Africa’s open secret: boy-wives and female husbands

Daniel Nelson

Pigs and Dogs

Image by Royal Court

But Caryl Churchill, one of the Britain’s top playwrights, and the excellent cast of three (Fisayo Akinade, Sharon D Clarke, Alex Hassell) pack a punch as they take apart the ludicrous suggestion that being gay is a colonial import (Winnie Mandela: “It is alien to our culture. It is filth”).

Basing the work on the book Boy-Wives and Female Husbands by Stephen O. Murray and Will Roscoe, Churchill’s rhythmic prose mocks the purveyors of ignorance and prejudice, and cites the evidence of anthropologists, historians and linguistics – sagoda, who never marry and wear skirts, ashtime who dress like women and do women’s work, mumenke a man-woman, wasagu a lesbian, wobo, kwaza and haja, yau dada:

Yes, I’m yau dada, we dress like women,

we sing and dance and serve the fried chicken,

We can still get married and give a girl children.

You don’t have to love her to give a girl children.

Colonial governments get a blast for imposing in anti-buggery laws, US evangelists for bringing in their implacable brand of Christianity, and “somebody says” is repeatedly blasted for some popular stigmatising phrase or other.

Yes, it’s a polemic, not a drama of opposing views, and if it ran over 15 minutes it would become tiresomely self-righteous. But sometimes it’s good to re-state the facts, rally activists, promote the concealed voices and mock the bigots.

This somebody says: £5 well spent.

* Pigs and Dogs is at the Royal Court theatre, Sloane Square, SW1, until 30 July, £5. Info: 7565 5000/ http://www.royalcourttheatre.com/whats-on/pigs-and-dogs