Africa and the Politics of Gay Rights

Ordinarily, an American Supreme Court ruling should not be a statute of universal application. But to believe that what happens in America is not the business of anyone outside its borders is to fail a major reality test. Most of us would be reading this from our hand-held device transmitted via the Internet. Even villages […]

Ordinarily, an American Supreme Court ruling should not be a statute of universal application. But to believe that what happens in America is not the business of anyone outside its borders is to fail a major reality test. Most of us would be reading this from our hand-held device transmitted via the Internet. Even villages are connected to mobile phones; most children have Facebook accounts or Twitter handle and therefore can have their personal information harvested by Google’s ubiquitous search engine. This is why we laughed at Bongos Ikwue’s lyrics – that there are neither virgins in maternity wards nor sunrises from the west.
Every person who lives on planet earth is susceptible to the influence of Western civilization. This is why responsible parents battle to keep their children on the straight and narrow; the children want Mohawk haircuts; hooded shirts under 40 degree heat, sagging of trousers and of course ability to own and use firearms- the hallmarks of American pop culture. When you are that powerful, you can influence anything.
So, when David Cameron announced at a Commonwealth Conference a few years ago that aid to developing countries would thenceforth be contingent on their government’s recognition of same sex relationships, he was not starting a debate with the third world; he was announcing a new world order. The sit-tight rulers who attended the meeting and kicked against the order were merely throwing infantile temper tantrums. Uncle Bob of Zimbabwe and his brother in life presidency, Gambia’s Yahya Jammeh have both lost the moral right to speak for Africa. Morality is like equity; those who come to it must have their hands sanitized. When our own clueless Jones returned and expedited work on the same sex marriage bill, his proposed trip to Canada, a country that recognizes same sex unions and openly elects gay people into office was cancelled. If Africa was to ever stand up against anything, it must first clear its own home of the cancers that impedes its development. Beggars cannot be choosers and the black continent is a continent of mendicants.
The black race should be the last place for discrimination of any kind. Even a century after the abolition of slavery, the black race continues to groan under the weight of prejudice. Every day, black people are discriminated against, sometimes subtly and at other times openly. It is not a coincidence that Barack Obama croaked Amazing Grace at Charleston but commended the Supreme Court decision on gay rights just moments later.
The African is too prudish to talk about sex. With a non-codified regime of oral dos and don’ts, African traditions are still largely at variance to global ones. Lack of rainfall may be attributed to the anger of the gods and public lynching is still preferable to long trials and other legal niceties.
It was therefore no surprise to hear that Mozambique has fallen in line on gay laws even though the science that supports gay rights is relatively new. A continent that cannot feed its citizens has little money for scientific research. If it does, it would prevent malaria deaths without western influence, feed its populace, grow its own cotton and weave its own cloths. Africa is a dependent colony. It may whine like a child denied ice cream, but it cannot enforce its will on its benefactors.
Truth is science is a mercurial art. It once concluded that the black race is incapable of reasoning. It once endorsed cigarette smoking in adverts before losing 500,000 people in America alone to the scourge and millions to tobacco related ailments, Africans are still smoking like fashion. Marijuana was once a criminalized business; today it is a megabucks business in the developed world but remains illegal all over Africa. Should there be a review of the science supporting openly gay relationships in a decade or two, Africa would remain the last to carry its socio-economic impact while the West would have the capacity to reverse the trend. The coming months would see other African nations falling in line as they are brought to their knees because the West always gets what the West wants from Africa.