Being LGBTQ+ in South Africa and Senegal: one continent, worlds apart
A week ago, the sentencing of two transgender women in Cameroon to five years in prison for "attempted homosexuality" highlighted the ongoing difficulties sexual minorities and transgender people face on the African continent. RFI spoke to two young people in Senegal and South Africa about their very different experiences.
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Habibou, a 25-year old student in Dakar, does everything possible to protect himself from the prevailing homophobia, and tries to hide his identity as a “goorjigeen" ("boy-girl" in Wolof).
"The mere fact that the word exists shows that homosexuality is part of our culture,” he told RFI’s Sabine Cessou. “People often forget, but it used to be tolerated in our traditional society, before the imams got this sort of fixed idea in their heads in the 1990s, targeting only gays and not lesbians."
Habibou resents the fact he can’t wear the clothes he likes, be the person he wants to be. "I avoid bright colours and floral patterns, I wear jeans and plain shirts,” he said. “I'm on my guard all the time so I don't look effeminate."
The threat of prison
His mother guessed he was gay, but they avoid talking about it and “she hasn’t told anyone in the family”.
As the eldest child, Habibou is supposed to set an example and this puts him under even more pressure. He meets his friends in secret places. “It’s risky. If I’m found out and someone denounces me, I risk going to prison.”
Article 319 of the Senegalese Penal Code clearly states: "Anyone who commits an indecent or unnatural act with an individual of his or her own sex will be punished with a prison sentence of one to five years and a fine."
When, in 2013, President Macky Sall said Senegal was “not ready to decriminalise homosexuality” and that “society needs to absorb, take the time to deal with these issues without pressure," Sall received plenty of public support.
For Habibou, the message is clear. "Things will never change. There is no way I am going to marry a woman, as some people do. Conforming to the point of pretending to be straight doesn't make anyone happy. If I want to live in peace, I will have to leave.”
Lessons of apartheid
10,000 kms south, in Cape Town, 32-year-old Khetiwe doesn’t need to hide. She works in an advertising agency and is married to her Xhosa partner. They have their own house in the bohemian district of Woodstock, and are thinking of starting a family.
Khetiwe says she is "happy" to be living in the only country in Africa where same-sex marriage is legal and LGBT rights are part of the constitution.
"I told my parents I was a lesbian when I was 14. It went well,” she told Sabine Cessou. “My father supported me. He explained that he hadn’t fought apartheid all his life to then see his children's freedoms trampled on.”
She encountered more resistance from her older brother who was “under pressure from his macho group of friends”. It took years, Khetiwe says, before he accepted that "his honour was not in question, but my happiness".
Lesbian trailblazers
She talks about the "corrective" rapes and murders of lesbians, who are more specifically singled out in the townships than gays.
She evokes "the atrocious murder of Eudy Simelane in 2008 in Kwa-Thema, a township in Johannesburg". A member of the Banyana Banyana national women’s football team and also a lesbian activist, Simelane was raped and stabbed in the face by four men, two of whom were later sentenced to 32 and 35 years in prison.
The press is drawn to such horrific stories, Khetiwe explains, but it should also focus elsewhere.
“The newspapers don't see that our society also produces stars like Zanele Muholi, a lesbian photographer who shows her work all over the world and deals with these issues in her art. Mamela Nyamza, a dancer and choreographer, is also doing this in an open way. And before her, Brenda Fassie, a very popular black singer, came out of the closet with panache in the 1980s."
Like all women in South Africa, Khetiwe is not exempt from the risk of being raped. But in her everyday life, whether at work, in the gym and outside, she says she is "accepted and respected".
Growth in LGBTIQ media
That sentiment of being accepted and respected as an LGBTIQ person in South Africa is helped by its vibrant media culture.
The country's gay radio station, Gay SA Radio, is reportedly the only one on the continent. With its slogan “where you are family” it tries to counter homophobia and break down stereotypes with frank discussions on a range of issues, including gay sex. With a young listenership of mainly 18 to 35 year-olds, its founder Livio Del Gallo says it’s become indispensable.
"If there is a person that’s coming out of the closet, accepting themselves, they don’t know where to go, what to do, who to speak to,” he told RFI’s Romain Chanson. “We have a voice.”
Meanwhile the news and lifestyle website MambaOnline, founded around 20 years ago by Luiz De Barros, likes to find role models within the gay community: “LGBTIQ people who are making a difference, who are artists, who are successful in their businesses,” de Barros told Chanson. “People who are visible and making an impact on our country, because I think it’s so important to have role models for LGBTIQ youth.”
LGBTIQ media is controlled and consumed largely by white men. But last year the monthly publication Exit was taken over by two South Africans of colour: Petros Abraham and Gontse Seakamela. Abraham said he wants the paper to speak to everyone.
"Our content is going to be representative of Africa. We tell authentic African stories. We go to villages, to townships. And also our target market is young people.”
They have big ambitions, but like all LGBTIQ media, the difficulties in attracting advertisers threaten its very survival.
Based on reports by RFI's Sabine Cessou and Romain Chanson
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