When The Flutist Burns His Pipe: The Rise of Queer and Emigration Literature in Africa
Photo: Sébastien Goldberg
A year after the South African writer Jarred Thompson won the 2020 Afritondo short story prize, I received a call from a friend who commented—in surprise—on how the award this time, again, had gone to a queer writer. The news immediately threw the usual red lights on what I had always—for the past few months, at least—thought: that queer writers and writings were now winning many of the awards and contests in modern African writing.
Thompson’s winning short story, Good Help is Hard to Find, was praised for “offering a delightfully queer treatment of everyday life, peppered with humour and warmth”. The usual criticism of queer literature in Africa is in its perception as taboo talk. And editors and critics, it seems, desire that it remains so or, as Zora Neale Hurston describes in her novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, remain in the "basin in the mind where words float around on thought and thought on sound and sight,” but never spoken out loud, or too fiercely when said, for fear of the good spell being broken.
Is it then a mere coincidence, or are Queer and Emigration Literatures taking over the African literary space? (I use the term queer writers (or similar) to refer to writers (or writings) that humanise homosexuality, regardless of the writer’s sexuality.) When the flutist burns his pipe, does he acquire a new one? When the fighter burns the bridge, does he anticipate one day his return?
As I suggested earlier, there seems to be subtle censorship against the proliferation of ideas that speak of this new reality or tackle queer literature—as was the case with an essay I published in a reputable African journal where many of my ideas were guillotined. The blunt tone of my argument in the said essay—I came to believe soon after—was perhaps what caused the outright censorship of my ideas rather than my arguments. But the truth is the truth: emigration and queer literature are slowly but surely taking over our literary spaces. There is now a burgeoning Western-inspired movement and a tacit politicisation of homosexuality and emigration in African literature today by writers and publishers alike. In one of his Dear Mr. Brittle Paper series titled "Queer Literature in Africa is not a Trend, Has Always Existed," former Brittle Paper deputy editor, Otosirieze Obi-Young says rightly that "to write literature humanizing queerness is a political act: because writing itself is political, because to humanize queerness is a decision in much the same way that to demonize it is".
I might have thought homosexuality and queer literature taboo topics not too long ago, but I realised that it would be quite retrogressive to fight against their rise in the literature of Africa. I am not against anyone fantasising about homosexuality in their work or how they win awards with it. Although I humanised homosexuality in a short story I wrote and published many years ago, I do not consider myself a queer writer; neither do I intend to be a torchbearer for the emerging genre nor, with this essay, mandate any writer to be one. Everyone, indeed, is free to write about what they want. In any case, it is a laudable movement in the tide of new African writing which I give a nod to and encourage any writer willing to hold the flaming torch. We find queer sentiments in new writings such as Chinelo Okparanta’s Under the Udala Trees, Jude Dibia’s Walking with Shadows, Romeo Oriogun’s Burnt Men, Alaa Al Aswany’s The Yacoubian Building, Tendai Huchu’s The Hairdresser of Harare, Wame Molefhe’s Go Tell the Sun, Damon Galgut’s The Beautiful Screaming of Pigs, Barbara Adair’s In Tangier We Killed the Blue Parrot, Akwaeke Emezi's The Death of Vivek Oji, amongst many others.
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“An attribution of homosexuality to the West is akin to attributing the act of breathing to only Asians or Oceanians. Sexuality is a human phenomenon and will always be a human rather than a geographical issue.”
Emigration, on the other hand, another theme that has pervaded modern African writing today, is less controversial. Of note are prominent emigration/diasporic writers such as Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Helon Habila, Teju Cole, NoViolet Bulawayo, Chika Unigwe, Taiye Selasi, Chinelo Okparanta, Imbolo Mbue, Yaa Gyasi, J.J Bola, and Zinzi Clemmons. In her very influential 2013 essay, Taiye Selasi, herself a cultural hybrid of sorts, proposed a pristine revolution in the form of Afropolitanism, the acceptance by African writers that they are citizens of the world. Taiye notes that "the novel is a European cultural form that we have adopted and made our own".
I perceive this new phenomenon to be a development in African literature, one like the harmattan — going by the now obvious diachronicity of literature — which passes after its season. My job as a journalist, critic, and literary shareholder would be to detail this moment rather than be a Luddite.
Sociological processes, of which literature is a bonafide member, are ever-changing and evolving. Young boys will always chase young girls, and girls, boys; this is a constancy. But literature would keep changing with the times that come, shape-shifting to accommodate the dynamics of each period. The new drive towards emigration and homosexuality in African literature, therefore, does not surprise me so much. While many agree that movement and emigration would always be the norm, it will be ill-informed of me to say that homosexuality is an exclusive Western ideal. In fact, anyone with enough guts to absolve Africa of queerness has as low an opinion of the world as of life itself. For one, the Yoruba word aduforo (one who engages in anal sex) is as old as Yoruba itself. The Shangaan tribe in southern Africa are known to refer to homosexual relations as inkotshane meaning "male-wife". Records have also shown that in many African societies, the transition from boyhood to manhood is ushered in through same-sex activities. In an article in The Guardian written by Nigerian Gay Right Activist, Bisi Alimi, and titled "If you say being gay is not African, you don’t know your history," Alimi notes that "in the Buganda Kingdom, part of modern-day Uganda, King Mwanga II was openly gay and faced no hate from his subjects until white men brought the Christian church and its condemnation. Though King Mwanga is the most prominent African recorded as being openly gay, he was not alone." Alimi goes on to argue that "the Bible is not our historical culture. This shows there is real confusion about Africa’s past." Likewise, in a 2014 Aljazeera America article, Sylvia Tamale quoted Ugandan President, Yoweri Museveni, as saying that “homosexuals in small numbers have always existed in our part of black Africa. They were never prosecuted. They were never discriminated”. Museveni would later in 2015 sign a bill banning homosexuality in what many described as a political ploy to win the 2016 Presidential elections.
An attribution of homosexuality to the West is akin to attributing the act of breathing to only Asians or Oceanians. Sexuality is a human phenomenon and will always be a human rather than a geographical issue. What I would attribute to the West, and I would not be strangled so hard or strangled at all, is the voice it gave to other forms of sexuality: gayism, lesbianism, binarism, etc. Africa has always been a continent reticence towards its own reality. Africans are naturally morally uptight, and our noses twitch at actions we view as immoral. Little wonder, then, that religion has a strong foothold in the African society. Blacks have always resisted “darkness” in all its derivatives; African Americans, though bound in slavery, still sang sweet spirituals to the heavens, to a God they believed received it. To us, religion and sanctity are as crucial as living itself. Young males in Africa grew up with the threat of having their penises cut off or having a live snake placed around their offending persons if they were ever caught “touching” themselves. There is also the famous injunction by mothers to their young, impressionable daughters to never let a boy see their underwears. Woe befell the proverbial girl who climbed a tree and a male passerby spied the revered underwear. Can we even forget the curses that follow anyone who saw two naked people touching each other?
We should also not forget how in 2014, in the famous Jail the Gays Act, President Goodluck Jonathan of Nigeria imposed a 14-year jail term on anyone involved in gay relationships. On the converse side, in 2013, the United States enshrined the rights to same-sex marriages in its constitution, lifting federal and state bans in 2013 and 2015 respectively. President Barack Obama, praised for being supportive of LGBTQ rights, signed executive orders against the discrimination of LGBTQ people. In his visit to Africa in 2015, Obama told president Uhuru Kenyatta of Kenya: “When you start treating people differently not because of any harm they are doing to anybody, but because they are different, that’s the path whereby freedoms begin to erode.” In response, Kenyatta said: “There are some things that we must admit we don’t share [with the US]. Our culture, our societies don’t accept.” How about the repulsion many Nigerians feel seeing popular crossdresser, Bobrisky? Former Gambian President, Yahya Jammeh, even mandated that the throats of gay people be split. Sylvia Tamale in the aforementioned Aljazeera America article argued that "at least 38 African countries already proscribe consensual same-sex behaviour. . . . African history is replete with examples of both erotic and nonerotic same-sex relationships."
Morality, then, is a weapon, and generations of Africans have been indoctrinated into its famed cult. You should then be far from startled that the mere mention of homosexuality, although practised in veiled quarters for traditional, spiritual, or aesthetic purposes, is never given a fair hearing in our society as a fair hearing is tantamount to an admission of its existence and, worse still, our own collective guilt. Naturally, we have grown quiet about these things. It is true that today, many young men and women, while being queer, dread the thought of voicing their values and needs. The Western literary market with its nearly antithetical posture to ours has opened our sons and daughters to the truth: that homosexuality is not so bad as our parents and forebears made us believe, that voicing our true identities as homosexuals is acceptable. Africans mass flight to Europe and America as well as our absorption and consumption of European television shows, movies, and music are factors that come into play here. Emigration and homosexuality with its growing acceptance are thus seemingly two sides of a single coin.
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Photo: Miko Guziuk
On April 20, 2021, the news of the ban on the YouTube channel of Prophet T.B. Joshua, leader of the Synagogue Church of All Nations (SCOAN), was on CNN. There was unmistaken uproar in the rightist camps at this news. Joshua, a popular televangelist known in many quarters for his controversial methods, had apparently on seven different occasions tried and was strangely successful in “banishing” the spirit of homosexuality from a number of his flock. Narrating the content of the offensive footage, Lydia Namubiru, CNN’s OpenDemocracy’s Africa Editor, quoted Joshua’s casting out the “spirit of woman” out of a female member. One of the male members “cured” from his “disease” revealed he now had a dislike for his male partner. The said female member was reported to have, after Joshua’s prayers, detested the look of her female partner. Apparently, these were only a few of the “cured” cases. YouTube immediately, beating with the cane of “hate speech,” banned the apostle’s channel which was accessible to his over two million subscribed virtual flock. TB Joshua’s fiasco calls to mind the validation and support given by the West to free thought, in particular, on homosexuality. His actions were seen as capable of spreading a counter-narrative on the stark normalcy of homosexuality. While it is essentially the prerogative of YouTube to deem such action as hateful and disrespectful to the queer community, it also buttresses the case for the argument that the queer community is active, outspoken, and gaining vibrancy in its modest demand for acceptance by the rightist half of the world.
The emergence of queer literature has only been a matter of time. Sooner or later, African literature would have been ushered into this Renaissance. Indeed, it is an inevitable phase in African art. As immutable as the sun setting, we will never be able to stop this movement. However, if I choose to play God and pander to the divides of fate, I can see a situation where this movement could have been at most delayed, had the African literary community been more supportive of its creative talents. This situation is man-made and, therefore, could have been easily managed. However, while the great deed has been done and the horse escaped from the stable, we can at least fix in a new doorpost, if it will serve any good against the hands of fate, that is.
My argument remains that the African literary space in general and the Nigerian literary community in particular has paid very little credence and respect to their writers. Save the very generous NLNG-sponsored Nigerian Prize for literature with its $100,000 cash prize for the winner, we would need to squeeze water from rock to find other such reputable literary prizes. Commendation should also be given to the Writivism Short Story Prize as well as the Quramo Writers' Prize which from its debut in 2017 has managed to give emerging writers in Nigeria a voice and some money. Luckily for us, too, big oil companies, individuals and private companies have found the light in African and Nigerian art, and some invest in our literary prizes. Notable is Chevron Nigerian Limited which until 2017 funded the Association of Nigeria Authors (ANA) prize. It had funded the national prize since 2001, sponsoring creative workshops, and in a 2017 statement by its then chairman, Mallam Denja Abdullahi, "other forms of assistance that it rendered to the association". The Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) and Cadbury Nigeria Limited are also known sponsors of the prize. The Miles Morland Foundation Writing Scholarship with its provision of funds and sanctity of time and space is very noteworthy and has honoured African writers like Nnamdi Oguike, Bryony Rheam, Akwaeke Emezi, F.T Kola, Kola Tubosun, and Elnathan John. The NLNG has also sponsored The Nigeria Prize for Literary Criticism open to writers across the world and aimed at promoting the critiquing of Nigerian literature. The 9mobile Prize for Literature is also a very worthy mention with its £15,000 cash prize and fellowship opportunity in the University of East Anglia. Unfortunately, the prize went into the shadows after Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀ won the 2017 edition with her novel, Stay With Me.
In a keynote speech written by Nigerian writer Chika Unigwe and read by Nigerian author and publisher Richard Ali at the Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda on June 19, 2015, Unigwe notes that "there has been a steadily growing discontent among artists and cultural activists about the oil industry’s connection to the world of arts and culture." Her argument in support of oil companies (not surprising since she won the NLNG prize herself three years before in 2012) goes against Archbishop Desmond Tutu's 2014 statement in The Guardian where he called on “people of conscience” to "break their ties with corporations financing the injustice of climate change".
Making a Case for Our Leach and the Truth
Right from Ben Okri’s exit from Nigeria, due largely to refusals by the Nigerian press to publish him, to Wole Soyinka’s banishment and censorship by the government for promoting “offending” literature, there has always been a leash on African writers. These days, and I must digress somewhat to this, it is sad to see that most African writers have lost the skill or perhaps zeal to upset corrupt governments. If my nostalgia is taken for prescriptivism, then so be it. Oftentimes, I wonder as to the raison d’etre—not the one hastily ascribed to hobby and preference—the real reason writers of the modern age are more prone to writing poetry and fiction that are incapable of supporting truth and reality. On the reverse, it seems we have been plunged into a generation that comforts itself in the comfortable lie of fiction and the loftiness of poetry. The drama of this generation can be easily sought on social media, with the endless Twitter wars and needless, puerile backlashes we see every day, virtual exercises that stem more from a place of mental shallowness or fatigue than concrete understanding. Many of these new writings are not dangerous enough. Either this or the government has gone too soft or simply shut its eyes to the writings of today that are too weak to defeat the system.
“The emergence of queer literature has only been a matter of time. Sooner or later, African literature would have been ushered into this Renaissance. Indeed, it is an inevitable phase in African art.”
I am drawn to the earliest years of Wole Soyinka, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Chinua Achebe and the later years featuring the weights of the likes of Odia Ofeimun, Bola Ige, Dele Giwa, Kola Omotoso, and Adewale Maja-Pearce, who upset the government and made valid contributions to the world of sociology and literature. With the new movement in African literature and the drift towards a less politically haunting modernism in Africa, the truth must never be negotiated. The system has always been against the truth. The system will always be against the truth. Political subjugation by the leaders against the led, like racism or any other largely contested ideology over time, will always be a feature of our humanity. From the freedom fighters in America to the activists in Nigeria, there will always be a case against truth. Truth is one word the government always shuts its ears to, and this will be a perennial problem. Malcolm X, Fred Hampton, Martin Luther King Jnr, were killed in their fight for the truth which the government refused to hear. Dele Giwa was killed for the truths he said. Wole Soyinka was thrown into jail and pressed because he wrote and spoke about a truth too bitter for the reigning government to swallow. Fela Anikulapo Kuti was beaten and jailed because the truth in his melodies reverberated too loudly, way above the orchestra of lies that reigned in the then theatre of shame. After more than twenty years, the truth is still being repelled, and the cycle keeps moving. When will Omoyele Sowore be truly free?
This leach of old still exists today, no doubt replaced by low or zero sponsorships, MFAs, local writing fellowships, and patronage. African writers and creatives need to eat, get good creative education, awards, laurels, commendation and validation by their own people. African creatives deserve to be praised by their own mothers who birthed them, and not surrogates. The latter has been the case as many writers have found solace, sad as it is, in the hot pots of strange mothers. The African creative industry has become the cold lover who forced her partner out into the bosom of a warmer woman. She would live the rest of her days crying from the pain of his infidelity, and even if he returns to her, she would be damned if he would be the same man that left. Interestingly, these European countries, welcoming lovers as they are, have seen the value of what we have, the raw creativity bursting from every space here, and they have chosen to exploit it, much so to their advantage, however inadvertent. The propaganda is visible. There is now a creative neocolonialism at play. With the cultural mix that midwives our writers’ flight away from home to distant lands and the givebacks of our literary prizes funded mainly by the West, there has risen the inevitable result: a Faustian exchange of monochrome souls and the consequential fear held in many quarters of the Gordian knot we are cursed to untie as well as the Damocles' Sword swaying above our heads.
In her Kampala keynote speech, Chika Unigwe’s idea could not be more naïve when she said, "As long as the sponsorship has no implication on what art is made and on who has access to the space and the means to make and consume that art, as long as the sponsorship is not a bribe to buy our voices and our consciences, as long as it does not censor our pens, then by all means, let us use the money for the force of good." Although largely good-willed, her belief in the "ideological innocence" of sponsors of these prizes only shows little knowledge of the politics of business whose central motive is in what can be gained or rather effected financially or ideologically. When Chevron invested in the ANA prize, it was only normal for them to shift the focus of the award to the environment for which they are concerned! And so we see the same happening to other prizes around. There will always be the osmotic flow of ideology from ours to theirs. Indeed, strings have to be attached.
As well as promoting deserving emigration/diasporic Literature by African writers, many literary prizes have scored success in humanising Queer Literature today. Notable prizes that have done this are the Writivism Prize, Gerald Kraak Awards, the Brunel International African Poetry Prize, The Commonwealth Prize, The AKO Caine Prize for African Writing, and the Afritondo Short Story Prize. These prizes now serve largely as refugee camps, receiving those voices that have been shut out in their homes. It is amazing because these voices have proven to be strong, daring and challenging of the African society, in and outside it. Romeo Oriogun's winning of the 2017 Brunel Prize and Arinze Ifeakandu's Caine Prize shortlisting, are notable examples of queer Literature that have made a mark on the big stage. In 2007, the Caine Prize went to Monica Arac de Nyeko for her short story, Jambula Tree. In 2012 and 2014, Stanley Kenani's Love on Trial as well as Chinelo Okparanta's America respectively were shortlisted for the Caine Prize. If any contest can be praised for their goodwill to deserving Queer Literature, the Caine Prize gets the prized fowl. In 2017, the Brunel Prize paid homage to the queer submissions of Sahro Ali and Romeo Oriogun, placing them in the shortlist with Oriogun winning that year. In the same year, Nigerian Akwaeke Emezi won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize with her short story, Who is Like God?
To conclude, I refer to a Ted Talk titled "The Stories of Africa," where Nigerian-American author, Chris Abani, said: "There has been a lot of talk about narratives in Africa. And what's become increasingly clear to me is that we are talking about news stories about Africa. We are not really talking about African narratives, and it's important to make a distinction." Abani's concerns are very much justifiable, and I would say that the importance of narrations lies not exclusively in the stories told but in the ability of these stories to move, transcend and defeat the hold of time. Stories become stale and irrelevant when they refuse to move. Here lies the beauty of the writings of today, of the poetry, drama and prose of Africa: its susceptibility and willingness to move with the tides of time. The world is moving. Africa moves along with it, and African writers, publishers, contests around the world have risen to this burgeoning need to tell these new—although hybrid—forward-bound stories. While in my hermit months in a village in Akwa Ibom, South-South Nigeria, I studied issues upon issues of Okike Journal: An African Journal of New Writing, founded and edited by Chinua Achebe. I was stunned by how much African literary history the publication was able to document over its years of existence. Okike documented the literature of its time. While I am aware that many other journals in Nigeria, and out of it, did the same and even better, it was noteworthy that Okike was able to cement the works of strong African voices such as Isidore Okpewho, Chinweizu, Ezenwa Ohaeto, Sola Osofisan, Arthur Gakwandi, Onuora, Ossie Enekwe, Don Burness. A.N. Akwanya, Ola Rotimi, and many others who we the younger writers that came later might have been quick to forget. For those fascinated as I am about history and the documentation of time, it is a great experience going into the past to see how the present and future can be made better. This age is a testament to the nascent, sexually prodigal, nomadic and free-spirited nature and temper of new African writings. We should be proud as a people to be a part of the growing tides of the new narratology of African writings. However, things can get better as more deserving queer voices await a fair hearing. We predict a time, and I sure hope to be here to document it, when African literary artistry would ripen to the extent when uncharted paths will be opened, silent voices speak up and hesitant hands finally join in to pen down hitherto untold stories. Therein lies the responsibility of African literary journalists, curators and publishers, to be ready to capture these strands of stories when they come up and document them for the era coming. This is necessary so the coming age knows that there was once a revival, and the past did well to capture it as batons for them to keep running with. It is congratulatory to announce that the African writer today is slowly burning the flute of his monochromatic past and entering into a new reality.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Nzube Nlebedim is a Nigerian fictionist, reviewer, essayist, cultural and energy journalist, biographer, poet, critic, and editor. He holds a BA in English Literature from the University of Lagos and radio journalism training from the Nigerian Broadcast Academy.
He is a passionate African writer who believes in curating the unique African literary experience. He has been published in The Republic Magazine, Counterclock Journal, Entropy Magazine, The Journal, Kalahari Review, The Lagos Review, The African Bard, African Writer, Children, Church and Daddies, Liberation Now, The Shuttle, iNigerian.com, and other media.
His novella, A Cry Within, was longlisted for the 2018 Quramo Writers' Prize. In 2017, his short story came top in the Ecuador-Nigeria young Writers' short story award and was translated and anthologised. He is the founder and editor-in-chief of The Shallow Tales Review, an online literary magazine that curates African content. He lives in Lagos, Nigeria, where he serves as Nigeria Field Editor for Energy Capital and Power.