By Tony W. Njoroge
Content Warning: This piece discusses homophobia, discrimination, and hate speech directed at LGBTQ+ people in Africa. It includes depictions of social and familial rejection, historical references to medical abuse, and job loss due to sexual orientation. It directly refers to suicide. Readers who may be affected by these themes are encouraged to engage with care.
Homosexuality is a hot button in Africa today. Much of the fervour, however, is fueled by demagogic politicians who want to distract their subjects from the real issues that matter, like the runaway corruption and nepotism. Many politicians today are in office because they are riding high on the rampant homophobia they’ve created and stoked. Some use phrases such as “Homosexuals are more lethal than all natural disasters put together,” and then go ahead to implement draconian laws such as life imprisonment.
I had a gay friend who was in the closet most of his short life. My friend Kamara (not his real name) and I were as close as brothers. Although we shared many happy times together, I noticed that many of the other children found him strange. Even in nursery school, he always wanted to be the mother when we played house. As the years progressed, I observed that he was acutely conscious of his appearance. I remember rebuking him often for spending so much time in front of the mirror.
When we got older and enrolled at the same boys’ boarding school, Kamara made the rest of us look like a bunch of greasy mechanics. His clothes were always the cleanest, and he took a shower every day. He had long, polished nails that always got him in trouble with the teachers, and he loved to plait his hair on weekends. Sometimes, when he walked, one would think he was strutting on a catwalk. Some boys disliked him at first because he was different, but they gradually came to like and appreciate him for how unique he was.
When we talked about girls, he always seemed bored. When one of the boys managed to smuggle a dirty magazine into school, Kamara was never among the hordes fighting to get a look at it. In grade eleven, Kamara and I were both appointed dorm captains. (There were ten dormitories with about a hundred students each.) He was the Kilimanjaro captain, and I was the Ruwenzori captain. Every Saturday, we did general cleaning of the dorms, and there was a competition organized by teachers to see which dorm was the tidiest. Kilimanjaro almost always won.
Being a dorm captain came with benefits. Our school had a policy of random locker searches and pat-downs by teachers. Dorm captains were exempt from this degrading ordeal. (Nothing is more uncomfortable than one’s chemistry teacher feeling his underpants while checking for contraband.) As such, many students would hide illicit goods such as marijuana, snuff, and dirty magazines in the lockers of dorm captains — for a small fee, of course. Dorm captains were also entrusted with making duty rosters, and some wealthier students bribed us handsomely to be exempted from chores such as scrubbing the dorm floors. Kamara was the only upright dorm captain who did not allow such bribes.
Kamara and I attended the same college and shared a room. Seeing that he had no interest in wooing women, I finally realized that my best friend suffered from what was called the “white man’s disease.” I went out one evening to a party and came back with two tipsy, attractive ladies, one for me and one for him. Kamara broke down in tears, and I had to kick the girls out. He finally shared with me his long-standing secret.
“Why on earth would you choose to be gay?” I asked.
Kamara stared daggers at me. “Tell me, why would anyone choose to be gay? Being gay in Africa is like living with leprosy,” he continued. “Why would I wish that on myself?”
“I just don’t get it,” I said. “We were brought up in the same village and attended the same schools. Where did you lose a step?”
“I didn’t lose a step anywhere. I have always been this way,” Kamara said. “Think about it. Who would choose to be a homosexual and go through all the hatred, danger, and ridicule that come with this label?”
Seeing that Kamara was making sense, and remembering all of the distinctive mannerisms he had shown since childhood, I did my research in the coming weeks and came to realize what a fool I had been. I apologized to him profusely.
I read how doctors in the past had subjected gay people to practices intended to cure them. In South Africa, during the 1970s and 1980s, gay and lesbian people were subjected to sex-change operations, chemical castration, and electrotherapy delivering shocks so severe that “[subjects’] shoes flew off.” These individuals were left mutilated but still gay.
After college, Kamara and I were scattered by the wind in pursuit of earning a living, but we spoke regularly over the telephone. In his mid-twenties, Kamara’s parents began pressuring him to settle down. “This Christmas, do not come home without a lady in your arms,” his mother would say, “and if her belly is protruding, all the better.”
I would visit the village from time to time, and I happened to bump into Kamara’s mother. She would whisper into my ear, “You have been friends with my son since childhood. You know how shy he is in the presence of ladies. Why don’t you introduce him to some of your lady friends, my child?”
“I will, mother,” I would lie. I knew she would cry out that demons had possessed her son if I revealed the truth to her. I tried dropping clever quotations if the subject ever came up in general, suggesting that homosexuality is not as simple as she assumed. But, generally, I held my tongue in her presence. It was not my place to shove Kamara out of the closet.
A week before Christmas 2021, Kamara’s boss got wind of his sexual orientation and fired him. Kamara went home without a woman in his arms. Everyone was disappointed but not as much as when he told them it was because he was gay and was tired of living a lie. He said he hoped they would accept him as he was. His father shouted that it would have been better had his mother given birth to a frog than to a son like him who brought such shame to the family. “Get out and never come back,” his father screamed. “The day you hear me call you my son again, take my name and give it to a dog.”
Kamara hanged himself that New Year’s Eve in a motel room in another part of the country. On that day, Africa lost a gifted young man. He would have made a fine leader—something greatly needed on our continent. But the sin of hateful ignorance has robbed us of his talents and presence.
My hope is that African nations begin to shed their draconian treatment of gay people. While progress is being made in certain nations, homosexuality is still legally punishable by death in countries such as Mauritania, parts of Nigeria, and areas of Somalia controlled by Islamist groups. (In a number of other countries, homosexuality can be punished by life imprisonment.) Regardless of the particular individual laws on the books across Africa, the widespread shame and ostracism wielded against gays has meant that Kamara’s fate is not unique.
Homosexuals are like poetry. They are hated simply because they are not understood. Homophobic sentiment is widespread in the continent. Social discrimination, widespread violence and “corrective” rapes and murders have been documented and are widely known. This forces many LGBTQ+ individuals to live in hiding, further challenging their mental health.
We must earnestly treat each other as human beings rather than allow hatred to give way to the worst of our nature. To fail to do so will result in so much more suffering for people like my dear friend.
Contact the author at @NjorogeWambugu