For gay African athletes, even rumors can end their careers and cause them great pain

For all the progress LGBTQ people have seen in sports in Western countries, despite the still-formidable obstacles, the situation is different in most of Africa, where same-sex relations are often illegal and athletes labeled as gay see their careers ended.

This is illustrated in a powerful Thompson-Reuters report showing how two athletes in Cameroon saw their careers end by reports that they were gay, with one man contemplating suicide after losing his family and friends.

For Thierry Essamba, it all came crashing down as he was preparing to train in track and field for the 2014 Commonwealth Games when an official told the media that Essamba was gay.


“I felt as if my body was being torn apart from the inside,” Essamba told the Thomson Reuters Foundation as he sat on the bleachers after finishing his daily solitary training in a dilapidated stadium in Yaounde.

“That day I saw all the people in the stadium who used to look up to me with admiration, with respect. Now they regarded me with contempt.”

Reuters notes that in Cameroon, “sexual relations between persons of the same sex” are punishable by up to five years in prison.

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