In our September round-up of LGBTQ+ news, Fatteh also spotlights Nigerian filmmakers resisting censorship, an Eswatini princess who claims Christianity helped her renounce lesbianism and must-read stories from Senegal, Niger, Ghana and South Africa.
በቤዛ ለዓለም
In September, LGBTQ+ Africans faced renewed pressure from police and public figures, while advocates challenged the assumptions used to justify their treatment.
In Cameroon, September court proceedings followed raids in Douala the previous month that swept up at least 68 people. Most were released, but nine were subsequently sent to New Bell Central Prison. Local organisations intervened on behalf of the detainees, most of them men accused of being gay, seeking to provide legal representation, food and medical care. A court later released two 18-year-olds and transferred the case involving a 16-year-old to a civil court for juvenile cases, but six men were returned to prison to await trial.
Police records showed that the raids had been conducted without judicial warrants and based on presumed sexual orientation or appearance, according to Cameroonian activist and journalist Jean Jacques Dissoke, writing for Erasing 76 Crimes. He also reported allegations of violence, intimidation and pressure to confess. Cameroon criminalises sexual relations between people of the same sex, with prison terms of up to five years. Dissoke argued that the raids violated safeguards within Cameroon’s own legal system.
Local LGBTQ advocacy Working for Our Wellbeing also called for full investigations into the killing of Paul Gérard in Douala in August and of Doloresse, a transgender woman killed in the capital Yaoundé in May. The organisation reported that police had arrested the main suspect in Gérard’s case.
Elsewhere on the continent, claims about the role of religion in changing sexuality came under scrutiny. Senator Princess Ncengencenge Dlamini, a member of the Eswatini royal family and an appointed senator, spoke publicly about her past relationships with women and said she no longer considered herself part of the LGBTQ community after becoming a born-again Christian.
According to the Eswatini Observer, which reported on her appearance on a church radio programme, the princess “had been happily homosexual for years before she was saved by Christ,” and had then “called on the church to welcome homosexual people who wanted to repent from what she described as the sin of homosexuality.”
Such attempts to change or suppress sexual orientation through prayer and religious ministry are known as conversion practices and are condemned by human rights groups, the medical experts as ineffective, degrading and potentially harmful.
David Maseko of Eswatini’s LGBTQ consortium, United Voices for Diversity, responded by saying that “sexual orientation is not a switch that a person can simply turn on or off.” Distinguishing same-sex attraction from choices about disclosure, identity labels, celibacy and relationships, he added that “freedom of religion and freedom of belief must be respected, but they should not become a basis for spreading misinformation about the lived realities of another community.”
The wider debate also included a prominent evangelical preacher who responded to the princess’s comments, stating that his church could change people’s sexual orientation through prayer. “I personally help gays and lesbians surrender to Jesus Christ,” Worship Centre International founder Apostle Justice Dlamini, adding that his church welcomes them “to help them be restored and normalised and not to embrace their sexual orientation.”
In other September news, there were reminders of LGBTQ Africans’ determination to defend their rights through activism and storytelling. In Nigeria, three episodes of the gay-themed streaming series “Living in Colours” returned to YouTube, despite renewed threats from the film regulator. And in Ghana, local advocacy Rightify Ghana trained 33 more youth leaders to advocate for the community, participate in civic and political life and influence public debate.
የፋጤ የወሩ ተሟጋች
Each month, Fatteh celebrates the people who stand up for LGBTQ communities across Africa. Our latest honouree is Alice Nkom, a trailblazing Cameroonian lawyer who has spent more than two decades defending gay people. Now, facing a criminal conviction linked to her human rights work, she needs the solidarity she has so long shown others.
Nkom’s commitment began with an encounter in a prosecutor’s office in Douala in 2003. Seeing young people handcuffed together, she checked the court docket and discovered that they were being prosecuted for homosexuality. She went on to found the Association pour la Défense de l'Homosexualité (ADEFHO, Association for the Defence of Homosexuality) and has since represented people facing prosecution while challenging the laws used against them.
That work has come at considerable personal cost. Lawyers for Lawyers has documented death threats against Nkom, threats directed at her children and attempts to have her removed from the legal profession. Yet she has continued to insist that LGBTQ Cameroonians are entitled to the same rights and legal protection as everyone else.
Last month brought her another challenge. On 21 September, a Douala court convicted Nkom of breaking seals placed on the offices of the Réseau des Défenseurs des Droits Humains en Afrique Centrale (REDHAC, Central African Human Rights Defenders Network), which she chairs. Acquitted of a separate rebellion charge, she received a one-year prison sentence suspended for five years and a fine. She announced her intention to appeal and, if necessary, take the case to Cameroon’s Supreme Court.
In a month when LGBTQ people in her country faced renewed persecution, Nkom’s years of advocacy remind us how much depends on allies being prepared to defend their rights. We honour her for sustaining that commitment through threats, professional pressure and repeated attempts to obstruct her work. As she matter-of-factly told the BBC last year: “My job is to defend people. I don't see why I would say I'm defending everyone except homosexuals.”
Explore our complete round-up of September headlines.
Niger rejects UN recommendations to protect LGBTQ rights
Uganda’s anti-LGBTQ laws contribute to ‘Not Free’ assessment of civil liberties
Gambian man accused of killing photographer in alleged anti-gay hate crime in US
Cameroon raids sweep up 68 people in anti-gay crackdown
Senegal police subject suspected lesbians to invasive examinations
Cape Town rainbow crossing vandalism sparks wave of anti-LGBTQ hate
Senegalese footballer at centre of homophobia row becomes investor in French club
Tunisian LGBTQ stories take centre stage in French theatre production
Sierra Leone activists report threats as accounts of alleged police raid are disputed
Eswatini princess’s account of sexuality and faith prompts debate
Niger’s explicit targeting of asexuality raises wider concerns
US lawyers lose contact with gay man deported to Equatorial Guinea