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The racist politicization of Black hair in African schools - Minority Africa
Nadege Bizimungu
March 29, 2021
My love-hate relationship with my hair started when I was six years old and my mom chopped off my hair a few days before I joined grade one. I remember crying and pleading with her while equally asking why I couldn’t just go to school with my long hair.
Eventually, she explained to me that my hair was not allowed in school and that someday when I am older, I would be able to have the long hair I wanted. That never happened.
Just like most children who attended public schools in Rwanda, which is where I am from, I had to shave my hair off throughout primary and secondary school.
In a viral tweet in January this year, a young Rwandan student got a “punishment haircut” and it reminded me how this used to be a regular form of humiliation for not shaving your hair during my time in primary school.
Yet this occurrence is not peculiar to Rwanda alone and is widespread in public schools across the African continent.
Just recently, the Achimota School, one of Ghana’s most prestigious public senior high schools, refused to admit two students because of their dreadlocks and in Kenya, a schoolgirl nearly lost her education for a similar reason.
“I [was] forced to cut my hair when I was in school back home,” says William Lugolobi, a Ugandan student at Northwestern University in Qatar. “I went to a school which had Indians, Arab people and some white people, and they never had to cut their hair. It was only the Black kids…officials would come and ask you to cut your hair, and if you didn’t you cut your hair, they would slap you and beat you.
These hair policies are not a new phenomenon. Its proponents claim that they are useful to ensure “uniformity” and cleanliness alongside cutting down distractions from students.
But this rationalization dismisses the racism and anti-Blackness at the foundation of these hair policies that are created and emboldened by a belief that Blackness equates a distraction from the norm of whiteness, and that it perpetually exists as a deviator from the acceptable which is white supremacy.
In private mixed-race schools on the continent, white and mixed-race children are allowed to keep their hair, but Black kids with kinky hair have to either shave or relax their hair so that it fits in a bun.
I never questioned any of these hair-policies growing up, but it became apparent to me much later in life how these policies had made me internalize negative colonial stereotypes about Black African hair that did not exist before colonialism.
When Christian missionaries established schools in different parts of East Africa, they constructed the narrative that Black hair was  unsightly, ungodly, and untameable, and  in the predictable fashion of whiteness, equating itself to and courting proximity to “godliness.”
Restrictions and rules were put on girls who attended “godly” schools as a way of minimizing their womanhood and shrinking their sexuality. Artistic hairstyles got banned so that women don’t attract any attention.
This was done in an attempt to diminish African women’s desirability to African men,  “who were constructed as primal beasts with no sense of sexual control.”
We must be aware of the pattern here. While the world incessantly demands conformity from Black bodies and Blackness, whiteness continues to go about being catered to and showing up as it is and expecting the world to adjust.

This is a pattern consistent with colonialism, slavery, and even white saviorism today, the ability for whiteness to intrude and then demand attention and/or to be centered.
Black and African people on the other hand have had to align themselves with eurocentric standards of beauty—straight hair, lighter skin, etc.— or risk rejection or the loss of their education.
“The evidence here primarily speaks to various types of short hair, including shaving, among women as being seen as desirable in the pre-colonial period; but distinctly less so as a result of colonialism,’’ says Zachary Wright, professor of African History at Northwestern University in Qatar.
In other parts of Africa, Black girls who attended ‘Castle Schools’ had to shave their heads to be differentiated from “mulatto” or “mixed” children because white colonizers didn’t want to risk confusing their mixed children with Black kids.
“The high school I went to was white before and it was only integrated post-independence,” says Garnet Achieng, a Kenyan Student at African Leadership University.
“It was only for white girls [at first], and that’s how the pushback ponytail came about. They had white girls holding their hair in ponytails, then when the African girls came in, they didn’t change the rules so this rule ended up promoting relaxed hair afterwards.”
It has been decades since independence in many African countries, and these racist hair policies are still in place with or without the presence of white bodies.
These hair policies are often combined with other negative stereotypes prevalent in mainstream media to instill internalized hate and stigma about Black hair. I couldn’t keep  my hair growing up because of these policies, but even when I dreamed of keeping hair, I wanted it to be straight and long, like the white girls on relaxer boxes and Tv ads I saw every day.
For the past decade since the rise of the natural hair movement, there have been efforts within the global Black community to dismantle negative stereotypes about Black hair.
This movement decreased sales on perm relaxers that fell 30.8 percent between 2011 and 2016. On the continent, we have seen protests in South Africa, where high school students spoke out against the aggressive ban on Afro hair, which has led to the amendment of some hair policies.
In 2016, four Ugandan creatives initiated the Salooni project, a pop-up salon art installation that became a safe space for African women to love their natural hair.
Although these efforts are progress, there remains a long way to go to break down racist and discriminatory hair policies in African schools.
This will require both policy change from schools, and involvement of parents, according to Nakisanze Segawa, a Global Press Journal reporter based in Kampala, whose coverage of school policies that forced Black girls to keep their hair short provoked an outcry on social media and led to a policy change.
“We need legal options, which has to start with our Ministers of Education providing guidelines and policies, and that would lead school administrations to let students choose whether they want to grow their hair or not,” said Segawa.
“If these guidelines are imposed with enough authority that caters for the education system, this would put out a very strong voice.”
Features a roundup of fresh MA reports, announcements, events/workshop listings, and minority content curated from across the web.
Nadege Bizimungu is an editorial intern at Minority Africa. She is a Rwandese journalism student at Northwestern University in Qatar who is deeply passionate about writing and multimedia storytelling, particularly about issues that involve African politics, race, and women’s rights. Her work has been featured in VOA-Africa and the Daily-Q, among others. Nadege is the co-founder of the People's Colony, a pan-African news platform that prioritizes African voices on global issues.

author: Nadege Bizimungu


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The reality of women with disabilities and maternal health care - Minority Africa
Elizabeth Mang'eni
August 25, 2022
While many countries are debating abortion rights, there is another reproductive right that is being overlooked: the right to survive childbirth.  Sadly, the plight and challenges of disabled mothers are often ignored. Four months ago, I lost my friend Diana, a woman with a disability, who died during childbirth. It’s been four months since Diana never got to experience motherhood, a role she had been yearning for since she learned she was expecting. Diana’s life was cut short in her prime for something that could have been prevented and regrettably, she is not the only woman with a disability we have lost. Are women with disabilities getting critical information that helps them with the pregnancy journey?
It’s been nine years since Kenya passed the Free Maternity Service policy that eliminated maternity charges in public health facilities to make maternity services accessible and affordable to reduce maternal and pre-natal deaths among women in the country. In 2017, to achieve Kenya’s Big 4 Agenda on Universal Health Coverage, the policy was revised by the government to the “Linda Mama’’ (protect the mother) programme to expand access to private sectors and expand the benefit package. The government has made efforts toward improving the lives of women over the years.
Maternal Mortality Ratio (MMR) is high in Kenya, with 362 maternal deaths per every 100,000 live births, and a stillbirth rate of 23 deaths per 1000 live births. This was made worse with the emergence of the COVID 19 pandemic in March 2020 in Kenya. These high rates of maternal deaths are attributed to well-known and preventable causes such as women not giving birth under the care of skilled health providers. It’s even worse for women with disabilities who have to experience inaccessibility and disability discrimination in the health sector as reported by the Kenya Network of Women and Girls with Disabilities in their shadow report to the CEDAW Committee in 2017. There is no disaggregated data by type of disability at health facilities to help capture the number of women and girls with disabilities who seek various health services—hence the invisibility of women with disabilities.
Unfortunately, health systems policies and directives in Kenya exclude the realities of women and girls with disabilities. Many health policies provide for the right to health including sexual reproductive health such as the Kenyan Constitution 2010, Health Policy 2014-2030, National Reproductive Health Policy 2007, National Reproductive Health Strategy 2009-2015, and Adolescent Reproductive Health and Development Policy just to mention a few.  These policies still fail to practically address the needs and rights of women and girls with disabilities.
As a result, when the implementations of these policies are being carried out, women and girls with disabilities are left out. Women and girls with disabilities continue to suffer stigma and discrimination when they seek reproductive health services. For instance, poor access to basic healthcare amenities such as accessible delivery beds and examination couches for women with physical disabilities remains. Several hospital facilities lack health personnel who understand sign language, which limits expectant women who are deaf. Even the existence of a translator or assistant can compromise confidentiality, furthering stigmatization when the information being shared is sensitive or private.
The lack of quality healthcare services for women and girls with disabilities continues partly due to a lack of information because women with disabilities are often not included in national health campaigns seeking to educate other women on prevention and responses to health concerns. This is even worse for women with visual impairment who are unable to access information in an accessible format such as Braille. Bigotry and stereotypical practices that demean women with disabilities persist such as forced abortion and forced sterilization for fear that disabled women may give birth to disabled children like themselves. Guardians or parents are allowed to decide for a “mentally unstable person”—a term that often includes women with intellectual or psychosocial disabilities—to undergo a forced abortion.
Together we can reduce deaths such as Diana’s among women with disabilities. First, we need disability etiquette and sign language training to be incorporated into the curriculum taught in health institutions for all nurses and doctors. Secondly, the Kenyan government should involve women and girls with disabilities in the pilot project on the Universal Health Care plan. Lastly, women with disabilities should be involved in matters regarding sexual reproductive health rights concerning them because like many women, they look forward to having a child of their own without fighting for their lives. The reproductive rights of disabled women should no longer be ignored.
This article is published as part of the Op-ed Project.
Edited/Reviewed by Cassandra Roxburgh and Uzoma Ihejirika.
Features a roundup of fresh MA reports, announcements, events/workshop listings, and minority content curated from across the web.
Elizabeth Mang'eni is an advocate for women with disabilities and a Public Voices Fellow on Advancing the Rights of Women and Girls.  She is the co-founder of the You4She Initiative, founded to promote disability advocacy and menstrual hygiene education among adolescent girls in Kenya.  She holds a Master's Degree from the University of Nairobi.

source: news-minorityafrica

license: Creative Commons - Attribution - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

author: Elizabeth Mang'eni


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“I feel more comfortable”: The ride hailing service in Nigeria determined to protect women - Minority Africa
Shade Mary-Ann Olaoye
November 14, 2022
Toyin Agboola was the driver waiting for me after I ordered my ride. In a pool of over 80 women, she is one of the drivers providing commercialised transport services with HerRyde, a women-driving-women platform.
The ride-hailing app was launched in Abuja in August this year by Monsurah Oluwafuyi (CEO), Muhammad Muazu (COO) and Kamaldeen Ibrahim (CPO) to provide a safer option for women passengers and commercial drivers.
At 47 years old, Agboola has always liked driving but never thought it would be a job for her until January, when she saw a Bolt advert on Google Ads that encouraged women to take up commercial driving. As a Bolt driver, Agboola had to accept requests from both men and women. In some cases where her passengers were women, they would express their comfort with having a woman driver but where they were men, Agboola says they would sometimes express their reservation at the idea of being driven by a woman.
“I have had occasions where I would pick men and they would tell me they didn’t want to sit beside me and would prefer to sit at the back,” she says. “One said he felt like I was stressing myself driving commercially as a woman and [that] I should give him the car to drive for me; another said that he didn’t want to sit beside me because I was wearing a gown that was showing my laps.”
Men have primarily occupied the Nigerian transport sector. From cyclists, bus drivers and truck drivers to top positions in the National Union of Road Transport Workers (NURTW). This has been the norm for so long in Nigeria that being a commercial driver is now believed to be a male occupation, thus widening the gender disparity for women drivers who are now discriminated against and not patronised.
Ride-hailing giants like Bolt and Uber have had ongoing complaints lodged against them about drivers’ misconduct and lack of fundamental customer service. Although there is no published data on the issue, a quick Twitter search on Bolt will show an array of complaints ranging from theft to verbal abuse to assault and harassment, mostly by women.
Grace*, an Abuja resident, works in a restaurant where she has to close between 11:30 pm to 11:45 pm on most days. Using Bolt was her only option to find her way back home. She told me the drivers would often tell her to sit in the front or would sometimes refuse to take the trip if it wasn’t a cash payment.
On one of these “come to the front” trips, the driver kept touching her thighs while changing gears until he placed his hand on her thighs permanently. “I told him to stop and he asked: ‘Abi, you no like am?’” Grace recalls. To stop situations like this, her boyfriend started booking her rides. “Once they hear a man’s voice, they behave,” she says.
While Grace’s story resonates with many women, a less popular story is the harassment and assault of women commercial drivers by male passengers. “One time, a rider I picked up from the airport told me to park the car, so that he could come to the front seat,” says 35-year-old Chichi, who quit her 9-5 job to become a full-time commercial driver. “[When I did], he started talking and would place his hands on my lap. His excuse was: ’This is how I play.’ I dropped him off at his destination and he called me later, trying to solicit sex from me and other female drivers I might know.”
Complaints like this are recurrent, especially about Bolt but they are often met with little or no punishment for culprits.
According to Monsurah Oluwafuyi, the CEO of HerRyde, in addition to the inclusivity of women in the mobility sector, the basis of the platform is to “provide safety and comfort for women both as drivers and as riders.” As a woman who uses public transportation herself, the goal of the platform is to provide a service where women users do not have to stress when moving from one place to another; they can, instead, relish the comfort of a less invasive environment.
Hauwa Shaffi’ Nuhu, a journalist with HumAngle, shared her HerRyde experience with me. “Using HerRyde, I didn’t sit in the back; I sat in front. I felt safer, more comfortable and at ease,” she discloses. “I love to ride shotgun but unfortunately, I have to give up that little pleasure whenever it’s a male driver. The physical proximity makes me nervous.”
Since Agboola started making use of the HerRyde app as a commercial driver, she has been a bit more relaxed and comfortable. “When the news came to me about HerRyde, I loved it because I feel more comfortable carrying ladies and enjoy my ride with women.”
As HerRyde continues to penetrate the market hoping to make it safer for women, they recognize that having all-women drivers and all-women passengers does not guarantee complete safety. Because of this, they have put measures in place, including an SOS feature for both passengers and drivers, which alerts a rider’s emergency contact and HerRyde in case of an emergency.
“Unfortunately, there isn’t a way of ensuring 100% safety. For HerRyde, what we are trying to do is have a feature where passengers and drivers who sign-up can have their IDs screened,” explains Muhammed Muazu. “So if all our users and drivers are screened to some extent, the chances of violence and crimes are reduced. In cases where these things happen, we will follow up pronto by investigating the matter and reporting to the police.” He adds that “The idea is to make it as difficult as possible for anything to go wrong.”
The plan for HerRyde moving forward is to expand to other cities like Lagos, Kano and Ibadan. It also hopes to prioritise women’s empowerment by teaching women how to drive, setting up auto repair workshops and partnering with assessment management firms for women who want to drive but don’t have cars.
“The way we’re looking at it is ‘What do women need?’, ‘What are the things that can make a woman’s life a little bit easier?’, and [then we look into] how to make it accessible or cheaper,” says Kamaldeen Ibrahim.
*Grace’s name was changed to protect her identity.
Edited by Khadija Sanusi, Caleb Okereke, and Uzoma Ihejirika.
Features a roundup of fresh MA reports, announcements, events/workshop listings, and minority content curated from across the web.
Shade Mary-Ann Olaoye is a gender and queer rights reporter whose work has appeared in Sahelien, AZ magazine, The Daily Dot, Media Diversity Institute and elsewhere.

created: November 14, 2022

author: Shade Mary-Ann Olaoye


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The Struggle for Visibility: How Zimbabwean Journalists are Tackling LGBTQ+ Issues - Minority Africa
Andrew Mambondiyani
May 23, 2023
In Zimbabwe, a highly conservative country that has been under a repressive regime for years, LGBTQ+ issues have remained highly polarised – a legacy of the hard-line stance of the late Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe’s former president.
A legacy that can be summed up in “worse than pigs and dogs,” a statement he once shockingly made about homosexuals, that still lingers among many people in the country, including journalists who have conveniently skirted around LGBTQ+ issues like a plague. So when a representative of the LGBTQ+ community, Agatha Marekera, recently told a public media workshop in Zimbabwe’s eastern border city of Mutare that the gay and lesbian population in the country is far higher than many people think, some journalists were both shocked and perplexed.
“There are so many people who are members of the LGBTQ+ community, but many people in the country don’t understand LGBTQ+ issues,” Marekera revealed to incredulous gasps.
For some journalists, it was their first time sharing a conference room with individuals who openly identify as members of the LGBTQ+ community. This is because, in the past, LGBTQ+ members have largely taken the backseat for fear of backlash from both the conservative society and the government.
Marekera adds that people from the LGBTQ+ community should enjoy the same basic services and human rights enjoyed by everyone else in the country without having to exist in silence.
“The approach we [Zimbabweans] have to the LGBTO+ community may not have been appropriate, and I think we should adopt a human rights approach.” Marekera believes members of the LGBTQ+ communities are people before they become the labels people assign to them. “They also have the same rights that every other person in this country has; they must be accepted for any services in the country.”
Marekera’s view is shared by many other journalists across Zimbabwe, who are now hesitantly warming up to objectively writing about LGBTQ+ issues. Led by various nationwide engagements between members of the LGBTQ+ community and the media, the hard-line era of Mugabe towards gays and lesbians is slowly receding.
Some of these countrywide engagements are spearheaded by the Voluntary Media Council of Zimbabwe (VMCZ), a professional media self-regulatory body set up by journalists and other civil society stakeholders who subscribe to media freedom principles of accountability, independence, and ethical journalism.
Founded in 2007, VMCZ has organised various countrywide workshops on LGBTQ+ issues, which Caroline Kuhudzai, VMCZ’s senior programme officer, says have received mixed yet encouraging responses from journalists. “During the media’s public engagements with experts representing different minority groups, including the LGBTQ+ community, we observed that a great number of journalists, just like many citizens, are not really knowledgeable about the LGBTQ+ community,” she tells Minority Africa.
According to Kuhudzai, there is a lot of hearsay, misinformation, and hate speech about the LGBTQ+ community. But VMCZ’s work is helping combat these through media engagements and radio programs aimed at journalists and the public. “Following the engagements,” she says, “we have since seen through our media monitoring an increase in the number of articles being published on LGBTQ+ issues, even in mainstream media. In four months, we saw eight to ten stories published by journalists we trained.”
VMCZ has also commissioned and given grants to journalists to write in-depth investigative stories touching on sensitive minority rights, including children, women, and LGBTQ+ issues. “From our assessments, we observed that there is a lack of knowledge and understanding of this community, and this is a gap we hope to plug,” Kuhudzai says. She adds that there is a lack of incentives for journalists to invest their time and energy in learning more about this community, “also, journalists fear that they might be identified as such, thereby risking their integrity.”
This fear played out when some of the journalists approached for interviews for this story flatly refused to comment. Despite the current government not taking a hardline stance on the LGBTQ+ community, the stigma attached to that label can break the career of a journalist working in Zimbabwe.
“The law in Zimbabwe forbids homosexuality and same-sex marriage, and various government officials have denounced the LGBTQ+ community,” Kuhudzai says. “These make it difficult or confusing for journalists to report on this community, fearing to be on the wrong side of the law.” She adds that editors in Zimbabwe are also not trained or well-versed in the community and generally prefer any other story to publish than that of LGBTQ+ stories.
But VMCZ say they will continue equipping journalists and the public with knowledge and skills to better cover and help integrate minority groups into the social sphere by focusing on conflict-sensitive reporting and unravelling the ills that affect minority groups, such as homophobia, child abuse, and violence against women while giving voices to the disadvantaged groups.
“At VMCZ, it is our responsibility to ensure that journalists are ethical and professional as they do their work,” Kuhudzai says. “Therefore, we will keep capacitating the media to strengthen their watchdog role and ensure that they report on every societal group without fear or favour.”
Edited by Samuel Banjoko and Uzoma Ihejirika
Features a roundup of fresh MA reports, announcements, events/workshop listings, and minority content curated from across the web.
Andrew Mambondiyani is a journalist based in Zimbabwe with a special interest in human rights, climate change and the environment in general. His work has appeared in local and international publications.

author: Andrew Mambondiyani


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The Ugandan feminist brunch encouraging women and non binary activists to ‘rest’ - Minority Africa
minorityafrica.co
August 14, 2022
The organizers explain that rest is political for women because they have been socialized to cater to everyone’s needs and only ‘rest’ when everyone is taking care of.
Features a roundup of fresh MA reports, announcements, events/workshop listings, and minority content curated from across the web.
Editorial.


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The Ugandan TV broadcasting in sign language - Minority Africa
minorityafrica.co
June 26, 2022
SignsTV, an online TV in Uganda broadcasting entirely in sign language is improving access by deaf persons to media content in the country where they are often excluded from mainstream media programming.
Features a roundup of fresh MA reports, announcements, events/workshop listings, and minority content curated from across the web.
Editorial.


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The West terms us “Unheard” but it isn’t listening - Minority Africa
minorityafrica.co
June 5, 2020
We saw this tweet (embedded below) by Jonny Geller who is a UK based literary agent and the conversation it catalyzed. This is our stance.
Perhaps the most problematic thing about White people like Geller categorizing African and Black voices in stories, media, and even Academia as “unheard” is that it attempts to exonerate the West and White people like Geller of the role they play in “unhearing.”
It is even more problematic because it suggests that a voice is only being “heard” when it is being listened to by the West, suggests that “mainstream” equates “whiteness” and that the audience we as Africans and Black people give to our work and our stories is not and will never be enough if it is not endorsed by the “superior” stamp of whiteness, when in fact we have always been listening to each other.
In the UK, Black people make up only 2.6% of the entire publishing workforce and it is about 86% White. In the US, only 1% of the editorial workforce is Black. How can a majority White editing workforce properly and adequately edit Black voices without white-splaining our stories?
Tweets like Geller’s stem from a system that centers whiteness and makes it the norm othering all else and demanding whatever point of view that intends to matter to gravitate towards it and then be tagged “mainstream.”
There is a redundant expectation by the West for Black and African creators to strive to go “mainstream,” to labour for white approval and in the event we get it to then be tagged as “emerging,” “unheard,” when on the contrary, we’ve always existed and we’ve always crafted and we’ve always listened to each other as Caine Prize chair, Ellah Wakatama expresses in her tweet.
We are cognizant of the ways in which language can be used as a tool to oppress and exclude and terms like “mainstream” “emerging” fall right into this class.
Mainstream is where we are. It is this editorial you read, it is you creative who reads it and who will go on to create for Black people, for African people, we are your audience, we are mainstream, and we have always been listening.
Toni Morrison once said: It is inconceivable that where I already am is the mainstream…I stood at the border, stood at the edge, and claimed it as central. l claimed it as central, and let the rest of the world move over to where I was.
It becomes even more necessary for us to create our own spaces and to tell our own stories outside of the White gaze and its approval.
Should the need ever arise to describe the attitude of the West to African and Black voices, a much more accurate language would be ignored, dismissed, gaslighted, and, victim-blamed.
Not unheard, not emerging. We cannot emerge if we have always been here. You just weren’t looking.
Features a roundup of fresh MA reports, announcements, events/workshop listings, and minority content curated from across the web.
Editorial.


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The West’s De-Growth Narrative Poisons The Climate Debate Across Africa - Minority Africa
Cassandra Roxburgh
October 10, 2022
The EU and US are talking over Africa, rebuking the construction of new coal power plants in South Africa, and new oil prospecting in the Congo Basin precious peat forest. This is the West’s ‘De-growth’ narrative that it is trying to foster over Africa.
On paper there’s nothing wrong with it: anyone drilling for oil in Congo Basin’s peat forest is trying to suffocate the earth’s lungs. Also, it’s irresponsible for South Africa to prepare new coal mines when Eskom is such a large sulfur emitter by global standards.
But there’s something counter-productive in the West’s self-righteousness – talking over Africa as if we are infants, and of course the historical and present-day hypocrisy of the West’s role in perpetuating destabilizing climate change.
The West’s lecturing on climate change mitigation in Africa is being interpreted as racist overlordship in some quarters here in Africa.  “The launch of the tendering process… speaks to our desire to put our resource potential at the service of our country,” Felix Tshisekedi, the president of the Democratic Republic of Congo, vowed in July when he announced plans to license 30 oil and gas projects in the ecologically sensitive Congo Basin. Mr. Tshisekedi must probably have borrowed a leaf from Gwede Mantashe, the coal-hawk minister of South Africa, who, in 2021, on the eve of COP21, publicly mocked the EU and US and accused them of conjuring up a plot to stifle Africa’s exploitation of her fossil fuel minerals. It’s no coincidence that South Africa and the Democratic Republic of Congo are arguably two of the most richly endowed African countries in terms of natural resources.
This brings us to why the West’s discouragement of new fossil fuel projects is being seen as a neocolonial ‘de-growth’ plot across Africa. Opportunistic populists across Africa are saying that there is no justification for the West to lecture Africa on fossil fuels because stopping oil and coal is akin to stopping economic growth, access to electricity, and tax windfalls across Africa.
Pro-fossil fuels messaging like – Gwede Mantashe’s and Congo’s defiant tone on oil rigs – has huge takers across Africa because of the hypocrisy of the EU and US in trying to lecture Africa about global warming.
Africa is the least contributor to historical greenhouse gasses and there’s no statistical dispute about that. It’s incorrigibly unfair that Mozambique, one of the world’s least emitter of carbon emissions, ranks 154/181 in the ND-GAIN index measuring countries most vulnerable to climate change. The reason is, starting with the massive burning of fossil fuels to industrialize England in the 1800s, Western consumers’ voracious appetite for industrial goods is spewing toxic plumes of carbon that wreck flood and drought havoc in the ecosystems of far-off countries like Mozambique. That the West is guilty makes it unworthy to speak over Africa about fossil fuels and climate change.
Then comes the laughable but sad. To combat climate change there must be no one rule for the West and one for Africa. This summer, as a knee-jerk reaction to Russia’s cutting of heating gas, Germany, the Netherlands, and France are quickly reviving coal and nuclear plants. Far off overseas, Australia is expanding coal fields; the EU is extolling Qatar, Libya, and Algeria to export more natural gas and counter Russia’s artificially enforced market shortages. In July BP, Shell and cohort declared the most stunning oil profits in decades prompting a furious call from the UN Secretary-General that insane oil profits ought to be taxed. These are the Western nations telling Africa to cool down on oil and coal. The hypocrisy is stinking!
The West’s ‘degrowth’ climate messaging on Africa sounds like a neo-colonialist plot. It is hypocritical and risks poisoning public attitudes towards de-carbonization across Africa. Make no mistake, Africa must decarbonize and invest in renewables. Also, the windfall of new oil and coal profits in the likes of South Africa and Congo usually end up in the pockets of plutoc–rats, not citizens.
However, ‘climate criminals’ like the US and EU has zero moral authority to shout the righteous call for Africa to slow down on fossil fuels. Africans themselves should lead the initiative in line with their millennium development goals.
Edited by Cassandra Roxburgh and Uzoma Ihejirika
Features a roundup of fresh MA reports, announcements, events/workshop listings, and minority content curated from across the web.
Cassandra Roxburgh is an Associate Editor at Minority Africa. Fae is a South African journalist predominantly covering the environment, transgender liberation, and the intersection between activism and technology. Fae has written for Yes! Magazine, Mail and Guardian, and News24. Cassandra holds an LLB from the University of Stellenbosch, and is currently finishing faer LLM thesis on corporate liability for environmental harms in Africa.

created: October 10, 2022

author: Cassandra Roxburgh


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‘There is no Judgment’: A look inside Uganda’s LGBTQ+ inclusive church - Minority Africa
PK Cross
February 12, 2022
Image description: A person’s fingers locked one into another is resting on a Bible with a black cover during service at Adonai Inclusive Ministries. On one of their wrists, there is a band with the Kenyan flag. They are dressed in a patterned shirt and blue jeans with their legs crossed over each other. Beside them is another person adorned with bands on their wrist wearing a ring dressed in a black outfit with a white motif.
Kampala, Uganda (Minority Africa) — It is a quiet Sunday morning in a Kampala suburb. From a distance, the distinct voices of people singing can be heard.  As one draws closer to the origin of the song, it becomes more apparent, the emotions unmistakable, as a group of about two dozen people chorus in unison, “Let your living water flow over my soul. . .”.
At first glance, it looks like a usual church gathering. But the person seated by the entrance keeping watch and scanning the area around the hall, the suspicious gazes from the congregation whenever someone enters the room, and the rainbow-themed backdrop reveal a more profound truth.
This is no ordinary congregation. This gathering has been organized by Adonai Inclusive Christian Ministries, an LGBTQ+ affirming church in Uganda’s capital, Kampala. It is led by and welcomes gay people, a huge fraction of who struggle with reconciling their faith and sexuality.
When I arrive at the venue, I am met with skepticism.  The person at the entrance nervously looks at me as if asking, “Who are you?”
My guide, also a member of the church, quickly notices their concern for safety and steps in, introducing me as a member of a media team there to cover the day’s proceedings.
“They are with us,” she says, in this context referring to an ally, putting their mind at ease.
Realizing that this moment might play out again with the rest of the group, my guide, a woman I would later find out is called Ruby, makes a formal announcement communicating our presence. I am there with a cameraperson and Minority Africa’s Sexual Minorities editor.
There is a man who is standing in front of the congregation, decked in a grey suit and smiling. He is Pastor Kagwa Ramathan Mutyaba, the founder of Adonai Inclusive Christian Ministries, and is more commonly known as Ram Gava.
“When you get baptized, you accept Jesus as your Lord and personal savior,” 26-year-old  Gava says to the congregation during his sermon and referring to a baptism taking place later in the day.
Before starting Adonai Inclusive Christian Ministries, Gava had served in mainstream churches in various capacities; however, he always faced rejection because he was “different.”
“What the pastors were preaching about people like me was hate; ‘people like you need to be killed, people like you need to be silenced’,” says Gava, who realized he was attracted to men at the age of sixteen.
In the congregation is Gabbie, a trans woman who was raised in the church but lost interest because of hostile attitudes towards her gender identity.
“I was this girly boy. People sometimes came to my father and they would tell him, ‘We do not understand your son, why is he girly?’” Gabbie who is a youth pastor at Adonai Inclusive Christian Ministries recalls. “Some people would think I’m going to spoil them,” she adds.
Her dilemma went beyond just concealing her identity from her church. Gabbie’s father is the pastor of the church she grew up in, and in such a setting, image is very important, so much so that until this interview, Gabbie had not officially come out to her family.
“There are some things you’re not supposed to do because you’re in the closet, you don’t want to create alarms around, you don’t want to become an issue of discussion around people,” 22-year-old  Gabbie explains.
“You do things according to who you are with, you go through a situation and you cannot share with anyone,” she adds.
Despite this huddle, Gabbie always wanted to work in the church. She started actively serving in her father’s church around 2007 when she was seven until exhausted by the discrimination she experienced, she left the church in June 2021. Nearly two months later, she joined Adonai Inclusive Christian Ministries where she now serves as a choir leader and youth pastor.
“I came to this church because it is a bit far from home; it will be so hard for [my father] to find out which church I am in and what they do,” she says.
And it seems to have worked. “[Here] I am basically myself. No judgment,” Gabbie says with satisfaction present in her tone. “I have never been myself like the way I am here. Sometimes I feel like I want to crossdress and I openly come to church in my heels and my dress.”
“No one is going to judge you, actually people will be like, you are looking beautiful.”
Uganda is a largely religious nation with Roman Catholics and Anglicans accounting for  39.3% and 32% respectively of the population. Homosexuality is illegal according to the laws of the country and it is also shunned by the different religious denominations.
When the anti-gay bill proposing the death penalty for homosexual activities was first introduced in 2009, and later signed into law in 2014, it was widely supported by the Catholic and Anglican churches who hailed the country’s leadership and joined protests decrying homosexuality as abnormal.
“The battle against homosexuality is not ours, but the Lord’s,” Anglican Archbishop Stanley Ntagali said during a gathering of Christian and Muslim leaders in 2014 to thank the president for signing the anti-homosexuality bill into law.
During the event, the Mufti of Uganda, Sheikh Shaban Ramadhan Mubajje described the new law as a ‘liberation of Ugandans.’
“Not from bad regimes, but from the wrath of the Almighty God the creator,” he said.
A little over a month earlier and two days after the bill was signed, Msgr. John Baptist Kauta, the secretary-general of the Uganda Episcopal Conference which is the assembly of the Catholic Hierarchy in Uganda said in an interview with the National Catholic Reporter, “Our reaction from the church is very clear, we don’t support homosexuality.
While Kauta said the country’s bishops had been against the harsh penalties involved for homosexual acts, he however added that they “believe (homosexuals) can change.”
“Too often the homophobia that we see in churches is based on religious dogma, religious heretics, and religious homophobia,” says Reverend Jide Macaulay, an Anglican priest and the Founder of House Of Rainbow CIC, a fellowship for Black LGBTQI+ people in London.
He explains that doctrines excluding a group of people because of their sexuality stem from ignorance and lack of knowledge.
“A lot of pastors, priests, or theologians do not understand human sexuality, they need to learn about the cultural history of acceptance of human sexuality,” Reverend Macaulay says.
Having trained as a priest himself in the Church of England and ordained as a deacon in 2013, he advocates for commitment to inclusion when formulating and interpreting church doctrines as well as the need to create spaces of worship that are embracing.
“When churches say that all are welcome, they should practice that principle that all are truly welcome,” he adds.
Gava knows a disregard for this principle that Reverend Macaulay refers to firsthand.
When he was around twenty years old, a preacher in his then church delivered a sermon on homosexuality and how it displeased God.  In search of healing, Gava went to the preacher at the end of the sermon and confessed his ‘sin.’
“I started going to a prayer mountain every Friday,” he says. “The more we prayed, the more this confirmed I belonged to the other community.”
This realization nonetheless did not deter Gava from seeking further healing and guidance from the preacher, a reaction that according to Reverend Macaulay is very common among LGBTQ+ people who have to navigate unsafe spaces.
“It is not that [gay people] are in denial or that they hate themselves,” he says. “The church and society have created a hostile environment to the point that people do not understand their ability to love themselves.”
Similarly, seeing no change, Gava returned to the preacher and told him he was still feeling the same way, still ‘gay.’
“I think he was tired so he went to the pulpit and then called me, ‘Young man, come here, raise your hands, I want to pray for you,’” Gava recalls. “The spirit of God is revealing it now that you are gay, and it is not Godly,’” the preacher went on.
After the sermon, Gava remembers being judged.
“No one wanted to hear me, no one wanted me to associate with their children, their sons.” “I was seen as a spoiled tomato in the basket,” he says.
The church, an institution that he had grown up in, one that meant a lot to him, had rejected him and he felt he had no reason to live. He notes this incident as when he first began to have suicidal thoughts.
“If the church cannot deal with me, if God cannot deliver me, then I have to die,” he says, explaining his thought process at the time and narrating the different ways he came up with to end his life.
One of those ways played out in Mbiko, in Jinja, a town in Eastern Uganda and just outside of Kampala, when he wanted to throw himself in front of a speeding truck along the highway.
“I could not, I had that fear that I could not surrender life just like that,” Gava says.
In 2019, after a series of suicide attempts, Gava came out on Facebook. In a post in which he announced his engagement to his then-boyfriend and also openly replied comments saying he was gay.
Although some of the responses were negative, his confession attracted support from other people in the LGBTQ community online.
“People started coming to me and telling me their experiences,” he says. “I thought I had the most terrible, ugliest of experiences, but I heard more touching, more painful, hurting stories.”
In 2019, after a series of suicide attempts, Gava came out on Facebook. In a post in which he announced his engagement to his then-boyfriend and also openly replied comments saying he was gay.
Although some of the responses were negative, his confession attracted support from other people in the LGBTQ community online.
“People started coming to me and telling me their experiences,” he says. “I thought I had the most terrible, ugliest of experiences, but I heard more touching, more painful, hurting stories.”
It was then that Gava decided to create an impact in the LGBTQ+ community. He reached out to some of the people who had shared their experiences with him and who were homeless and struggling because of their sexual identity and orientation, offering them his home.
This home was a single room rental and Gava barely had enough to support himself. He started living with 13 people, providing food, shelter, and all other basic requirements since they were unemployed.
As things got tougher, they turned to prayer.
“We started worshiping, started streaming on Facebook, people started fellowshipping and the church began,” he says.
Today, Adonai Inclusive Christian Ministries has over 40 members who attend physical church services with many more attending virtually. The church also started Freedom House, an LGBTQ+ shelter in 2019, which has housed over 70 LGBTQ+ homeless persons since it opened its doors.
My guide Ruby is one of the 70 people who have lived in the shelter. When her family found out she was queer, she was thrown out. Now she serves as an apostle and coordinator at the church, a mandate she entirely believes in.
“When you are together in a place with people who understand you and who are just like you, there is some sense of [community], you realize you are not alone, you are never alone,” Ruby says.
On this day, she is also getting baptized. She wears a wide smile as she is dipped into the inflated pool. In October last year, Freedom House was raided by the police with several people arrested. Thankfully, no one was taken to jail.
“We cannot control how people think or perceive who we are,” Ruby says to the team later as she is being filmed for a video version of this story. “[Humans] get angry and scared of things we don’t understand.”
She adds, “For [LGBTQ+ people] who are not in safe spaces, please do not give back the anger that has been sent to you. It’s simply that people do not understand who you are.”
Yet, outside legal, cultural, and religious hurdles, Adonai Inclusive Christian Ministries has to tackle financial obstacles as well. In Uganda,  the day-to-day running of places of worship survives largely on collections of their members and so correspondingly, the larger the church, the more funds it has.
Despite these challenges, the church continues to serve different members of the LGBTQ+ community in Uganda.
Gabbie, who joined Adonai Inclusive Christian Ministries because of how far the church was from her home, has gotten much more than she expected.
“[In] this [gathering], you get confidence, your self-esteem is boosted, and you start being yourself,” she says.
While Gabbie was not out to her family at the time of our first interview, especially her father, she would tell me later that an uncle contacted her when the video version got popular online.
But she knew. She had anticipated this on the day of our first interview and told us she was simply tired of hiding.
“I am ready to face him and tell him that this is me. I didn’t learn it from anywhere, no one spoilt me. This is me,” she says about her father.
“I know it will break him down,” she adds “But for how long am I going to hide this? For how long am I going to hide my identity?”
Features a roundup of fresh MA reports, announcements, events/workshop listings, and minority content curated from across the web.
PK Cross is a journalist at large at Minority Africa.

created: February 12, 2022

author: PK Cross


text:
These Nigerian content creators want to change perceptions about albinism - Minority Africa
Edisana Stephen
June 26, 2022
A collage of two images. The first is Ayomide Matilda, a fashion content creator living with albinism. In this image from a shoot, she is dressed in black, with white sunglasses and her hair is an afro. She looks fiercely at the camera. The second image is Jessica Hyacinth, a content creator also living with albinism. She is sitting on a stool posting for the picture. Her hair is tinted blond and is a low cut. She is wearing an orange wrap blouse and what appears to be a green skirt. There is a plant behind her and just in front of the green backdrop.
Lagos, Nigeria (Minority Africa) — As a child, Jessica Hyacinth, who lives with albinism, was frequently scrutinised and dehumanised.
“I went to the market with my mum one day and children followed us singing oyibo pepper, adults were asking if I could see and arguing among themselves that I was actually a doll and not a real person,” Hyacinth recalls.
The experience, one of many others, spurred the Nigerian content creator to begin to make educational content about albinism.
“The biggest challenge is that people don’t have the right knowledge about the condition. If they all knew better, life would definitely be easier,” Hyacinth says about the necessity of her voice and platform.
She shares a story. “I was in a bus one day riding to Lekki Phase 1 and some people got off; then a person with albinism was about to enter the bus and occupy [one of] the empty seats when the driver yelled at him to get off that he doesn’t carry Afins [a Yoruba word meaning White Skin].
“I froze where I sat in the last row. I was so sad and felt guilty that I couldn’t do or say anything. So I just sat there and cried.”
Most statistics on the number of persons with albinism in Nigeria estimate it to be between two to four million and a 2014 study found that 41% of persons with albinism exhibit mental health issues related to being a person with albinism.
It is a similar situation across the continent where persons with albinism suffer from discrimination spurred by certain myths and misconceptions. There are widespread beliefs that albinism results from mystical forces, whether God, the devil or witchcraft. Some of the superstitions are benign; others have proven more dangerous.
In Tanzania, witch doctors have spread the myth that individuals with albinism and their body parts have superpowers. For example, anglers use nets woven from albino hair, believing these nets will catch more fish.
Witch doctors use body parts from persons with albinism as ingredients in potions or as a trinket for jewellery to bring good fortune and wealth to those who possess them. Victims are  kidnapped and then dismembered by hired killers or even sold by unscrupulous family members, with body parts fetching up to $75,000. These myths create a culture of violence aimed at people with albinism.
Ayomide Matilda, a fashion content creator and model living with albinism who advocates against discrimination targeted at people with albinism, finds the myths to be absurd.
“[Many people] assume things and feel that our presence would evoke strange things,” she says. “We get treated differently since people aren’t ready to change their narrative of us.”
For this reason, Matilda founded Beyond Colours, a platform wielding content creation as a tool to combat albinism discrimination.
“The media has been playing a huge role in publicity lately but I feel it is doing less of what I’d love to see,” Matilda says. “Albinism awareness is one of the major reasons I ventured into content creation and I’ll never shy away from it.”
It is the hope of creators like Matilda and Hyacinth that their content can dispel particular misconceptions. One of such is that people with albinism go blind. Hyacinth describes how strangers would ask if she could see them.
“Having random people ask me if I could see them and mockingly wave in my face as if to fact check is humiliating,” she says.
Another particularly damaging misconception is that albinism is due to a lack of sun and so persons with albinism are encouraged to work outdoors as frequently as possible, they say, further increasing their risk of skin cancer. The contrary is in actuality the case.
“As an albino model, I struggle with the timing of my outdoor shoots on certain days as I can’t be out in the sun for long periods,” says Matilda.
While content creators like Hyacinth and Matilda are working tirelessly to change the perceptions of people with albinism in Nigeria and the wider African continent, it is a task that will need broader collaboration from mainstream media.
For instance, one of Hyacinth’s biggest concerns is how people with albinism are presented in films. She explains that they are portrayed as villains in many Hollywood films and that these casting decisions negatively affect stereotypes of albinism.
What is the solution? To Hyacinth, a shift in storytelling can play an influential role in changing negative narratives.
“We want to see people with albinism cast in many different roles, not just villain roles,” she says.
Similarly, while Matilda admits some progress in media representation of albinism, she still sees room for improvement in the diversity of said representation. “There is a lot of segregation on sets between people with albinism and people without,” she says.
Nevertheless, the subject of adequate representation for people with albinism has long been contentious, even among persons living with albinism themselves. Ameen Olatunji Yusuf popularly known as “Teejay Ameen”, a Nigerian entertainment executive, thinks that positions should be given on merit.
“When I hear of representation, I’m thinking handouts. It’s disheartening that some people believe that they’re owed a chance because of their condition,” he says.
Ameen’s standpoint is that people with albinism need to use their skills and talents to create their own spaces to thrive. Yet for Hyacinth, she hopes that her presence and representation can allow future generations of persons living with albinism not to be exposed to the same discrimination she experienced as a child.
“I worked extra hard to do everything that every other child was doing because I didn’t want people to say, ‘She’s not doing it because she has albinism.’ So I felt inclined to prove that I was normal,” she says.
Ameen has a contrary experience.
“Never for once in my life have I felt different,” he says, explaining that his parents treated him like they did his siblings and he took on equal tasks as them with no special treatment.
In later years when he “discovered albinism to be a thing,” Ameen says he had already established confidence in himself so the discrimination didn’t bother him.
“Whatever people said thereon, I didn’t see it as discrimination. I’ve never seen myself as different. I’m still a black man,” says Ameen.
And feeling a difference or lack thereof for a condition should not be conflated with feeling limited by it. As Hyacinth puts it, “I always say that it’s nothing more than a lack of melanin in my eyes, skin and hair. I have big dreams and I don’t see my condition as a hindrance to them.”
‘’There’s no shame in understanding how things would work differently for me,” Ameen says about navigating living with albinism in his community. “I increase the size of text on my phone to make up for my shortsightedness. You have to learn that this is how things are and adjust accordingly.’’
Although Matilda, Hyacinth, and Ameen don’t believe they can completely change the narrative, they hope to nudge it in a better direction. For example, through her work, Matilda aspires to empower people with albinism to live their lives authentically without fear.
“My life is beyond my skin colour. I know and accept this and I’m winning everyday,” she says.
And Ameen believes, “You cannot control what people think but you can influence the narrative. Silence the noise and listen to yourself, listen to your heart and discover yourself. Discover your purpose and that’s enough motivation to keep on doing whatever you’re doing.”
Edited by Cassandra Roxburgh, Caleb Okereke, and Uzoma Ihejirika.
Features a roundup of fresh MA reports, announcements, events/workshop listings, and minority content curated from across the web.
Edisana Stephen is a Nigerian writer voicing minority issues and mental health as relating to Africans.

author: Edisana Stephen


text:
“They died for us”: The people tending to the graves of Namibia’s colonial genocide victims - Minority Africa
Bayron van Wyk
January 10, 2023
We women of Hereroland will always stand behind our warriors and urge them to fight foreign invaders, even those with cannons and machine guns.
Stop! Where are your men? Running away as fast as they can –
Yesterday’s battle was disastrous. So many women and children blown to pieces.
You cannot expect freedom of passage when you stand behind your   soldiers
And you will pay with your lives. For every dead German soldier let there be one hundred dead Hereros.
Soldier, if I should stop to call you that, your senseless shooting of our women and children with cannons and machine guns cries out for pity –
This is all out war; a war the Hereros started. In war, the innocent die with the guilty. If you stand behind your warriors and shout “Kill German soldiers”, you may expect no mercy –
This is our land – the home of our children. We are not armed, nor will we ever be. Your brutality far exceeds the demands of war. Even wild animals in a rage behave better than German soldiers. Justice will one day be done. It will see our families back in Hereroland and you will be gone-
This is an extract from Samuel Maharero, a 2001 play by Clarence Kaakunga on the colonial genocide that took place between 1904 and 1908 in Namibia. In this scene, there is a confrontation between a German colonial soldier and an Ovaherero woman, Corma. The encounter comes as Corma was fleeing with her three children, Kangoo, Kandji and Kangoo across the Omaheke Desert to Botswana to escape the onslaught of the Germans on the Ovaherero. Between 1904 and 1908, the German colonial forces in Namibia – then German South-West Africa – launched a crippling attack on the Ovaherero at Ohamakari. The Nama, who launched a guerrilla offensive against the Germans, were also similarly targeted. This resulted in a genocide that claimed the lives of more than 80% of the Ovaherero population and 50% of the Nama population. It was especially women like Corma and their children that suffered the most from Germany’s colonial genocide in Namibia. Those who were not killed were brutally raped and forced to labour for their German colonial masters in the many concentration camps that were established in southern and central Namibia. Bodies of some of the deceased were taken to Germany for scientific experiments.
Since Namibian independence in 1990, Ovaherero and Nama activists have demanded that the German government pay reparations to them. Twenty-five years later, the Namibian and German governments started negotiations over an apology and reparations for the colonial genocide. In 2021, Germany agreed in principle to apologize and pay 1.1. billion euros for “development projects” in the regions that the Ovaherero and Nama populations historically occupied. The deal was however widely criticized by some Ovaherero and Nama traditional leaders for not including them more prominently in the negotiations.
Although the two groups are unsatisfied with how they have been excluded from the negotiations, they continue to work tirelessly to honour the victims of the colonial genocide and ensure that their story is not forgotten. They have also recently been joined by several other groups comprising younger activists who are also working at illuminating the experiences of the colonial genocide in Namibia. In Swakopmund – Namibia’s coastal town known for its German colonial architecture – a group of activists established the Namibian Genocide Association (NGA) to keep the memories of the colonial genocide alive. The Otjiherero words Katuna Okuzemba Ko, which means “We will not forget” in English is the motto of the association.
“The Namibian Genocide Association mostly has young members. This is because we are not fighting for ourselves. We want the next generation to have a better future,” says Lourens Ndura, the former Secretary-General of the association. “The wounds of the genocide still live with us and [are]passed on from the previous generation. Our children need to start healing from the trauma.”
Laidlaw Peringanda is the current chairperson of the association. He is a descendant of the Ovaherero people and an activist. Since 2018, he and the members of the association have been organising annual cemetery cleanings at the cemetery in Kramersdorf – a former “whites-only” suburb – in Swakopmund. This cemetery was formerly separated into sections for whites and blacks. It is also where many of the Ovaherero and Nama victims of the colonial genocide were buried in unmarked graves.
“We started with the clean-ups at the cemetery because this cemetery contains one of the biggest mass graves from the colonial period in Namibia. We have these clean-ups regularly to preserve the graves,” Peringanda says
According to Lourens Ndura, NGA were motivated to start with the cleanings when they saw how graves belonging to the genocide victims were being neglected by the workers of the Swakopmund Municipality. “These graves have never been given attention,” he says. “The municipal workers there only take care of the graves of the whites, while forgetting about the graves of our ancestors. That is not fair. They should also be taken care of like the other graves.”
The number of people who come to the cemetery varies every year. Sometimes twenty, sometimes more or less. When they arrive at the cemetery, the participants gather at the Genocide Memorial Stone. This is a black marble stone, 2m high in size and cemented into a brick foundation at the entrance of the cemetery. It was erected in 2007 by a group of Swakopmund residents in honour of the genocide victims. On it, a brief history of the genocide is provided. Upon arrival, participants observe a moment of silence and are given a chance to read the text on the stone.
“In honour & loving memory of thousands of Ovaherero and Nama men, women and children who perished at this sacred site. They died in concentration camps of hunger, slave labour, sexual abuse, disease, fatigue & adverse weather conditions at the hands of German soldiers,” reads the beginning of the text on the stone, which then goes on to give more information on the colonial genocide.
After this, the participants are then given either a shovel, rake, or broom and in groups of at least two go about the cemetery, piling sand on some graves, re-marking some and removing overgrown weeds from others.
The participants come from different backgrounds and for different reasons.
“Honestly, I went out of pure curiosity. I wanted to know about what was going on there,” says 29-year-old Buhle Paulina Ndlovu who hails from South Africa. “When I saw the poster announcing the event, I wanted to be part of that. I wanted to know what the state of things [was] and what the purpose of the restoration of the graves was. “There was a sense of reverence. It was weird that in that cemetery with its dark history you don’t feel the weight of immediate death. Instead, what you feel is people’s intention to care. They showed that they cared about their ancestors.” Frowin Becker, a 30-year-old German Namibian, has attended all the clean-ups. Unlike Ndlovu, the cleanings go beyond curiosity for him; they are about his identity and mould his ideologies.
“They certainly helped adjust my perception of Swakopmund and its community. It’s a far more honest presentation. Most incredibly sobering,” says Becker. “I’ve appreciated being exposed to what draws different participants to this particular site. They’ve definitely encouraged me to study my own family’s and community’s history in this country. That in turn continues to inform my ideology. So, the impact has been quite substantial.”
While cleaning, it is very common for the participants to come across previously undiscovered graves and human remains.
Peringanda says that although it can be saddening and shocking to find people’s bones so easily, it is satisfying to be able to give them a proper burial and make sure their graves are marked.
“It is important to show respect to the victims,” he says. “They died for us. It was not only men but women and children who were kept in the concentration camps”
Along with cleaning the graves, the association has also managed to reduce residential development of houses near the cemetery which often led to cropping on some of the graves and stopped tourists and locals driving over the graves with their 4×4 quad bikes.
Ndura says they will do all they can to preserve the graves because not only are they part of their history, but this is the little they can do to honour their ancestors.
“We need to understand our history. It will help the younger generation to know what happened to their elders,” he says.
The association has also started fundraising to be able to improve the conditions of the graves of the genocide victims in the cemetery.
Ndura says that they will pursue justice and healing in any way they can, including cleaning up the graves of their ancestors.
“We do it to keep it as evidence. Otherwise, the wind will blow the graves away. They will disappear. We can’t let that happen. Our ancestors are buried in those graves,” he says.
Edited/Reviewed by Mamaponya Motsai, Caleb Okereke, Cassandra Roxburgh, and Uzoma Ihejirika.
Features a roundup of fresh MA reports, announcements, events/workshop listings, and minority content curated from across the web.
Bayron van Wyk is a 2022 Minority Africa fellow from Namibia. van Wyk’s life journey began in the small town of Rehoboth in southern Namibia where he was born. As a child, he struggled with his sexuality because of the stigma associated with being openly gay. It took him a long while to accept who he was and to be comfortable with his own sexuality. He is a human rights activist, writer and scholar interested in LGBTIQA+, environmental and climate change issues. Currently, van Wyk is studying in Cape Town, South Africa. His work focuses on LGBTIQA+ organizing in Namibia and through his work, he hopes to bring about more social justice for LGBTIQA+ persons living in Namibia.

created: January 10, 2023

author: Bayron van Wyk


text:
This Nigerian anthology on queer joy wants to make you “Feel Good” - Minority Africa
Job Tapera
January 24, 2024
Much has been said in criticism of the fetishisation of queer suffering. For a long time, queer characters in books, films, and art have been robbed by their writers of the fruits of human existence. From Ijeoma in Chinelo Okparanta’s Under the Udala Trees (2015) to Dumisani in Tendai Huchu’s The Hairdresser of Harare (2010), queer characters are often left to reconcile with endings that are, at best, bittersweet and, at worst, tragic. Tenderness, companionship, spirituality, sensualism, and joy seem devastatingly out of reach for many queer media characters.
Queer joy, as a movement, seeks to radically depart from the doom and gloom historically associated with queer media to tell stories that uplift and inspire. Proponents of the movement present queer characters falling in love, enjoying healthy familial relationships, and wholly accepting themselves and their identities. There are trade-offs to be made here: The excessive focus on what is cloying and sentimental in queer joy-inspired works may feel almost deceptive and far removed in time and place from the realities of being queer in Africa and anywhere in the world. Equally, queer joy-inspired works tend to centre grand, epiphanic moments of self-discovery and self-acceptance, dramatic gestures of support from family and friends, and an overall view of queer that doesn’t quite hit the mark on the accuracy scale.
In 2023, Daniel Orubo and Opemipo ‘Ope’ Aikomo, a pair of Nigerian creatives, set out to bring together writers from across Nigeria with a deceptively simple project in mind. Writing realistic stories about queer people that, above all else, simply feel good.
“There’s so much sadness in queer media,” laments Daniel, who has worked in content creation and storytelling for the past decade. “Sad stories just hit harder, to be honest,” he chuckles.
The sentiment is not uncommon. Queer suffering is serially platformed and disproportionately critically acclaimed across a range of media forms. “But there is happiness out there, and it doesn’t have to be corny. Neither does it have to lack artistic integrity just because it focuses on joy and human happiness.”
For Ope, the project was among many projects produced by a studio he runs. The studio explores new projects that create and centre a community of practice for which there is a tangible output – a book, a film, etc. Ope calls these Feel-Good Projects, and, in his words, “the beauty of Feel-Good Projects is their infinite potential.”
The result was a refreshing re-interrogation in eight short stories of the many faces of queer joy in Nigeria. From starstruck lovers reuniting at a book festival in Lagos to a hookup that gradually turns into something more passionate and intimate, A Feel-Good Book is a breathtaking celebration of the joy all around that will leave you feeling inspired and enthralled.
The path to A Feel-Good Book was narrow and winding. The initial proposal had a long list of potential writers, representing different stylistic schools of thought but united by a desire to capture the essence of queer joy. Over time, however, reality quickly set in. “Some writers dropped out because of the expectation of joy in their submissions. They kept writing but it kept getting sad,” says Daniel. Others still were asked to submit several times after their initial submissions didn’t quite hit the mark. Daniel and Ope both display an inspiring faith in their writers, however. “I figured some of them are likely to become Booker Prize winners, so why not call them now?” Daniel, fully serious, says.
Equally, the production process had its hiccups. What was initially meant to be a physical book was quickly converted into a digital project when the cost of production and distribution became apparent. Despite this, Daniel and Ope saw a great opportunity in a digital publication. A Feel-Good Book hopes to reach 50,000 readers and is well on the way to achieving this.
And that’s just the beginning. In December 2023, they launched a short film, Hanky Panky, exploring the intersections of queerness, religion, and family. Their film was a semi-finalist at the New York Film and Animated Media Awards, a testament to the brilliance of the production and its depth of material. “Ope and I work well together,” says Daniel, “and I’m open to doing something else. I hope to see Feel Good happening yearly: I want queer stories stories to fly.”
There is no doubt, from the moment you open A Feel-Good Book, that the stories behind the eye-catching designs will fly. There are eight stories in total, each by a different writer, canonizing queer joy in a way that is accessible, relatable, and deeply human. The characters in each story love and are loved, experiencing the fullness of joy, not at the expense of sorrow, but at the expense of its romanticization. As an added treat, each story is accompanied by resplendent artwork and a profile of its writer in which the stylistic and literary choices made in the writing of each piece are explained. The message is clear: Queer joy is an ongoing conversation, and we are invited to dialogue with our writers, hearing from them about what they deem to be the appropriate representation of happy queer people.
The anthology opens with “A Bookish Affair,” a story of a reignited romance told with the poeticism of someone discovering, for the first time, what it means to love. “From the moment I saw him,” swoons the narrator, “I knew there was something different about Mazi.” We cannot help but fall in love with Mazi and the narrator. The story’s writer is Edwin Okolo, a writer and journalist who writes at the intersections of gender identity, feminism, and contemporary African culture. He describes his objective in writing the story as being to “add to the very limited canon of queer storytelling” with a “queer story that is positive, affirming, and most especially, fun.”
In “The Mathematics of Hooking Up,” Olakunle Ologunro, a Master of Fine Arts candidate at Johns Hopkins University, places you, the reader, in the shoes of a young Nigerian who finds love in an unlikely place. “Everyone talks about how good the amala in Ibadan is,” the story begins, “but nobody talks about how horrible the Grindr is.” The story is chucklesome yet deeply wholesome and leaves us with important lessons about the all-consuming magic of love. As the narrator puts it, no matter how hard one may try to resist it, in “the mathematical equation of meeting people and hooking up, the body and the heart will always find the right answer.”
The theme of finding love in unexpected places is continued in “Sink or Swim.” Written as a letter to a queer man named Saint, described as “strong and handsome, resourceful, and capable of more strength than most,” the piece is a reflection on a relationship shared and a life lived. The writer of the letter introduces herself to us as a queer woman “committed to a life-long platonic relationship” with Saint. Often, when queer joy is screened, it is almost a caricature of itself, drowning in its own excessively sugary romantic affectations. Fareeda Abdulkareem, the writer of “Sink or Swim,” reminds us that true love “may sound underwhelming.” And that is okay. Our narrator’s love may be mundane, and it may be unfamiliar, and may not alternate “between dizzying joy and paralyzing sadness,” but it is real.
Sometimes, as Mariam Sule-Izuagbe points out in “Wake Me Up When Love is Enough,” queer joy can be messy. The final story in A Feel-Good Book narrates a relationship between two women that is tested in the face of devastating news. To begin with, the pairing was unique in its own right: “Ify defined it as a relationship and referred to Somto as her girlfriend, but only in her head.” The relationship is unusual to us, the readers, but for the most part, Ify and Somto seem perfectly content with what they have going on. Until they aren’t. One might wonder, then, what place such a plot might have in an anthology about queer joy. As with most other things, joy is complex and takes its form in varying, sometimes contradictory ways. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie spoke in an acclaimed TED talk about the danger of a single story. There is no one single story of joy.
Equally, there is no one single story of queer joy.
What is true, however, is that joy, queer joy, exists for everyone. And it begins, as Daniel puts it, with “stories about humans and their good feelings .”
A Feel-Good Book is available online at afeelgoodbook.com. Also, watch Hanky Panky on YouTube today.
Edited/Reviewed by Caleb Okereke, Uzoma Ihejirika, and PK Cross.
Features a roundup of fresh MA reports, announcements, events/workshop listings, and minority content curated from across the web.
Job Tapera is a writer at Minority Africa. He is Zimbabwean and covers social justice, the environment, decolonial politics, arts and culture.

created: January 24, 2024

author: Job Tapera


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This Nigerian film wants to change perceptions of queer femme men - Minority Africa
Samuel Banjoko
February 20, 2022
Featured Image description: A still from the film Country Love with the two lead characters staring intently at each other. On the left is a femme man and the lead who is blonde, dressed in a flowery shirt and wearing a pearl necklace. Their nail is painted black and they have a colorful wristband. By him is a masculine presenting person who’s bare chested, has jet black hair, and is wearing a gold chain.
While scouting for locations for their first film in Eastern Nigeria, Wapah Ezeigwe decided to not disclose that they were making a queer film.
“I basically went around lying about what I had to do,” they say. “I didn’t really feel bad about [it] because I felt I was doing a good thing.”
As a femme queer Nigerian person who is non-binary, Ezeigwe was frustrated by how femme characters were portrayed in films both in Nigeria and outside of the country. They felt a huge proportion of the films they watched featuring femme roles relied on femmephobic tropes but also that queer representation was dominated by “masculine queer” characters.
“The queer identity is very diverse,” 26-year-old Ezeigwe says. “It is kind of offensive when you try to streamline these identities and represent queerness as being masculine.”
It was no surprise then that when the filmmaker who is currently one of 20 film creatives chosen across West Africa to be part of the Multichoice Talent Factory, decided to make their  directorial debut, it was a film with a femme queer man as the lead character.
“I felt we shouldn’t be pushed around being femme and that it was very important for people to understand our identity,” they say.
The short film Country Love is a  story about acceptance and siblinghood. It looks at how sexuality, memory, and childhood love model the experiences of queer people in Nigeria.
“Our home, our family members, the feeling of love, I wanted to explore those things and how it concerns a queer individual,” says Ezeigwe who, besides being director, also wrote the film.
The idea for Country Love came to Ezeigwe from the title of a poem ‘Stay’ they found while reading The Muse, a literary journal from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka.
“The title brought this melancholic idea to me about someone that’s not at home with himself and wants to leave but is aware that leaving would cause a deep sense of sadness. I wanted to tell the story of someone struggling between staying and leaving,” Ezeigwe tells Minority Africa.
Country Love focuses on the relationship between two siblings, Kambili and Nneka. It touches on the concept of home as regards queer people , for many of who a home is a place where there is a clash of interests despite the love that exists therein.
The lead character Kambili returns home after fifteen years, more comfortable and confident in himself, but his queerness and his sister’s refusal to accept him – the reasons he left home – strains their relationship.
“She’s been longing for her brother to return, but as time goes by, they’re back to square one because now he’s more in tune with who he knows he is, and she just cannot understand and accept it,” says Uzoamaka Onuoha who plays Nneka in the film.
“But she loves her brother and can’t love that aspect of her brother. Yet from Kambili’s point of view, ‘You can’t accept me and accept only the part that is conducive for you.’” Onuoha adds.
A huge part of Nneka’s contention with her brother is his open expression of his feminine side. Focusing on this and writing Kambili as an unapologetic, vibrant and confident character mattered to Ezeigwe for various reasons.
“I’m very deliberate about how I portray femme [characters],” they say. “Most people expect the femme person to be weak. I feel seeing our identity from a place of power is very important.”
And why is femme representation crucial? Because femme men often end up being on the frontline of  the queer movement, Ezeigwe says.
“Both consciously and unconsciously,” they explain. “Once you are femme and you are out there…even though you don’t identify as queer, people would always assume you are queer.”
It is an understanding that actor Kelechi Michaels who plays Kambili says the film made him realize as well.
“Working on it made me respect femme men more because it’s not easy having to live your life in a way that everyone looks at you in some kind of way,” he tells Minority Africa.
Michaels, 24, is not femme and he notes this as a reservation Ezeigwe had when he sent in his audition tape.
“[They were] like ‘Oh I am going to need you to be as femme as possible,’ and I was like yeah sure,” he says.
Although having worked on various projects within the Nigerian movie industry, Michaels admits Country Love was different from anything he had done requiring a lot more from him as an actor.
“I realized sometimes on set that after I finished a scene, I got really weak because of how demanding that particular scene was,” he says. “It was a lot of struggle but it kind of made me grow as an actor.”
The film was shot on location in Enugu State, Eastern Nigeria where Michaels notes he got a glimpse of what life was like for femme men in Nigeria.
“There were some times where when we [started]  shooting, the villagers would gather around,“ he says. “I would always get this side talk and stares from them, like seeing a man act as a woman was kind of really strange for them.”
Although Nigeria is a deeply homophobic country, with the Same-Sex Marriage Prohibition Act disallowing marriage between persons of the same sex, there are no laws criminalising making films with gay characters.
Yet, films with queer characters are not usually aired on Nigerian television, with the National Film and Video Censors Board often criticising such movies and banning them. This doesn’t discourage filmmakers like Ezeigwe, who believes visibility is important and is one of the most powerful tools that can be used for queer liberation.
“Being aware that we’re in a struggle, we’re not liberated in this part of the world, so if you want to tell queer stories, you have to focus your mind that you want to bring out queer visibility,” they tell Minority Africa.
“You may not want to be so political with your film, you just want to tell stories, but because you’re in a very stifling society, you find yourself always at that place where your expressions are seen as political and challenging society’s stereotypes,” they add.
Country Love is currently being submitted to film festivals and is expected to be released for public viewing later in the year. Michaels, like much of the cast and crew, continues to be optimistic about what impact the film will have upon its release.
“I hope that every femme queer man out there would see this film and feel seen,” he says.
Features a roundup of fresh MA reports, announcements, events/workshop listings, and minority content curated from across the web.
Samuel Banjoko is a Supporting Editor at Minority Africa. He is a Nigerian writer based in Ibadan, Nigeria who enjoys writing about art and culture.

created: February 20, 2022

author: Samuel Banjoko


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TikTok’s Algorithm of Gay Hate and Uganda’s anti-homosexuality bill - Minority Africa
Bana Mwesige
June 7, 2023
When Facebook was shut down in 2021, on the eve of the presidential elections, it was by far Uganda’s most popular social media website. Everyone I knew was there: friends, coworkers, lovers, exes, people I went to school with, and people I just saw in my neighborhood. In fact, it was a mini-dating site for queer people and it allowed you to find out which of your friends knows your potential crush, and then message them for some verifiable background information. It was also a place for community, where gossip and safety information was shared in messaging groups, as well as general news and information.
My instinct around the time of the shutdown was to simply use a VPN to bypass the Facebook shutdown. I did find friends, family, and acquaintances with technical know-how there, but it was nothing like the community I had once known. After years of this shutdown, the COVID-19 pandemic, growing up, and re-aligning priorities, I finally gave up on Facebook, as did the majority of my friends, family, and community. I check my messages and notifications on occasion to keep up with correspondence from acquaintances outside of Uganda, but Facebook is mostly a shell of its former self. I frequently wonder, “Where did all those people in my Facebook community go?” There is no single easy answer, but a good number of them (particularly from within my circle) can be found on WhatsApp and Instagram.
During the pandemic though, a new social media tool emerged from the ruins of Facebook in Uganda: TikTok. The number of Ugandan users on the video microblogging website is not available, but its influence can be seen through the sheer metrics and reactions to Ugandan content. For example, the most popular content creators in Uganda have 6 million followers. These are Kim Kardashian numbers! Kim Kardashian has 8 million followers.
Over the years, I’ve realized that many Ugandans (including myself) are merely consumers of TikTok content. We could easily spend two hours in heavy traffic just scrolling through videos on our favorite niche topics. There is something for everyone, including queer people, whether it’s food, music, endless fights between content creators, or just educational and funny content. In fact, I have never seen queer Ugandans as visible, free, and open as on TikTok in my life as a Ugandan. Many of my non-queer friends admit to knowing at least one LGBTIQ+ person through TikTok content.
TikTok’s algorithm, like many other social media sites before it (Hi Facebook), amplifies hate and divisiveness to drive conversation, likes and views. It’s no surprise that videos of LGBTIQ+ content frequently go viral, even if they’re as innocuous as someone walking down the street or dancing in a bar. LGBTIQ+ people and allies have been a particular target of “content-farmers”; these are essentially TikTok users/content creators who pick up on divisive issues in politics and culture to boost sales of their products or services. To spread fake news, misinformation, and hate speech, these content farmers frequently imitate the social media pages of legitimate media outlets such as NTV Uganda or NBS Uganda. In fact, when there is a high demand for content, they will search the depths of the internet for anti-gay content from the early 2000s and re-purpose it for the current market.
There is a likelihood that anti-gay content on TikTok contributed significantly to the panic that led up to the passage of the Anti-Homosexuality Bill in March 2023 which was recently signed into law. (Some of the panic included this unverified story of sexual abuse from Budo, which led to a government investigation that is yet to yield results.) Indeed, many of the conversations and unverified “cases of homosexuality” that many Ugandan lawmakers openly discussed in the run-up to the bill were spread and amplified by these TikTok content farmers.
The algorithm ensured that Ugandans (both pro- and anti-gay) had an unrestricted supply of this content. New pages were created to simply distribute and share this content; new content creators looking to make a buck profited from this misinformation; religious leaders saw this as an entry point into the hearts and minds of young people on social media; and old content creators shifted their focus from the mundane to bashing homosexuals. I personally could not escape the renewed focus on this topic, with every third video in my feed being about homosexuality. These videos garner hundreds of thousands of views as engagement on them is higher. A simple search of the term “kisiyaga” (the luganda term referring to homosexuality) or “LGBT” on TikTok will produce videos with thousands if not millions of views.
While LGBTIQ+ people and allies were bombarded with all of this, TikTok was largely absent from the conversation. TikTok’s hate speech detectors do not appear to as effectively remove videos that contain hate speech in Luganda (the most spoken language in the country’s capital). Videos calling for the murder of homosexuals in Luganda are frequently left up for days or weeks unless they are reported multiple times, at which point TikTok will remove them and ban the user.
John Grace, a regular TikTok user pointed out that in this video which calls for the murder and lynching of LGBTQ Ugandans, and this video which is one among many screen recordings of a live video of a person describing in gruesome detail how LGBTQ persons should be murdered. These videos like others calling for the death of LGBTQ persons in Luganda are still up despite being reported countless times. There’s even videos targeting particular queer people for doxxing and harassment still up on TikTok like this one saying that the first “target” of the bill should be the two queer tiktok creators.
The anti-gay content farmers have not let up since the bill’s passage. They’ve found a new target. Along with rival pastors, they are now accusing a prominent Kampala pastor of homosexuality. Some accounts purposely promoting this story on TikTok also, another account dedicated to exclusively defend the pastor and push counter accusations. I can’t tell you how many times in the last few weeks I’ve come across accusations and counter-accusations, story shifts, and recycled 2000s videos about this pastor on TikTok. For one thing, this amounts to targeted harassment; however, will TikTok take any action? I seriously doubt it.
For both queer and non-queer people in Uganda, the proliferation of this rhetoric and TikTok’s subsequent inaction could have disastrous effects, in the same way that the aforementioned Facebook’s inaction directly aided in a genocide.
The similarities and difficulties that the major social media platforms face in these situations are so striking that it almost seems implausible. For example, Facebook had trouble moderating content that was in local languages. Furthermore, they lacked staff members who were responsible for monitoring hate speech and content in the region. So, to TikTok, have you learnt anything about moderation from Facebook?
Edited and Reviewed by Uzoma Ihejirika and Caleb Okereke.
Features a roundup of fresh MA reports, announcements, events/workshop listings, and minority content curated from across the web.

author: Bana Mwesige