Who’s on Trial?

It is no longer news that the shortlist of this year’s Caine Prize for African Literature is out. On the shortlist are Bombay’s Republic by Rotimi Babatunde; Billy Kahora’s Urban Zoning; Love on Trial by Stanley Kenani; Melissa Tandiwe Myambo’s La Salle de Depart and Constance Myburgh’s Hunter Emmanuel.
This is a review of Love on Trial by SO Kenani, hopefully I will be reviewing the other stories on the shortlist over the next few weeks. The stories shall be reviewed in no particular order.
Love on Trial is from a collection of short stories written in 2011 titled For Honour and other stories published for Random House by EKhaya.
The story is set in present day Malawi. It is about the African and homosexuality, international politics, foreign aid (aka charity) and religion. Ultimately, it is about the powerful West and powerless Africa.
The writer, SO Kenani weaves the tale around a young man, Charles Chikangwe, who was caught in a primary school toilet having sex with another man. This discovery was made by no other person than the illustrious Kachingwe, the village drunk. And like any lush who is worth his salt, he was able to milk the juicy scandal for every drop of local gin he could get by entertaining tourists with the story and taking them to the very place where the ‘crime’ had been ‘committed’.
The scandal, through word of mouth and then the press, eventually got to the authorities who promptly arrested the accused (without any other evidence than the word of a drunk), arraigned him and threw him in prison.
Surprisingly his father was supportive but, as expected, the Malawian government and religious bodies came out in arms insisting that homosexuality was ‘unnatural’, ‘un-African’, ‘devilish’ and that the young man only needed to ‘give his life to Christ’ and then do a ‘deliverance’ and all his troubles will simply melt away. A female friend of his even suggested that his ‘unnatural’ desires will melt away once he tasted the love of a woman.
The accused eventually went on trial, which was quickly wrapped up within one day and he was sentenced to 12years imprisonment. Of course there was only one witness, the infamous Mr. Kanchigwe who was suffering from a case of DT at that point in time, while the accused stood alone.
It is interesting to note at this point that Charles Chikangwe did not waste his breath denying the accusation he only wanted to prove that he had the right to love anybody, it was his choice.
While the Malawian government and most of its people were the villains of the piece, the international community were heroes. They breathed down the neck of the Malawian government and withdrew aid when they stubbornly refused to toe the line and release the incarcerated young man. It was a sad period in the lives of the citizens of Malawi.
At the end of the day the economy fell apart and this affected everybody, including the man that started it all, Kachingwe, who was unable to obtain his anti-retroviral drug supplied by one of the super-powers. A case of what goes around comes around I suppose.
Homosexuality in Africa is a very touchy subject. Recently, in Nigeria, the government passed an anti-gay marriage bill which led to public discourse and nearly split the Nigerian writing community into two halves, one side accusing the other of being homophobic, while the other side retaliated by calling the lot homosexuals.
A lot of writers ended up calling one another all sorts of other unsavoury names and some even went to the extent of ‘unfriending’ and removing people from their Facebook pages and groups.
This story is therefore relevant to the current situation in Africa. With a lot of African leaders coming out to state that homosexuality is an ‘abomination’ or something to that effect.
Ironically a few days ago, Joyce Banda Malawi’s new president declared that she was going to repeal the anti-gay law.
It is rather unfortunate that the story was not as tightly woven together as it should be. It dragged on a bit especially in all the parts that Kachingwe, the village drunk, appeared. There were too many repetitions and a lot of inconsistencies, which were especially glaring due to the fact that it is a short story.
For example when Charles was interviewed on live television it was as if the author zoomed into that part with a camera, the careful way every word and expression was documented contrasted sharply with the way other scenes in the story were described. Even the court scene went by so fast it made your head spin.
One major thing that baffled me about the story is the point SO Kenani was trying to prove by choosing to have the two men caught in a toilet, a primary school toilet for that matter. Are primary school toilets in Malawi that clean? Because I know for a fact that if anybody tried to have sex in a primary school toilet in Nigeria they would have gotten more than they bargained for.
Another thing that makes his toilet story unbelievable is the fact that the two men have been lovers for many years, does that mean all this while the two men have been having sex in public toilets? Or was it that they were so desperate to have sex that they threw caution to the winds?
The tale got fatalistic towards the end, the way the Malawian government watched helplessly as their economy fell apart beggared belief. As bad as African leadership is I doubt if a government will simply fold their arms and announce to their people that they are losing grip and have no intention of rectifying the situation.
Every character, from Charles Chikangwe to Mr. Kachinga, was flat and one-dimensional. They behaved predictably and we did not even get a glimpse into what made them behave the way they did. Everybody was a caricature. I would have loved to know why Mr. Kachinga decided to tell Charles story to the whole world (aside from the obvious of course), since both of them are from the same village, I’ll expect that there’s a level of familiarity between the two men.
Why did Charles stubbornly refuse to reveal who his lover is? Why was he so hell-bent on being the poster boy for ‘Ten reasons why coming out of the closet in Malawi is a really bad idea’? He had every opportunity to refute the allegations because his accuser is a well-known lush.
The fact that all through his tribulations the man Charles claimed to love so much he was willing to go to jail for did not even turn up once does not correlate with what we know of human nature. The absolute absence of the lover is totally unbelievable. Why was the man not even around to watch Charles go on air to put the noose round his own neck?
It was as if the story was designed specifically to reinforce the African ‘single story’ syndrome. Usually writers who engage in this kind of writing portrays her in a single light. Africa is a great mass of land full of hungry children with kwashiorkor impregnated bellies, tse-tse flies, tyrannical leaders, abused women, misogynists and more recently, homophobes and religious fanatics.
The superpowers came out smelling like roses while another African country has been put firmly in its place ... in Africa.