Jermain Ndhlovu.
(Zimbabwe, 1986)
Talking about sex and sexuality—gay or straight—is difficult.
For our members, being from conservative countries where same-sex relations are illegal makes self-actualisation a challenge. Sexuality is a stage of life that every person has to face, and usually with the guidance of parents, family, friends, church, school and other social settings. LGBTQ+ people do not get that privilege—we have to figure it out on our own.
Ubuntu
The acronym LGBTQ+ itself is relatively new. “Coming out” is by and large a western concept because in pre-colonial African sexuality, a relationship is about people rather than biology – Ubuntu. In some African kingdoms, a cisgender man could have a wife-husband or a cisgender woman could have husband-wife. There was no coming out.
Ubuntu however also expected a person to have children. Many LGBQT+ people would therefore “grow out of it” and lead heterosexual lives while maintaining same-sex liaisons. While modern people deny it, several kings and queens of various kingdoms of world history before religion are known to have engaged in same-sex relationships—from Alexander the Great to James-I-translated-the-Bible-to-English, Mwanga II of Buganda, to Shaka of the Zulu!
The spread of homophobic religions thus provided a political hard line for creationists worldwide. Africa after 1890, saw people’s grandfathers being arrested for having same-sex relationships based on foreign Abrahamic—neo-Roman law.
Rainbow Anonymous
I started Rainbow Anonymous on 22 August 2020 during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic as a WhatsApp group with friends. I am never someone to sit and complain. Two months later we had our first funding!
We are officially registered as a foundation on 23 March 2023. We always seemed too busy to become registered until the opportunity came along.
Monthly meetings
We therefore host monthly meetings were we discuss sex and sexuality. The purpose is to reconnect lost culture and merge it with modern life. On social media, people say the future is bisexual. The past was always fluid if you ever give yourself the time to research your village before it became a part of nation state.
Our monthly hour-long meetings are via Zoom at the moment due to funding constraints as members are in various areas across the Netherlands.
For many, mental health is a key topic in the journey towards self-pride.
See our past activities here!