‘There was so much vitriol’: Willis Chimano on being outed while in Africa’s biggest boy band

Coming out as gay was not something Willis Austin Chimano, a member of the Kenyan Afropop band Sauti Sol, had ever considered. From about 2005, when the group – widely considered to be Africa’s biggest boyband – was formed, to 2018, Chimano says he “wore a mask” at work, careful how he acted, spoke and dressed.

At the same time, he embraced his queer identity in his private life.

“I had to do everything in my power to keep my sexuality hidden,” he says. His band mates knew, and supported him, but Chimano thought he would not be accepted by the wider public. “I was scared that it could ruin our chances at becoming bigger.

“I just wanted to keep a clean representation of me,” he says. “My queerness would have been a scandal.”

Then, in 2018, a photograph of him with his partner was posted on social media and republished by the mainstream media in Kenya. He was the first pop star in Kenya to be outed as gay – and social media went wild.

“There was vitriol, oh my God, so much,” Chimano recalls. “People were saying ‘you’re a sinner’, ‘it goes against the laws of nature’, ‘it’s against African culture’. There’s a larger society belief that what [queer people] are doing is wrong. People don’t understand.”

Kenya is one of 31 countries in Africa that still criminalises queer people. Gay sex is punishable by up to 14 years in prison. A challenge to the colonial-era law, introduced by the British, was rejected by the high court in 2019. Many members of the queer community are shunned by their families in this deeply religious country.

Currently, the Kenyan MP Peter Kaluma is urging parliament to advance the family protection bill 2023, which aims to outlaw same-sex relationships, LGBTQ+ activities, public cross-dressing and related advocacy campaigns. In neighbouring Uganda, the world’s harshest anti-LGBTQ+ bill, which allows the death penalty for homosexual acts, was signed into law in 2023.

Chimano publicly admitted for the first time to the media that he was part of the queer community in 2021. Despite his fears, Sauti Sol went from strength to strength. The group signed a deal with Universal, their album performed well, and the last single they released was their biggest ever.

However, when it came to performing as a solo artist, Chimano was, at times, confronted with a different reality. He had started writing his own songs to come to terms with the turbulence of the last few years.

“I needed to get through some of my hang-ups and a bit of my trauma and just fix myself, in a way,” he says. He released an EP, Heavy is the Crown, in 2022, at a time when Sauti Sol was exploring taking a break so members could pursue solo opportunities.

Before its release, in February that year, he was due to appear at a festival he had organised called Love and Harmony, but it was shut down. “The cops were just like, ‘Oh, you’re coming here to do a gay event in my jurisdiction and we’re not going to allow that to ever happen.’”

His team found another venue – a shopping centre – in a different area of Nairobi. But as he was heading to rehearsal, Chimano remembers seeing more police trucks on the road than normal. Midway through the practice, he was called into a room and told the show was off.

Police officers carrying AK-47s had been sent to the venue. In Chimano’s opinion, it was to intimidate him. “The message was that we could go ahead and set up and go on with the show, but that we should prepare for the consequences,” he says. “They were walking around with their guns and looking intimidating.

“I was in shock, naturally. Something switched in me and I walked outside, sat and stared at a wall. Then I broke down.”

He wrote on X: “Bullies never win! You may have gotten your way this time. You’ve only made my resolve stronger … The show that I’ve been working so hard on will be seen. That is a fact!”

An accompanying statement said the show had been called off by the police for “security reasons”.

The next time he performed a solo show was months later when he was hired as a performer for a corporate event. They asked him how his set would look, right down to what the dancers would be wearing. “I took it as, ‘Hopefully, it’s not too gay?’ … They were asking questions just to make sure there was nothing camp about it,” he says. After a lot of back and forth, the show went well.

Since Sauti Sol officially announced their hiatus in 2023, Chimano has been working on a one-man show with songs from his EP, which has taken him to Australia, France and the UK, where he performed in London and Cardiff as part of the ongoing UK-Kenya Season of Culture, organised by London’s Africa Centre and the British Council. With each performance, the show continues to evolve, making space for experimentation and emotional discovery. He hopes to perform a version of it in Kenya in future.

He has also been writing a memoir, which he hopes to publish next year, and a debut album, due for release sometime in 2026.

Meanwhile, Chimano has been a source of inspiration for members of the queer community and their family across Africa. Through his music, writing and art, he has taken on the role of advocating for the queer community.

He is part of a movement of people “who are expressing themselves more and being out there”, Chimano says. He remains hopeful for the future; and is positive that the law criminalising the queer community in Kenya will be repealed at some point.

“There’s a lot more straight people who have friends in the queer community and I hope when the time comes, when we’re talking about allyship, they speak up and show up for us,” he says.