The world came to Nairobi, capital of Kenya, this week to talk — and shout — about how to achieve a better world. Delegates attended the World Social Forum (WSF) in their thousands to discuss topics as diverse as poverty, land redistribution, women’s issues, water affairs, government impunity and human rights abuses.
The WSF is the mirror image of the World Economic Forum, an annual gathering of top business and political leaders in Davos, Switzerland. The WSF has been held every year since 2001 in opposition to capitalism and globalisation. But critics say the WSF is simply a talk shop that doesn’t even produce concrete resolutions. However, Archbishop Bishop Desmond Tutu told a gathering at the forum this week that, despite the lack of concrete outcomes, the WSF does help to strengthen the social movements worldwide. He added that when G8 countries make decisions, they take into consideration issues raised at the WSF.
There was a certain amount of chaos at the Kasarani sports complex where the event was held this week. Participants milled around and frantically consulted their programmes to find the sometimes badly marked venues, and sometimes events simply didn’t happen.
For registration, those from Africa paid around 10 times less than representatives from wealthy places such as Europe and America. An official at the registration desk told me that South Africans had to pay more because it is not part of Africa. She did not explain.
This was the first time Africa had played host to the main event of the summit, and it provided an appropriate backdrop to the concerns of the WSF.
Amid all the causes being espoused on banners and flyers, a trail of small pink posters inviting participants to “Come and discover your Q-spot” led to a tent where a number of gay and lesbian organisations from around the world gathered under the auspices of the recently formed Gay and Lesbian Coalition of Kenya.
In a country where male-to-male sex is outlawed and carries a prison sentence of up to 14 years, Kenyans willing to speak openly about their homosexuality are brave. “If people discover your sexual orientation, you are kicked out of jobs,” said Emmanuel Kamau of Ishtar, an organisation for homosexuals.
Anna (not her real name), a lesbian, her lover and their gay friend, Fabian Stanley, who doesn’t mind being named, were still shaken by an ordeal a week before the WSF.
The trio got involved in an argument with one of the residents at a hostel for nursing students. Others joined in and before long they were pelted with stones. Security personnel took them to the local police station where they were forced by male officers to strip in front of members of the public. “My girlfriend, who dresses in male clothes, was further humiliated when one of the officers insisted on inserting a finger in her vagina,” said Anna. “They said they wanted to make sure she was a woman because they could not see that from her clothes. They said she could also be hiding ‘something’ in her vagina.” They were only released after Kamau’s intervention.
Kenya is not alone in its laws against homosexuality. In Uganda the penalty for “unnatural carnality” is life imprisonment. Some time ago the trashy Ugandan tabloid Red Pepper published the names of a few gay women. It called on the public to name other lesbian women in order to rid the country of “the deadly vice”.
Fikile Vilakazi, director of the Coalition of African Lesbians — which has 12 member countries — said she rejects the notion that homosexuality is alien to Africa. “The key thing is that human rights are indivisible. We are females and males, but we are also other things. The commonality of all the people at the WSF is that we are involved in a struggle — whether against poverty or for the right to live out our sexuality as we please.”