The other night I watched Rafiki (2018) (part of the international film festival), a Kenyan film directed by Wanuri Kahiu. Rafiki, which translates to “friend,” is a drama with LGBTQ+ themes. This film is the story of Kena and Ziki, both daughters of rival political candidates, as they fall in love. While I don’t want to spoil this film, it’ll be hard to relate it to leadership without doing so. After Kena and Ziki enter a relationship with each other, they are soon found out about (as you’d expect) and are harassed by their family and neighbors. Both of them are physically assaulted by people in the small town they grew up in. It was a hard scene to watch. Then they face potential jail time for being lesbian (how is that a threat!? How can you be arrested for that?!). Furthermore, both sets of parents struggle to continue loving their daughters after their homosexuality is revealed.
What is the cause of all this? What could possibly tear families and neighborhoods apart like this? Rafiki does a great job of highlighting two causes: sexism and homophobia that is so deeply ingrained in society because of religion. The church is a place of high tension in Rafiki. Every service is full of nervous glances from the leading characters. There is one scene in which the pastor discusses homosexuality and claims that God’s laws can’t be broken, that changing the laws of man won’t save people who are homosexual. Furthermore, there is another scene in which he discusses the significance of matrimony between a man and a woman; how they need each other to be complete. During the discussion after the film, a student (who is from Kenya, herself) brought up the point of how she hadn’t even realized how many expressions were sexist or homophobic, she hadn’t thought about how accustomed Kenyan society was to excluding/degrading/alienating these groups of people. This reminded me of the Zinn readings on slavery and racism. While the origins are different, the way these mentalities stick and stay in society is very similar. And the violent reactions to these minority groups of people (though women aren’t really a minority)… just going through life is much like Plato’s Cave Allegory; people don’t want change/new/different/ Even if it’s for the better, even if it stops suffering. Even if it doesn’t affect them at all.
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