Shoga, which means very close friend, or homosexual, was suspended after its premiere, and retitled as Shoga Yangu (my friend). Its cover illustration and poster were changed: whereas the originals had the protagonist's face as half male and half female; the revised version has the star as fully male, with a wife in the background.

7. Afrikaans characters in Forty Days (1979) make passing reference to the Hillbrow section of Johannesburg with suggestions of homosexual depravity. A film about the Second World War, Seuns van die Wolke (1975) lightly touches on a homosexual relationship. The Shadowed Mind (1988), on the other hand, is a somewhat sloppy thriller with gay characters and frontal nudity, and Botha notes that it is apparently trying to situate homosexuality somewhere between sanity and madness, and a bisexual character is brutally murdered. Negative stereotypes abound in Lipstiek Dipstiek (1994), Kaalgat Tussen die Daisies (1997), There's a Zulu on My Stoep (1993), Sweet ’n Short (1991), and Panic Mechanic (1996). Much as in Nigeria, Botha notes a comparative absence of lesbians in films, pointing to Quest for Love (1988), The World Unseen (2008), and My Black Little Heart (2008). Quest for Love is a film of emotional complexity with convincing lesbian protagonists.

8. The Man Who Drove with Mandela (1998) tells the fascinating story of Cecil Williams, the flamboyantly gay theatre director and communist for whom Nelson Mandela played chauffeur as a ploy to get to underground resistance meetings. The lives of gay men in District Six are documented in Jack Lewis's A Normal Daughter: The Life and Times of Kewpie of District Six (1997), told through the eyes of a drag queen, and Sando to Samantha aka the Art of Dikvel (1998).

9. Luiz Debarros has directed several ground-breaking shorts and feature-length films, including Pretty Boys (1991) about Johannesburg's rent boys; Clubbing (1993) about a group of young people, including a gay couple; Hot Legs (1995), a gay revenge story that avoids stereotypes; Metamorphosis (2000), a biography of Leonard Du Plooy, a “colored” man who became white overnight and late in life became one of Johannesburg's most famous drag queens (“Granny Lee”); By Night (2000), about people who work at night; and Two Moms (2004), about a lesbian couple and their two adopted children. A documentary about a hairdresser, called Dark and Lovely, Soft and Free (2000), counters negative stereotypes, and Gerald Kraak's Property of the State: Gay Men in the Apartheid Military (2003) chronicles the mental anguish caused by the military's use of aversion therapy. South Africa's first daily television soap opera, Egoli (1992–2010), broadcasted in Afrikaans and English, gradually included a few gay characters near the end of its run.

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John C. Hawley

John C. Hawley is professor of English at Santa Clara University, California, former President of the U.S. chapter of the Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies and he has served on three executive committees of the MLA. He is currently the president of the South Asian Literary Association and is editing a special issue of African Literature Today on the topic “Queer Theory in Film and Fiction”.