NAIROBI, KENYA – The audience is silent in anticipation at The Go Down Arts Center in Nairobi, the capital. The pitch black walls of the auditorium add to the eerie ambience until a husky female voice interrupts the quiet.
“My name is Kate Kamunde,” the 30-year-old woman says as she leans into the microphone at the event celebrating International Day Against Homophobia last month. “I am the executive director of Artists for Recognition and Acceptance.”
But to the audience, filled with young people from Kenya’s gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and intersex, LGBTI, community, Kamunde needs no introduction. She is not only one of them, but is also an inspiration to many of them who look up to her for support.
A musician and a lesbian, Kamunde works in her own organization that uses art to get people talking about homosexuality in Kenya. Her organization, Artists for Recognition and Acceptance, AFRA, is a nongovernmental organization, NGO, for lesbian, bisexual and transgender women to express their artistic talents while addressing the issues that face them.
“I use art because art is a very powerful tool of communication, so doing that is bringing dialogue to the fore and getting people to talk about what they would not talk about in a normal setting,” Kamunde says.
Kamunde, who has been singing since she was 18, says that most of her music is about love, rejection and the taboo topic of homosexuality.
Homosexuality is illegal here and even the event is not advertised openly. Kamunde says she knows too well the stigma associated with her sexual orientation.
“I sing about myself and what I have gone through and the stigma I have gone through even not being out,” she says. “Even people suspecting that I may be gay has led to so much emotional turmoil.”
Stigma aside, she easily sings her neo-soul music on stage. “This Is Me and My Little Life,” one of the songs she performs, draws cheers from the audience, with some members wiping away tears that flow freely from their eyes.
“I release that [turmoil] by writing music [because] I know I may not talk to someone who will understand exactly what I am going through, but I know when I sing the song someone will be touched by the message,” she says with a smile.
As judicial candidates were asked to defend their sexuality during the selection process this month before being sworn in yesterday, homosexuality remains taboo – and illegal – in Kenya. A human rights report released last month cited various abuses by government officials and police against Kenyans who identify as LGBTI. The government says discrimination is against its policies, and police encourage the aggrieved to report crimes against them. Meanwhile, NGOs have been working to promote LGBTI rights and provide support services, although operating openly is still a challenge.
Same-sex practices are illegal in Kenya, according to the Kenyan Penal Code. Article 162 makes having “carnal knowledge of any person against the order of nature” a felony that is liable to 14 years imprisonment, and Article 165 makes “any act of gross indecency” between males or any attempt at such acts a felony that is liable to five years in prison. Homosexuality is not only illegal in Kenya, but it is also a taboo topic in the predominantly religious society.
The intolerance of homosexuality surfaced this month during interviews in Nairobi for the posts of chief justice and deputy chief justice by Parliament’s Constitutional Implementation Oversight Committee. Two candidates were forced to defend their sexuality on national TV, as Kenyans expressed their right to know whether they are homosexuals, which they fear would affect their ability to serve.
“They should tell us what they really are in private,” lawyer Peter Waiyaki, a member of the Christian Association, said to the committee during the interviews. “They should not hide.”
One of the candidates, Willy Mutunga, a human rights lawyer, was appointed chief justice yesterday. But first he had to address his sexuality on TV, as many Kenyans say it makes them uncomfortable that Mutunga wears a stud on his left earlobe because they think it signifies that he is gay.
“I am not gay, but I do not discriminate,” Mutunga said during the interviews. “I respect the right of gays, lesbians and everyone.”
The other candidate who was under scrutiny for her sexuality, Nancy Baraza, was appointed to the deputy chief justice post yesterday. She denied she was a lesbian during the interviews. But, like Mutunga, she said she also had nothing against members of the LGBTI community.
Baraza is currently pursuing her doctorate, and some members of the religious community here worry her thesis on lesbianism and Kenyan law means she might promote an LGBTI agenda.
“Her thesis is a clear indication that she does not hold family values close,” Father Ferdinard Lugonzo of the Kenya Episcopal Conference said to the commission. “If confirmed together with Mutunga, they will generate pro-gay, anti-life jurisprudence.”
Baraza defended her research topic, saying that she noticed that the gay community in Kenya was marginalized and yet accounted for at least 15 percent of Kenya’s 40 million people. She said that being gay didn’t jeopardize the family and that discriminating against people who identified as LGBTI in various ways, such as denying them health services, hurt public health.
“It is instructive that Kenya is struggling with the issue of HIV/AIDS among married couples,” Baraza said. “One thing you need to realize is that some of those people you ignore as gay and deny them medical services are bisexual and in marriages.”
Homophobia in Kenya is rife, according to a report published last month by the Kenya Human Rights Commission, KHRC, an NGO that campaigns for human rights here by monitoring, documenting and publicizing human rights violations. The report, “The Outlawed Amongst Us,” documents various instances of discrimination, such as LGBTI people who say they don’t seek reproductive health care services for fear of arrest and stigmatization.
Kamunde confirms the report, saying that even in her arts organization, many women will not come in person to present or defend their paintings, clay works or poems because of this fear.
Discrimination also goes beyond silence and rejection, with physical violence common in Kenya, according to the report.
“Lesbians are raped by vigilantes, and they seek to rape them so that they can discover the pleasure of heteronormal activity,” says Eric Gitari, who helped lead the research team for the KHRC report.
The report blames the laws, the police and even members of Parliament for the discrimination against and stigmatization of LGBTI people, calling the failure by the state to protect them deliberate in policy and legislation.
“LGBTI persons are often harassed by state officials, who enforce heteronormativity against presumed homosexual expressions, extort for bribes or ask for sexual favors and charge those who do not comply with their demands with trumped up charges,” according to the report.
Alfred Mutua, government spokesman, says it is not the policy of the Kenyan government to discriminate on the basis of race, gender or sexual orientation.
“If any member of Parliament has expressed such form of utterances as that would lead to violence against gay people, one it is personal opinion, two it is illegal and government action should be taken against them,” Mutua says.
Charles Owino, deputy police spokesman, released a statement challenging the findings of the report, especially claims that gay people were arrested and held for more than 24 hours. He urged those whose rights were violated by the police to come forward so that culprits in the police force could be charged.
“We have been known to take suspects to court and would like a particular case to come forward,” Owino wrote in the statement. “We do not deal with rumors.”
Meanwhile, various NGOs are working for LGBTI rights here.
Ishtar MSM is a community-based organization working for the health and social well-being of men who have sex with men, MSM. Founded in 1997, its membership includes more than 300 MSMs, according to its website.
Since then, many more organizations have been formed, although a number say they have been denied registration by the government, according to the KHRC report.
Ishtar MSM, one of the first organized movements in Kenya to promote LGBTI rights, was also one of the founding members of the Gay and Lesbian Coalition of Kenya, GALCK, according to the GALCK website. GALCK, which is made up of six LGBTI groups in Kenya, supports members of the LGBTI community who are in distress by providing counseling, support services and temporary shelter for those rejected by their families.
David Kuria of GALCK says it’s not easy being gay in Kenya. A budding information technology professional, Kuria says he quit to concentrate on the activities of GALCK after being denied work opportunities in leading information technology firms for being gay. He says that even his mother has been shunned from church groups in the village because of his sexual orientation.
“Anybody who tells you being gay in Kenya is easy will be lying,” Kuria says. “It [is risky]. We are hated, we are discriminated upon and rejected even by our own families.”
Kamunde says she tries to use every chance she has to talk about AFRA in order to reach out to those who are hesitant to come out of the closet.
“Someone has to do it, and that person is me,” she says with a smile.
She says her music career hasn’t taken off because of her “lesbian” label. She says she can perform only to closed groups in closed parties where members of the gay community meet.
“It’s not easy breaking the glass ceiling,” she says. “Many people will not even want to know that I can sing. To them, [I] am a lesbian, so a sinner, an outcast. So I market myself amongst ‘us.’”
But in the LGBTI community, she is a star of sorts. Many young fans say they look up to her, they want to be like her and they enjoy her music.
“Kate is entertaining, encouraging and a star of sorts,” says one fan, Lafitah Nekesa, with admiration in her eyes.
Kamunde strums her guitar, hoping to change the attitude of her people one note at a time.
“Unless we tell our fellow Kenyans that we, too, are people, wives, sisters and their children and that we are not sick, then this debate is lost,” she says as she begins her next song.