NAIROBI — Ten days ago, when Wanuri Kahiu’s film “Rafiki” was announced as Kenya’s first-ever entry at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival, Ezekiel Mutua, the head of Kenya’s Film Classification Board, could barely contain his pride.
“She is our icon when it comes to film,” he said of Kahiu, while on air at HOT 96 FM’s Nairobi studio. In his estimation, Kahiu stood beside Hollywood mega-star Lupita Nyong’o as Kenyans in film who should be celebrated.
“We are just handling the classification issue,” said Mutua, who controls what Kenyans can and can’t see on television and in theaters, “so we don’t end up, you know, have a situation where it is nominated, and we are not celebrating it here.”
But anyone who knew the content of the film and knew Mutua’s politics would have felt deeply confused. “Rafiki,” which means friend in kiSwahili, is about two young women who are best friends and fall in love. Mutua is well-known for inflammatory remarks about LGBT people. In Facebook posts, he has described homosexuality as “filth” and said it was a Western concept intent on “destroying our children.” His board regularly bans content that recognizes LGBT people’s existence.
On Friday, his KFCB announced that the film would be banned in Kenya.
“Anyone found in its possession will be in breach of law,” the board said in a tweet. It is unclear exactly which law the film itself or possession of it would contravene, though gay sex is illegal in Kenya and punishable by up to 14 years in jail. A petition to overturn that law is underway in a Nairobi high court.
KFCB spokeswoman Nelly Muluka tweeted a justification for the decision. “Our culture and laws recognize family as the basic unit of society,” she wrote. “The (board) cannot, therefore, allow lesbian content to be accessed by children in Kenya.”
The board then unveiled its own hashtag, promoting its decision: #KFCBbansLesbianFilm. Kenyans of all persuasions on issues of sexuality flooded Twitter with their opinions. KFCB retweeted dozens of those who expressed derision toward LGBT people.
But in a world where more and more have access to content over the internet, the KFCB has power over a diminishing amount of content.
To Kahiu, it seems like she's being singled out because she’s Kenyan, and the KFCB wants to make a statement about Kenyan culture.
“I’m really disappointed because Kenyans already have access to watch films that have LGBT content, on Netflix, and in international films shown in Kenya and permitted by the classification board itself,” she told Reuters. “So to then just ban a Kenyan film because it deals with something already happening in society just seems like a contradiction.”
In its announcement to ban the film in Kenya, the KFCB said it had given Kahiu two days last week to “remove the offensive classifiable elements,” a request which Kahiu rejected.
The film is based on the award-winning 2007 novel “Jambula Tree” by Ugandan author Monica Arac de Nyeko, and will debut at Cannes next month.
“Jambula Tree is about the relationship between two young girls in a very complex social setting in a community which does not look kindly at that relationship,” Arac de Nyeko told the BBC’s Network Africa soon after it came out. “It's a combination of struggle and the power to dream and love.”
Homosexuality is taboo for many Africans, especially those who profess Christianity and Islam, which includes the vast majority of Kenyans. As with dozens of former British colonies, Kenya inherited its laws against gay sex from Victorian-era penal codes written by colonial administrators.
In the light of the KFCB’s decision, some of Mutua’s praise for the film on the radio earlier this month seem strangely pertinent.
“Film, and art, should be a mirror of society,” he said. “We may react with shock and consternation, but we forget it is actually a reality.”
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