South Africa is celebrating Pride under the shadow of last month’s brutal murder of the first openly gay imam, Muhsin Hendricks. The killing attracted worldwide attention, but many African voices expressed muted reactions, saying that homosexuality is an "un-African" trait introduced to the continent by European colonisers. However, this is historically and socially false — and here’s why.
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00:00It's Pride Month in South Africa. But wait, how much is there to celebrate?
00:06So there's a lot of discrimination that people are experiencing on the African continent.
00:11Many African nations still criminalize same-sex relationships with penalties ranging from
00:16imprisonment to death in some cases.
00:20Welcome to the flip side.
00:22There's a myth that homosexuality and non-normative gender expressions have never been part of Africa.
00:29But is that really so?
00:31Diverse gender expressions and same-sex practices have been documented across pre-colonial African societies.
00:37There's historical evidence in Central Africa, in Burkina Faso, in Nigeria and Uganda.
00:45Woman-to-woman marriages existed among the Igbo nation in Nigeria as well as the Nandi nation in Kenya.
00:53In local contexts around South Africa.
00:56The ancient kingdom of the Buganda had openly gay men in the kingdom's court.
01:01There's so many, many examples.
01:04So if being gay or lesbian or queer or trans has been part of Africa, why do we have narratives claiming the opposite?
01:13I'll give you a hint. Colonialism.
01:16What colonization actually introduced was homophobia.
01:20Through punitive legal codes and Western religious interpretations.
01:24That it is un-African, that it is, you know, demonic, whatever it is.
01:28When people claim that homosexuality is un-African, they ironically perpetuate colonial viewpoints while erasing the authentic African histories.
01:37Those that seek to erase, you know, this experience, they are erasing the diversity of the human race.
01:46And that erasure can often translate into violence and brutality.
01:50Meet Ndumye Funda, a lesbian activist in Cape Town, whose wife fell victim to a homophobic crime known as corrective rape and died from the consequences.
02:00She got raped, got plotted by her best friend because she was a lesbian.
02:04The rape at gunpoint, there were five guys.
02:07She died because of cryptomeningitis, was HIV positive.
02:11You know what, there are so many women like her.
02:14I don't want to see them suffering.
02:16We need to see justice, not to certain cases, but to all the cases.
02:20Recently, the world's first openly gay imam, Mohsin Hendrix, was shot to death.
02:25When you are getting physical violence, such as the case of Imam Hendrix, it is about mobilizing.
02:35It is about coming together in solidarity and saying that we will not take any more of this violence.
02:43His death illustrates the dangerous reality that many of us as activists face.
02:48As South Africa marks Pride Month, there is every reason to celebrate diversity and humanity in the hope that one day, hate and violence will be a thing of the past.
02:58It's not just about queer people because these power struggles are about everybody.
03:05Some leaders use homophobia as a unifying force, a way to define what they are against rather than what they stand for.
03:14This deflects attention from governance failure and corruption.
03:18And that's the flip side.