KEY POINTS:
Deep in the Sahara, one of the world's most extraordinary tribal exhibitions takes place every year when young Wadabi men adorn themselves with beads and face paint to woo wives.
At the end of the all-night ceremony, the most effeminate of them is given the pick of the virgins. This extravaganza in Niger is one of Africa's most treasured heterosexual rituals. But almost anywhere else on the continent, any flirting with sexual boundaries is deeply taboo. Being gay in Africa is not easy.
When the South African Parliament voted last month to legalise same-sex marriage, Mongezi Chirwa, of Alexandra, near Johannesburg, said he was looking forward to becoming one of the first men to tie the knot with his boyfriend.
The debate that followed was not so much centred on the old arguments that homosexuality is a colonial "abomination". Neither has there been much quoting of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe's view that gays and lesbians are "worse than dogs and pigs".
Guardians of tradition, such as Chirwa's grandmother and spiritual healer Nokuzola Mndende, argue that the real problem presented by the new South African law is that it is going to be difficult for African families to adapt traditional rituals to gay and lesbian in-laws.
Mndende, who is the director of the Icamagu Institute, said: "There's the issue of lobolo [dowry]. Normally the man pays it. In this case, who is going to pay?"
Mndende is disappointed that South Africa's black-led Government - which passed the Civil Union Bill by 230 votes to 41 - is destabilising tradition.
But Mogezi Guma, of the Commission for the Promotion and Protection of the Rights of Cultural, Religious and Linguistic Communities, says traditional practices can easily be adapted. "For instance, cattle were used before as a way of paying lobolo but today money and cheques and receipts are exchanged."
Africa remains one of the most homophobic places in the world and even in South Africa - with the exception of gay tourism spots in Cape Town - it is not advisable for same-sex couples to walk hand-in-hand in the street.
African archbishops, especially Nigeria's Peter Akinola, have led the schism in the Anglican Communion since the election of Gene Robinson, an American gay bishop, in 2003. Churches in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda have followed suit.
Critics of the South African Civil Union Bill point out that its fatal flaw is that religious leaders may still, on grounds of "conscience, religion and belief", refuse to officiate at same-sex weddings. The churchmen have been supported by politicians such as Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, who last year changed the constitution to introduce a ban on same-sex marriage.
In Nigeria - which enforces powerful anti-homosexual laws, including five years' jail for consenting sex, without the option of a fine - the Federal Executive Council also approved a bill in January seeking to outlaw gay marriage. In October 2004, Sierra Leonean lesbian activist Fannyann Eddy was raped and savagely beaten, and died from a broken neck, after being assaulted in her office. A man was arrested but escaped from detention.
In Cameroon, 11 men are in prison on the basis of their presumed sexual orientation after nine were found guilty of sodomy and sentenced to 10 months' imprisonment in June.
At the same time, Cameroon's media has launched an aggressive "outing" campaign. Its victims have included the Franco-Cameroonian former tennis star Yannick Noah, 45, singer Manu Dibango and two Cabinet ministers.
In Ghana, four men were jailed for two years in 2004 for alleged "unnatural acts". Gays and lesbians in the west African country agreed to speak anonymously.
"Pentecostal churches perform exorcism rites on people seen as being gay," one man said. "I was beaten up a couple of years ago. I met this guy on the beach and agreed to meet him at the market. When I got there several men and women accused me of forcing their friend to have sex. They beat me and took everything I had.
"They said they would beat out of me the evil spirit of homosexuality."
African homophobes justify their actions with the claim that homosexuality is a white colonial import.
But activists say homosexuality and gender-bending is as old as Africa. They say that what came with the colonisers was homophobia in the shape of morally charged legislation that aimed to tame "savage" practices such as shows of affection between people of the same sex.
Historians say that in ancient communities homosexuality was widespread and acceptable. Men who wished to adopt traditional female roles and who found male partners were not frowned upon because they did not represent a threat to other men.
If South Africa became the first African country to legalise same-sex weddings it is not because it has a better grasp than others on African anthropology. It is because it has an organised gay and lesbian movement - including influential websites (such as www.mask.org.za) that have provided a lung of expression for people in all English-speaking African countries. It was as a result of a case brought by gay and lesbian campaigners that the South African Constitutional Court last year gave the Government until December 1 to create the Civil Union Bill.
But the South African gay and lesbian lobby would not be where it is today without a man called Simon Nkoli.
Nkoli, who was 41 when he died from an Aids illness in November 1998, united gays and lesbians and initiated the first South African Pride march in 1990. More importantly, as an anti-apartheid campaigner, he spent four years in jail with leading ANC figures Popo Molefe, Frank Chikane and Defence Minister Mosiuoa "Terror" Lekota. Nkoli profoundly influenced the future decision-makers.
Before the vote in South Africa's Parliament, Lekota, a heterosexual, told MPs: "The question is not whether same-sex marriages or civil unions are right or not. It is whether South Africa is going to suppress same-sex partners or not.
"Men and women of homosexual and lesbian orientation joined the ranks of the democratic forces in the struggle for liberation. Same-sex unions should be afforded similar space as heterosexual marriages in the sunshine of democracy."
- INDEPENDENT
