Coming Through the Nkuta

"They would put drugs in your food. Once you were tired they would drag you to their beds". Since the law banning homosexuality was passed in 1972, this is the fate suffered by many homosexuals in prison in Cameroon at the hands of fellow inmates. "One of them is only sixteen and they violate him too". Unfortunately, many Cameroonians seem to believe it is the punishment they deserve, "We really should hang them, what they do is witchcraft". Inherent to the problem is the marriage of sexuality and control in Cameroon: "In Cameroon sexuality is based on power; the relationship between dominant and dominated," a Cameroonian sociologist tells us. Even before 'The List', power and homosexuality had been linked by the rumours surrounding the first president. "What made the rumour very persistent was that accessing power has always been very secret." And so conspiracy theories abound. As Alice, a Cameroonian lawyer who defends homosexuals, points out, many of her clients, "did it to get promoted socially. They think they have to get fucked to succeed." Unfortunately the implications against those high up has worsened the plight of all the country's homosexuals. Against this backdrop Alice has taken up the fight by defending homosexuals in court. Yet at every turn she faces a society that seeks to block her every move. "I do not see how I could sign this paper for you," the public prosecutor says when Alice presents a permit to visit her clients in jail. "This guy is a first class homophobe", she confides to us after another unsuccessful attempt to get through. Now the appeal procedure is still held up in the court of Yaounde, and to this day homosexuality remains a crime. In reaction Alice is making her efforts subtler and has begun a campaign to change attitudes within families with homosexual children. But until the law is overturned homosexuals remain imprisoned in their own society. "Freedom in Cameroon? There's no such thing."