Wanuri Kahiu’s vibrant film Rafiki (2018) made contradictory headlines upon its release. In Kenya, Kahiu’s home country where the film is also set, it was banned. Yet at its Cannes Film Festival premiere, it was lauded for being the first Kenyan film ever to be screened – and it received a standing ovation. This divided reception is largely the result of the film’s representation of same-sex desire. Meaning “friend” in Swahili, Rafiki tells the coming-of-age story of two young women, Kena (Samantha Mugatsia) and Ziki (Sheila Munyiva), the beloved daughters of competing political families, whose friendship blossoms into a tender candy-colored romance. However, contemporary Kenya upholds a colonial-era law that bans gay sex and this legal reality drives the homophobia that Kena and Ziki must negotiate as well as the film’s censorship in the country. This important historical context serves as a reminder that European colonialism was complicit in institutionalizing homophobia in a region that, prior, had no traditional or native laws against homosexuality. “I strongly believe that homophobia is un-African,” Kahiu has said. These competing headlines invite conversations about the origins of global homophobia and to what extent countries that were formerly colonized by Europe continue to enforce colonial statutes designed to sexually subjugate native peoples. Read together, these headlines also highlight the irony in Europe’s celebration of the film. For as Rafiki showcases the colonial law, it pokes holes in the West’s rather recent moral high ground on LGBTQ rights and critiques its neocolonial desire to rescue queer Africans from homophobia. Thus, Rafiki brilliantly sits between African and European receptions signaling both complexities and possibilities of putting postcolonial queer love onscreen. This type of fresh filmmaking is what Kahiu has dubbed “AFROBUBBLEGUM”: a combination of “the Bechdel Test” (“there are at least two women who talk to each other about something other than a man”) with an African Bechdel Test (“Are two or more Africans healthy? Are those same Africans financially stable and not in need of saving? Are they having fun and enjoying life?”). AFROBUBBLEGUM-style films like Rafiki oppose an array of stereotypical visions of the continent from gender and sexuality to race and class. It’s a commitment, Kahiu says, to putting “love and joy” at the center of African narratives. Given the host of queer films and African films that center on tragedy, Rafiki is a cinematic and political accomplishment, clearly shaking up how different audiences across the globe view otherness and understand sexuality.
By Rebecca Kumar
