GAY RIGHTS HOT ISSUE


Skye Chirape, below and left, uses her creative talents to protest in support of oppressed and persecuted African women


Are you currently in a relationship? I am engaged and I’m hoping to have a very big African wedding, but also a very political wedding to make a statement. I am also planning to have a baby aſter we get married and also adopt. My dream is to live on a farm and take in as many children as we can adopt.


Do you see yourself as a Christian? No, I do not see myself as a Christian, al- though I did grow up in a Christian home and family. I do not believe in organised religion. However, I do believe in God. I would say I lean more towards Buddhism because I really believe in its ideologies of people living side by side. It’s all about love, friendship, acceptance and meditat- ing. I think everyone is equal.


“I believe fashion breaks down barriers, but most importantly my clothes allow me to become visible to the world and express myself and my political views as an African woman”


thetic to my plight of being African and a lesbian. Instead of life getting better I had to face other issues such as immigration restrictions and being homeless. I was also detained in Dover. However I took the Home Office to Court, represented myself and won and I can now live free mentally, physically, spiritually and sexually.


Do you find Africans living in the UK more accepting of same-sex relationships than those in Africa? No, just more tolerable. Te British Afri- can or Black community here are just as homophobic as you would find back home, but because of the law they cannot object.


How have you learnt to stand up for yourself? I have always been surrounded by strong vocal people. Despite my father being


72 | NEW AFRICAN WOMAN | WINTER 2011


homophobic, he had countless other good qualities and he was always a man who spoke up for what he believed in. I also learnt from my mother, who is also a fighter – a strong African woman. She also taught me to be tough and to speak up for what I believed in.


If you could create change, what would you revolutionise? I would change people’s attitudes and start with our history. Te problem in Africa is that there is a lot of history, but not everything has been recorded correctly. Very little is written about gay people prior to European involvement in Africa. Research has shown evidence of same-sex unions being tolerated, understood and acknowledged within traditional cultures. Boy wives and female husbands are


prevalent in oral traditions of the Bantu tribes in Kenya such as the Kikuyu and the Kamba. In the Nile region, Kalenjin, women-to-women marriages were also welcomed and were accepted as alterna- tives to heterosexual marriages. Plus in South Africa and Southern Africa, including Zimbabwe, there is a tradition that is acknowledged to this day of ances- tral marriages of female traditional healers (sangoma) to other women.


Have you made peace with your family? My father died just before I decided to come to England and although I know this may sound strange, in a weird way I suppose I could say I was thankful. What I mean is that as I was growing up, my father and I were very close, but he was also very possessive, especially be- cause I was a girl child and he really had high expectations of me. I arrived in Eng- land a year aſter he died, but if he was alive at the time of my turmoil, I know that my life would have been even more difficult because he would have tried to take con- trol. With the rest of my family there is little communication. I am still trying to build a better relationship with my mother and brother, but the rest of my family do not speak to me because I am gay.


What does it mean to you to be an Afri- can woman in 2011? Growing up in Zimbabwe as a female I was irrelevant. As a lesbian, I was non-existent and my visibility would have cost me jail time, ‘corrective’ rape, forced marriage, banishment or even my death. Troughout my life in Zimbabwe there was not one single portrayal anywhere of ‘gayness’, ‘queerness’ or lesbianism combined with Africaness. I was taught to be ashamed of myself


because I was letting my race down, but now being African means being proud and being recognised as a beautiful female. It also means being powerful because I now have a voice and I am now visible. I am therefore proud of being an African, proud of being a woman and proud of being a lesbian.


Photos: Kay Hayward


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