By Lisa Vives, Global Information Network<\/p>\n\n\n\n
NEW YORK (IDN) \u2013 Binyavanga Wainaina, one of Africa\u2019s best-known authors and gay rights activist, has died in Nairobi after a short illness. He was 48.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Wainaina won the 2002 Caine prize for African writing. Credited with founding the literary magazine and collective Kwani?<\/em> and advancing the fight for LGBTQ rights in Africa, he made headlines around the world in 2014, when he responded to a wave of anti-gay laws around the continent by publicly outing himself in a short essay, published to mark his 43rd birthday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He also revealed he was HIV positive. Calling it the \u201clost chapter\u201d of his 2011 memoir \u201cOne Day I Will Write About This Place\u201d, the essay \u201cI Am a Homosexual, Mum\u201d reimagined the last days of his mother\u2019s life, in which he went to her deathbed and told her the truth about his sexuality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After Wainaina came out, Time magazine in 2014 named him one of its 100 most influential people, with Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie praising him for having \u201cdemystified and humanized homosexuality\u201d after the death of a Kenyan friend, whose family were prevented from holding a church memorial.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Wainaina was also known for his biting essay How to Write About Africa<\/em>, which included the advice: \u201cAlways use the word \u2018Africa\u2019 or \u2018Darkness\u2019 or \u2018Safari\u2019 in your title.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ironically, in a unanimous ruling by a three-judge panel of the court, a Kenyan High Court upheld on May 24 the criminalization of gay sex. \u201cA sad day for the rule of law and human rights,\u201d said Eric Gitari, a co-founder of the National Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission, a Kenyan civil rights group, who was one of the petitioners in the case. \u201cWe expect that the court of appeal will overturn this erroneous decision which in our view is very biased,\u201d Gitari told reporters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n T\u00e9a Braun, director of the Human Dignity Trust, an international gay rights advocacy group, noted in a statement that Kenya\u2019s constitution guarantees human dignity and freedom from discrimination.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cYet in handing down this disappointing judgment, the court has ruled that a certain sector of society is undeserving of those rights,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The judges\u2019 ruling was, however, welcomed by religious groups. Some of them clapped and thanked the judges.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The three judges said that while they respected changes to laws banning gay sex in other countries, it was the court\u2019s duty to respect prevailing Kenyan values.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Many African countries still enforce strict laws governing homosexuality, in most cases a legacy of laws imposed by the colonial rulers. [IDN-InDepthNews \u2013 28 May 2019]<\/p>\n\n\n\n Photo: Kenyan author Binyavanga Wainaina in Nairobi, Kenya, on January 27, 2014. Source: The East African<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By Lisa Vives, Global Information Network NEW YORK (IDN) \u2013 Binyavanga Wainaina, one of Africa\u2019s best-known authors and gay rights activist, has died in Nairobi after a short illness. He was 48. Wainaina won the 2002 Caine prize for African writing. Credited with founding the literary magazine and collective Kwani? and advancing the fight for LGBTQ rights […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6173,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,26,16,32],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-6170","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-africa","8":"category-culture-art-religion","9":"category-news","10":"category-regions"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inpsjapan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6170","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inpsjapan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inpsjapan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inpsjapan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inpsjapan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6170"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/inpsjapan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6170\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6171,"href":"https:\/\/inpsjapan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6170\/revisions\/6171"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inpsjapan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6173"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inpsjapan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6170"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inpsjapan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6170"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inpsjapan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6170"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}