Ideas - The deadly fight to be queer in Africa

Episode Date: May 26, 2025

Homosexuality is a crime in more than half of African countries. New laws in some states make it illegal for anyone to even advocate for LGBTQ rights. These laws bring up questions of foreign influence, neo-colonialism, and the role the international community could and should play in nudging human rights on the continent.

Other People's Problems was the first podcast to take you inside real-life therapy sessions. I'm Dr. Hilary McBride, and again, we're doing something new. The ketamine really broke down a lot of my barriers. This work has this sort of immediate transformational effect. Therapy Using Psychedelics is the new frontier in mental health. Come along for the trip. Other People's Problems Season 5, available now. This is a CBC Podcast.

Hi there, I'm Nala Ayaad. Before we get into today's show, I'd like to ask you for a favor. If you enjoy ideas, please hit the follow button on whatever app you're using. We've got some fascinating conversations coming up that you won't want to miss. And if you already follow the show, perhaps you can also leave us a rating and a review. It goes a long way to helping ideas reach more listeners like you. Okay, now onto today's show.

-♪ -♪ Welcome to Ideas. I'm Nala Ayed. Homosexuality is a crime in more than half of the countries across Africa. A crime punishable by prison sentences or in some cases, death. In the last couple of years, sweeping new laws have been introduced and passed in six African countries, making it illegal just to advocate for LGBTQ rights. It's a bill to promote proper human sexual rights and Ghanaian family values. In Ghana, a bill called, quote, the promotion of proper human sexual rights and Ghanaian family values,

was passed by parliament in early 2024. While the bill wasn't signed into law at the time, Ghana's current government is drafting something similar. We are grieving because our entire existence is about to be erased. And that's a lot. Leyla Lariba identifies as queer and non-binary and goes by the pronouns they them. Leyla is the director of One Love Sisters, based in the nation's capital. One Love Sisters Ghana is an organization that focuses on LGBTQ and gender nonconforming Muslims and we have programs that are designed for the entire LGBTQ and gender nonconforming community.

The organization is now under threat. This is a trying time for everybody, not just for people in the grassroots community. Ideas producer Nicola Lukcic was in Ghana not long after the bill was passed by parliament. In this episode, she explores what's at the root of the battle over sexual rights in Ghana and Africa more broadly. I met Leyla at the One Love Sisters office, in a location that Leyla keeps a secret from most. We, as activists, we are at even a bigger risk because of the work that we do and because

we can be easily traced. So I make sure that even before I conduct any form of activity anywhere, we liaise with organizations in other regions to make sure that this organization help us to a very secured place that we can have activities. And also on my own, I make sure that I prioritized my safety because prioritizing my safety means prioritizing my colleagues' safety. It also means prioritizing the community's safety.

So all the time, I make sure that my security is tight. I don't share my location anyhow. I don't invite just anybody to my house. I'm a very private person. So a lot of people don't even know where I stay. A lot of people don't even get close. So to me, that's security enough. Despite the risks, Leila feels compelled to push on with the work

to provide shelter and therapy for those at risk. Some of the biggest needs of the community is psychosocial supports and also relocation and jobs. Because at the moment, most of the cases that we face are people being threatened to abuse, corrective rape. We have people who... Did you just say corrective rape? Yes, we have people whose relatives have threatened them that if they don't stop being a lesbian, being a queer person, they will ask a gang to rape them to change their sexuality. And these people had to write to us and seek for emergency relocation. And all these people that I wrote were supported.

So currently, what I tell people is the community in Ghana needs a lot of emergency support because people are always in pressing needs. We had almost about three cases last month requesting for relocation because one specifically mentioned that an auntie said she will call an area guy to sleep with her just to change her sexuality because she's not pleased with what she does. And were you able to get her out? We supported her and she has now rented

and moved away from the auntie. The organization also provides a helpline and collects cases of gender-based violence, or GBV for short. Honestly, I look like I have the energy, but there are days I get home and I feel so tired because I'm human and this work is draining. Already it's draining because we at One Love Sisters, we collect cases of GBV and all sorts of abuses across the regions. Currently we are operating in about 16 regions with over 32 hotline operators

and all those people bring in cases, different diverse cases across the regions. So it's draining. At times you need to find a way to refill your cup before you are able to give out there because you can't sell from an empty bottle. Even to get community members to come to a program is a big challenge. They are scared of their safety.

They are scared of the fact that they will be arrested. They are scared of the fact that anybody can see what they are going. And why are you scared? I'm not scared of being arrested. I've been arrested before and I don't see any crime in being an agenda activist or advocate because what I'm doing is to educate and sensitize people who need education. And at times, it gets to some times that are very crucial in

an activist life. And this is one of those times where you feel like this is the time you need to do more. This is not a time to run away. This is time to stand tall and fight for your community. ["Rita Nkitiya"] Okay, so I'm Dr. Rita Nkitiya. You can call me Rita. and I am a feminist activist based here in Accra, Ghana.

Rita is a Ghanaian-Canadian gender equity consultant who has done work for Human Rights Watch. I'd say the past three years in particular have been very difficult for those of us doing activist work and within the community because we've just felt, yeah felt a lot of fear, trepidation, deep concern over what this bill will mean and what it has already meant for our community. Rita was born in Ghana and moved with her family to the Toronto area when she was a toddler. She always felt drawn to her homeland and moved back for some time while pursuing her PhD. And my focus was on examining second generation Ghanian-Canadian transnationalism.

So I was curious about my generation and how they were connecting to their homeland. Around that time in 2009, there was a huge narrative around Africa rising and a lot of people were returning home or wanting to return home. And I was one of those people who felt like I did feel a sense of connection and I wanted to strengthen that connection.

And I had a lot of friends in Toronto, a lot of friends in the GTA who wanted to come home. And so I thought it would be interesting to actually examine or document this journey, right? And so when I came, came to do my research and also contribute to movement building in Ghana and Africa more broadly. Like many Ghanaians, Rita grew up in an evangelical Christian community. I think we perform conservatism more than we actually are. Right? And so there's a lot of ways in which we,

we might be religious, we might go to church every Sunday, we might go to mosque, but at the same time, we have quite a fluid sexual politics. But it's not the kind of thing that we talk about publicly. I used to say that in Ghana, you can do anything, really, as long as you sort of keep it under wraps. Because of how conservative the society is, I think that people are often afraid to be open

about their sexual proclivities or their interests. But like any other society, Ghana has a lot of diversity when it comes to sexuality and gender. It's always been this way. It's just that we, because of the influence of religion, we often find ourselves hiding those, or masking those parts of ourselves. That's really interesting.

So, because you say that there's a fluidity, acceptance. So when the law was proposed, what was that? Was that a shock for you? How would you describe the sort of shift that had to happen in your mind? sort of shift that had to happen in your mind. Yeah, this is such a complicated situation, right? Because I think that there's a few things at play. One, the lobby groups that pushed for this bill were being supported by a transnational network of anti-gender, anti-rights actors, right? Who sort of started out in the West, you know, in sort of evangelical right-wing groups that are basically trying to gain influence and power, you know, in the global South.

And so they're so backed by those actors. I think it was very easy for lobbyists to create a bogeyman or some kind of you know scapegoat in the queer community. Christian community and traditional rulers of Latte, Equiappem and the Equiappem North and traditional rulers of Latin Equipem and the Equipem North municipality of the Eastern region have embarked on a massive walk to register their displeasure against lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and others,

LGBTQ plus activities in the area. Welding placards with varied inscriptions. When the bill was first proposed, its sponsors and supporters framed the LGBTQ rights question as a kind of ungodly, un-Ghanian foreign invasion, a 21st century form of colonization. in an interview with Ghana District's TV to share their views on LGBTQ+, and its impact on the society. My position on the LGBTQ is that it is an abomination and so we don't like it. And so through this, I'm appealing to all the Christians in Ghana to stand solidly behind the Christian

Council of Ghana, to stand solidly behind the Pentecostal and Charismatic Council, to stand behind the Catholic Secretariat and all the Christian community in Ghana. That we all stand, we stand solidly behind them and kick LGBTQ out from our country Ghana because we know the implications behind that. If we entertain these things, God will punish us, God will kill us as he kills Sodom and Gomorrah people by fire. And so I think even though queerness has always existed in Ghana, I think that when it is brought to the mainstream and when it's narrated as something that is dangerous to our society, something that is dangerous to our children, something that is dangerous to our children, something that is a threat to our national development, that

is a threat to our so-called family values, then people get scared. So it's a scare tactic to make people feel like, wow, this is actually a problem. Queerness is actually a problem. I think another thing is that the media and lobbyist groups, when they talk about what is actually like sexual and gender diversity in Ghana, they're using the language of LGBT,

which is fairly recent in our history, right? It's not language that comes from our, you know, any of our cultures. And so it's easy for people to... dissociate themselves from LGBT or see it as foreign. Because indeed, that language is foreign, right? Those aren't words that we would use in our language, right? But, for example, if you talk about Cotso Bessia, right, which is sort of an effeminate man,

we're very familiar with that. We know that it's a normal thing. But for example, if you talk about Kujo Bessia, right, which is sort of an effeminate man, we're very familiar with that. We know that it's a normal thing, right? But when we when we're using language that comes from outside of Ghana and our culture, then it's easy to to other, otherize it. Right. And then it becomes a dangerous thing or, you know, we can put any kind of labels that we want on it. So I think in some ways it's how the conversation began

and how it was framed and constructed. While I say this, of course, homophobia exists in Ghana as it exists everywhere. And queer communities often haven't felt safe to come out and be visible, right? And so in some ways when the bill was introduced, we were in a place where we were yet speaking for ourselves. Somebody else was telling our narrative.

Somebody else was telling the story of who we are, right? And it became easy for other people to just malign us or to say that we are a problem and that we're a threat to the society. If you were to remove the influence of imported Christianity and remove the imported language around sexuality and human rights, people and cultures within Ghana, according to Rita, have historically been more accepting of same-sex relationships. Take for example the practice of supi. So there's also a practice that we see a lot in boarding schools in Ghana amongst same-sex,

particularly in female boarding schools, and it's called supi. And it's really like some sort of romantic relationship between, usually between a senior student and a junior student. But it's quite common for girls at that age to develop deep intimate bonds with each other. And if you talk to our aunties, they all, everybody has a story of either knowing somebody who practiced Suppy or practicing it themselves. And so it's not uncommon for that to be an experience that people have. It's just that the narrative around Suppy is that it's something you do as a kid,

but when you become an adult, you leave that, that's like, it's child's play, you know? But it isn't something that is completely foreign to us. And why we leave that in childhood is because of heteronormativity, right? It's because of the pressure for women to get married to men and have children and all of that, right? But it doesn't mean that those desires cease to exist

necessarily, right? It's just that people find ways to manage it while also becoming wife and mother. That's interesting though, going back to your earlier point about the language LGBTQ being seen as something foreign imposed on Ghana. So would you say if the language issue were changed slightly, would that help? I think it would be a step in the right direction in some ways. Because look, we were colonized.

And so a lot of how we understand ourselves in contemporary Ghana is based on a kind of colonial foundation. And I don't think that we're doing enough to actively work to decolonize, right? And so for me, what that means is that we get to define ourselves for ourselves. I think that work still needs to happen across this continent. I think, yeah, it's something that we need to be, I think, yeah, I just think it's something that we need to prioritize in how we talk about ourselves and how we talk about contemporary Ghana. Who are we actually? What does it mean to be Ghanian?

This is all fairly post-colonial language. But I think, to your question, I think there are other challenges. So even if we change the language, I think that there's still, what we have to contend with is religion, which is also a product of colonialism, right? So because many people are listening to what their pastors

or what their imams have to say, you know, if those pastors and imams are not taking a progressive position on gender and sexual diversity, then their congregation tends to go with that, right? And so I think that the ways in which religion has become such a huge part of Ghanian people's lives. And if we're in a context where those religious institutions are not progressive or do not take a more humane approach to dealing with gender and sexual diversity,

then that's going to impact how people see themselves and what they think is possible for them in terms of their identity and in terms of their social and their sexual practices. It's interesting the way you framed it. It's like, you've got a colonized nation that is now wrestling with more colonizer influence both in terms of religion and language around gender and

sexuality. How do you go about reclaiming? Or is it something to be reclaimed or you just have to work with this mess and hope for the best? I mean, okay, there are different approaches. So this is going to be a bit of a messy answer. But, you know, on one hand, there's a school of thought that says we need to go back into our history and find all the evidence that queerness existed, right? Queerness has always been with us. We have to go back and, you know, go into the archives,

go into our oral histories, see where queerness lives, see where it existed. And I think that's, it's noble, and I think it's very important, right? I think that's part of the work of decolonization, absolutely. And I think we also get to decide who we want to be, right? As a nation, as a people. We get to decide what kind of country we want to live in.

Do we want to live in a country that is bigoted and discriminatory, or do we want to live in a society where we all feel free, where we don't have to hide, where we aren't violent, where people aren't oppressive to each other based on their personal views about that other person? I think that sometimes when we talk about reclaiming or going back into the history and reclaiming,

there's so much about who we are now that didn't exist before. And so we could play that game all day, right? So I think it's important that as a society, we decide that we will not be bigoted, that we will be a peace loving country, that we will create conditions where people are able to live a dignified life, where they are free of discrimination. And so then it doesn't matter who we used

to be, right? It's about who do we want to be going forward. Can I ask this personally for you, how has the proposed law impacted how you've been able to feel here in Ghana? Yeah, I've never felt so disconnected from Ghana and Ghanians than when this bill was passed. disconnected from Ghana and Ghanians than when this bill was passed. You know, as somebody who didn't grow up here, I'm constantly grappling with what it means to belong, right? And so that will always sort of just be there, lingering. But before this law was passed, I think that while we were not necessarily, you know, the most welcoming, you know, society when it came to LGBT rights, I don't think that... I don't want to create this myth that before the bill was passed, that we were all feeling very free and safe,

but there was still space for us to exist, right? And we weren't looking over our shoulders, and, you know, we could still organize and create space for ourselves and now that this bill has been passed and is waiting a cent and everything that has happened in the aftermath of that to me makes me question um what kind of society I actually live in and and you know and what kind of culture do I actually belong to? Because it's quite unconscionable that this bill was even proposed

and that our lawmakers have engaged in what I feel is such cowardice, right? Because we also know that there are many parliamentarians who are not in favor of this bill, that either voted out of fear or didn't show up to vote that day in parliament out of fear, right? And so it's, yeah, it's made me really question what it means to be a Ghanian and to live in this society where we could create such regressive laws. And I think in general, Ghana has a really good track record of, you know, signing on to human rights laws and treaties, you know, internationally.

And so this bill seems quite contradictory to that record. And so it's made living here uncomfortable. Yeah, it's made it uncomfortable. And also it's impacted my work, right, because Yeah, it's made it uncomfortable. And also it's impacted my work, right? Because the law makes it illegal for us to even advocate for a queer community. And so it means that every time we hold a meeting, you know, we do any kind of advocacy work, we are risking our lives, right?

We are breaking the law, which is, I just never thought, I just never thought this would happen. I never thought that this could happen in a place that, like Ghana, that has a reputation of, you know, having a, you know, the being, having a shining democracy in West Africa, you know? So it's, it's definitely a stain on our human rights record and our, and our international reputation. What makes you want to stay? I don't know. This is an interesting question.

I don't know, maybe somewhere in me there's still some hope. And I think also I've built a community here that I'm really proud of. And I think about all of the very brave activists doing grassroots work who are on the front lines, working tirelessly to support our communities and to hold the line. And I feel like we've worked really hard, and I feel that we can't just give up.

I think we're going to continue to fight for as long as we can. And I count myself in that struggle. [♪ music playing in background, with a beat of guitar and piano playing in background, with a beat of guitar and piano playing in background, with a beat of guitar and piano playing in background, with a beat of guitar and piano playing in background, with a beat of guitar and piano playing in background, with a beat of guitar and piano playing in background, with a beat of guitar and piano playing in background, with a beat of guitar and piano playing in background, with a beat of guitar and piano playing in background, with a beat of guitar and piano playing in background, with a beat of guitar and piano playing in background, with a beat of guitar and piano playing in background, with a beat of guitar and piano playing in background, with a beat of guitar and piano playing in background, with a beat of guitar and piano playing in background, with a beat of guitar and piano playing in background, with a beat of guitar and piano playing in background, with a beat of guitar and piano playing in background, with a beat of guitar and piano playing in background, with a beat of guitar and piano playing in background, with a beat of guitar and piano playing in background, with a beat of guitar and piano playing in background, with a beat of guitar and piano playing in background, with a beat of guitar and piano playing in background, with a beat of guitar and piano playing in background, with a beat of guitar and piano playing in background, with a beat of guitar and piano playing in background, with a beat of guitar and piano playing in background, with a beat of guitar and piano playing in background, with a beat of guitar and piano playing in background, with a beat of guitar and piano playing in background, with a beat of guitar and piano playing in background, with a beat of guitar and piano playing in background, with a beat of guitar and piano playing in background, with a beat of guitar and piano playing in background, with a beat of guitar and piano playing in background, with a Across North America on SiriusXM, in Australia on ABC Radio National, and around the world at cbc.ca.com. You can also find ideas wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Nala Ayaad. It was over 30 years ago that Clifford Olsen first called me. Secret phone calls from Canada's most notorious serial killer. I knew I was killing the children but I couldn't stop myself.

Now it's time to unearth the tapes because I believe there are still answers to be found. I'm Arlene Bynum from CBC's Uncovered. Calls from a killer. Available now. Questions around human rights and sexual practices throughout Africa are fraught with a number of countries making moves to criminalize LGBTQ people and criminalize those who support LGBTQ rights. There's a close relationship between the messages from the evangelical pulpit and the laws that are being proposed and passed.

Okay, so my name is Haley McEwen and I'm a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Political Science at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden. In Haley's PhD research, she investigated how and why the American Christian right has been trying to influence sexual politics in African countries. While the extent of international funding is hard to trace, She points out that by the year 2020, American Christian groups had spent approximately $280 million promoting so-called pro-family agendas worldwide, with about a quarter of that spent in Africa. And the Institute for Journalism and Social Change

saw a 50% increase in this kind of funding on the African continent between 2019 and 2021. Of course, this is only the funding that is actually traceable from the tax declaration forms that organizations have to fill out. So the reports also say that these figures are not representative of what is the total expenditure that is probably happening. And they're not only promoting anti-LGBTI agendas, as I mentioned, but they're also promoting agendas against access to contraception, reproductive health services, sexuality education, and things of that nature. So ironically, you know, you find the US Christian right groups having a lot of success in positioning

themselves as allies of African audiences and saying things like, you know, we are here to help you defend yourself against these foreign influences. You know, they'll say, look at what the feminist and gay rights movements have done in our countries, you know, and they blame them for things like declining fertility rates, or the decisions of people to not have children or to not have many children, as many children

as they would have in the past. So they'll say, you know, if you don't protect yourself against these LGBTI activists and organizations and feminist movements, they're going to do the same thing to your country that they did in our country. So in that way, they're really positioning themselves as being more in touch with the needs and realities of African audiences than even local feminist or LGBTI advocacy organizations and human rights defenders. Right. And then the irony is that they do not see themselves as neocolonialists. Absolutely. They're bypassing that charge. Even though the ideologies that they are promoting, for example, the idea that the nuclear family model is universal across all time and space,

which all of the research we have says very much an ideology, a colonial ideology. And that is what they are promoting in African countries. And it doesn't take very long to look back into colonial histories to see how the idea of the gender binary, the gender hierarchy, and the nuclear family model were imposed by colonial regimes. It uses a language of, you know, purity, keeping the African family pure, keeping African values pure.

Zetou Matabeni is a filmmaker, author, and professor of sexualities, genders, and queer studies at the University of Fort Hare in South Africa. We know since pre-colonial times that Africans have always had diverse sexualities, diverse gender identities. In actual fact, it was the introduction of colonial laws that made sexual diversity and gender diversity to be what is considered unlawful because colonizers couldn't comprehend

the non-existence of a binary system. And they couldn't understand how these things that they were colonizing, and I specifically say things, these things that they were colonizing were actually so advanced and they couldn't contain them. And so they came up with these laws. And many African countries, I mean, just the British colonial law

is still existing today in 10 countries at least in the continent. And there's a lot in that colonial law, but a big part of it is about what the British called this unnatural carnal knowledge or the vices or, you know, sodomy, et cetera. So yeah, I think part of it was also just to get rid of what they considered like the savage African. And part of the colonial projects sought to eradicate the languages of those being colonized.

That's quite a painful thing, actually, if you had to think about it. Without a language, without a language that you can relate to, a language that is yours or a language that is taken from you, you basically are an empty vessel. And so when colonization took place, in many of these places, all of us who were colonized had to take a new language. I have to speak English and consider it a first language.

You have to speak French, you have to speak Portuguese, you have to speak, and so the eradication of our indigenous languages was that means of spiritual subjugation because language is what connects you to your source, to your land and to who you are and to the people around you. So colonialism had that impact and it still has that impact because that impact has also made Africans to adopt new terms, new languages in which to state who they are or explain

themselves. So the language of LGBTQ is a problematic language because it's a language that comes from elsewhere. It's not a language that we've had to create ourselves and to make it relevant for our own reality. It's a language that has come also with a lot of finances that we have to mobilize. It's a language of mobilization.

It's a language of connection with other people in the world. So we can talk about being LGBTQ in Kenya or in Uganda or in Accra, but you can also talk about being LGBTQ in Kenya or in Uganda or in Accra, but you can also talk about being LGBTQ in Belarus, in New York, in Amsterdam, et cetera. And that has its own currency and it comes with a certain version of capital in the world. And that currency is what many of us have to struggle with because it is also a currency that because of the language, it takes you away from your immediate environment, because it's not something that's easily understood or

understandable because it comes from elsewhere. And so when you appear as this thing called LGBTQ, you also have to declare who you are. So you have to make sure your identity fits into one of those letters, whereas in one's own indigenous language, it doesn't quite fit. Is that right? That's correct. And we have our own, you know, our own terms, our own languages that we use that don't circulate as much as LGBTQ. People will tell you about the Yandau Du in West Africa, people in South Africa, there are many terms. And so there are many terms all over, but these are not so they don't circulate, they're

not understood or they're not known. And we should ask why? Why? Why have they been taken over? Or why? Why is it that it's LGBT that circulates more than these others? And this shorthand, the seems, by the politicians and parliamentarians who are proposing laws that will obliterate rights of people with diverse sexualities. So it's weaponized in a way that might not have been anticipated by people in the West. Yes, that's correct. I mean, and yeah, I think people call it,

it's like, you know, LGBT is like, you know, the sexy thing that the West has provided. So, yeah, and you're correct when you say that, you know, politicians have taken it on and they've seen it as they say it is like the New York colonisation, which is not necessarily the case because we may say LGBT is doing something challenging in African society, but we should also be critical of the response to it and what is fueling that response. And that response, I think, is because of its logic

and the way it comes from has deeper roots of colonization than LGBT. So this Christian missionization is part and parcel of the colonial project. And so when it's happening now through evangelicals, it's using the through evangelicals, it is, you know, it's using the same kind of logic. So it is much more present as a new colonial project than thinking about LGBTQ, which is much more recent. And it does a very different kind

of work. Zethu emphasizes that erasure was key to the colonial project. The other impact of colonization on sexual rights has also been a fragmentation. Fragmentation of beings. Now you become like a sexual being instead of a human. And a human in African terms is a very complex thing. So in many African languages, actually there's a commonality when we're talking about human. And the commonality is this notion of Mundo.

So you go to East Africa and people talk about Mundo. You go to Southern Africa, people talk about Mundo. You go to Northern Africa. So this notion of Mundo. You go to Northern Africa. This notion of Mundo is a known notion throughout the continent. And that tells you something because it comes from our indigenous languages. It tells you something about who we are as African people, as a people who are connected to our land and to the spirit and to the environment.

Because the Ndu of the Mundo, that Ndu part is the spiritual connection that shows how we exist in the world. That we are not just these physical beings who are operating on our own. We are beings that are both physical, but also existing in another realm. So that's why it's so important for many Africans to connect to those who came before them,

to connect to nature, to connect to the environment, because there is that relationship. It's interesting, because along with the language, you have the Victorians coming, and then they start labeling certain kinds of sexual acts. So that then started creating a kind of consciousness redefining sexuality in indigenous cultures. Is that it? Yeah, I mean, I think one thing we can say is that, you know, colonialists are really

obsessed with sex. Yeah, and it's like a weird obsession. So I think for many Africans, sex is present, but it's not the only thing. It's not the main thing. It's like it's present. We use it for all kinds of things, right? But the way in which colonialists and the Victorian thing was so, you know, into sex and sex has to be pure, sex has to be right, it has to be, you know, like one theorist actually writes about it as a, you know, like there's, you know, there's a charm

circle when you're thinking about sex. Like there's the inner core where everything is done right. It's so, it's heterosexual, it's vanilla, it's like, and then the outer core is like all these people who are sex workers, who are promiscuous, et cetera, et cetera. So I mean, that's like the, you know, the Victorian logic, which I think for many, for many people in Africa,

it was not so interesting, you know, it's like, oh, okay. What else can you say? You know, can you talk, oh, OK. What else can you say? You know, can you talk about? Yeah, can you talk about how, you know, how how you are connecting to how you're connecting to water, how you're connecting to land, to to air, etc. But they are the fascination and the obsession with sex is something that I think for many of us, we still battle with it. And yeah, and then, you know, we also then have to try

and work through this notion of sexual liberation as if, you know, we never had the sexual liberation in the first place. And interestingly, you fast forward to the 21st century and the obsession with sex is all the more present when these anti-LGBTQ laws being proposed and kicked in into play. What is the impetus? What's the motivation to be using this language in the laws that are being proposed? The LGBTQ language. I mean, I think part of it is also,

it's used because it's also now the language that circulates. And to be honest, I really doubt many, many politicians will know what LGBTQ is about. Many politicians really know what LGBTQ is about. They just know it's something foreign, is that it? Or something ungodly? They probably know it's something that circulates. It says something about homosexuality. So whether they know the shifts of how it started, because we can't assume that everyone, even LGBTQ people themselves don't know

all of what LGBTQ stands for. Some people know that they're just lesbian, they know one category. They can be lesbian or gay or trans or bisexual or intersex. So for example, in, yeah, there would be a law that talks about, you know, that talks about sex change, for example. Yeah, oh, what we prefer to call is gender reassignment surgery. But there will be a lot of talking about sex change and that law, it says it's an anti-homosexuality law. And you ask yourself,

do these people actually know what they are saying, what they are talking about? And that's not to say that, you know, that we are interested in educating politicians really about what LGBTQ issues are. No, I think what could be interesting is engaging in a different language, engaging politicians in a different language, a language that they can actually understand. Because many of them, when you talk, when you really talk about, if you use an African lens in terms of thinking about sexuality and gender, they get it. But then when you use the language of human rights and LGBT rights, that's the thing that they feel that they need to contest.

So what do people here in the so-called West, what do we need to understand when we're wanting to be supportive of what we would consider LGBTQ rights on the continent of Africa? I think first is to understand the complexity of the issues that we are dealing with is to understand the complexity of the issues that we are dealing with in the continent and to understand that even as allies, allies have been implicated in the challenges that we face and the complexity that we face. If allies are against neocolonization and colonization, they should stop it from within their own borders before it goes out. What do you mean? Stop the colonialists because they live there. They live in the US, they live in Europe. Stop them from coming to colonize Africa because we have problems that we have to deal with. We

have our own problems. So we don't want American problems. We don't want European problems. We want to deal with our own problems. So, you know, I think as allies, particularly those in the US or in the global North, they have to be much more, pay much more attention to what they are producing from within and what that does when it goes out to other countries. And secondly, when allyship goes outwards, part of what it needs to do is to listen,

listen to the people in Africa, listen to what they are saying, what they're desiring for themselves, what they're imagining as their future, and how they see their world existing outside these interventions that are doing this project of neocolonization. If you could wave a wand and imagine your utopic world of queer Africa, what would that look like? Yeah, that's always a weird question to answer.

I don't know if there is a queer world of, a utopic world of queer Africa. I mean, I write about queer Africa a lot. And I suppose that's also part of, you know, a desire to imagine something else. So my version of utopia is not a located version, also because this idea of Africa was a constructed reality. And so desiring to exist beyond a construction for me or someone else's construction would be to imagine, you know, to imagine an existence of Africans queer or not. Yeah. And we can, oh, I can say queer for now. Queer as the Africans who have been persecuted, who have been humiliated, subjugated by colonial laws, by current laws. And for many of them, my wish, and it's not a wand,

it's not a magic wand, but it's a wish that maybe we can each have moments where we can imagine ourselves as really free. I think every African who's gone through this life in the continent would have their own imagination. And I would want to wander in those imaginations because there could be, I'm sure there's millions and millions of these imaginations. And together they can collectively create a world that we are probably not even ready for. And I wanna hold onto that,

that world that we're not ready for, because it gives me wings. And all I wanna do is fly in this moment of wonder and in these collective imaginations. And I think all queer Africans have this. And one day I think I would just love to be in that space of wild collective imagination. And we're all just, if flying is our desire, then we can all fly and just create a new world where we can all exist freely. Thank you so much. I really appreciate this conversation.

Yeah, you're welcome, Nicola. Thank you for your questions. Zetu Matibene is a filmmaker, author, and the South Africa Research Chair in Sexualities, Genders, and Queer Studies at the University of Fort Hare. In all things, we are exhorted by the Holy Book to give thanks to God. Recently elected Ghanaian President John Mahama is committed to reviving a pro-family values bill. I, as a Christian, uphold the principle and the values that only two genders exist, man and woman. And that a marriage is between a man and a woman. I've spoken with the speaker so that a renewal of the expired proper families values bill

should be a bill that is introduced by government rather than as a private member's motion. Hello, testing one, two, three. One, two, three. And where are we right now? Okay, so we are in Hamilton, Ontario. Rita Nketia, the Canadian-Ghanian researcher and rights consultant, happened to be visiting her Canadian home,

so I checked in with her before she headed back again to Ghana. And it's been almost a year since the original bill passed through parliament. How are activists feeling and advocates feeling on the ground now? I think it's a mixed bag. I think there is some feeling that we're just sort of waiting and watching. I think people are just kind of trying to observe the landscape and see, monitor conversations that are happening in mainstream media, what are politicians saying, what are lobby groups saying, what is the president saying.

I think some of us feel that this is a good sign that he has not yet presented a bill when he could have by now. And I think most of us are just continuing with our work. We realize that there's a lot of work to do. Our communities need our support. Unfortunately, this bill and all of the conversations that have sprung out of this moment have created a context in which our human rights are still being violated.

So we're monitoring that. There's often cases of violence towards the community, and so we're still having to deal with that. Overall, I think that we're just sort of waiting to see what happens next, but also continuing to support our own community and advocate so long as the space is there for us to do so. And also since we last spoke, there's been a change in the political leadership down south in the United States with the withdrawing of USAID and other big American funds. What impact do you think that's going to have

on LGBTQ advocates in Ghana? Yeah, so we're already seeing the impact of the U.S. funding cuts. Um, so I've spoken to many activist leaders who've said that they've lost their funding. Um, huge parts of their budget for the year have, um, have now disappeared. And it's really impacting their ability to serve the community.

We also saw that with Trump's rhetoric and his executive order around legislating only two genders in the US, we're seeing how that's also impacting politics in Ghana. What Trump's presidency means for Ghana and many countries in Africa is that our local bigots, local anti-rights or anti-gender lobbyists are using this as a kind of vim or they feel more confident to carry out their homophobia and the violence against LGBT communities because they look at the West as, you know, sort of leaders of the world. And so if a

world leader like Trump can make these statements, then it kind of gives them leeway to also be bigoted. You're heading back next week. When we first spoke, you spoke of how you've never felt so disconnected from Ghanaian culture. What are you hoping for when you return? Look, I think that the community has been through a lot in the past few years, and we've built quite a lot of infrastructure. We've been able to build up the ecosystem, and I'm really proud of the work that we've done.

And so, as I'm returning, I'm looking forward to reuniting with folks. Of course, I've been virtually still in communication with everyone, but I'm hoping that this year gives us a new energy around our work. We've been through this already. If a bill is reintroduced, then I think it's time for us to really think about how do we strategize

differently based on the experiences that we've already had, based on understanding the playbook of anti-rights actors. So I'm really hoping that when I return, I can sort of step into some really transformative and innovative work around LGBT rights and feminist movement building. on LGBT rights and feminist movement building. You've been listening to Queer in Africa, produced by Nikola Lukcic. Our technical producer is Danielle Duval. Our web producer is Lisa Ayuso, senior producer Nikola Lukcic. Greg Kelly is the executive Producer of Ideas. And I'm Nala Ayed.

For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.