I must confess that when I first chanced upon Prof PLO Lumumba, I assumed that the name was a nom de plume, a portmanteau invoking the Palestine Liberation Organisation and the Congolese independence leader, Patrice Lumumba.
As it happens, Prof Lumumba is a real person – his initials stand for Patrick Loch Otieno – a prominent Kenyan legal academic and former head of the country’s Anti-Corruption Commission. He has a reputation as a passionate pan-Africanist, a critic of the state of the continent’s leadership, and an advocate for using Africa’s culture and traditions as a basis for dealing with its governance issues.
Outside those with an interest in the continent’s politics and intellectual climate, Prof Lumumba is probably best known to South Africa as a name on internet memes, typically as an admonition for the failings of African governments. His recent visit to South Africa has changed that.
Invited as a guest of the Economic Freedom Fighters, Prof Lumumba travelled to the country to speak at the party’s anniversary celebration. This was to take the form of an address at the University of Cape Town. It’s doubtful that this would have been much noticed had it not been for views he’d expressed on homosexuality and the recently assented-to Ugandan Anti-Homosexuality Act. While this did not outlaw homosexual sexual conduct (as this was already illegal), it imposed ramped-up penalties, including death for what it calls ‘aggravated homosexuality’. ‘Promoting’ homosexuality would also be harshly punished.
This has drawn a great deal of criticism from across the world, including from many in South Africa, including the EFF. Supporters of the measure have couched their views in terms of the unacceptability of homosexuality to African culture and the imperatives of tailoring Africa’s institutions to its particularities. This was essentially the position taken by Prof Lumumba. He has described homosexuals as ‘sick’, and in May, he greeted the presidential assent on Twitter: ‘All Africans of goodwill should congratulate Ugandan Parliamentarians and their President YK Museveni for defying Western Countries and doing the right thing. We must define ourselves as Africans.’
He has returned to this theme on a number of occasions.
This, rather than his association with the EFF, or the content of his speech, became the prevailing story, and Prof Lumumba’s presence drew protests. His endorsement of this legislation and his views on homosexuality led to a petition from UCT staff and students calling on the UCT administration to cancel the permission for the event.
‘We believe’, the petition read, ‘that by providing Prof Lumumba a platform on campus to deliver a public lecture, UCT signals its tacit acceptance of his homophobic and, in South Africa, unconstitutional, pronouncements which border on hate speech. Allowing a self-admitted homophobe to continue with a public lecture on our campus signals to LGBTIQA+ staff and students that we are not valued or safe in our workplace and place of study.’
‘Freedom of speech’, it went on, ‘is central to the notion of academic freedom, in support of fostering critical thinking in the pursuit of knowledge. However, it cannot be mobilised to justify promoting homophobia or any prejudice that causes harm and potentially death to already marginalised individuals and communities.’
In a similar vein, a spokesperson for UCT’s Rainbow Society told Daily Maverick: ‘UCT is an institution which presents itself as a safe and inclusive academic environment where young African people can learn about and express themselves. By allowing a self-proclaimed homophobe who publicly proclaims his support for homophobic laws and actions to have a platform at UCT, it is an implicit way of saying that Lumumba’s actions and words are acceptable.’
The university administration responded with a careful, formalistic response. It noted that the event was organised by an outside party, expressed ‘concern’ about Lumumba’s views and ‘urged’ the EFF to ‘engage’ with him about them. What it was in effect saying was that this wasn’t a hill the university was going to die on and it hoped the EFF would do the right thing, without being overly prescriptive as to what the right thing would be.
The event went ahead, with protestors massed outside denouncing the event. The latter framed their action as condemning the ‘platforming a homophobic proponent of hate speech, in direct dereliction of their duty as an opposition party to uphold the Constitution of South Africa.’
I watched this unfold with interest, for several reasons.
One was that it was an intriguing conjunction of developments in its own right. Some years ago, while I was at the SA Institute of International Affairs and most of my work was on African governance, it struck me that the rhetoric about Africa having a common destiny and needing a common voice was always undermined by a lack of common values. As it happens, official approaches to homosexuality were a good illustration. How, after all, does one talk of a continental identity when South Africa would recognise a same sex marriage, and Sudan would execute the participants for engaging in it? (One senior diplomat told me at the time that on two major human rights issues, capital punishment and the acceptance of same-sex sexuality, South Africa was typically outside the continental mainstream.)
The Ugandan legislation brings this matter into sharp relief. Incidentally, in Prof Lumumba’s native Kenya, a recent court decision has held that the country’s constitution does not permit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. This was greeted with horror by much of the political and religious leadership of the country.
And while polling is scanty across the continent, there is evidence of considerable antipathy towards homosexuality. The Pew Research Centre found in 2019 that only 14% of Kenyans, 7% of Nigerians and 9% of Tunisians agreed that homosexuality should be accepted by society. (South Africans, warts and all, were much more open, with 54% feeling this way.)
Now I find what Uganda has done to be a case of dreadful state intrusion into people’s private lives and personal autonomy. I also identify a strong odour of political opportunism about it. All in all, I can find nothing positive to say about it. But in terms of African opinion, Prof Lumumba does not appear to be an outlier.
This, together with his considerable reputation as a scholar and activist means that his views should not be dismissed as unimportant – which, presumably, is part of the reason that the protests took place. But attempting to ‘no-platform’ him seems a horribly misplaced idea too. On purely pragmatic grounds, he represents a perspective that South African society and South Africa’s activist community is confronted with when facing the continent of which it is a part. If for no other reason than to oppose this mode of thinking, it is necessary to understand it.
This is all the more important as Prof Lumumba has couched his arguments in words that resonate with Africanist thinking. He decries the acceptance of homosexuality as a foreign, alien import, and has suggested that human rights norms need to draw from African tradition rather than from universalist pretensions. Those who dispute this – and I’d include myself here – need to engage with these arguments seriously and firmly. They are not going away, however unpalatable they may seem on the campus of UCT (though let me note here that the relativisation of the concept of human rights and the rejection of constitutional governance have plenty of admirers in academia; indeed, they were on full display during the Fallist protests, in which UCT played a prominent role). ‘Education Cures Homophobia’ read one sign in the protest. Maybe, maybe not. Bad ideas may not always yield to better ideas, but in the absence of an alternative, that is the best response we have.
This in turn raises an issue of critical importance: what is the function of a university? It strikes me that the appeals to keep Prof Lumumba out relied on the idea of the sense of security of the university community. I can empathise, though I find this inadequate.
A university should above all else be devoted to the pursuit of knowledge. Knowledge worthy of the name is the result of a constant process of examination, inspection and argument. Carl Sagan once said of science that its only sacred truth is that there are no sacred truths. Knowledge can be deeply disruptive, even threatening, to people’s feelings of self or to their conception of what is good.
These are the quite understandable, even correct, emotions of homosexuals and their allies at UCT. But this is an inevitable price to pay for pursuing knowledge and one that a university must prioritise. The ‘community’ of a university is always founded on a shared commitment to scholarship, not personal or sectarian identity. This is, I acknowledge, not always easy to achieve.
If knowledge is to be pursued, as a matter of principle, the widest latitude to express and propagate views is necessary. This includes the perspectives of people like Prof Lumumba.
Actually, UCT has at times been amenable to doing so. Earlier this year, anti-Israel groups provided a platform for Hamas and Islamic Jihad. These are hardly open-minded democrats and constitutionalists – nor should it be said, sympathetic to homosexuals or others of non-traditional sexual identity or orientation – and their positions would be deeply offensive to many students. Yet, holding my nose, I think there is a justification for allowing such groups to have their say – if only, once again, to enable them to be understood.
In many other almost routine ways, UCT has been willing to countenance positions that are extremely alienating and uncomfortable to large sections of the community. Think about the influence of Marxist scholarship or the activity of Communist political formations, each of which takes a jaundiced view of those it regards as class enemies. The EFF itself has hardly distinguished itself in fostering an environment of tolerance and understanding (and anyone familiar with its party philosophy and programme could only chuckle cynically at the notion that the EFF sees itself obligated ‘to uphold the Constitution of South Africa’).
UCT has not always behaved with such commitment, though. In 2016, UCT rescinded an invitation to the Danish journalist Flemming Rose by the institution’s Academic Freedom Committee. (As this was an invitation extended by the university, and not merely on the campus, the proposed event was somewhat different from Lumumba’s address; however, a comparison is revealing as to the approach the university has adopted to ‘controversial’ speakers.) In a rather vacuous explanation, then Vice-Chancellor Dr Max Price said that his appearance would stoke division, that it might provoke violence and that allowing Rose to speak ‘in the current environment might retard rather than advance academic freedom on campus’. Apparently having a ‘controversial’ speaker with contestable ideas might prove too much for the country’s leading university. Prof David Benatar described this nonsense beautifully: ‘It seems that we are being told that we must restrict the speech of those serious about freedom of speech in order to protect those same people’s freedom of speech. That is exactly the wrong response.’
The wrong response indeed, that is, if free expression and free enquiry are intended.
The IRR subsequently invited Rose to South Africa, explicitly to make the point that the country needs to hear contested views. He spoke in Johannesburg and Cape Town (and even delivered a talk to a class at UCT). The sky didn’t fall, no mass destruction followed, and having attended one of the addresses, I thought he provided a compelling account of his actions, and a well-reasoned defence of them. I’m sure reasonable people could disagree on the content, though as a contribution to free expression, to intelligent public debate and to the pursuit of knowledge, it was entirely beneficial.
As far as Prof Lumumba goes, his address is available on Youtube. It made no mention of homosexuality or gender identity at all. Actually it contained little of substance, coming across like a hybrid of church sermon and a political exhortation. A missed opportunity for all, if you ask me.
The protestors faced off with counter-protestors from the EFF – some reports suggested that things got a little heated, though no physical violence took place. There seems to have been no attempt, none that I can discern, to get Prof Lumumba to actually debate his views. Another missed opportunity. (While he may have departed from UCT, and while the protestors may have felt some sense of satisfaction in registering their objections to him, this means nothing for those threatened by the Anti-Homosexuality Act, and any ‘solidarity’ that might be claimed really amounts to so much posturing.)
But life goes on, and the university remains standing, perhaps even a mite sturdier after a ‘controversial’ speaker passed through.