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A Study on the Increase of Institutionalized Gender Repression- the 2014 Anti- Homosexuality Bills of Uganda and Nigeria

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A Study on the Increase of Institutionalized Gender Repression- the 2014 Anti- Homosexuality Bills of Uganda and Nigeria The University of the Witwatersrand Policing Gender Dissidence: a study on the increase of institutionalized gender repression- The 2014 Anti- homosexuality bills of Uganda and Nigeria Name: Farai Morobane Student no: 747302 Supervisor: Dr. Jacqueline Ala TABLE OF CONTENTS Declaration 6 1. INTRODUCTION 2. RESEARCH QUESTION AND HYPOTHESIS 8 2.1 Research Question 8 2.2 Claims and Hypothesis 9 3. LITERATURE REVIEW 10 3.1 Feminism in International Relations 10 3.2 Radical Contributions 12 3.3 Human Rights and Feminist Theory 16 4. LGBTI COMMUNITIES IN SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA 21 4.1 A Decade of Discrimination 21 4.2 “Homo(sex)uality is un-African” 25 4.3 Discursive Formations on LGBTI in Africa 26 5. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 29 5.1 Research Design 29 5.2 Operationalization and Definitions 30 5.3 Proving Causality 31 5.4 Case Study Selection 32 5.5 Sources for Research 34 6. CASE STUDY PRESENTATION 35 6.1 Nigeria 35 6.2 Uganda 39 7. THE NATIONAL, REGIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL LEVEL IMPACTS 46 71. National Impacts 46 7.2 Regional Impacts 53 7.3 International Impacts 59 8. RESEARCH ANALYSIS AND RECOMMENDATIONS 67 8.1 National Level-Nationalism and Collective Identity 67 1 | P a g e 8.2 Regional Level Impacts 69 8.3 International Level Impacts 70 8.4 Political Salience and Political Strategy 72 8.5 Recommendations 73 ADDENDUMS REFERENCE LIST 2 | P a g e Declaration I declare that except for reference to other people’s works, which have been duly acknowledged, this report is my own unaided work. It is submitted for the degree of Master of Arts (International Relations) in the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. It has not been submitted before any other degree or examination in any other university, nor has it been published by any other person or organisation. ____________________________________ Farai Morobne May 2015 3 | P a g e 4 | P a g e 1. INTROCUTION The decade 2005 to 2015 ushered in a period of great political salience of issues of gender minorities, LGBTI communities and the legislation of sexuality. Voices demanding equal rights and recognition for LGBTI communities were steadily becoming louder but at the same time as voices calling for the further curtailing of homosexuality were also getting much louder many countries have moved towards rights incremental approaches to marginalised groups of people. Moreover, many countries have moved away from legal discriminatory policies that restrict and supress the rights to privacy and dignity and discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation. In the first two months of 2014, LGBTI rights were dealt heavy blows in two African countries. On 7 January, Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan signed into law a bill that criminalises same-sex unions, with prison sentences of up to fourteen years. This same law sentences any person or organisation that funds in any way the registration and operation of gay organisations, clubs, or societies to a prison sentence of ten years. A month later, the president of Uganda, Yoweri Museveni, officially assented to a more draconian bill which imposes penalties as high as life imprisonment for people engaging in consensual same-sex sexual activity. Nigeria and Uganda are arguably part of a greater trend in Sub-Saharan Africa of states to exercise control and rights extractions with regards to LGBTI communities with the apparent aim of maintaining African culture, traditions and family life. Ironically, these anti-homosexuality laws or 'anti-sodomy laws'- that date back to the colonial era penal codes, have long been abandoned by those countries that created them. I argue that political saliency is intrinsically linked to national political interest and this is possibly the most central element of the question; what are the factors leading to the recent increase in repressive policy making for gender minorities in Africa? There exists a gender hierarchy in social structure. This hierarchy reflects the ascriptions and roles that come with different prescribed gender identities. It is essential within feminist scholarship and policy making in general that the designated group ‘gender’ is not taken to be the exclusive referent for women. The work of African feminist theory in international relations and policy dissemination needs to move beyond juxtaposing the two; here gender is understood as an all-encompassing term for all gendered identities including non-conforming gender groups or what has been called disparate gender identities which include the LGBTI community. Therefore the study has an inevitable rhetorical aim of secularising gender minority rights under the larger banner of gender emancipation as a contribution to African feminist literature. The thinking informing this argument is that the project of gender emancipation should not be disintegrated phase by phase because the sources of the constructions of repression and rights repossessions are the same. In other words, the systematisation that confiscates the rights of women is the same that results in the passing of laws that confiscate the rights of gender minorities. It is vital to disclaim that legislation is only one step towards the emancipation of repressed gender groups and social justice in any society. All the same, however sectional the rule of law is as a tool for social justice, it is a necessary- and some would argue a foundational condition towards change. 5 | P a g e The following paper will analyse the factors leading to an increase in the repressive forms of legislature for gender minorities in African nations with the case studies of Nigeria’s 2014 Same-Sex Marriage Prohibition Act and Uganda’s 2014 Anti-Homosexuality Act. 6 | P a g e 2. RESEARCH QUESTION AND HYPOTHESIS 2.1 Research Question What are the factors leading to the recent increase in repressive policy making for gender minorities in Africa? The case studies to be used are the 2014 anti-homosexuality laws in Uganda and Nigeria. The research project aims to address the question of how these laws came about and what influences were involved in their emergence. The starting point of the enquiry is that there has been an increase in the passing of repressive gender laws on the continent in recent years. The study looks at the two Anti-homosexuality laws of 20141 that have been passed in Uganda and Nigeria. The aim of the research is to identify and critically analyse the factors leading to this increase dating back particularly to the past nine years, 2006 to 2014 which have piloted an overabundance of similarly repressive laws in other parts of the continent and in other realms of gender politics. These bills, with varying profiles, occur in diverse contexts but both have similar consequences in each instance; the gender hierarchy is further reified and freedoms extracted by those at the top of the hierarchy from those at the bottom. There has been a plethora of research explaining the factors leading to homophobic legislature in African countries as well as other places in the world like Russia, India, the Arab world, and specific American states. There is also a significant body of research dedicated to scholarship on Uganda and Nigeria the perverse nature of what has come to be known as the “Anti-gays” law. In a move to avoid the dangers associated with ideological debates that shade African politics as primitive, backward and morally inept, the less confronted question of how the recent legal crackdown on homosexuality is unfolding at a particular period is what the research is concerned with. In other words, the project intends to identify the issues impacting the level of salience that anti homosexuality bills have increasingly been receiving in African states. The variables for the purpose of analysis that have been selected from a preliminary scoping of current literature on the increase if homophobic legislature in African countries, are political transitions in leadership and government system; the regional cascading of anti-gay legislature geo-politically as well as the conflation of gender conservative laws in general as well; and the influence of religious diplomacy and growth in visibility of the LGBTI2 rights movement in Africa. Contemporary scholarship on Africa often falls into the trap of particularising Africa and African “pathology”; Africa does not have a monopoly over institutionalised and socialized homophobia. However, the Nigerian and Ugandan laws of 2014 have depicted a break from the secularization of statecraft in the two countries furthermore the heavy sentences on the crimes regarding homosexuality have been recently implemented into legislature, worsening the existing colonial laws on homosexual conduct. These bills provide one depiction of the larger trend in regression of gender legislature on the African continent. It is thus the aim of the study to understand the factors leading to the increase on the 1 At the time of the undertaking of the research, only Uganda and Nigeria had implemented harsher laws on homosexuality by 2014. 2 A recognisable acronym to collectively refer to a group of identities that includes lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex persons 7 | P a g e African continent of gender repressive law making in the recent years, this is what makes the cases interesting and temporally relevant. 2.2 Claims and Hypothesis The main claim the study wishes to put forward as a hypothesis is that regressive laws are often defensive and reactive. They are one mechanism that is used by governments to “restore” the authenticity in African socio-political ideology and are a rejection of further “Westernization”. The claims being made by this dissertation are the following: Firstly the study stems from the logic that the rule of law is one necessary condition for driving change. This is in fact the first step that needs to lead to social justice because without this foundation providing de jure backdrop for social justice the chances of achieving the desired outcome, which in this case is gender equality, are slim if not completely unattainable.
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