[Debate] Aid, Resistance and Queer Power: Critique of "Aid Conditionality for LGBTI Rights"

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

<http://bit.ly/HJdUel>
<http://bit.ly/ITorY5>
Aid, resistance and Queer power

Hakima Abbas*

LGBTIQ Africans are currently at the crux of an ever-increasing
conservative (dare I say fascist) assault perpetuated primarily by the
ruling elites in collusion, and often financed by, global right wing
forces using the apparatus of the state and institutions such as the
Church.  African progressive forces, through LGBTI and Queer movements
and allies in the feminist, academic, human rights and social justice
communities, have been resisting this onslaught and attempting to
bring to bear a new understanding and discourse on so-called LGBTI
issues in Africa notably by contextualizing these in the ever growing
democratic regression and class struggle on the continent.  In light
of this situation, global attempts to stand in solidarity with African
LGBTI persons and communities have brought these issues to the
forefront of international attention. Western policy makers, often at
the demand of European and US civil society, have responded with
several forms of intervention including the threat of tying
development aid to human rights protection of LGBTI persons.  These
attempts have not always been met with elation by Queer communities or
movements in Africa. In order for us to understand some of the
resistance within the Queer movement to the use of aid as a stick to
African governments to shift their policies and laws towards LGBTI
persons, we have to deconstruct and understand the foundation of aid
in general, the history of aid in Africa as well as the context and
politics of Queer organizing.

In the 1950’s as Africa was gaining independence and attempting to
create South-South alignment outside of the cold war allegiances, the
development paradigm was gaining grounds in international affairs with
the United States of America (US) in particular positioning themselves
as the benefactor of both a crumbled post-war Europe and of Europe’s
former colonies.  The Union of Socialist Soviet Republics (USSR) also
sought to gain ideological alliance based on socialist principles and
effects.  While the war was cold for most of the world, it was
cataclysmic in Africa where legitimate governments were overthrown,
proxy wars were fuelled, natural resources exploited and economies
devastated.  With capitalism offering little in the form of social and
economic rights for the masses, as was the call during the struggle
for independence, what it did offer was ‘aid and development’, while
its liberal proponents further expounded the virtues of a singular
brand of democracy and human rights (read as civil and political).

The end of the USSR would spell the dominance of liberal capitalism,
and therefore dominance of the aid and development discourse in Global
North-South relations. It is with much fanfare that developed nations
continue to pledge significant sums of money in aid to countries of
the Global South, but none more than in the continent of Africa.
However, a large proportion of aid pledges to Africa remain
unfulfilled while another large proportion of aid serves to contribute
to the donor nation, being tied to services and products provided from
companies in donor countries.  Most foreign aid has been provided in
the form of loans, bearing high rates of interest and creating a
crippling debt crisis that has perpetuated the underdevelopment of
African economies.  Africa today pays more in debt servicing than it
receives as aid from Western countries and blocs: it is estimated that
while Africa receives less than $13billion in aid annually, it spends
$15billion annually on debt repayments. For every dollar that an
African country receives in grants, it pays $13 in interest on debt.
While some aid conditionality is used to protect and promote human
rights, the majority of conditions are elaborated to entrench further
dependence on donor countries creating for example trade preferences,
sole contractor agreements, etc.

Aid, as it is currently constructed between the West and Africa, is
therefore not sufficient to redress the conditions that maintain the
levels of poverty in Africa despite the continent being one of the
richest in raw materials. Rather the aid and debt crisis is a
reflection of the historical and present relationship that Africa and
the rest of the world maintain.  In short, it is about power – a
relationship based largely on dependence and exploitation.  I have
argued elsewhere (1)  that while many are focused on reforming the aid
architecture, African energies should be spent on seeking alternatives
such as fair trade, reparations and cancellation of odious debt.

So if aid is not in the interests of African peoples’, why would aid
conditionality be a tool for African social justice?  The language of
human rights has been lauded by liberal western democrats who assume
that they must coerce Africa into understanding notions of equality
and justice without acknowledging the devastating effects of
globalized neo-liberal economic policies and the limitations of
elective democracy as practiced by two party states with only one
acceptable ideology.  In the last decade LGBTI issues have been put
squarely in the geopolitical arena.  In Africa, the homophobes are
using the very notions of citizenship and African identity as rhetoric
to exclude and oppress LGBTI persons and communities.  This does not
come in a vacuum of oppression.  Indeed a democratic regression and
looming economic recession has created systematic entrenchment of
various forms of oppression.  Notably, oppressions that seek to exert
power over bodies and sexuality are gaining ground in an increasingly
fundamentalist state and religious rhetoric armed with populist power.
 On the flip side, LGBTI issues have gained ground in the
international arena as a barometer to determine who the ‘good liberal’
countries versus the ‘bad backward’ ones are.  With racist undertones
about the ‘barbaric’ and ‘uncivilized’, it has been written that the
‘cultures’ and ‘traditions’ of the Black and Brown peoples of the
world have not yet been civilized enough to tolerate gay and lesbian
people.  And with this undertone, ‘gay rights’ (terminology used as if
it should suffice to encompass the collective diversity of LGBTIQ
equality and liberation) has become a card on a bad deck for Western
governments to use as political mileage internationally, again with
much fanfare. It is truly unfortunate, because behind some of these
efforts there are indeed individuals who sincerely seek to stand in
solidarity with LGBTI communities and people all over the world.  And
perhaps that is the place at which we start, a discussion about what
we understand by genuine solidarity and how to achieve it.

Receiving criticism from the African LGBTIQ movement about their broad
aid withdrawal statements, some Western governments have rather talked
about a redirection of some aid to civil society movements who are
working on LGBTIQ rights and equality. All movements need resources
and there is a myth that the LGBTIQ movement in Africa has been
inundated with funds, and will continue to be because of the special
interest bestowed upon it by Western governments.  The reverse is in
fact true: on very little, the African LGBTIQ movement has made great
strides.  If funding is to genuinely be a strategy for solidarity, the
African LGBTIQ movement must be afforded the space to dictate its own
funding priorities. In spite of the divergent opinions that will
inevitably exist, there are certainly priorities that can be agreed
among a broad spectrum of activists. The movement also needs to begin
to set the parameters of what money is acceptable given the political
framework in which the movement operates and seeks to have an impact
on.

Aid conditionality for LGBTI rights is currently being used to show
muscle for an otherwise vulnerable minority, but this action, not
taken with the full consultation ignores the adverse effect that the
action would actually have on LGBTI Africans.  All Africans would
suffer if, for instance, our education and health systems were further
crumbled.  Certainly, the withdrawal, or threat therein, of foreign
aid only reinforces the argument that homosexuality is a Western
construct.  And of course the homophobes, knowing full well the
illegitimacy of their argument, encourage this connection as when
President Museveni talked about why he withdrew the Anti-Homosexuality
bill ignored or obliterated the significant widespread Ugandan and
African movement to fight the bill, but focused only on Western
pressure thus stirring backlash.

An emerging Queer movement in Africa is engaging in this context and
conversation not from the point of view of ‘gay rights’ but from a
framework of queer liberation.  Attempting to dismantle the binary
notions of gender and sexuality to talk about pluralism and
complexity.  This movement seeks not to separate LGBTI issues from the
broad spectrum of issues that affect all Africans including Queer
Africans.  This implies that what affects Africans negatively is
indeed bad for Queer Africans but also, and critically, that the
reverse holds strong.

There are a myriad of opinions in the LGBTIQ movement about the use of
aid as a tactic.  This is exactly as it should be and reflects the
plural and multifaceted nature of a steadily growing movement. Just
like sanctions for South Africa became a tactic that the liberation
forces had to debate and build consensus around internally: whether
the effects on Black people could be counterbalanced by the potential
victory over the Apartheid system.  So, too these are tactics that
must be debated, discussed, and decided by the African Queer movement.
 When difficult measures that will impact whole communities and
nations are used, they must be used responsibly, as an urgent resort
and always with the decision making of those directly affected.
Nevertheless, while aid for LGBTIQ rights and equality are being
discussed, significant shifts in global geopolitics almost render the
discussion futile.  With so-called ‘emerging’ powers wielding as much
political and economic clout as former colonial powers, the aid system
is likely to significantly transform and aid conditionality may be
rendered obsolete.  In this context, the Queer African movement must
again consider how to make global alliances, with whom and with what
tactics, and must continue to engage critically on the nature of
genuine solidarity with these allied partners.

(1) ‘Aid and Reparations: Power in the Development Discourse’, Hakima
Abbas with Nana Ndeda (2009) published in ‘Aid to Africa: Coloniser or
Redeemer?’, by Pambazuka Press (Edited by Hakima Abbas and Yves
Niyiragira), ISBN: 978-1-906387-38-9

_____________________________________

Hakima Abbas is the Executive Director of Fahamu Network for Social Justice.

-- 
Yoshie Furuhashi
<http://mrzine.org/>