This chapter presented a contextual analysis, albeit limited in scope by the sheer size of the continent and diversity of its people, cultures traditions and beliefs, as background to the debates within the UN. Through presenting and analysing a selection of continental case studies in which political actors have instrumentalised homophobic rhetoric, this contextual analysis debunked the idea of a monolithic African homophobia. In doing so, the tools and aims of politicised homophobia have been exposed and explained. It can, therefore, be seen that across Africa state rejection of SOGI rights has been attributed to the influence of transnational actors, including religious organisations, while others locate the backlash within local politics, where vilification of gay people distracts the wider citizenry from issues of lack of development, corruption and government failure.
As was seen in the country studies African leaders have often invoked homophobic narratives in relation to imagined heteronormative nationalisms, anti-colonialism and occasionally with Abrahamic religions in efforts to maintain tighter control of the state and its population. Meanwhile, South Africa’s re-emergence and adoption of domestic SOGI rights legislations seems, in some parts of the continent, to have started a chain of reactive politicised homophobia, in which elites activated homophobic discourses in response to this external threat to the nation, as witnessed in Zimbabwe, Uganda and Nigeria. Other states responded to the emerging threat of same-sex marriage on supposed heteronormative traditional family values. Whilst initially responding to perceived external threats, politicised homophobia was subsequently turned inwards and used to suppress social and political opposition in several states across the continent: homosexuality became a stick to beat the opposition.
The strategic application of this has then been utilised to combat internal threats including economic, social or political unrest has been evidenced in Malawi and Uganda, where queer activists were scapegoated as threatening the nations access to aid funding, which was causing economic hardship. Some leaderships have also responded to internal or external political opposition by capitalising on social homophobic sentiment through implementing politicised homophobia whilst also re-inscribe heterosexual virility to the nations image of itself (Currier, 2019:22). In this way some African leaders have used politicised homophobia across the continent to achieve two objectives. Firstly, politicised homophobia has been used in several states to legitimise the leadership and delegitimised opposition forces. Secondly leaders have attempted to divert blame and attention from increasingly apparent negative consequences of their leadership, including corruption, economic mismanagement and rising inequality.
93 This thesis argues that these objectives have been achieved by instrumentalising two interlinked narratives, which make the following claims. Firstly, that sexual and gender minorities and their rights are un-African; they are an affront to supposedly heteronormative African religions, traditions, cultures and beliefs. Secondly that rejecting SOGI rights is an anti neocolonial act, which rejects coercive moral imposition from actors in the global North and preserves an imagined African heteronormative nationalism to which SOGI rights have been deemed counterproductive. The first objective constructs the post-colonial state as binary gendered and heterosexual based on ahistorical cultural conceits, while the second determines a masculine, patriarchal state protector of moral authority and traditional beliefs, culture and religions.
This analysis also enabled us to interrogate the veracity of these claims. This determined that the un- African claim is a fiction which draws heavily on conservative desires of the political elite and falsely universalises notions of heterosexuality and binary gender identities on a realistically much more diverse population. In this way, it demonstrated that un-African makes false claims to homogenised heteronormative traditions, cultures and religious beliefs whose real purpose is to challenge the advance of liberal, progressive rights-based regimes from the global North. This claim is closely linked to a more accurate challenge, the encroachment of neoliberal, rights-based norms that are characterised as neocolonial. This charge of neocolonialism revealed political anxieties that included the need to overcome the colonial legacy of oppression by external actors as well as fostering a cohesive nationalism in states that are marked by considerable social, political and sometimes religious difference. These concerns have also been challenged by fears of losing agency, sovereignty and self-determination in the face of powerful international pressure from INGOs, donor states and international institutions.
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6 Batting for both sides 49 : South Africa and SOGI rights at the UN
Ambassador Matjila stated in the UNGA in 2016 on the issue of SOGI rights “we always disagree with most of our colleagues in the continent” (UNGA, 2016e). This chapter reviews his conclusion through a queer critical discourse analysis of the debates on SOGI rights within the UNHRC and the UNGA between 2011, when South Africa successfully introduced the first dedicated SOGI resolution (17/19), and 2020, when the UN IE SOGI presented his latest report (44/53). The analysis will seek to identify how support and rejection of SOGI rights initiatives have been discussed within the UNHRC and UNGA with particular emphasis on South African interventions and those of states and blocs presenting objections, thereby focussing on understanding the two sides South Africa bats for; those states from the global North and Latin America that promote SOGI rights and those from across the African continent and membership of the OIC that oppose their promulgation. As noted in Chapter Three a queer discourse analysis is an iterative process that is dependent upon a wider contextual understanding of the issue analysed. This contextual analysis was set out at two levels, the African continental and South African national, in the preceding chapters. This chapter’s review of the UN and those contextual analyses are undertaken simultaneously and are informed by each other; they instruct and provide interpretative meaning to each other throughout the research process.
This chapter presents and analyses the debates that took place within the UNHRC and UNGA on SOGI rights between 2011 and 2020. It begins with a description of the organs of the UN, with particular emphasis on the remit, procedures and relationships of and between the UNGA and UNHRC, as well as South Africa’s role within these organisations. This is followed by a timeline of SOGI dedicated interventions within the UN. The development of these resolutions is then detailed in chronological order so that a trajectory of narratives and potential change over time can be understood. To refer to the methodology section, this analysis takes how SOGI rights and sexual and gender minorities have been put into the discourse and, using a queer lens, asks questions about what that discourse does in terms of creating the normal and perverse and what power underlies those identifications to influence other states’ behaviours, interests and identities.
Therefore, in this analysis section the language used to determine pro and contra arguments for the rights of sexual and gender minorities within the UN is studied and emergent patterns noted. This provides evidence of the narratives used to describe and frame the issues. The analysis draws out key narrative foundations that South Africa uses to support it position on SOGI rights within each debate and in voting on resolutions. This includes drawing upon South Africa’s long history of freedom struggle and the rights enshrined within the Constitution. It also presents the notable objections to SOGI rights, exploring the arguments and confrontations within which South Africa must defend its policy position. There is a particular focus on African contributions to these debates as the African Group has led on some objections and forms the largest continental cohort of the OIC.
49 Jordaan, 2017a.
95 As Onapajo and Isike determined, “Africa provides the largest concentration of states opposed to [SOGI rights]” (Onapajo and Isike, 2016:21). As will be evidenced the key oppositional narratives include the claim that SOGI rights are not universal, they conflict with, largely undefined, traditional, cultural and religious values and beliefs, and they are being enforced through coercive, neocolonial methods.