One of Africa’s best-known authors and gay rights activists, Binyavanga Wainaina, has died at the age of 48. The Kenyan author died on Tuesday night in Nairobi after a short illness, the BBC reported. His death was confirmed by Tom Maliti, the chairman of the Kwani Trust, which Wainaina founded. “He could have become a poster boy for liberal literary Africa, a ‘cultural personality’, but he resisted turning himself into anything other than what he was: a writer, and an editor,” Rausing said. The Kenyan laws, as in many other African countries that outlaw same-sex relations, are vestiges of British colonial rule.

Source: The Guardian May 22, 2019 10:52 UTC