Freemasons, Elites, and Scandal: Cameroon’s Rumor Mill

An bizarre and intriguing modern book has been composed by two anthropologists, called Trick Accounts from Postcolonial Africa: Freemasonry, Homosexuality, and Illegal Enhancement. It investigates an progressing scheme hypothesis in Cameroon and neighboring Gabon that degenerate elites spread homosexuality through their associations to mystery orders like the Freemasons. They follow the roots of the trick hypothesis to a ethical freeze in Cameroon in 2005. They at that point move back in time to get it what it all implies. We inquired the creators to tell us more.

What started the ethical freeze in Cameroon?

On Christmas day in 2005 the diocese supervisor of Yaoundé, Cameroon’s capital, the broadly homophobic Victor Tonye Bakot, astounded the country with a sermon assaulting the national tip top. He denounced them of spreading homosexuality by driving butt-centric sex on youthful men enthusiastic to get a job.

The sermon was all the more shocking since the ecclesiastical overseer talked in the Yaoundé cathedral with the nation’s pioneers right in front of him, counting at that point president Paul Biya. It advertised a unused variety of the Catholic church’s assaults on Freemasonry.

Freemasonry is a male-only association that locks in in undercover ceremonies and advances a ethical arrange but is not a religion. It developed around 1700 in Scotland when generous scholars joined ancient societies of bricklayers. A Amazing Hold up was set up in London in 1717. Freemasonry at that point spread to France and French colonies.

In France, Freemasonry was furiously assaulted by the Catholic church, stressed by the progressively common inclinations of the brotherhood and its evidently central part in the French Insurgency. So, indeed in spite of the fact that the 2005 assault by the Cameroonian ecclesiastical overseer was nothing unused, it hit like a wave in this particular setting and made a scheme hypothesis that lives on today.

Only a month after the sermon, a few daily papers begun distributing records of “supposed” or indeed “prominent” gay people. (The so-called Affaire des listes – the list affair).

They named priests and other lawmakers, sports and music stars, and indeed a few senior devout pioneers. Upbraiding the tip top as gay people adulterating the country had gotten to be an outlet for people’s disappointment with the regime.

The first class did not know how to guard itself against this assault. At to begin with Biya inquired for regard for people’s security. But when unused gossipy tidbits and clues were distributed, the government propelled a witch-hunt against assumed homosexuals.

Same-sex hones had been criminalized by presidential proclaim in Cameroon in 1972. But until 2005 this was at times connected. Since at that point, in any case, individuals suspected of such “criminal” conduct have been irritated by subjective captures and imprisonment.

Since 2000 homophobia has been on the rise on the African landmass but, as Cameroonian humanist Patrick Awondo underscored, its “politicisation” takes distinctive shapes in each nation. In Cameroon – and to a lesser degree Gabon – the gay person focused on by well known shock is lawmakers and the first class. The assumed ubiquity of Freemasonry and other worldwide affiliations in higher circles is a key figure here.

You see this as a scheme theory?

Our investigation of this effective assault as a trick account addresses what might be one of the major challenges for scholastics nowadays: how to bargain with the torrent of scheme speculations that frequent legislative issues globally.

These run from Trump and QAnon to the “street parliaments” in the early 2000s in Côte d’Ivoire (well-known open spaces utilized to protect the run the show of President Laurent Gbagbo).

Academics utilized to see it as their to begin with errand to invalidate such scheme speculations, but there is an expanding acknowledgment of the pointlessness of such an approach. Supporters may detest claims of logical information as predominant and adhere all the more to their feelings. Sociologists have famous it might be more critical to to begin with attempt to get it why these regularly far-fetched stories can pick up such power.

We propose in our book that historicising scheme speculations might be an reply. That is, considering them as items of particular verifiable settings.

So what is the chronicled foundation of the panic?

The to begin with chapters of our book bargain with the histories of masonism and anti-masonism in European and African settings. We attempt to get it why sees that Freemasonry is tied to same-sex hones remained especially safe in French-speaking Africa.

We moreover consider the changing adjust between the mystery of the brotherhood and open show in post-colonial Africa. A great case is the spilled 2009 video appearing the introduction of Gabon’s president Ali Bongo as the Terrific Ace of the Amazing Hold up of Gabon.

Going open like this is very extraordinary for a Freemason. Bongo likely trusted to awe his various foes by gloating of his get to to uncommon shapes of control. But it too appeared him as a neocolonial numbskull as he was being driven by agents of the Amazing Hold up Nationale de France.

Of course, connecting homosexuality to Freemasonry fortifies the claim – presently made by numerous in the landmass – that homosexuality is un-African and forced by colonialism. But for Cameroon and Gabon, there are hard-to-ignore signals that this was not the case.

Take, for case, the work of German ethnographer Günther Tessmann. He worked among the Tooth individuals on the border between Cameroon and Gabon fair after 1900, some time recently the foundation of colonial specialist. A repeating concept is biang akuma (the “medicine” of wealth), which to Tessmann’s astonish was related with sex between men. He highlighted in 1913 as of now two measurements of well known discernments of homosexuality in numerous African settings: the affiliation with “witchcraft” and too with enrichment.

This final component came out unequivocally from our comparisons with Côte d'Ivoire, Senegal and Nigeria. The thought of the butt as a source of enhancement has a long history in Africa. This puts the complaints of present-day Cameroonians that they live beneath anusocratie (run the show of the butt) in a broader perspective.

It too made a difference us to contribute assist to talks about almost the require for encourage decolonising strange studies.

Clearly, to get it the complexities of the perplexing joins between Freemasonry, homosexuality and illegal enhancement, we must move past thoughts of settled identities.

A pivotal commitment to the talk about on homosexuality that detonated after 2005 came from Cameroonian anthropologist Sévérin Abega. He demanded that to get it the recognitions of it one has to take into account a nearby conviction among a few communities in Cameroon that each individual has a double.

Thus Abega foreshadowed later talks about by Cameroonian researchers like Francis Nyamnjoh on African personhood as inadequate and Achille Mbembe on the return of animism.

Another conclusive figure in understanding why connecting Freemasonry to homosexuality got to be such a hot political issue after 2000 is the web. Web get to was a watershed, bringing alleviation for LGBTIQ+ individuals in Cameroon and Gabon. But it too reinforced a backfire against thoughts of a cheerful character related with the west. (In a turn to these improvements, Biya’s girl, Brenda Biya, caused furious wrangle about by coming out as lesbian in July 2024.)

What do you trust perusers will take away?

The book offers understanding into the part – as ubiquitous as it is understudied – of Freemasonry and comparable worldwide orders in Africa. It includes to ponders of the affiliation of same-sex unions with “witchcraft” and unlawful improvement in west Africa.

Such angles are generally missing from activist-oriented ponders – no question for great reasons – but basic for understanding the prevalent talks about and battles over same-sex issues in Africa nowadays.