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Thomas Sankara’s progressive feminism applies equally to LGBTQI+ rights in Africa

Thomas Sankara’s progressive feminism applies equally to LGBTQI+ rights in Africa
Anda Dungulu and Letlhogonolo Mokgoroane
By Anda Dungulu and Letlhogonolo Mokgoroane
11 Sep 2024
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Sankara’s stance on women’s liberation was informed by the notion of women as human beings and an understanding of how toxic masculinities had an impact on the status of women.

“The condition of women is therefore at the heart of the question of humanity itself, here, there and everywhere. The question is thus universal in character.” – Thomas Sankara 1987 

In August 2024, a lesbian couple was brutally murdered by a man in Edendale, KwaZulu-Natal, in what can only be classified as a homophobic killing, and what the law considers a hate crime. This brutal killing is the third deadly incident of queerphobia in the past month. 

On 11 August 2024,  while South Africa was paying tribute to the 20,000 women who marched to the Union Building in 1956, Clement Hadebe, a transgender woman, was shot and killed in Johannesburg while walking home in the early hours of the morning.

A week later, on 18 August, 32-year-old Xolani Xaka, a gay man, was stabbed to death by a group of men at the gate to his home in Gqeberha, in the Eastern Cape. 

This occurred in South Africa, a country lauded for its Constitution and as a beacon for queer rights on the continent and in the world. These killings are also happening in the context of a wave of anti-queer laws emerging on the African continent.

Recently, Liberia’s House of Representatives instructed its committees on gender, health and judiciary to review the request for the amendment of its anti-homosexuality law. The amendment would make homosexuality a criminal offence.

Liberia would join countries like Uganda, Ghana, Malawi, Burkina Faso and Kenya. Anti-queer legislation is on the rise in other parts of the world. Most notable is the United States, where there are currently around 527 anti-queer bills.

In Uganda, the situation has worsened with the passage of the draconian Anti-Homosexuality Act in 2023. In Ghana, despite its more solid reputation for democracy and respect for human rights, the passing of the Anti-Homosexuality Act has thwarted the rights of queer people.

Police raids on queer events and spaces have drastically increased since the bill was first proposed. The most relevant example of this was the forced closure of Alex Kofi Donkor’s LGBT+ Rights Ghana Centre in Accra. 

Colonialism and the law as an instrument of oppression 


For many years, Africans lived under colonialism in conditions where our identities were dominated by those of colonial powers. For colonialists, this continent was the haunt of native savages, who they came to enlighten. To achieve this enlightenment, they subjected the natives to cultural domination, enforced through a system of state-sanctioned violence and dehumanisation.

In fact, anti-LGBTQI+ prejudices date back to colonisation in Africa where colonisers, through Christianity, believed that monogamous, heterosexual relationships were the only acceptable type. 

When colonial powers invaded Africa, they imported and imposed their beliefs, laws and cultural practices, which included the criminalisation of consensual same-sex relationships.

Unfortunately, many former African colonies retained and continue to perpetuate them and falsely assert that through the passage of these laws, they are protecting the cultural norms of their countries. 

Towards Sankara’s liberation 


The late former president of Burkina Faso, Thomas Sankara, headed an administration that incorporated feminist agendas by stopping female genital mutilation, forced marriages and child marriages. It also sent girls back to school at a time when women’s and children’s rights lacked protection in parts of the world.

As such, it remains one of the most progressive moves in advancing girls’ and women’s rights around the globe. 

Sankara’s stance on women's liberation was informed by the notion of women as human beings and an understanding of how toxic masculinities had an impact on the status of women.

Sankara was cognisant of women’s experiences under colonial and patriarchal rule and appreciated that liberation required equal rights for them to thrive in society. He publicly emphasised that: “The revolution and women’s liberation go together. We do not talk about women’s emancipation as an act of charity. Inequality can be done away with only by establishing a new society where men and women will enjoy equal rights.” 

Through an understanding of Sankara’s leadership, we must accept that there can be no liberation for women without the liberation of queer people in Africa. Our struggles and rights are tied together.

African women who are queer, for instance, exist in intersecting spaces of oppression where they are discriminated against because they are black, queer and women, and often negotiate and navigate their identity under conditions of exclusion, invisibility, invalidity, misunderstanding, cultural rejection and a constant threat of violence from the state and society. 

The criminalisation of queer people by the state creates state-sanctioned and state-sponsored queerphobia in already hostile societies for people pushed to the margins, which constitutes various forms of violence, discrimination and harassment under the guise of culture and religion.  

Concept of ubuntu


Sankara’s politics was rooted in humanising women, which is the whole concept of ubuntu. The late Justice Yvonne Mokgoro described ubuntu as “a metaphor that describes group solidarity as central to the survival of our communities, where the fundamental belief is that motho ke motho ka batho ba bangwe/umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu, which, translated, means a person can only be a person through others. It is a humanistic orientation towards our fellow beings.

Ubuntu must be applied as the primary value in which we see each other as human beings and as Africans. 

To criminalise LGBTQI+ people is contrary to Sankara’s politics and ubuntu. It is a systematic and structural patriarchal dictatorship of queer people, and a colonial legacy intended to control.

It is often used as a tool of distraction by African leaders for their failures in developing and maintaining law and order in their countries, as well as the endemic corruption perpetrated and upheld by them. 

Through a Sankaran lens, we are called to recognise the humanness in fellow Africans as a praxis and to love one another before and beyond any cultural and religious beliefs.

Criminalising people for who they are and the relationships they chose to have leads to a society that is complicit in all violent acts committed against them. This is a stain on our collective conscience as a people.

It is our duty to uphold LGBTQI+ rights as human rights, and our failure to do so is to accept that we no longer have ubuntu, and that we are no longer African. DM 

Anda Dungulu and Advocate Letlhogonolo Mokgoroane are based at the Centre for Applied Legal Studies, Wits University.

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