Even now, more than 180 years since Dr Ludwig Krapf and his wife Rosina arrived on the Kenyan coast, the missionaries have never tired of reminding us of their contribution to education, healthcare and the spread of literacy.
The missionaries and their modern-day acolytes are less likely to trumpet the fact that their presence also brought several negative impacts, particularly during and after colonisation.
They don’t like to talk about their intentional suppression, if not outright banning, of African religions and traditions. However, the truth is that missionaries often viewed African spiritual systems as ‘pagan’ or ‘heathen’, and actively worked to eliminate them.
The
result of this was the loss of indigenous knowledge as our oral traditions,
rituals and customs were discouraged or deemed inferior.
They sought to remedy this situation with the imposition of Western culture.
European norms around dress, marriage, gender roles and behaviour were
enforced, typically erasing local identity.
Nearly two centuries after they first arrived and disrupted our lives while purporting to rescue us, they are back. Today, they are disguised as Missionaries of Morality, and their new gig is exporting hate from their countries, while claiming to be teaching us family values.
This time they are aided and abetted by their new kitchen totos, politicians and other suggestible types. This lot is happy to be used as fronts, in the sense of being legitimate-looking individuals whose job is to conceal the true nature of their foreign master’s undesirable actions.
They help their US and European taskmasters set up conferences and distribute glossy pamphlets on the sanctity of wombs and wardrobes.
These ultra-conservative crusaders from the US and Europe, having lost the cultural wars in their own countries (because people finally realised that love isn't a sin), are now on a salvation safari across Africa.
The target? The same people they've always blamed for earthquakes, feminism and falling church attendance: LGBTQ+ Africans and women who dare to own their bodies.
Welcome to Operation Save Africa from Africans, where our colonial saviours have dusted off the same old paternalism and repackaged it with a crucifix and accessorised it with cultural gaslighting.
They said their recent conference in Nairobi was about “protecting the African family”. The way they go on, you would think it was an endangered species that only they can save.
Meanwhile, they are prepared to funnel millions of dollars into legislation that criminalises love, polices uteruses and scapegoats queer people for all of society’s problems, from potholes to poverty.
If these groups loved Africa as much as they love interfering in her bedrooms, maybe they’d sponsor maternal health clinics or help end child marriages. But no. The real emergency, it seems, is that two women might be holding hands in Nairobi. Or that a teenage girl might want access to a sanitary pad and an education.
Their local collaborators, self-proclaimed moral gatekeepers, have embraced their roles with colonial gusto. They nod furiously at every imported talking point, mistaking it for divine inspiration. Meanwhile, the people they claim to be protecting are left to suffer under outdated laws and dangerous ignorance.
They say it’s about “values”. Whose values? Victorian missionaries called: They want their imperial morality back.
If irony were a currency, this “Family Values” circus would be richer than all the oil and gas fields in Africa put together.
They’ve come to Africa to teach us about families? The same continents whose policies tore apart indigenous families, stole children and enforced eugenics now want to give lectures on “protecting the child”? Please.
It is time they understood, once and for all, that Africa is not an ideological dumping ground or a rehab centre for failed Western theocrats. We know what family means. It means Ubuntu. It means chosen families, aunties who aren’t blood, grandmothers who raise whole villages. Furthermore, it does not mean importing bigotry they can’t sell back home and slapping a khikoi on it.
So to the “pro-family” missionaries and their Kenyan puppets, I say: We see you. Your dollars don’t sanctify your discrimination. Your prayers don’t cleanse your prejudice, and your presence doesn’t validate your agenda. Go fix your own countries. Africa is not your morality playground.
