If you say being gay is not African, you don’t know your his

[cronus]

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfre ... ristianity

If you say being gay is not African, you don’t know your history


During his visit to Africa this summer, the US president, Barack Obama, addressed legal discrimination against LGBT individuals. Meeting the Kenyan president, Uhuru Kenyatta, Obama said: “When you start treating people differently not because of any harm they are doing to anybody, but because they are different, that’s the path whereby freedoms begin to erode.”

Unfortunately, the response from Kenyatta was that “there are some things that we must admit we don’t share [with the US]. Our culture, our societies don’t accept.”

As I dug deep, I realised that African culture is no stranger to homosexual behaviours and acts
This is the same argument that Robert Mugabe used to suppress the human rights of LGBT people in Zimbabwe; that the former president of Nigeria, Goodluck Jonathan, used when he signed the most dangerous law against LGBT people in the modern world; and that President Yoweri Museveni used in a ceremonial signing of the anti-gay bill in Uganda. This year Gambia’s president Yahya Jammeh called for gay people’s throats to be slit.

When I was appointed by Berlin’s Humboldt University this year to teach the course “Pre- and post-colonial sexual orientation and sexual identity in Africa”, I knew I had a huge task before me. I had to teach students about a history that is mostly unwritten.

In digging up facts I found that, while many Africans say that homosexuality is un-African, African culture is no stranger to homosexual behaviours and acts.

For example, in my local language (Yoruba), the word for “homosexual” is adofuro, a colloquialism for someone who has anal sex. It might sound insulting and derogatory, however, the point is there is a word for the behaviour. Moreover, this is not a new word; it is as old as the Yoruba culture itself.

(continnued)

[NineBerry]

The problem is the idea that something is good or bad because it belongs to or doesn't belong to "our culture". Don't care about the past. Look at what effect something has on the present and future.

[cronus]

The problem is the idea that something is good or bad because it belongs to or doesn't belong to "our culture". Don't care about the past. Look at what effect something has on the presence and future.

Yes, I understand the German perspective. In the remainder of the world understanding and caring about what happened in the past is a very important step to understanding the present and acting as a guide towards the future.

[NineBerry]

That's not what I said, though. Sure, you can analyze the past to learn things. What I mean is that something is good simply because "this is how we have always done it".

[Svartalf]

Indeed it is... recently, I was reminded how , during the 1800s, many local officials opposed the passage of railroad near their bailiwick because it would destroy the livelihoods of porters, carters and muleteers.

[Hermit]

...not to mention the thousands of stablehands. The steam engine destroyed a huge industry.

Or did it?

[Svartalf]

it did, just that the evolution of technology just found new jobs for them... do you know how much of Paris has been made available for people because it's no longer required for horses, and thanks to modern cars being more compact than horse drawn vehicles.

[Hermit]

it did, just that the evolution of technology just found new jobs for them...

I look at porters, carters, muleteers and so on as components of the transport industry. The steam engine has not destroyed the transport industry at all. It has transformed it.

do you know how much of Paris has been made available for people because it's no longer required for horses, and thanks to modern cars being more compact than horse drawn vehicles.

Not just Paris and the space problem was more severe than the issue of where to park those horses. A bigger problem was predicted to be what to do about their exhaust. Every major city in the western world was in danger of being buried under mountains of horse shit. The first international conference dealing with urban planning was convened because of that problem. It disbanded without having found a solution even though some tinkerer named Benz had already devised it ten years earlier. The Great Horse Manure Crisis of 1894 is one of my favourite stories, which is why I have posted about it several times over the past six years.

[Svartalf]

1884n automobile is that old? (barring horrid steam contraptions like Cugnot's fardier)

[Hermit]

1884n automobile is that old? (barring horrid steam contraptions like Cugnot's fardier)

The patent for Benz's Motorwagen was valid from January 29, 1886 - 12 years before the conference took place. The car was not much to look at - almost literally simply a horseless carriage. Here's a replica of the prototype:



The motor was very primitive of course. A one litre, single cylinder four stroke, it was less powerful and slower than a horse, but it was not a horse, nor a road going steam locomotive. Gears came later. So did brakes. Although the motor car had an inauspicious start, I think as a proof of concept it was a resounding success. And progress was quick. In 1888 Bertha, Karl's wife, took their two teenage sons on the first recorded long distance journey undertaken by car, which was by then the model 3. They drove to Bertha's mother's place one day and back home the next, a distance of almost 200 kilometres. I don't think they had a lot of time for doing much besides driving, what with the top speed of the improved model being 16 km/h and running repairs being done along the way, one of which caused Bertha to become the inventor of brake lining.

So, yeah, the Mercedes Benz was already more than a glint in its creator's eyes more than a decade before the urban planners despaired over what to do about horse manure. Of course they could not have known, that the solution already existed; the beginning was rather inauspicious and mass production lay in the future still.