Utopias, joy, and the law
The director of Kenyan film 'Rafiki' discusses leading the struggle against state sponsored censorship in Kenya right now.
Wanuri Kahiu. Image via author.
- Interview by
- Julie MacArthur
The courts did not rule in our favour today. A sad blow for Freedom of Expression and Freedom of Speech in Kenya. But we believe in our constitution and are glad we have the right to defend it. We will appeal! A luta continua!
In Rafiki, filmmaker Wanuri Kahiu adapted the award-winning short story “Jambula Tree” by Ugandan author Monica Arac de Nyeko and transposed the deeply affecting and richly textured story of love and discovery between two young women to the vibrant, bustling streets of Nairobi. In 2018, Rafiki became the first Kenyan film to screen as part of the prestigious Un Certain Regard program at the Cannes Film Festival, to great acclaim. Following this world premiere, the Kenya Film and Classification Board announced the film would be banned in Kenya “due to its homosexual theme and clear intent to promote lesbianism in Kenya contrary to the law.” Kahiu sued the government over unconstitutional infringements on freedom of expression, which led to a temporary lifting of the ban to allow the film to screen to packed Kenyan audiences for two weeks and qualify for the Oscars. With the ban reinstated, Kahiu continued to appeal the judicial order over the next two years. On 29 April 2020, a High Court in Kenya upheld the 2018 ban. Immediately following the court’s ruling, the Creative Economic Working Group of Kenya put out an official press release denouncing the ban.
This interview was conducted before the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and so many others, and the global protest movement against anti-Black racism that persisted and followed in its wake. The transcript has been edited for length and clarity.
On 29 April 2020, a High Court in Kenya upheld the 2018 ban on your film Rafiki. Given our current circumstances, I understand the case was held and verdict delivered over Zoom. How surreal was this moment for you, defending a case of “freedom of expression” in a time of such widespread crisis and arguably increased need for the defense of “freedom of expression” and respect for human rights and constitutionality?
It’s mixed because there’s so much going on in the world and there’s such a need to address the global crisis but at the same time there have been such violations of freedom of speech and freedom of expression recently as a result of the crisis as well (increased attack on journalists by police) and we know that if your right to freedom of speech and freedom of expression is threatened then it makes it harder to advocate for any other rights. So it’s mixed. We know it kind of seems like it’s not the most important thing at the moment but at the same time it’s incredibly important because that’s the only way we can ensure that people’s rights are being met, even as the current crisis continues.
It seems actually incredibly timely, strange but timely, that you’re leading this struggle at this moment.
Yeah, but I think that any moment is the moment. There’s no good time and there’s no bad time, unfortunately. Especially because, past this, we realize that this is about one film, but it’s such a continent-wide problem. There are so many artists being attacked for what they’re singing, what they’re drawing, their depictions in film, so it’s much larger than that. In times of crisis, there seems to be a further crackdown on these things, so there will never be a good or a bad time, there will just be the time to fight, and that’s what we’re doing.
Language and history seem so important here. In 2018, the ban [on your film Rafiki] was temporarily lifted by Justice Wilfrida Okwany, whose ruling stated that “I am not convinced that Kenya is such a weak society whose moral foundation will be shaken by simply watching a film depicting gay themes … The undisputed fact is that … the practice of homosexuality did not begin with the film Rafiki.” We could add neither did censorship nor the belief that Kenyans, or Africans more broadly, need to be “protected” from certain kinds of content. The Kenya Film Classification Board under CEO Ezekiel Mutua relied on the Films and Stage Plays Act, legislation passed under the British colonial government in 1962 on the eve of independence, legislation that is very similar, in language and intent, to the original 1912 act, “The Stage Plays and Cinematography Exhibitions Ordinance,” which was used to censor Hollywood films in particular, to shield “susceptible” African audiences from “undesirable ideas such as kissing, sex, shooting, and nudity.”
And we could continue, looking at the colonial roots of anti-homosexual laws. Activist, poet, and scholar Stella Nyanzi wrote a great piece in 2011 entitled “Unpacking the [govern]mentality of African sexualities” in which she argued that ungoverned sexuality threatened the idea of women as symbols of tradition, control, and stability. And we can easily take this out of the realm of “sexuality” if we put it within the lineage of the struggles of intellectuals and activists like Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Wangari Maathai, Boniface Mwangi, and many others.
What do you think this ruling, quoting Justice Makau, “to protect society from moral decay,” tells us about the legacies of colonialism and postcolonial use of governance and judicial practice to police morality?
I think there’s such a disconnect in that already, right? Because what is promoted is this idea of protecting African ideals, and it’s said over and over again: protecting the African family, protecting Kenyan morality. But, the truth of the matter is that we’re just protecting colonial legacy. The contradiction is so glaringly obvious—tracing back the roots of this current law, it goes back to sedition laws, where colonialists were trying to silence anti-colonial voices and anti-colonial propaganda. I feel strongly that the anti-freedom of expression movement is a colonial movement still. It’s a conflict that we are democratic nations now but still perpetuating colonial laws that were made against us: that were made to debilitate us; that were made to oppress us; that were made to create false narratives about us; that literally took our voices away to the point that most of our history is no longer written by us and we’re not contributing to it, apart from the fact that we are all historians. But the idea that so much of identity has been taken away from us by these laws, and these are the laws we are now reinforcing, feels very tragic. Deeply complexing and very tragic.
I’m reminded of the late Binyavanga Wainaina’s comment that it is not homosexuality that is “un-African,” it’s anti-homosexuality laws—the epitome of Victorian ideals.
Exactly, homophobia is un-African. I really believe that is the thing we should be targeting.
[Kenya Film Classification Board under CEO Ezekiel] Mutua went so far as to take to Twitter to claim: “you want gay films? Go to countries that have legalized that practice.”
Is that what he said? {laughter}
Yes, so this is a slightly facetious question: can a film be “gay”?
{Laughter} Just like can a film be murderous? Mutua is illogical at best. Anyone that can see through it can see that he is using this agenda to advance his own ideology and ambition. It’s so curious, because there are many legal films and TV shows that play within Africa that have LGBTIQ themes in them, because that’s human nature. We’re human, and that’s human nature. Rocketman played in the cinemas, and there was no problem. It’s the fiction of Africans having same-sex relationships, that’s the problem. So it’s as if even by ourselves we are being excluded from the whole breadth of humanity.
And on that line, one of Mutua’s defenses has been that he asked you politely to change some of the scenes and that would have solved the problem. From what I’ve gathered, it was particularly the ending …
It wasn’t particularly the ending, it was only the ending. Because it wasn’t remorseful enough, that’s the word that he used.
That is striking. While following a Romeo and Juliet structure, the film does end on a different note. In a review I wrote of the film, I ended with this: “As Kena [one of the protagonists] says of her pink-and-purple dreadlocked love interest, this film may not be the ‘typical African’ film many have come to expect. But perhaps, as its final image flashes forward to bright, new possible futures, it is the film we want and need.” Is that what was so threatening, these new possible futures that the film hinted towards, the joy, the hope that the film ends with? Is that really what is at stake?
Absolutely. He’s been very clear on saying that he didn’t want people to think that it is acceptable in Kenya for you to love another person of the same sex. He stated very clearly to me that the impression the film leaves is that it is acceptable and he doesn’t want to leave that impression. But he did not go on to define acceptable to whom or why. That’s the curiosity because populations are not made up by one person, or one ideology. He made it seem as if we are all meant to be this one thing, and this is obviously something I strongly disagree with. First, as a woman, and as someone who believes in equal rights for everybody. And the moment we have this “single story,” like Chimamanda [Adiche Ngozi] talks about, this idea of a single ideology, single identity, it’s not only concerning, it also cuts out a lot of people who don’t fit into the hetero-patriarchal standards.
Thinking about this idea that it is radical to imagine different kinds of futures—this film is a contemporary love story, but you also made another brilliant, acclaimed film, “Pumzi“—a sci-fi, post-apocalyptic film. And yet, I think the connections are clear, about imagining different kinds of futures, and that in your work is always entangled with how we think about the present.
One hundred percent. The work that I create does not have a stylistic thread necessarily in terms of genre or artistic approach. But there is a thread line in the idea that I am trying to create my own versions of utopia, whether it is in a thought, an attitude, a friendship, or love, or the idea of sacrifice—I feel like those moments of utopia or those moments of hope where we can see different versions of ourselves and different good in ourselves, especially for Africans, is what I work towards. It’s what I would love to leave as an idea of what we can be, what we can work to, and what we already are.
I am currently re-reading Dreams in a Time of War by Ngugi wa Thiong’o, which he begins by calling up T.S. Eliot’s famous line that “April was the cruelest month.” Ngugi ends the memoir with a pact, made with his mother, to “have dreams, even in a time of war.” This seems to really resonate with these kinds of utopias that you are speaking of, imaginings that are even more crucial at times when they are under threat.
Absolutely. Because if we don’t have something to hope for then how do we know what we are fighting for. Life cannot only be about the fight. Life is not only about the struggle. Life is about what happens next. And if we don’t show, as artists, the possibilities of what’s next, then how do we give people a guiding light to move towards.
In a recent talk, you said, “We have to see ourselves as people of joy”—and I loved the way you connected this to ideas of expression, and to beauty for its own sake, not always functionalist or in need of an anthropologist to explain it as in colonial discourses.
For the longest time the African continent has been thought of as a serious continent, as a place where bad things happen to people. Whether it’s war or corruption or famine or disease, it happens to Africans in Africa. So there’s been an overwhelming sense of “over there,” a “them” versus an “us.” One of the things that has fostered that ideology is the images, stories, journalism, and sometimes the way art is framed coming out of the continent. There’s a friend of mine who says you don’t want to wake up in the morning and watch an African film. And what she meant was, African films have been known to be so devastating and so heartbreaking, you’re [watching them] almost as if it’s tax. And that phrase really stuck with me because it’s so curious that we’ve been linked to a continent of pain given if you look into our traditions, our art, our ways of expression—be it music, dance, whatever—there’s always been heavy notes of frivolity … And we know to be true that the imagination doesn’t have borders, so why do we try to impose these imaginative borders on Africa too? Why is it that we only consider some type of work important if it’s coming from Africa? And the rest is derivative because it doesn’t deal with serious issues. I think that that is really problematic because it keeps showing Africans as people who are hopeless, desperate, or lost. That is not any way I describe the people that I know. Nor does it describe the people my parents know, nor my grandparents know. Yes, there continue to be moments of hardship, but even within that there is joy. And I think the best example of that is Hajooj Kuka’s film Beats of the Antonov. It has this beautiful series in the documentary where the place that he is shooting [the Nuba Mountains in Sudan] was bombed and people would run away into cave holes or the bunkers that they built themselves to avoid the bombs. And they knew that the bombs were dropped in threes—boom, boom, boom—and as soon as the third one was dropped, there would be a moment, and then there would be laughter, an explosion of laughter, and teasing each other: “oh, I saw the way you were running!” “you’re running like a goat!” That is a natural way of dealing with life, it’s seeing the joy in it, and what we’re living for. And if we don’t make an effort to make sure that we continuously see what we’re living for, we’ll begin to believe the lie that has been fed to us, which is we are a desperate continent, or we’re a broken continent. And if it says that about Africa, what does it say about the rest of the world if we imagine that Africa was the cradle of humanity? Are we saying that genetically everybody is linked to a broken, sad beginning? I don’t believe that to be true either. We need to remember our roots and we need to remember our joy in the way that we depict ourselves. That, to me, has become my life’s mission. To make sure that everything that I do has hope and joy in it so that I can show that we are a people of hope and joy. Period.
The kindredness with Hajooj Kuka’s film Beats of the Antonov fits perfectly within this conversation. I remember Hajooj, very openly at the world premiere of the film, saying “I made this film to overthrow a government.” And the audience laughed because the film didn’t necessarily feel that way. It felt so joyful. Why does joy seem to be so threatening to some political or moral orders?
Absolutely. And I think you’re on to something—which is something I’ve begun to believe more and more—that joy is disruptive. I think joy is political. I think that if we see large numbers of Black people truly enjoying their lives, truly being happy with themselves, I feel like that is challenging to the status quo. Because I truly don’t believe that the world is rigged for people who are considered “minorities” to be joyful. So there is a disruption that joy brings. And also, if you look at the work that has been banned across the continent, it’s joyful work. It’s not the remorseful work that they’re saying “Umm, could you change it because there’s a little too much violence or too much hatred”—that’s not the work, unfortunately, that’s being banned. The work that breaks us, and puts us down, and demeans women, and is violent against women or violent against minorities, is not the work that is being banned. And to me that is one of the most problematic things. We’re saying because you are a minority, you have no right to joy, and the moment that we show or we push back and we say this is our joy, then that’s when we’re shut down, and that is … painful for me.
That dovetails with a statement that Stella Nyanzi made just recently when being released from prison after 18 months for writing a poem deemed insulting to the president [of Uganda], that she said she would not “be remorseful”—her activism and artistic work has often been called a politics of refusal, engaging in a long tradition of “radical rudeness” as Sylvia Tamale and others like Carol Summers have detailed. Nyanzi recently published a book of poems clandestinely written while in prison “No Roses From My Mouth” in which she writes: “I will write myself to freedom!” And this idea of joy, of love, of sex, and of expression as key to exercising freedom is linked to the work you’re continuing to do, pushing forward this case as it moves into the appeals arena.
Yeah, it’s necessary, and I’m the most reluctant activist because I believe that everything I say is in my films … What I believe about the world, what I believe about equality, is in my films. But, this time, I think, being pushed into this space, I just felt that I am not in the wrong. I don’t know how else to say it. I just felt truly like I voted for the [2010] Constitution. I remember fighting for the constitution and it was very active. Actually the first time I was in any activist space was when we were advocating for the constitution. I was part of a group mobilizing young women to push through this constitution. And it was very clear, unlike a lot of other African governments, that there was a clause for freedom of expression, which means something to me as an artist. So, when somebody says “No, you’re wrong,” when the constitution you voted for is actually quite clear in its message about the very work that you’re doing, then it’s problematic. It’s as if someone is treating you like you’re ignorant, like you’re not taking your work seriously. And I truly believe that my work is to create stories. And not everybody has to agree with the content of the stories and therefore not everybody even has to watch them, I’m not asking everybody to watch them. But I’m definitely fighting for the right for you to decide to watch them … I believe that whatever you believe, even though I don’t believe it, you have the right to say it, unless it is constrained by the very clear instructions that are already in the constitution [propaganda for war; incitement to violence; advocating hate], and none of the things that we’ve done are in conflict with the constitution as it stands. And that’s why I felt like it’s a necessity for me to fight for it because I don’t take for granted that I was alive enough to vote; I was alive enough to advocate; and I will be alive enough to fight for my children’s rights to live in a country where their constitution means something. It has to mean something.
Artist and activist Ayodele Ganiu, currently a fellow at McGill University in Montreal, in December 2019 wrote a really timely piece, in which he argued that:
The popular saying in Nigeria that “the judiciary is the last hope of the common man,” including for an artist who uses creative expression to challenge the status quo, is fast becoming a fallacy in many African countries … To protect artistic freedom in Africa and empower artists to exercise their civic responsibilities … Without an independent judiciary, there will be no true art, and no rule of law.
Your film has now come at this nexus of law and art that maybe you didn’t plan for, or necessarily wanted to insert yourself into as an activist, but Ganiu certainly sees it as a civic duty to produce this kind of art.
Yeah, and I think it’s my civic responsibility also to fight for it now. Because I didn’t think it was before, but I know for a fact that it is now because if I don’t do it, who am I asking to take up this fight, if I’m not the one doing it? It is difficult, I can’t say that it’s not. I think that it constantly reminds you that patriarchy is real. That it doesn’t matter what the law says. That sometimes people will walk over your rights. But as a result of this censorship, it has also made me investigate the other types of censorship that are not in public arenas, that are not in courts. That are in homes, and the way that we speak to people, and the way we ask them not to tell their stories or we ignore their plights or their existence. There are so many assaults on freedom of expression and freedom of speech in everyday ways and that have come to light. What kind of world are we creating when we actively stop people from speaking or from doing because of, say, economic censorship? No, you can’t tell that story because nobody will read it. No, you can’t make that film, because there is no viewership for it. That economic censorship continues to happen around the world, outside of Kenya. So even as we fight this fight in Kenya, I know there’s a much bigger hearts and minds fight just on the idea of the ability to speak your mind. But I am of the opinion that there is no human rights without freedom of expression and freedom of speech. Because without it, you wouldn’t be able to advocate for anything. Without freedom of expression and freedom of speech, there would be no women’s rights, there would be no LGBTIQ rights, there would be no disability rights, there would be no rights because you wouldn’t be able to express what is happening.
Maybe ending on a more hopeful note, although banned in Kenya, the film is having a life and a journey, both regionally and in the world. Could you speak a little bit about the distribution and the platforms that the film is available through?
Across the African continent, the film is available on DSTV, which is the African [satellite] station. So, everywhere across Africa the film is available except Kenya, which is extraordinary to me because there are much more conservative countries than ours. But what it has done for audiences is that it has added to the narrative of Black love, which, unfortunately, there are not enough love stories of people of color. And especially queer people of color. So, it has opened up spaces for people to feel seen, which is all a filmmaker can ever want. To be able to create a film where other people feel seen because they often didn’t belong. Growing up, I never saw people like me falling in love. So to add an experience where that happens is incredibly important for me, so that we know that we’re worthy of love.
