Author, gay rights activist Binyavanga Wainaina, aged 48

One of Africa’s best-known authors and gay rights activists, Binyavanga Wainaina, has died aged 48.

The Kenyan author died on Tuesday night in Nairobi after an illness, Tom Maliti, the chairman of the Kwani Trust which Wainaina founded, told Associated Press.

Wainaina, who won the 2002 Caine Prize for African Writing, was a key figure in the artistic community who promoted local authors.

Friends and supporters in an outpouring of tributes yesterday shared his work including his biting essay How To Write About Africa.

“Always use the word ‘Africa’ or ‘Darkness’ or ‘Safari’ in your title,” it began. “Subtitles may include the words ‘Zanzibar’, ‘Masai’, ‘Zulu’, ‘Zambezi’, ‘Congo’, ‘Nile’, ‘Big’, ‘Sky’, ‘Shadow’, ‘Drum’, ‘Sun’ or ‘Bygone’.”

Wainaina also helped to create tolerance for the LGBT+ community by coming out publicly in 2014 as gay in Kenya, a country where laws still criminalise homosexual behaviour. He also revealed he was HIV-positive.

He published a painfully honest essay online to mark his 43rd birthday. He said he came out to help preserve his dignity.

“All people have dignity. There’s nobody who was born without a soul and a spirit,” he said, in an interview with Associated Press in January 2014.

“There is nobody who is a beast or an animal, right? Everyone, we, we homosexuals, are people and we need our oxygen to breathe.”

In the interview, Wainaina, who dyed his hair in rainbow colours, lashed out at laws against homosexuality in Nigeria and Uganda.

He also criticised Russian President Vladimir Putin, who promoted legislation banning “gay propaganda” aimed at youth.

“I can’t sleep at night because there are people who I may know or who I don’t even know... who may be dying or being beaten or being tortured right now in a Nigerian cell or three weeks ago in a Ugandan one,” he said.

Picture: AP. Kenyan author Binyavanga Wainaina came out publicly as gay in 2014.