Homosexuality, politics and Pentecostal nationalism in Zambia

Building upon debates about the politics of nationalism and sexuality in post-colonial Africa, this article highlights the role of religion in shaping nationalist ideologies that seek to regulate homosexuality. It specifically focuses on Pentecostal Christianity in Zambia, where the constitutional declaration of Zambia as a Christian nation has given rise to a form of ‘Pentecostal nationalism’ in which homosexuality is considered to be a threat to the purity of the nation and is associated with the Devil. The article offers an analysis of recent Zambian public debates about homosexuality, focusing on the ways in which the ‘Christian nation’ argument is deployed, primarily in a discourse of anti-homonationalism, but also by a few recent dissident voices. The latter prevent Zambia, and Christianity, from accruing a monolithic depiction as homophobic. Showing that the Zambian case presents a mobilisation against homosexuality that is profoundly shaped by the local configuration in which Christianity defines national identity – and in which Pentecostal-Christian moral concerns and theo-political imaginations shape public debates and politics – the article nuances arguments that explain African controversies regarding homosexuality in terms of exported American culture wars, proposing an alternative reading of these controversies as emerging from conflicting visions of modernity in Africa

Gay Rights, the Devil and the End Times: Public Religion and the Enchantment of the Homosexuality Debate in Zambia

This article contributes to the understanding of the role of religion in the public and political controversies about homosexuality in Africa. As a case study it investigates the heated public debate in Zambia following a February 2012 visit by United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, who emphasised the need for the country to recognise the human rights of homosexuals. The focus is on a particular Christian discourse in this debate, in which the international pressure to recognise gay rights is considered a sign of the end times, and Ban Ki-moon, the UN and other international organisations are associated with the Antichrist and the Devil. Here, the debate about homosexuality becomes eschatologically enchanted through millennialist thought. Building on discussions about public religion and religion and politics in Africa, this article avoids popular explanations in terms of fundamentalist religion and African homophobia, but rather highlights the political significance of this discourse in a postcolonial African context

Sexual Orientation, (Anti-)discrimination and Human Rights in a 'Christian Nation': The Politicization of Homosexuality in Zambia

Zambia has recently witnessed heated public and political debates over issues of homosexuality and gay or LGBTI (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex) rights. This article explores these debates with particular reference to the new draft constitution and the role of the Human Rights Commission (HRC). Homosexuality and LGBTI rights became heavily politicized during the constitutional review process. Discussions emerged not only about the penal code that prohibits same-sex practices, but also about the anti-discrimination clause in the constitution. The HRC explicitly warned against an inclusive formulation of this clause to prevent it from being applied to sexual orientation. Offering a critical historical and religio-political reconstruction of the politicization of homosexuality in the constitutional review process and examining the ambivalent contribution of the HRC, this article analyses these dynamics in relation to the political imagination of Zambia as a Christian nation. It argues that the ambivalent contribution of the HRC must be understood as a complex negotiation of the moral and religious sensibilities in society, and of popular political and religious rhetoric. However, the analysis also demonstrates how the logic of the Christian nation, and its subsequent moral geography, has begun to be subverted by a marginal yet important counter-narrative