The Sunday Mail
Sex is a funny thing. As Adam said in our very first Kok Tale, it is love — for Adam that meant sex — that makes the world go round. Like water hyacinth, it seems to have taken over in some parts of the world.
When last did the US produce a hit song that was not about sex? Vast cyber-continents on the internet are devoted to it. Not only has it invaded almost every aspect of human existence, but like a virus it mutates.
There must have been a time in the world long ago when sex was fairly straightforward, but as society has become more and more complicated, sex has taken on all sorts of wild and wonderful forms.
Traditionally, the English upper class has always been hooked on sado-masochism — sexual kicks from inflicting or suffering pain. It is said that, during the French revolution, in an early form of sex tourism, English gentlemen used to cross the English Channel to drool as the Paris povo chopped off the heads of their upper-class fellows.
Some men go for children, of all ages, including babies! Some men like only boys or other men and some women like only girls or other women. Some are bi-sexual — they can go with a man or a woman. Some go in for animals — a dog, a goat or even in some cases a hen.
Some like to do it privately, for others the more the better, as we hear from the current court case in France involving Strauss-Kahn and his orgies — what he calls libertinage. Some want only one partner, others many partners all at the same time.
Some are addicted masturbationists. Others use all sorts of gadgets.
And that is just human beings. In the natural world the creatures of the earth make us humans seem straight-laced. There are some species that are both sexes in one or can change from one sex to the other.
There are species where the females, once the male has consummated, turn on him and eat him up. The Swedish playwright, August Strindberg, thought that was quite a good way of describing the women in his life!
The topic of sex comes up inevitably when Adam is around. Some years back the issue of gay rights at the International Book Fair was in the news. Adam and I had been attending the Indaba and, tired after a long day of listening to authors doing what they do not do best, that is, talking about their books instead of writing them — we slipped into the Monomotapa for a couple of much-needed pints.
We could never go to the Monos without lamenting the fact that the only city hotel with a Zimbabwean name was now called the Crown Plaza! But the issue of rights for homosexuals was threatening to burn the Book Fair down. The President had attacked gay rights in quite extraordinary style. So we soon got on to the topic.
As a rampant heterosexual who adored women, one would assume that Adam was a homophobe, i.e. someone who does not at all like homosexuality. Yet at the same time Adam believed that if something — including homosexuality — makes you happy and it does no harm to anyone else, go for it. So what was Adam Kok’s position on homosexuality? It didn’t take long to find out.
Adam, like the vast majority of the sons and daughters of Mother Africa, shuddered at the idea of a man doing —or trying to do — to another man what he, Adam, was doing all the time to other men’s wives. He didn’t even want to think about it.
“Adam, you have to move with the times. The modern world has no room for homophobes. Haven’t you ever heard of Gay Rights?” I said to him.
“Listen, comrade, I know that when we were in the movement those rights you are speaking of . . .” he couldn’t even bear to say the word gay — “those rights were seen to be part of the Left Agenda. Our comrades in Europe expected us as revolutionaries to be including them in our struggle — like we are fighting for freedom and we must also be fighting for the right to go to bed with another man! That’s why, in our beloved country, under our own ANC, homosexuals have a legal right to get married! But I never bought that — and a lot of other comrades from different parts of Africa didn’t either — including you.”
“Adam, my friend, that was then,” I said patiently, knowing that it was a fact that the comrades in Europe who were supporting us in those days, expected us to buy into the gay rights issue. “Surely if that’s the way a man or a woman was created, you can’t blame them.”
“We, Africans, have never had a problem with homosexuality, comrade. I don’t know about Zimbabwe but back in the village there was always a couple of old ladies who lived together or a young man here or there who behaved like a woman. No one persecuted them. We were not blind. We saw what animals do, getting on top of each other from time to time, and we knew what goes on in boarding schools and prisons.”
Adam took a long sluk of beer and looked longingly at a beautiful woman going past, probably coming from the Book Fair. “But what we do not like is other people, non-Africans, telling us what to think. We should leave them alone, yes, we should not harm them. That is their human right. But we do not accept homosexuality as a viable alternative to the man/woman thing. We do not want anyone to blow trumpets about it. We do not want people going around trying to get other people, especially our children, to like it. If what they do makes them happy and they don’t interfere with anyone else, who are we to stop them? But I must admit, Jack, when I think of the joys a woman brings to a man, to trade a woman in for a man! It freaks me out!”
At that moment an obvious foreigner from Europe crossed the lobby of the hotel, no doubt come to attend the Book Fair. With him was a young black man in short dreads with the inevitable little ear-ring in one ear and some nice bead bracelets on his wrists. They went over to the lifts, obviously going up to the European’s room on one of the top floors. I looked at Adam. He was looking at me. Then he spoke: “Comrade, didn’t you say you regretted the things the President said about homosexuals? He was a bit emotional, but don’t you think he had a point?
“Yes, but don’t you think people need to understand what makes us Africans so emotional on this issue first before they say we are wrong? Our history of homosexuality is quite different from Europe’s. We had our own version and it did not give us problems, but colonialism brought us something quite different. In the past, for us revolutionaries, homosexuality was an aspect of oppression. It was an expression of power, something white men did to us or to our children — an unequal and exploitative relationship, something which traumatised many of our people. When people talk gay rights we think of that. That is our experience. We do not think of the relationship of two equal consenting adults, we think of the white priest or schoolmaster who sodomised our children.”
“Come on,” I said. “Do you think there was a lot of that and do you think that Zimbabweans of the President’s generation experienced things like that?”
“I leave that to Zimbabweans to answer. I am talking about my own experience and things I myself came to know about. Whether it is true or not, now they are trying to force us to see the issue the way they see it. Again it is an expression of power, an unequal relationship. We Africans must tell these Europeans to respect our views and take the trouble to understand our way of seeing things from the perspective of our own history. We shall always reject their right to think for us.”
The lobby and the bar were filling up. The Monos was buzzing. “Comrade, I must go home. Rudo is expecting me. Why don’t you come to dinner? I just love seeing you casting sheep’s eyes at my wife!”
I swung an uppercut at him, which he dodged easily, and, laughing, the two of us left the Monos and drove off to his place — where, just as a fire that seems dead, suddenly bursts into flame, the debate we had started, blazed up again.
To access any of the previous 37 Kok Tales, go to https://rmshengukavanagh.wordpress.com/.
