The Sunday Mail
Robert Mshengu Kavanagh
This is the second instalment of Homophobe: The Hot Plate
“We, Africans, reject homosexuality because it is not in our culture and because we are Christians, who believe in the Bible. It’s as simple as that. How can we accept something which the Bible tells us is wrong?”
“Speak for yourself, Rudo,” I countered.
“‘We Africans’, as you call us, are not all Christians? Millions are Muslims. There are Hindus, Jews and those who practise African religions. I think there are times when ‘we Christians’ can be just a bit arrogant, don’t you think?”
“Muslims can’t stand homosexuality either, comrade.” As we discovered in our story about Charlie Hebdo, Adam had a lot of respect for Islam.
“Listen you two,” – Adam and I -“you are foreigners. You are not Zimbabweans. Maybe in your country your schools and your prisons are full of homosexuals. Don’t they call Cape Town the ‘Gay Capital’ of Africa? Maybe homosexuality was part of your Griqua culture in the old days, Adam. But let me tell you, as a Zimbabwean, there was never any such thing as homosexuality in Zimbabwe. And I’ve never heard this rubbish about white priests and teachers forcing the boys at their schools and churches to have sex with them.
“You are just trying to undermine my religion – and my country. There was no such thing then and there is no such thing now. We do not accept it. These people, the so-called ‘gays’, are just copycats of Western culture.
“My heart bleeds at how our youth just can’t be themselves, can’t be Zimbabweans, but instead they are always running after these rotten fashions that come from America and Europe. Hezvoka! You are insulting us! Go back to your beloved South Africa, find some nice men to marry and live happily ever after with your gay rights,” seethed Rudo.
Earlier Adam and I had attended the Writers’ Indaba at the Zimbabwe Book Fair. After it was over we had gone over to the Monos for a drink. As Gay Rights was a hot property at the Book Fair, we had discussed the issue and Adam had held forth on what he thought of homosexuality. Then he invited me to dinner and here we were, sitting round the table at his place after one of Rudo’s excellent meals – and the topic flared up again when the Book Fair was mentioned.
There was a moment’s silence after Rudo’s onslaught. But then I decided to have some fun at my friend, Adam’s, expense.
“Adam, you foreigner! Before you go back to South Africa, let me just say you are a hypocrite. Isn’t your philosophy ‘the greatest happiness for the greatest number’? Do you not say that if something makes people happy and it does no harm to others, you don’t see any problem with it?”
“Did you say that, Adam!” said a shocked Rudo.
“I thought we were Catholics.”
“Ah, no, man, honey,” said Adam, squirming in his chair and meanwhile looking daggers at me. “No, man, the comrade’s just quoting me out of context. Anyway the Bible doesn’t say it’s a sin to be happy.”
Before Rudo could respond to that, I decided to press my advantage. “So according to your philosophy, Adam, if two people of the same gender, two men or two women, find happiness in each other, including sexual happiness, and they don’t harm anyone else – what right do we have to tell them they are wrong? A person’s sexual preference is a personal issue, isn’t it? People get their sexual kicks from doing all sorts of things. It’s nobody else’s business how they do it. So, according to you we should leave the homosexuals alone. They don’t need to be abused, insulted, outlawed, beaten up, taken to court. Like any other human beings, they have their rights.”
I knew Rudo would have a fit but what I was enjoying was getting Adam’s backside onto a hot plate. What I said was more or less what Adam himself had said when we discussed it earlier but I knew he knew if Rudo found out this is what he said and this is what he believed, he would be in for the high jump. Adam feared nothing more than Rudo’s high jump. There was nothing he could do but stay put – on the hot plate – and it was hurting.
Rudo did not, in fact, have a fit. She just favoured Adam and me with a withering look and, having made us feel like dogs, she went into the kitchen to fetch the dessert. All of a sudden I felt an almighty kick on my shin under the table. It was Adam.
“So, ucing’ uk’bauclever, ne, comrade? You think you’re smart. Wag net. Just you wait.”
The dessert came and then we retired to the lounge where we had some coffee and Adam and I had a Rembrandt brandy. I could still feel my leg throbbing from where Adam had kicked me but I thought he had had his revenge and the discussion was now over. But I had underestimated the opposition and Adam was out to get me after his experience on the hot plate.
Rudo usually went to bed quite early. She knew that with a bottle of brandy between us we would probably go on talking for hours. The kind of topics we discussed did not appeal to her and she was just having a glass of hot milk with us before retiring, when Adam threw the cat among the pigeons.
“Comrade,” he said in a suspiciously friendly way, “what made you change your position, the position we had during the struggle, that gay rights were not part of the agenda of an African revolutionary? To hear you saying now – as you did this afternoon – that we should move with the times and recognise homosexuality as an acceptable alternative to a Christian relationship and . . . ”
He didn’t get any further. Rudo had put down her glass of milk and was looking at me in horror. “Sahwira, is this what you said? Could it be that you are not a Christian? Are you a Satanist?” (Anyone who was not a Christian was a Satanist, according to Rudo.) “Are you telling us that we have been sharing our hospitality and friendship all these years with an unbeliever?”
All I could do was swallow. Adam looked at me with a very innocent face, which concealed a contented smirk that now he had me on the hot plate. With great pleasure he was waiting to see me wriggle. He knew I didn’t go to church, I didn’t pray and therefore in the eyes of a lot of Zimbabweans I was a Satanist.
Rudo’s friendship was something I could not do without so I decided to indulge in a bit of well-intentioned prevarication. In other words, I had to dodge my comrade, Adam’s, bullet while pretending to tie up my shoelaces.
“No, I am not a Satanist, Rudo.” That much was definitely true. Someone who is not a Christian is not by definition a Satanist. A Satanist is someone who worships, not God in His church, but the devil – and holds rituals and indulges in practices that are evil.
Rudo’s eyes were still boring into me. Obviously I was not yet off the hook. “Then what are you?” she spat.
“I was baptised and confirmed a Presbyterian, Rudo.”
But Rudo was too clever for that. “I didn’t ask you what you were baptised and what you were confirmed. I asked you what you are now. Do you go to church?”
“Yes,” I said. This was also true. I do sometimes go to church – if, say, one of my friends is getting married, joining Chita chaAnna, baptising a baby or getting buried.
“Which church do you go to?”
Adam was enjoying seeing me squirm. This was more than revenge. It was torture. The hot plate was now red hot. “No particular church,” I ducked and dived.
“You see, Rudo, I’m an Ecumenist. I believe in the unity of the Christian Church.”
Adam’s jaw dropped. I was going to escape! He knew I was going to escape because Ecumenism was a topic Rudo could not resist. She was much more interested in Ecumenism than Homophobia, Utilitarianism, Agnosticism or any of the other isms that floated like poison clouds over our heads all evening.
Rudo was off. She began to describe “Big Sunday” and invited me to come to Highfield next week where she is in Mubatanidzwa we Madzimai and secretary of the Highfield Fraternal!
I was off the hot plate but the pain of sitting on a hot plate doesn’t end as soon as you get off it. Having discussed Ecumenism to her heart’s content, the divine Rudo went off to bed and slept like the angel she is – while Adam and I tossed and turned all night, nursing our throbbing backsides.
To access any of the previous 38 Kok Tales, go to https://rmshengukavanagh.wordpress.com
