RE: USA Africa Dialogue Series - I Died Today

I wonder if folks have seen Adichie's rebuttal to the wave of homophobia
sweeping through our continent.
Apologise for cross posting if you have seen it already.
Tunde Zack-Williams


Anti-Gay Law: Chimamanda Adichie Writes, 'Why can't he just be like everyone
else?'
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By Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
I will call him Sochukwuma. A thin, smiling boy who liked to play with us
girls at the university primary school in Nsukka. We were young. We knew he
was different, we said, 'he's not like the other boys.' But his was a benign
and unquestioned difference; it was simply what it was. We did not have a
name for him. We did not know the word 'gay.' He was Sochukwuma and he was
friendly and he played oga so well that his side always won.
In secondary school, some boys in his class tried to throw Sochukwuma off a
second floor balcony. They were strapping teenagers who had learned to
notice, and fear, difference. They had a name for him. Homo. They mocked him
because his hips swayed when he walked and his hands fluttered when he
spoke. He brushed away their taunts, silently, sometimes grinning an
uncomfortable grin. He must have wished that he could be what they wanted
him to be. I imagine now how helplessly lonely he must have felt. The boys
often asked, "Why can't he just be like everyone else?"
Possible answers to that question include 'because he is abnormal,' 'because
he is a sinner, 'because he chose the lifestyle.' But the truest answer is
'We don't know.' There is humility and humanity in accepting that there are
things we simply don't know. At the age of 8, Sochukwuma was obviously
different. It was not about sex, because it could not possibly have been -
his hormones were of course not yet fully formed - but it was an awareness
of himself, and other children's awareness of him, as different. He could
not have 'chosen the lifestyle' because he was too young to do so. And why
would he - or anybody - choose to be homosexual in a world that makes life
so difficult for homosexuals?
The new law that criminalizes homosexuality is popular among Nigerians. But
it shows a failure of our democracy, because the mark of a true democracy is
not in the rule of its majority but in the protection of its minority -
otherwise mob justice would be considered democratic. The law is also
unconstitutional, ambiguous, and a strange priority in a country with so
many real problems. Above all else, however, it is unjust. Even if this was
not a country of abysmal electricity supply where university graduates are
barely literate and people die of easily-treatable causes and Boko Haram
commits casual mass murders, this law would still be unjust. We cannot be a
just society unless we are able to accommodate benign difference, accept
benign difference, live and let live. We may not understand homosexuality,
we may find it personally abhorrent but our response cannot be to
criminalize it.
A crime is a crime for a reason. A crime has victims. A crime harms society.
On what basis is homosexuality a crime? Adults do no harm to society in how
they love and whom they love. This is a law that will not prevent crime, but
will, instead, lead to crimes of violence: there are already, in different
parts of Nigeria, attacks on people 'suspected' of being gay. Ours is a
society where men are openly affectionate with one another. Men hold hands.
Men hug each other. Shall we now arrest friends who share a hotel room, or
who walk side by side? How do we determine the clunky expressions in the law
- 'mutually beneficial,' 'directly or indirectly?'
Many Nigerians support the law because they believe the Bible condemns
homosexuality. The Bible can be a basis for how we choose to live our
personal lives, but it cannot be a basis for the laws we pass, not only
because the holy books of different religions do not have equal significance
for all Nigerians but also because the holy books are read differently by
different people. The Bible, for example, also condemns fornication and
adultery and divorce, but they are not crimes.
For supporters of the law, there seems to be something about homosexuality
that sets it apart. A sense that it is not 'normal.' If we are part of a
majority group, we tend to think others in minority groups are abnormal, not
because they have done anything wrong, but because we have defined normal to
be what we are and since they are not like us, then they are abnormal.
Supporters of the law want a certain semblance of human homogeneity. But we
cannot legislate into existence a world that does not exist: the truth of
our human condition is that we are a diverse, multi-faceted species. The
measure of our humanity lies, in part, in how we think of those different
from us. We cannot - should not - have empathy only for people who are like
us.
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Some supporters of the law have asked - what is next, a marriage between a
man and a dog?' Or 'have you seen animals being gay?' (Actually, studies
show that there is homosexual behavior in many species of animals.) But,
quite simply, people are not dogs, and to accept the premise - that a
homosexual is comparable to an animal - is inhumane. We cannot reduce the
humanity of our fellow men and women because of how and who they love. Some
animals eat their own kind, others desert their young. Shall we follow those
examples, too?
Other supporters suggest that gay men sexually abuse little boys. But
pedophilia and homosexuality are two very different things. There are men
who abuse little girls, and women who abuse little boys, and we do not
presume that they do it because they are heterosexuals. Child molestation is
an ugly crime that is committed by both straight and gay adults (this is why
it is a crime: children, by virtue of being non-adults, require protection
and are unable to give sexual consent).
There has also been some nationalist posturing among supporters of the law.
Homosexuality is 'unafrican,' they say, and we will not become like the
west. The west is not exactly a homosexual haven; acts of discrimination
against homosexuals are not uncommon in the US and Europe. But it is the
idea of 'unafricanness' that is truly insidious. Sochukwuma was born of Igbo
parents and had Igbo grandparents and Igbo great-grandparents. He was born a
person who would romantically love other men. Many Nigerians know somebody
like him. The boy who behaved like a girl. The girl who behaved like a boy.
The effeminate man. The unusual woman. These were people we knew, people
like us, born and raised on African soil. How then are they 'unafrican?'
If anything, it is the passage of the law itself that is 'unafrican.' It
goes against the values of tolerance and 'live and let live' that are part
of many African cultures. (In 1970s Igboland, Area Scatter was a popular
musician, a man who dressed like a woman, wore makeup, plaited his hair. We
don't know if he was gay - I think he was - but if he performed today, he
could conceivably be sentenced to fourteen years in prison. For being who he
is.) And it is informed not by a home-grown debate but by a cynically
borrowed one: we turned on CNN and heard western countries debating 'same
sex marriage' and we decided that we, too, would pass a law banning same sex
marriage. Where, in Nigeria, whose constitution defines marriage as being
between a man and a woman, has any homosexual asked for same-sex marriage?
This is an unjust law. It should be repealed. Throughout history, many
inhumane laws have been passed, and have subsequently been repealed. Barack
Obama, for example, would not be here today had his parents obeyed American
laws that criminalized marriage between blacks and whites.
An acquaintance recently asked me, 'if you support gays, how would you have
been born?' Of course, there were gay Nigerians when I was conceived. Gay
people have existed as long as humans have existed. They have always been a
small percentage of the human population. We don't know why. What matters is
this: Sochukwuma is a Nigerian and his existence is not a crime.


Read more
http://newswirengr.com/2014/02/19/anti-gay-law-chimamanda-adichie-writes-why
-cant-he-just-be-like-everyone-else/

-----Original Message-----
From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
[mailto:usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Emeagwali, Gloria
(History)
Sent: 28 February 2014 12:25
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Subject: RE: USA Africa Dialogue Series - I Died Today

I love this poem - minus line 31.

What made me cringe was not the f- word but
the v- word , surprisingly.

But who am I to query a poet?


Professor Gloria Emeagwali

________________________________
From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
[usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of franklyne ogbunwezeh
[ogbunwezeh@yahoo.com]
Sent: Thursday, February 27, 2014 10:59 PM
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - I Died Today

I Died Today!!!

By

Emmanuel Franklyne Ogbunwezeh

I died today.

I died today in shame and anger and annoyance.

I died today in those lifeless bodies of innocent school children of Yobe
State, whose only "crimes" were going to school to conquer ignorance.

Ignorance proved too strong and fatal.
She proved murderous and self-righteous.

Ignorance not only slaughters the mind enslaved to it; It battles to waste
the lives of those who are massed against it.

The schizophrenic ignorance packaged as religious fanaticism invaded the
citadels of knowledge and exacted vengeance.
The price was the body and blood of over 43 innocent young Nigerians.

I died today!
Nigeria killed me.

The country of my birth, took its posterity to the Golgotha of hate.
She had her crucified in between a troop of thieves.

I am busy dying over and over again in my brothers and sisters massacred by
the fiery hate of a fanatical horde of thieves;

And the thieves of Abuja are busy DISAPPEARING billions of dollars that
would have made my poor life here a bit livable.

I died today.
Nigeria killed me.

I died today in those men and women lynched by the hateful ignorance of
homophobes; who instead of pursuing solutions to Nigeria's problems, are
taking out their angst on minorities that do not fit into the conceptual
schemes of their morbid faiths.

I died today.
Nigeria killed me.

I died in all who would lose their lives today on Nigerian deathtraps of
roads.
Roads constructed with corruption and embezzlement, to the furthest reaches
of dysfunction and non-existence.

I died today in all whom Nigeria has fucked over, and sodomized without
Vaseline for so long.

I died today in Nigerians, in whom hate, ignorance and atavism have built up
a cocooned vision of the world that was sired in hate and lives by peddling
hate.

I died because our education degenerated into dsyfunctionality as to teach
them anything.

I died.
Nigeria killed me

Emmanuel F. Ogbunwezeh
25.02.2014

* ************** *************** ****************** ***************
*********** What constitutes a disservice to our faculty of judgment,
however, is to place obstacles in the way of assembling truth's fragments,
remaining content with a mere one- or two-dimensional projection where a
multidimensional and multifaceted apprehension remains open, accessible and
instructive.


Wole Soyinka, Between Truth and Indulgences

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