Was Homosexuality Accepted In Pre-Colonial Africa?
WE RARELY HEAR GOOD NEWS FOR GAYS COMING OUT OF AFRICA, BUT WAS IT ANY BETTER BEFORE EUROPEANS ARRIVED? WE ASKED SOUTH AFRICAN MP ZAKHELE MBHELE TO BREAK IT DOWN.
“I wouldn’t say homosexuality was accepted but it was known and accommodated to varying degrees and in various ways. From my reading of research studies, pre-colonial African societies were patriarchal and hetero-normative and operated on the basis of gender roles, as have most other societies around the world. However, there were gaps and exceptions where sexualities and identities that did not conform were allowed to exist.” "Same-sex intimacy among adolescents was tolerated as it was considered part of pubescent-stage sexual experimentation. However, as soon as one had gone through initiation rituals and formally became a man or woman, one was expected to stop such behaviour and fulfil the expectations of your gender: essentially to get married and have children.” " Among traditional healers, you might call samesex marriage did occur but it wasn’t as straightforward as it sounds. According to traditional African spirituality, becoming a sangoma or traditional healer is not something you choose. Rather, it is a calling or vocation in which you are possessed by one of your ancestors who gives you mystic powers of discernment that you use for divining. Usually, a man would be possessed by a male ancestral spirit and a woman by a female ancestral spirit but sometimes a man would be possessed by a female ancestral spirit and vice-versa. Occasionally, it is said, an ancestral spirit would compel the sangoma to take a spouse on its behalf. Because it would be a female ancestral spirit, it would want to have a husband but because the sangoma is a man, it would, in appearance if not in effect, be a man marrying another man. Similarly with a female sangoma who is possessed by a male ancestral spirit marrying another woman. Because the marriage was considered to be between an ancestral spirit and an opposite-sex spouse, it would be accommodated and tolerated as still conforming to patriarchal hetero-normative gender prescriptions.” " There are documented where homosexuality was accommodated if the individual concerned “became” a member of the opposite sex. For example, if an effeminate gay man dressed as a woman, performed women’s tasks and for all intents and purposes behaved and functioned as a woman in society, he was considered a woman and accommodated as such.” " Overall, though, was frowned upon in most African cultures. In some societies, people caught having same-sex relations were subject to minor sanctions such as a fine of livestock. The nature of the sanction shows that it was considered a minor infraction unlike the traditional JudeoChristian Levitican code which considers it an ‘abomination’ worthy of the death penalty. It’s also likely that such sanctions were at least partly about punishing behaviour that was meant to have been left behind in one’s childhood, and also about punishing adultery, if one of the ‘offenders’ was married. I have no doubt though that most gay men in pre-colonial African society lived in the closet and chose lives of gender conformity as prescribed by cultural codes of patriarchy and hetero-normativity, as still happens today.”