The common belief among Africans is that homosexuality is primarily a story of seduction by Europeans and/or Americans, in which the Africans acquiesced out of fear or from a desire for money. But we know that this is a lie, and this is an attempt to shed some light on the true history, that which our colonial masters had ensured was kept hidden from us.
In the black/white relationships that did develop into homosexual unions, the white partner appears to have been the aggressor and there is no doubt the abuse of African people by Europeans has included sexual abuse. What is untrue, the lie, is that such abuse was the origin of African homosexuality.
There are two false assumptions in anthropology. The first false assumption is that savage or primitive people know nothing about homosexuality; the second false assumption is that Africans were savage or primitive people. Where there was clear and indisputable evidence of African homosexuality, anthropologists had to invent excuses in order to save these false assumptions, and that is what they did.
The first excuse was that Africans learned homosexuality from the Arabs. Then the excuse was that Africans learned homosexuality by hustling Europeans. Anthropologists said homosexuality was only a corruption practiced by the overly rich chiefs. Then they said that poor people practiced homosexuality because the overly rich chiefs had monopolised all of the women in harems. They said it was only youthful high spirits: the African was not really homosexual; he was just real drunk last night! Every excuse you are likely to hear from a deep closet case was used by Euro-American academics in the attempt to explain away the facts.
But the facts were these: that homosexuality was found in almost every major African ethnic group that we know of, through all of the history we know of. Few of the societies of Africa could be called savage or primitive, but all over the world, those people who might fairly be called savage or primitive are perfectly familiar with homosexuality. Homosexuality is not the white man's way. It is the way of gay people of all races and nations, of all places and times.
African Homosexuality
One common mistake made is that of confusing the popularity of homosexual activity with what gay people are doing and how they are treated. In Azandeland, (in modern day Southern Sudan, Congo and the Central African Republic), most men, or at least very many men, had homosexual affairs. Although most men were still expected to marry women, father children, and so forth, the Azande knew very well that some men preferred to have sex with other men. And although every man was expected to marry a women, Azande customs provided a man with an excuse to have sex with another man whenever he wanted, throughout life. Marriage between warriors and recruits was only a part of the Azande accommodation to male homosexuality.
The Azande were not a liberal people, they were the rare example of a society that punished female homosexuality while imposing no penalty on males. Because it was thought fatal to any man who witnessed it, female homosexuality could, in theory, entail the death penalty. But in fact female homosexuality was common, and the public knew about it. In an Azande folktale two women conspire to fool a husband in order to get together. The most common sexual activity between men was intercourse between the thighs. This sort of adaptation is common in cultures where homosexual affairs become fashionable among non-gay men. We do not know what the gay, or preferentially homosexual Azande did. We only know the Azande knew there were such men.
In societies where homosexuality becomes popular across the board, it is usual to find that older men choose unmarried young men and that the older men assume the role of top in these relationships. So it is perhaps instructive to look at two groups in Africa that went counter to that tendency. A good example of an African people with a tradition of male homosexuality between lovers of the same age was the Nyakyusa who lived north of Lake Malawi (aka Lake Nyasa).
However important the family was in Africa, you cannot form strong states and vast empires such as Africa had, on the basis of family alone. Intermarriage helps some. But to build a strong state you must have forces that run across family lines, that hold the various families together, and that keep feuds and rivalries from tearing society apart. Various African societies have used various institutions to paste society together. There might be secret societies, like fraternities and sororities, especially in West Africa. There might be trade organisations or craft guilds. There may be dance associations or religious institutions. Very commonly, people are organised in age groups.
The Nyakyusa of what is now southwestern Tanzania and northern Zambia carried organisation by age group to the extreme. They organised their villages by age group. One of the first things young Nyakyusa boys did, to show they were becoming responsible, was to herd cattle. Generally a boy and his best friend would herd their families' cattle together. Pasturing the cattle gave the boys plenty of time to play around. And, of course, what they did was to have sex. They danced together, engaged in mutual masturbation, anal sex, and intercourse between the thighs.
Oral sex, whether heterosexual or homosexual, was not very popular in traditional African societies. Most of them thought it was very bad. Oral sex or rape were considered serious crimes which might entail a cattle fine. All of the other things the boys did might get them a tongue lashing or a minor whipping if they were caught by the adults. But everyone knew what was going on and no serious attempt was made to stop the boys. At a fairly young age Nyakyusa boys had to move out of their fathers' homes. At first they were likely to sleep with other boys in abandoned huts or other bachelors' quarters in their fathers' villages. Boys slept together, and naturally had sex with each other at night. So long as force was not used, no crime was reckoned to have occurred when the boys had sex. For the boys, homosexuality was considered a perfectly normal, if not completely desirable, sexual outlet that required no explanation, supernatural or otherwise.
Eventually boys of the same age, perhaps from several parent villages, got together and began to form a village of their own. At first this was a boys' village. The girls remained in the parent villages until the boys reached a marriageable age. In a sense, Nyakyusa villages have a life cycle from boyhood through manhood to old age. A village is child to some other villages, parent to some villages, and brother to yet others.
In Africa you are a child until you become a boy. You remain a boy until you of an age to have a house, a female wife, and children of your own. Nyakyusa began having homosexual relations at 10 to 14 years of age. They seldom married before they were 25. So for ten to fifteen years of the most sexually active part of life, Nyakyusa men practiced homosexuality. Once they got married to women, and virtually all of them did, Nyakyusa men were supposed to stop having homosexual relations. Nonetheless, a few cases of relations between men and boys came to light. This was punishable by a cattle fine. It is said, however, that the men were not afraid of the fine, but of the shame of being caught in activity associated with witchcraft. In any event, Nyakyusa men did not believe it sacrificed their masculinity to perform anal sex in either position. They did not believe they were castrated in the middle of their burning skulls just because they had sex with their friends. Certainly the Nyakyusa public thought it peculiar if a man with a wife at home preferred to have sex with a man or boy, but that only raised questions of witchcraft, not questions of manhood.
A very exceptional case was provided by the Nkund¢, a Mongo people of what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo. Their tradition of homosexuality among men included the requirement that the younger men assume the top position. That tradition had died out by the time it was reported, but had been replaced by several others. One replacement was a game called yembankongo wherein younger boys pretend to be monkeys. Another replacement was the game of "playing parents," which is very commonly reported. Among the youngest children the game is merely imitative of adult sexual positions, but as the young people mature the game becomes perfectly conscious sex. And in the game not much attention is paid to whether the partners are of the same or opposite sexes. Among the older boys, when they lay together, one would say to the other, "This is what I do to your sister." The missionary who made this report then suggests that the boys are not really doing anything homosexual because they say that stuff about each other's sisters.
Female homosexuality was well known and was called ya¡kyabons ngo which can be translated very roughly as "bumping pussies." The missionary writes, "Homosexuality has been known among the Nkund¢ since time immemorial, among men as well as women." But then he tries to explain it away, saying it is difficult for the young people to get married (Hulstaert). This kind of doublethink is found over and over in the literature whether the writers are missionaries, colonialists, historians, or anthropologists.
A tradition is something that the average person in society knows about and reports. Since the average person in any society is non-gay, traditions of homosexuality are filtered through non-gay perceptions. Then when the traditions are reported, they are filtered again through the prejudices of the anthropologist or the colonial civil servant or whoever. Finally, before the report is printed, it often is edited or censored. Sometimes we end up with a few sentences in bad Latin, if we are lucky. Often we find only a reference to "unspeakable acts" or "reprehensible scenes." We have a good idea what is meant, but the details are lost. Then we may find a later report that is more candid. We just have to suppose that the later report explains what the "unspeakable acts" were.
Here, however, is an example in which the earlier investigator gave the better account. The Fang live in the forest on the border between Gabon and Cameroon. The Fang were so called Bantus who replaced the original Pygmy inhabitants of this area three or four hundred years ago. One writer (Trezenem) reported: "Neither homosexuality or bestiality have ever been recorded, to our knowledge, among the Fang." That writer did his fieldwork around 1935. Writers who treat homosexuality and bestiality in the same sentence do not merit our trust. The Fang deserve a closer look. Sure enough, a writer who did his fieldwork around 1905 recorded traditions of homosexuality among the Fang. First Gunther Tessmann gives the usual reports of younger people playing parents. He reports a game played by older boys among the neighbouring Pangwe: one boy plays the wife of another and presents the play-husband with a mud pie. If the husband accepts, he pretends to eat the mud pie. They do not, however, pretend to have sex, but have sex in fact.
Adult Fang excuse this sort of thing by saying the children do not know what they are doing and that children have no sense of shame. Adult Fang imply that such things never happen between adults. Tessmann then writes: We have spoken of homosexual relations among 'children.' In adults such conduct is regarded as something immoral and unnatural, simply as unheard of. In reality, however, it is frequently 'heard of' that young people carry on homosexual relations with each other and even of older people who take boys, who, as is well known, 'have neither understanding nor shame'. And they readily console them by saying: [we are playing a game]. The children are excused with the well-known assertion, which in its deeper sense can rarely be defended: [they don't know what they are doing]. Adults are excused with the corresponding assertions: [he has the heart of boys], which is, of course, by no means flattering to them.
Publicly, of course, homosexuals are treated with the greatest contempt, and they were therefore forced, as a matter of course, to cast about for a protective covering to shield themselves from the attacks of those who are different, just as a porcupine is protected by its covering of quills, a covering on which the attackers would cut their mouths and their caustic tongues. Such a covering was supplied by medicine, it was said that homosexuality is 'wealth medicine.'
Well, do you think that homosexuality among the Fang had completely disappeared by the Thirties, so that the writer who denied it was being completely honest? Or do you think it more likely that he was not sufficiently interested to ask the right questions of the right people. Certainly he made no great effort to survey the literature on the point. Clearly the Fang are as capable of being hypocritical as anyone. Perhaps by the Thirties they had learned to be more careful about what they said to Europeans. The Fang were not proud of their traditions of homosexuality. Adult male homosexuality was not generally accepted by the Fang. Fang homosexuals had to have a cover story. They told the other Fang: we are not really homosexual; we are just making money. Perhaps the Fang, as much as any of us, realised it was just an excuse, but at least it was an acceptable excuse.
This is an example of a homosexual tradition and also an example of a tradition that not everyone in society thinks well of. According to Fang belief, the bottom man has the wealth medicine and the top man acquires it. Tessmann writes: "In actual fact it might turn out the effect of the medicine consists in the mutual support the 'friends' render each other, based chiefly on the consciousness of common guilt and the endeavour not to let this guilt be known." The wealth medicine is called bian nkuma which is generally used as an euphemism for anal sex between men. There is also a down side to this. Fang think homosexuality causes diseases such as leprosy and yaws.
The Fang are great story tellers and you are likely to find some of their stories in any anthology of African folktales. One of the stories involves four suitors who arrive at Bongo's house to court his beautiful daughter. The suitors were Schok I, Schok II, Schok III, and Schok IV. The daughter liked Schok IV. The mother liked Schok III. The brother liked Schok II. Bongo, the father, liked Schok I. Night fell and when they laid down, Schok IV laid with the daughter, Schok III laid with the mother, Schok II laid with the brother, and Schok I laid with Bongo. Schok IV tried to get romantic with the daughter, but since they were all in the same hut, the others made remarks to discourage him. Instead, he and the daughter planned to run away together, and the next day that is what they did. When it became apparent what had happened, Schok III flew into a rage, killed the mother, and fled. But Schok II decided to stay with the brother and be the brother's lover. Bongo wanted to make it up to Schok I, so he offered Schok I money and a wife. But Schok I refused, saying: "No, I don't want it. Rather, let it be that we shall always be together; when you urinate I shall urinate; when you defecate, I shall defecate; when you sleep, I shall also sleep with you in the same bed."
Those Fang! Such romantics! Anyway, that is the Fang pledge of eternal love. So Schok I stayed with Bongo and was his lover. They became quite rich. But this is, after all, a Fang story, and the Fang do not approve of homosexuality, so eventually one of the lovers died of leprosy and the other died of yaws, while the Schok who had murdered the mother got away scot-free. In stories, disease awaits all those whom the Fang consider to be sexual deviants, such as anyone who has sex in the daytime. (To be continued)
References will be provided at the end
