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The Culturalization of Citizenship pp 115–136Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

The Nation and Its Undesirable Subjects: Homosexuality, Citizenship and the Gay ‘Other’ in Cameroon

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Abstract

This chapter is based primarily on empirical research conducted in the gay milieu between 2008 and 2010 and in different state courts in Cameroon where I followed trials for homosexual offences. By analysing how sexuality was culturally constructed by the regime of Cameroon’s first president Ahmadou Ahidjo (1960–1982) and that of his successor Paul Biya, the paper sheds light on the continuities and discontinuities in the government’s forging of sexual nationalism and citizenship as well as its management of the so-called ‘peril of homosexuality’. The paper argues that since the enactment of laws criminalizing same-sex relations in 1972, the Cameroon government has been determined to lock the sexuality of the masses into entrenched forms of localism and autochthony, accompanied by concerted efforts to draw boundaries between insiders and outsiders, citizens and strangers, authentic and deracinated Africans, good and bad citizens, and loyal and disloyal subjects, and so on.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    LGBTI = lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex people. Although I acknowledge their differences in meaning, this paper uses the terms homosexual, gay, lesbian, MSM and WSW interchangeably.

  2. 2.

    In a private conversation (12 November 2009), one prominent Cameroonian political scientist and former member of parliament told me that this sodomy law was decreed in the wake of a series of emergency legislations passed by Ahidjo’s regime to clamp down on his political opponents, notably members of the Union des Populations du Cameroun, a radical political movement banned under his rule.

  3. 3.

    My previous work has shown how this Pan-Africanist project was informed by a sexual policy that sublimated the procreative and reproductive dimension of sexuality, as well as the fetishization and ritualization of heterosexual relationships (cf. Ndjio 2013b; Van Klinken 2014).

  4. 4.

    This legislation is now denounced by many human rights and gay associations for its gross violation of the Cameroonian constitution of June 1972, revised in January 1996.

  5. 5.

    In an early study on African postcolonial space, I showed how the Biya regime—following the failure of the democratization process in the mid-1990s—made both private and public spaces the sites of political power, with the postcolonial state not only expanding its scope of power but extending its control and surveillance over the masses (Ndjio 2005).

  6. 6.

    See the special issue published by the Cameroonian scholarly journal Terroirs (2007).

  7. 7.

    The figure provided by ADEFHO is astonishingly high if one recalls that between 1972 and 2006 very few cases for homosexual offenses were brought to state courts (see Ndjio 2010).

  8. 8.

    Even the so-called progressive or pro-opposition newspapers such as Le Popoli and Mutations, which are generally critical of the government, reproduce these conservative views about gay people and same-sex practices. See Le Popoli 14 March 2005, Mutations 17 May 2005.

  9. 9.

    One of the co-accused was detained in the cell of the gendarmerie together with her 9 month-old son. Cf. www.camer.be.org, 16 October 2008.

  10. 10.

    These two concepts refer to a wicked political system in which the poor and weak are compelled to offer their rectums to men in power to achieve their legitimate social aspirations (see Ndjio 2012, forthcoming).

  11. 11.

    Cf. L’ Anecdote 255, 31 January 2006: 7.

  12. 12.

    Nouvelle Afrique 187, 19 January 2006: 3–4.

  13. 13.

    One satirical newspaper talks of a ‘gay mafia’ that has infiltrated the state apparatus and all spheres of power in Cameroon, and has planned to make this country a paradis terrestre (heaven on earth) for sodomy and pederasty. See Le Popoli 537, 27 June 2007: 2–3.

  14. 14.

    On the link between homophobic policy and nationalist discourses in other African countries, see Dudink (2011) and Epprecht (2013, 2008).

  15. 15.

    See Jeune Afrique, 12 March 2012: 3.

  16. 16.

    See the report jointly published in August 2010 by four local and international human rights organizations including the Cameroon Association for the Defence of Gay Rights, Alternatives-Cameroon, Human Rights Watch and International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission.

  17. 17.

    See Aurore Plus, 7 April 2007.

  18. 18.

    See Le Popoli, 24 June 2009.

  19. 19.

    Cf. U.N. Human Rights Council (2011) para. 40; ADEFHO/Alternatives-Cameroun/HRW/IGLHRC (2010).

  20. 20.

    See ADEFHO’s report issued on 23 August 2009, which recorded some of the state’s violations of the rights of homosexuals.

  21. 21.

    See Jeune Afrique, 12 March 2012: 3.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Douala, Douala, Cameroon

    Basile Ndjio

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  1. Basile Ndjio
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Sociology, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Jan Willem Duyvendak

  2. Anthropology, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Peter Geschiere

  3. Sociology, University of Humanistic Studies, Utrecht, The Netherlands

    Evelien Tonkens

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Ndjio, B. (2016). The Nation and Its Undesirable Subjects: Homosexuality, Citizenship and the Gay ‘Other’ in Cameroon. In: Duyvendak, J., Geschiere, P., Tonkens, E. (eds) The Culturalization of Citizenship. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-53410-1_6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-53410-1_6

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