S. N. Nyeck and Marc Epprecht, editors.Sexual Diversity in Africa: Politics, Theory, and Citizenship.

Abstract

This book may not be what readers expect. The main title suggests a survey of diverse and non-normative sexualities in Africa, but the subtitle more accurately reflects the contents: this book is about the ways that non-normative sexualities, as an abstraction, have figured into African politics and theorizing. This emphasis on the representation and the conceptualization of sexualities, rather than on the lived experience, is both the strongest and the weakest point of the book. This book consists of three parts: an introductory section titled “Framing the Debates,” which also appears to act as a catch-all for everything that does not fit into the other two parts, one on South Africa, and one on west Africa. The first section contains the strongest conceptual material, especially the opening chapter on human rights challenges and sexuality minority rights within African legal frameworks. Here, as they have done elsewhere, authors Olajide Akanji and Marc Epprecht make the case that the notion of individual rights, the foundation of much international jurisprudence and legislation, may not be the best way to advance the struggles for justice of sexually diverse citizens in Africa. The notion of group rights, so often invoked to justify homophobia and repression, may also be deployed to advance the interests of gay citizens. Group rights, Epprecht and Akanji argue, are more deeply rooted in African political structures and commitments, such as the African (Banjul) Charter on Human and People’s Rights.