Suspect sexualities: contextualizing rumours of homosexuality within colonial histories of population control

This article examines the widespread notion that homosexuality is ‘unAfrican’ in relation to a historical contextual factor that has been widely neglected within efforts to situate and make sense of this widespread notion: the legacy of western population control interventions in Africa and the anxieties, fears and suspicions that they have provoked. The article discusses the relevance of population control history within efforts to understand emerging forms of intolerance towards lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex and queer (LGBTIQ+) people across the continent. Western population control interventions initiated after the official demise of colonial governments have provided a historical basis for suspicions and rumours about how the West continues to manipulate and control African communities despite the formal termination of colonial rule. While positivist western epistemic frameworks have largely constructed such suspicions as ‘irrational’ and as barriers to its development agendas, critical approaches have argued that they can provide critical insights into social imaginaries, particularly in relation to dynamics of power and inequality. In interrogating the suspicion that homosexuality is ‘unAfrican’ from a critical perspective, analysis considers the rise of the international population movement and history of population control agendas in African countries in order to open up new ways of understanding the historical contextual factors that have engendered rumours that homosexualiy is a western imposition. Discussion specifically considers rumours and suspicions that homosexuality is a form of population control which have been iterated by African thought and political leaders. The article also relates these discourses to the increasing influence of the US pro-family movement in African sexual politics. Analysis draws on discursive data that was collected through online ethnography and fieldwork as well as a critical review of literature examining population control agendas and rumours in Africa. This article concludes that the history of the international population control movement is directly implicated within contemporary stigma and scapegoating of LGBTIQ+ people in Africa. The persistence of the suspicion that homosexuality is ‘unAfrican’ can therefore be explained, in part, through its genealogy within longer standing awareness of western efforts to contain population growth across the continent.