Perspectives on LGBT Rights in Africa: Mike Bosia Comments on Lilly Phiri’s Article

We continue a series of four pieces addressing LGBTI nomenclature, issues, and politics in Africa. The four authors whose short pieces we feature provide much food for thought, on the mythological constructions of history, religion, and culture, the abuse of power by national and international actors, and the pros and cons of communal identities and notions of “rights.” We look forward to our readers’ comments on this important series.

Today:

by Michael Bosia, “Mike Bosia Comments on Lilly Phiri’s Article

Lily Phiri’s response to Ebenezer Obadare’s commentary on homophobia in Nigeria poses a significant question to the global movement for sexual minority rights.  While Obadare contests the constitution of a homophobia largely reactive to social transformation in the West – and not to domestic claims for LGBT rights – Phiri turns to our very notion of rights and the ties that bind communities together.  While both are asking how we establish space for LGBTI Africans to “flourish,” Phiri questions whether or not a human rights approach is applicable in the African context.  Hers is an argument deployed by human rights advocates and opponents.  But the South Africa from which Phiri writes offers evidence of the dilemma she poses.  There, a legal and discursive framework that grounds LGBTI rights within both constitutional law and national identification is itself undone by social and political leaders who promote a profoundly homophobic rhetoric –despite endorsement of LGBTI rights by leading religious officials.  Elsewhere in Africa, and truly around the world, state and legal institutions are even less authoritative, subject to corruption and cronyism or divisive partisanship, so that political institutions neither wish nor have the capability to guarantee basic human rights, let alone those rights associated with sexual autonomy.  Even a strong central state like France has its Kim Davis in the form of a deputy mayor who refused to authorize marriages between lesbian or gay couples.  Moreover, the disturbingly uneven application of aid conditionality by Americans and Europeans has been met with deep concern from LGBTI activists in Uganda and elsewhere, and Western rhetoric on human rights in Africa has emboldened leaders to oppose “Western rights” as “gay rights” – an error Phiri does not address.  But the result is that we should all, like Phiri, be searching for new solutions that empower sexual minorities to structure their lives and their politics with the resources and communities of support they require.

Michael J. Bosia is an associate professor of political science at St. Michael’s College in Colchester, Vermont. Co-editor of Global Homophobia: States, Movements, and the Politics of Oppression, Bosia last year conducted research on local organizing in response to state homophobia in Uganda and Egypt.

Previous:

by Ebenezer Obadare, “Ebenezer Obadare On Gay Rights, Same-Sex Marriage

by Lilly Phiri, Reflections on Ebenezer Obadare’s Insights on Gay Rights and Same-Sex Marriage

Forthcoming:

by Cilas Kemedjio, “Cilas Kemedjio on Human Rights”

%d bloggers like this: