This article by Mubeezi Tenda and Omolara Oriye first published by Liberation Alliance Africa is part of several responses by African feminists and liberation workers against the surge of conservative, right-wing, white supremacist, anti rights, religious fundamentalist forces that are gathering in various capitals of the continent, organizing against the rights of women, children and people of diverse genders. They promote and politicize a narrow idea of family rooted in Eurocentric, colonial imposed nuclear family — is alien to African communities, precolonial and today. Spreading hateful rhetoric, funding and fanning discriminatory laws and policies that deny many African people their rights is not an ‘African value’. Community, not the colonial- capitalist prescribed nuclear family, is what sustains us. That’s how we survived and resisted colonialism. Any success in our fight for our independence depends on building community, centering values that advance unity, dignity, empathy and self determination, especially in such a time of polycrisis and extractive imperial geopolitical agendas seeking to control African people’s futures.
The “African Values” Agenda of the West a Tool for Continued Colonialism. We are Not Fooled
A lineup of white men swooping into the African continent to lecture us on African values — if this isn’t imperialism striding boldly among us, then pray, what is it?
Currently underway, in Wangari Maathai’s beloved homeland — Muthoni Kirima and Dedan Kimathi’s birthplace — is the so-called “Pan-African Conference on Family Values”. It is being held right here on African soil, in Kenya, home to one of the most significant rebellions against imperialism, and led by the very same people of European extract, the same ones these ancestors, and so many others, gave their lives fighting for the right to exist as autonomous human beings. To the untrained eye, one might ask: What could possibly be wrong with a conference discussing family values?
Let us be clear: this is no neutral gathering. It is a carefully orchestrated effort to further entrench systems of domination rooted in colonialism, capitalism, neoliberalism, patriarchy, racism, and homophobia. These oppressive and extractive frameworks are cloaked in the ideal of the nuclear Christian family—an imported structure as foreign and cancerous to African traditions as the Global North that now aggressively promotes it. These are not our values. They are the antithesis of our traditions and the liberation we seek.
This imposed value system manufactures consent to marginalise and erase entire populations, particularly LGBTQI+ Africans, who have always been part of our societies, loved and accepted in many of our cultures. It strips African women and girls of rights that are fundamental and autonomous. It cultivates ignorance around our sexual and reproductive health and rights. It denies access to life-saving healthcare on a continent that has already endured generational loss and systemic neglect.
The imperialist hand behind this conference was made plain with its first poster—a pale and vast sea of old white male faces. Only after widespread albeit misplaced outrage did the organisers make a token gesture of “inclusion,” quickly adding a few African faces to mask the reality.
We are not fooled.
We see the far right’s interest in African bodies for what it is: a continuation of millennia-old exploitation. We are aware of their desire to control our minds, our bodies, and our lands in service of their capitalist and neoliberal agendas. History has taught us that Europe’s interest in Africa or African bodies has never risen from any motive other than a twisted desire for domination, powered by greed, self-interest, and an expansionist ethos.
Many African ancestors met untimely deaths trying to survive Europe and its “dark desire” for our people, our land, our minerals, and our spirit. From the grotesque slicing and grabbing of African lands in Germany’s Berlin Conference, to the first European establishments on the continent being corporations, the Imperial British East Africa Company, Royal Niger Company, and Dutch East India Company (VOC) in South Africa. From the “missionaries” who arrived to grease the wheels of the empire, disabling our will to fight through empty promises of paradises light-years away from our land, and threats of fiery hells for dissenters.
Truly, there has never been a moment when Europe has exhibited admirable values or expressed an interest in Africa that centered our lives, families or wellbeing. The trail of European history is littered with the bodies of African people, enslaved, charred, or mutilated. Our history is populated with African families and lineages permanently ended or separated beyond repair by the slave trade. The sight of imperialists in a room full of their victims speaking of “values” is, at best, laughable. Laughter—because we are beyond tears. As the Yoruba adage says, “Ti oro ba ju ekun, erin ni a fi n rin” (when a situation exceeds tears, we turn to laughter).
This conference is not the first attempt at this imperialist agenda. We remain victims of sustained, oppressive state structures that serve foreign interests at the expense of our people and continent. We see the use of moral panic and fertility propaganda as distractions—boogeymen designed to obscure the ongoing economic extraction and environmental destruction of our land. We see how they sow division within African communities, inventing fictional enemies to divert attention from the actual threat.
We must be clear: what does a culture enriched by stealing, rape, plundering, and imperialism have to teach anyone about values?
As African people, we reject the racist, paternalistic infantilisation from imperial powers that pretend to care or claim to understand our value systems. We reject both the white face of imperialism and the Africanised, feminised face it hides behind. We call on the African men, women, and all those bamboozled into alignment with this destructive agenda to see it for what it is: a dishonour to who we are as a people, and an affront to our historical fight for our land, our bodies, and our spirit.
Our traditions have always centred people, not power. Our diversity has always been celebrated on this continent, not erased.
We reject the narrow, individualistic definitions of family, freedom, and values being forced upon us.
We call on all African people to reject this imperialist imposition and reclaim our right to define who we are, what we believe, and the future we dream of—for us, and by us.
We call on African governments: this is your opportunity to become worthy of your ancestors’ sacrifices and to write a history of your lineage that you can be proud of, for future generations. It is time to take this continent seriously and fight for its present and future. Africa is not a spare-parts yard. Our spirit, bodies, art, and minerals are not here to feed plunderers while we starve.
We call on African feminists, women and girls: we see how you navigate this colonial world that insists on controlling your bodies, minds, and futures. Do not be deceived by fancy titles covering up harmful agendas that seek to take your very lives. It is time to take an ideological, spiritual, mental, and emotional stance against the empire and its antics.
Feature photo: Ivan Bruno de M / Shutterstock.com