Obviously the Christian influence on the ways in which sexuality in Africa has been/is seen is decisive. Furthermore, as has been the case for something like a century now, in many parts of Africa, Christianity is no longer just determining the ways in which gender relations are perceived from the outside; Christianity is also influencing the ways people see themselves, their past and present. As reported from Namibia by Becker, gender identities that were promulgated by the missionaries in the first half of the 20th century are presented in postcolonial discourse as ‘traditional’. Interviewing men and women in rural Owamboland, Becker was told that ‘in our tradition we are very Christian’. According to her “Christianity has largely succeeded in restructuring people’s conceptual universe in important respects, including the social, cultural and political representations of everyday life.”
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This is yet another indication that ‘traditions’ change all the time. So what is the point in trying to disentangle, to say which parts of ‘tradition’ are traditional,