DISPOSSED

Spying on foreign governments reached its height during the great hey days of the iron curtain. The two main superpowers of America and Russia spied not just on each other’s activities but also on their surrogate regimes. Surrogate states spied on each other too – Kenya would take great interest in what Tanzania would be doing and vice versa.

The fall of communism however reduced the need of state surrogacy and with it the need of African states to be interested in the internal affairs of other states. Of course acts of spying remain highly criminalized and carry very punitive sentences – they are acts of high treason.

Because of the huge financial rewards given some people were always tempted to spy on their own governments to the benefit of foreigners. Others engaged in it for ideological or political reasons. In movies one would normally see political dissenters defecting to the West from Russia, but it is likely there were reverse defections as well.

Why are we discussing history on this website? – Well because there are ideological reasons why gay and lesbian people should feel completely disenchanted by their own governments and societies. Having been denied any sense of belonging and space to be who we know they are, and especially at a time when they can see how differently gay and lesbian people in other countries are treated, they have reason to hate the African society and its leadership.

For the gay and lesbian people whose systematic exclusion from the national public life is painstakingly thorough, what loyalty do we owe to the governments and our fellow citizenry? The Ugandan anti-homosexuality bill proposes death sentence for serial offenders, and Kenya is soon following suit. The parliamentary Select Committee, removed any hope that might have been there of ever having the basic human rights of the gay and lesbian Kenyans ever seeing the light of day – what annoys the most was the grin on their faces as they did it.

Unfortunately the opportunities for ideological defections do not appear to exist anymore. It is likely given the current global economic crisis, new political or more likely competing economic structures and interests will emerge. These will create opportunities in which people who are consistently and thoroughly excluded like the gay and lesbian people in Africa can begin to take the sweet revenge on the homophobes.

There is need to put a price on this systematic exclusion – the gay and lesbian people in Africa are dispossessed, excluded and lacking of hope for any meaningful change however slight. If there is anyone out there creative and courageous enough, there is enough anger and hostility, which can be channelled to some cause – any cause that can make African homophobia costly to the Africans?