Captain Ibrahim Traoré’s regime in Burkina Faso presents a paradox. On one hand, Traoré has engaged in bold, symbolic decolonisation by expelling French troops and cutting military ties with the former colonial power. Such moves, wrapped in anti-imperialist rhetoric, assert national control and seem to fulfil long-held aspirations for self-determination. On the other hand, he has criminalised homosexuality with prison sentences of up to five years and escalated crackdowns on opposition and the media.

Until now, Burkina Faso had never outlawed same-sex intimacy in its history, unlike most former colonies. Yet Traoré’s government justified the new law as reflecting “the deep aspirations of our society” and “respect for cultural values”. This comes amid a shrinking civic space, as his regime silences dissent, jails journalists and crushes peaceful protest.

The contrast is striking. A regime ostensibly devoted to “liberation” from Western dominance is enacting draconian social controls and human rights abuses reminiscent of the worst colonial values.

Democratic norms and individual freedoms are in retreat. This raises an uncomfortable question: what kind of liberation is it when a country kicks out foreign soldiers only to adopt authoritarian laws and exclusionary ideologies?

If the struggle against French neocolonial influence was meant to empower the people of Burkina Faso, that promise rings hollow when those very people are now told whom they can love, what they can say and who must lead them.

Decolonisation v Decoloniality

“...Decolonisation is ensuring that the stranger in our house leaves, while decoloniality is the process of cleaning the house after the stranger leaves.”— Wakunuma et al, 2025

To understand this contradiction, we must distinguish between decolonisation and decoloniality. Decolonisation in the narrow sense refers to formal independence such as the lowering of the Union Jack or French tricolour, the departure of colonial troops, the ceding of sovereign authority back to local leaders. In contrast, decoloniality is a deeper, ongoing process: a dismantling of the entrenched systems of power, knowledge and hierarchy left behind by centuries of empire.

Living decolonial scholars such as Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni and Nelson Maldonado-Torres, building off the work of Fannon, Césaire and others, argue that colonialism lives on in the logic, metaphysics, ontology and matrix of power of modern societies, even after the colonisers have formally gone. In Maldonado-Torres’s words, coloniality is the invisible “war” that continues in times of ostensible peace, sustaining racial gendered, and other forms of domination. Decoloniality, therefore, refers to efforts at rehumanising the world by breaking the hierarchies of difference that dehumanise communities and individuals. It means producing new liberating ideas and practices — ie, “counter-discourses, counter-knowledges, counter-creative acts” to uproot oppression at its core.

Crucially, decoloniality demands what we might call “epistemic humility and pluralism”. It means recognising that no single civilisation has a monopoly on truth, and that we must shift the very geography of reason away from Eurocentric perspectives to include the once-silenced voices of the colonised. Decoloniality is not about flipping the script so that yesterday’s oppressed become today’s oppressors; it is about transcending oppression entirely.

As Ndlovu-Gatsheni explains, decoloniality is the “dismantling of relations of power and conceptions of knowledge” that perpetuate racial, gender and geopolitical hierarchies. It strives for a future of inclusion, dignity and freedom in which being anti-West is far less important than being pro-human. Indeed, authentic decolonial movements explicitly challenge the predominant racial, sexist and queerphobic politics that still pervade the world. By that standard, Burkina Faso’s leadership, in persecuting LGBTQ+ people and stifling dissent, is betraying the very spirit of liberation it claims to champion.

Homophobic contradictions

Burkina Faso’s new anti-gay law is part of a wider trend across parts of Africa and the Caribbean: a recent surge in homophobic legislation and rhetoric packaged as a return to “traditional values” or a bulwark against foreign influence. Ironically, many of these campaigns are themselves fuelled by foreign influence, specifically, by White-led, Western conservative and fundamentalist organisations bankrolling and bolstering anti-LGBTQ+ agendas.

The hypocrisy is rich: homophobia, often justified as authentic culture, frequently relies on colonial-era laws and imported religious dogmas. Far from an assertion of indigenous values, these anti-LGBTQ+ crusades often amount to neocolonialism in disguise. By marginalising and in some cases brutalising segments of their own people, these regimes do the colonial legacy’s work for it — divide, rule and dehumanise.

Lessons for us

“Part of being a revolutionary is creating a vision that is more humane. That is more fun, too. That is more loving. It’s really working to create something beautiful.”— Assata Shakur

Why should this matter in Bermuda? Because our island stands at a crossroads. Still a British Overseas Territory, our ruling Progressive Labour Party government has long proclaimed a mission of self-determination through sovereignty. Yet, while many Caribbean neighbours gained independence decades ago and more recently states such as Barbados have removed the King has their head of state, Bermuda has repeatedly hesitated in referendums with public sentiment reflecting caution.

Nevertheless, the PLP continues to lay the groundwork for sovereignty through establishing both formal bilateral relationships and deeper informal ties with African and Caribbean states. Bermuda’s recent participation in the Africa-Caricom Summit in Addis Ababa and our pursuit of full Caricom membership signal a desire to situate the island within a “global family” of the African diaspora. These initiatives carry powerful symbolism by reconnecting us to a shared history of struggle and hope, but symbolism alone is not transformation.

To ensure these alliances truly serve the Bermudian people, we must scrutinise the ideologies we adopt. Embracing our African and Caribbean heritage should not mean uncritically importing the illiberal tendencies present in some allied states. Given Bermuda already struggles with inequities in gender, disability and LGBTQ+ inclusion, our international engagements should elevate, not erode, our human rights and governance standards. True sovereignty will not come from replicating the strongman politics or exclusionary policies seen elsewhere, but from embodying justice, dignity and inclusion — the very ideals at the heart of decolonial theory.

Decolonisation alone, shedding external rule, is insufficient. Without decoloniality — the deeper project of dismantling oppressive hierarchies — independence risks becoming hollow. If and when the Government does consider guiding Bermuda towards sovereignty, it must pair diplomacy abroad with reform at home. This requires engaging deeply with decolonial scholarship, fostering what Nelson Maldonado-Torres calls “epistemic disobedience”: questioning not only Eurocentric frameworks but also our own internalised biases.

Decoloniality, after all, is a project of universal human liberation. In practice, that could translate into school curriculums that better tell the story of Afro-Bermudian history and global Black achievement, economic policies that rectify historical and present-day racial and gender inequalities, as well as zero tolerance for anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination in legislation and rhetoric.

Bermuda’s future, whether sovereign or not, must rest on values of community, dignity, equity and justice — principles embodied in African philosophies such as Ubuntu, Kujichagulia, Ujima, Ujamaa, Nia, Kuumba and Imani. These stand in direct opposition to systems of authoritarianism, intolerance, exclusion or exploitation. I would argue that coloniality is so deeply embedded in our society, institutions and mindset that we seem to have forgotten that the everyday impacts of colonialism and coloniality are still ever-present.

Thus, we must first confront where Bermuda truly stands; otherwise, we will continue to see social fractures manifest in ways that harm us all. The lesson from Burkina Faso is clear: unless we move beyond symbolic decolonisation and embrace decoloniality in policy, in community and in our individual actions, the legacy of coloniality will keep rearing its ugly head. Recent events, both locally and globally, soberingly remind us that the cost of delay is real. The question now is whether we have the courage to act ... not just in words, but with purpose and conviction.

Sources:

Human Rights Watch, “Burkina Faso Criminalises Same-Sex Conduct”,https://www.hrw.org/news/2025/09/03/burkina-faso-criminalizes-same-sex-conduct

Home affairs minister Alexa Lightbourne cited in Royal Gazette report by Alva Solomon, “Minister highlights island’s ties with Africa and Caribbean”, https://www.royalgazette.com/general/news/article/20250908/minister-highlights-islands-ties-with-africa-and-caribbean/

Nelson Maldonado-Torres, “Ten Theses on Coloniality and Decoloniality”, https://caribbeanstudiesassociation.org/docs/Maldonado-Torres_Outline_Ten_Theses-10.23.16.pdf

Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni, “Discourses of Decolonisation/Decoloniality”, https://www.blacfoundation.org/pdf/Ndlovu-Gatsheni-16.pdf

The Guardian Editorial Board, “The Guardian view on Africa’s homophobic legislation: Western influences are encouraging hatred”, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/mar/13/the-guardian-view-on-africas-homophobic-legislation-western-influences-are-encouraging-hatred

Wakunuma, K. et al. (2025). “Decoloniality as an essential trustworthy AI requirement”,https://www.researchgate.net/publication/389408950_Decoloniality_as_an_Essential_Trustworthy_AI_Requirement

• Taj Donville-Outerbridge is an award-winning Bermudian human rights activist, writer and student studying a double masters of public administration and global affairs at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He also has a decade of involvement in Bermuda’s political system under his belt. He can be reached via Instagram @_king.taj_ and e-mail at tdonvilleouterbridge@yahoo.com