The Hard Life of LGBTI People in Africa. The Cases of Uganda and South Africa in Context.

Building on the overview of discriminatory and criminalizing legislation that is present in the large majority of African countries, the article discusses, on the one hand, the success and the shadows of the only African country that has a progressive legislation and relatively strong LGBTI movements: South Africa. On the other hand, it discusses the impact of the recourse to courts where homophobic discourse is used by decision-makers as a powerful instrument to gain cheap political consensus, as is the case of Uganda. The question of the pertinence of legislation and case-law as means for social change lies at the core of the article.