Pre-Colonial Actualities, Post-Colonial Amnesia and Neo-Colonial Assemblage

This chapter will present an overview of some of the contestations and confluences (both intentional and coincidental) regarding the uncovering, recovering and discovering of pre-colonial, pre-Westernized SSAGD cultural and faith heritages that have been erased or re-written due to what Wieringa (2009) calls ‘postcolonial amnesia’. Researchers find that many pre-colonial cultures were ‘historically more accommodating to sexual difference than present-day homophobes allow’. In the case of African countries, ‘it is the dogmatic intolerance of same-sex sexuality that is “un-African” as it largely reflects imported Christian missionary ideology and colonial law’ (Epprecht and Egya, 2011: 369).