How ‘African culture’ became a tool for keeping the natives in their place

“African culture” is an imposition created to define and therefore dehumanise and enslave the continent, to deny its inhabitants their history and their agency. Illustration/John Nyagah 

By Patrick Gathara

In Summary

• Rhetoric of a culture clash masks an effort to own and define what it means to be an African. It posits the existence of a common African culture, a mystical commonality that supposedly underlies the traditions and practices of the thousands of communities on the continent.

In his famous 1996 speech delivered on the occasion of the passing of the new Constitution of South Africa in Cape Town, Thabo Mbeki, then the country’s vice-president, declared: “I know that none dare challenge me when I say: I am an African!”

If some on the continent had their way, however, then it appears that someone could in fact take him up on that.

The week before last, Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan signed into law a bill that outlawed gay marriage, public displays of same-sex relationships, and belonging to gay groups.

In doing so, he joined a wave of officially sanctioned homophobia that is sweeping the continent. From Angola to Zimbabwe to Uganda, persecution of gays is on the rise fuelled by fundamentalist preachers, intolerant governments and homophobic politicians.

The war on gay rights is waged on the battleground of culture and identity. Its most committed troops regularly declare that theirs is a fight to defend African values from the encroachment of Western attitudes.

“It is un-African because it is inconsistent with African values,” declared Ugandan MP David Bahati, who in 2009 introduced legislation to make homosexuality a capital crime.

As reported in the Washington Post, Nsaba Butoro, the country’s Minister for Ethics and Integrity, said: “You are talking about a clash of cultures. The question is: Which culture is superior, the African one or the Western one?”

But the rhetoric of a culture clash masks an effort to own and define what it means to be an African. It posits the existence of a common African culture, a mystical commonality that supposedly underlies the traditions and practices of the thousands of communities on the continent.

This is, of course, fiction. The African culture that is supposedly being defended is itself little more than a figment of the Victorian imagination.

The idea of descent from childishly simple and primitive people, unsoiled by the complexities of modernity and living in harmony with nature in an Eden-like paradise, a by-one society of wizened old sages men sitting under trees spewing maxims surrounded by overly-sexualised women shaking their well-endowed butts — this is not the creation of the people who inhabit the continent.

In fact, the notions of common ancestry and common fates were forged far away from the continent’s shores, in the capitals and classrooms of Europe and America.

This invention has been employed by colonial and post-colonial tyrants across the continent to insist that their subjects are uninterested in concepts of knowledge, truth, justice and human rights, that they need to be protected from the horrors of the female brain and body, and the decadence of love, romance, sex, joy, imagination and fun.

After all, the African was created to work, to obey, to conform, to donate his labour and resources for the benefit of his betters.

“African culture” is an imposition created to define and therefore dehumanise and enslave the continent, to deny its inhabitants their history and their agency. Thus the historical fact that homosexuality was practised and tolerated in many traditional African societies is wished away.

Particularly revealing in this regard is the practice of justifying strictures against gays by appeals, not to traditional religion or practice, but to Christianity and Islam and the invented “cultures” of artificial nation-states.