Introduction
Exploring sexuality and nationalist ideologies in postcolonial Africa, Basile Ndjio distinguishes four strategic units that mark the deployment of sexual politics through nationalist discourse, specifically in the context of Cameroon.
The first unit is the sublimation of procreative and reproductive sexuality, accompanied by the fetishization and ritualization of heterosexual relationships . . .. The second unit is the essentialization and racialization of native Africans’ sexuality . . .. The third unit is the segregation and symbolic “othering” of homosexuals . . .. The fourth unit is the criminalization and demonization of homoerotic practices and other unconventional forms of sexual longing and expression.[1]
In this chapter, I use these four units distinguished by Ndjio, adopting them as an analytical frame to examine the different strategies and patterns in the politics of sexuality in postcolonial Zambia. Discussing these, I draw on material I used in previous publications, but in a more concise and systematized way here.[2] Although Ndjio’s frame proves to be useful to analyze the Zambian context, there is one crucial difference between Cameroonian and Zambian postcolonial sexual politics: more than in Cameroon, in contemporary Zambia the politics of sexuality appears to be shaped by an explicitly Christian, mostly pentecostal, form of nationalism. This is the result of President Chiluba’s 1991 Declaration, which in 1996 was enshrined in a preamble to the country’s constitution and has given rise to a sense of pentecostal nationalism.[3] This became the ideology of nation-building, replacing the earlier ideology of “Zambian humanism” promoted by the first republican president, Kenneth Kaunda. Despite considerable differences, both ideologies reflect certain continuities that will become clear below. Let me make one caveat: while I discuss Ndjio’s units one by one, it should not be interpreted as that they can be easily separated or are successive stages. Although it will become clear that there are certain historical developments, at the same time, the various units are intertwined and overlap in complex ways. Due to the limited space of this chapter, I choose not to give a full and detailed account but only highlight certain patterns.
The Sublimation of Procreative and Reproductive Sexuality
Sublimation here refers to the process through which heterosexuality is transformed into the pure, ideal form of sexuality, and is reimagined as of a culturally and socially higher order. According to Ndjio, this process served to “maintain the long durée of male sexual supremacy as the foundation of postcolonial political power.”[4] In the Zambian context, a clear early manifestation of this unit can be observed in the discourse of Zambian Humanism, which was introduced by President Kenneth Kaunda in the mid-1960s, and became the ideology of Kaunda’s United National Independence Party (UNIP) in the 1970s. It served as a socialist-inspired philosophy for postcolonial nation building and was based on what Kaunda saw as “a distinctively African way of looking at things” while also having a “Christian basis.”[5] The latter is not surprising, given Kaunda’s upbringing at the Presbyterian Lubwa Mission in Chinsali, Northern Province, where his father was an evangelist and teacher.
In 1975, at a time when, according to David Gordon, the repressive and intrusive tendencies of humanism became pronounced[6]—the UNIP Research Bureau published a document called The Zambian Moral Code. Here, the party (which, in the system of single-party democracy at the time, equaled the government), presented a program of moral regeneration based on humanist principles. The Code addresses issues in areas such as politics, economics, and labor relations, but also in the more individual sphere, with sections about smoking habits, love and sex, marriage, cosmetics and dress, and nudes. Already in the introduction, the Code expresses concern about the “considerable immorality” in Zambia, referring to mini-skirts, tight trousers, jeans, and unaccompanied girls in Zambian streets at night.[7]
Interestingly, in the section about love and sex, the Code repeatedly refers to the phenomenon of a “decent free love affair,” which is considered acceptable on one condition: that it is man, not woman, who takes the initiative. Referring to Zambian customary law, the code literally states,
The Zambian traditional customs and indeed the African custom in general, dictate that a woman shall at all times wait until she is loved or approached by a man to engage her in a decent love affair. On the contrary, it shall not be in her power to solicit for love or to engage herself in “Soho-Hyde Park” type of love affairs.[8]
Drawing on ethnographic accounts of gender and sexuality in southern Africa, Signe Arnfred points out that the “rules for a decent love affair” in traditional societies often reflect the sociocultural norm of discretion.[9] Here, women are allowed to engage in sexual relationships with men other than their husbands, as long as they keep a public image of shyness and modesty. Traditionally, these norms of sexuality are complex and subtle, and they allow for considerable levels of feminine power and agency in the negotiation of sexuality, especially in the matrilineal societies of many peoples in Zambia.[10] However, the rather bold statement of the Code that “it is immoral for a woman to solicit a man for love” appears to invoke a Victorian or Christian notion of im/morality and can be argued to reflect a patriarchal bias that, in the words of Ndjio, seeks to “maintain the long durée of male sexual supremacy.”[11] The next section of the Code, about marriage, further foregrounds how sexual morality is concerned with reproduction. The section states that it is allowed for husbands to exchange their wives, for a payment in money form or in kind, with other men, the first reason for this practice being the situation where the wedlock of the couple concerned may have had entangled into problems of childlessness.[12]
In the contemporary Zambian context, where public morality has been transformed by the rise of pentecostal forms of Christianity, it is unimaginable that “free love affairs” or the exchange of wives would be publicly promoted by political parties and leaders, in the way that Kaunda and UNIP did in the 1970s. Yet, the process of the sublimation of procreative sexuality can be observed here, too, although it manifests itself in new forms. For instance, prominent pentecostal pastor, Bishop Joshua Banda of Northmead Assembly of God Church in Lusaka, who is one of the strongest defenders of the Declaration, addressed all the wrongs of popular masculinity in Zambia in a series of sermons, “Fatherhood in the 21st Century,” and sought to overcome these by promoting an ideal of biblical manhood. The sermons are interesting as they clearly illustrate Ndjio’s point of the politics of sexuality being concerned with maintaining male supremacy. Banda in his sermons develops a relatively nuanced or even “soft” version of masculinity, as he denounces men’s obsession with power, control, and supremacy and defines “biblical manhood” in terms of responsibility and “servant leadership.”[13] Yet in the end, he bases his notion of manhood on biblical ideas of male headship, although he does endorse the equality of men and women, he simultaneously emphasizes that men have received a “primary” responsibility to provide leadership in the family, the church, and society at large.[14] What is relevant here is that Banda explicitly emphasizes the procreative nature of his Christian ideal of masculinity, and contrasts it to “alternative,” that is, homosexual, lifestyles.
Biblical fatherhood has in mind that a man, as God aimed him, in a family takes his role as a father, and a woman, as God has fashioned her, takes the role as a mother in the home, and the two become the package that bring into this life, by procreation, a family through the offspring. And nothing else exists besides that. And why should those who take up a so-called alternative life style still take on the role of a mother and a father if they are [of the] same sex, and then go into adoption of children? We can adopt children in families and that’s fine, but not in this fashion … There is no substitute for fatherhood. It is rooted in biblical manhood, and biblical manhood is rooted in creation. And in creation God made them male and female. It is Adam and Eve and not Adam and Steve.[15]
Indeed, in his sermons Banda construes homosexual men as the counter-image of “biblical manhood,” as they mix up the divinely ordained gender order and as such represent what he calls “the impairment of true manhood.” The sermons provide an interesting twist to Ndjio’s argument that postcolonial African politics of sexuality seeks to address the crisis of the Muntu—that is, the libidinous African heterosexual male. The sermons, like African pentecostal discourse more generally, seem to address this crisis of masculinity by domesticating masculinity, while simultaneously rendering the sphere of spiritual power as a key for the performance of masculinity in public.[16]
The Essentialization and Racialization of Native Africans’ Sexuality
As part of the earlier mentioned discourse of Zambian humanism and its concern with moral regeneration, Kaunda in his 1975 Watershed Speech stated,
