Teach a man to fish or give him the fish? 1

You know the age-old adage about how if you give a man a fish you feed him for a day and if you teach him how to fish he is fed for a lifetime?

The former is what aid agencies tell you they want to do when they set up development programs in Africa and elsewhere they have decided, usually unilaterally,  that their money, technical expertize and presence are needed.

Papa Chavez

What brought this into sharp focus for me was the death of Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez recently. The “poor” came out in numbers almost not seen since Jesus conjured two fishes and a loaf of bread into a feast that fed the 5,000. The jury is still out as to whether Chavez really gave his poor people a fish or taught them how to fish. And it is on that issue that it seems appropriate to segue to Uganda.

It is absolutely true that if you have money to give away, you will always have willing takers.

And so, it seems, it is the case for what passes for gay activism in Uganda. In just a matter of two or three years, the number of gay activists organizations in Uganda has mushroomed from around 5 to more than 30. All of them seek funding from have foreign constituencies in Europe, the United States, Canada, South America, Britain trying to … help. Most of the would-be helpers are Chavez-like paternalistic do-gooders with clear terms of reference to showcase their caring credentials.

Some of the donor organizations, however, don’t seem too interested in accountability for the money they disburse. The popular rationale for this tends to be that they can’t demand accountability from the oppressed and downtrodden who are operating in secrecy. The oppressed gays, lesbians, bisexuals (LGBTI) of Uganda would be putting themselves at risk if they so much as cast around for a part-time auditor to make sure that donations are being used for the reasons highlighted in their proposals, wouldn’t they?

Gay activism is the latest “sexy” bleeding heart bandwagon to roll into Uganda. on the back of a pro-gay worldwide wave that is sweeping everything in its path. So far so good; after all what caring soul would decry any efforts to help the downtrodden?

An example of a Ugandan LGBTI public begging bowl set up on the internet a couple of months ago -  and eventually pulled down

This being Uganda, savvy people haven’t taken long to figure out that there is money to be made in gay activism. I have it on reliable authority that some donors are nonetheless disbursing to groups and individuals enough money to pay 10 teachers’ salaries in Uganda for 8 months -  even when they are cautioned that they might be funding little more than a jamboree of conspicuous consumption. I have received e-mails from people complaining that money sent to them for their “security” is being diverted to other purposes by their leaders.

Then there are the fictitious membership roll calls. My phone number and name appear on the members’ lists of two relatively new Ugandan LGBTI organizations. But I am not aware of when I signed up to be their member or attended any of their meetings.

Left-right dichotomy

Can the donors really be this gullible?

Yes and No.

Yes, some of the organizations going around cup in hand in the West ‘on behalf of ‘suffering Ugandans’ are run by naive young people,  barely out of school, who are out of their depth in dealing with crafty Ugandans. The internet campaigns that have sprung up in the last few months are good examples of this.

No, in 2013 the more experienced donors know that there is waste and misuse of resources going on but gay rights are highly sexy worldwide right now and it is good public relations to be seen to be doing something towards the LGBTI cause in Africa. So they simply turn a blind eye to the more egregious evidence of charlatanism.

Why?

I think it is part of a worldwide ideological war between left and right in the Americas (mostly) and Europe that leads to such disregard for standards of accountability that the donors demand of organizations in their own countries and mainstream NGOs in the developing world. If Scott Lively’s Defend the Family is using money to fight the ideological battle for minds in Africa, the argument tends to go, so can the left.

With the right-wing in retreat even in their last bastion, the United States of America, the liberal/left wing has an excellent opportunity to prove their caring credentials by wearing their bleeding hearts on their sleeves. If some of the funds are being wasted, so be it; the wider goal of changing mindsets globally justifies relaxing some of the oversight on the donated funds.

It is a disturbing trend but you will not see it change soon because that is how practically every crooked, thieving, lying, inept regime in Africa has managed to stay in power; with a lot of unconditional help from friends in America, Canada, Britain, and Europe and so on.

As someone told me when I asked her about why the demand for accountability seems more lax with some LGBTI donors than one would normally expect, “it’s the nature of the beast.”

Related articles

• Arnest : Ugandan goes online to seek a loan to pay his kids’ school fees (kiva.org)
• Canada funding opponents of ‘abhorrent’ anti-gay bill in Uganda
• Quebec launches $7m campaign to fight homophobia

President Yoweri Museveni: please hire me! 3

Yoweri Museveni needs a special adviser on [homo]sexuality: me!!!

I have finally found the job I would like to do in Uganda.

Specifically, I want to be hired by Uganda’s president, Yoweri Kaguta Museveni, as his spokesperson on homosexual affairs.

Okay, perhaps that would be too narrow a remit. Can he maybe hire me as his special adviser on matters relating to sex and sexuality? If you bear with me, you will see why this is such an excellent idea.

Mr. President:

I am ready to be your public relations manager, your consultant, your special adviser, your go-to person whenever  human rights activists  from the USA or wherever come to nag  when you are resting at your country home in Rwakitura, or when you wish to  clip the ears of a stubborn member of Parliament or wayward Speaker of the House.

What’s brought this on?

Simple. Who better to hire than a gay man whose fabled objectivity keeps friends and foes on their toes in trepidation that he might call them out?

Secondly, Mr. President, you need simple lessons in sexual public relations. Of course you are right when you argue that [in a manner of speaking] if you were to kiss your wife in public you would lose an election. That would be a very Ugandan reaction.

Mr. President, in me you are preaching to the converted on the issue of exhibitionism. Yours truly has lived on four continents and attended more gay pride parades than some people have had hot dinners. But I have nonetheless remained unimpressed by public displays of affection, preferring instead the Ugandan demure, roundabout, way.

Yes, this means that I frown on gay pride parades, hanging by the chandeliers or engaging in lesbian cat fights in public bars, men having backseat sex in public car parks, “cottaging” (having sex in public toilets) and any form of militancy that seeks to push the sexual envelope with lurid, simulated, sexual displays. That is ‘cut and paste’ stuff’ that might look good in San Francisco’s Castro District. In Uganda, it should be taken home and kept there.

Western people exhibit sexual acts in public which we don’t do here,” … Africans do even punish heterosexuals who [publicly] expose their sexual acts.” (Museveni)

Yes, Mr. President, we should keep our gay sexual peccadilloes in our gay bars (even if we don’t seem to have any), at our private gatherings, in our bedrooms. But it would help if you would say this not only when you are addressing American pressure groups, but Ugandans too. Activists must indeed respect the confidentiality of sex in our traditions and culture, but so should Martin Ssempa and his ilk who fail to respect our traditional expectation of sexual confidentiality when they try to incite the masses with pornographic shows on the pulpit.

We just need to make sure that our repressed attitudes towards sex are not used as an excuse to deny gay Ugandans equal access to the medical care they need – as is now the case.

As for your perennial refrain of there being  “… no discrimination, no killings, no marginalization, no luring of young people using money into homosexual acts,” you are right. Well, almost totally right.

I am ready to join Special Adviser (Special Duties), Nasser Sebaggala plus 100+ others

The problem is that you say there is no discrimination and then stay deafeningly silent when your Minister of Ethics barges like a bull in a China stores into gay and lesbian gatherings in hotels in Entebbe and elsewhere . How can that be looked at as anything other than discriminatory when it is fairly plain that the activists have a right to assemble just like any other Ugandan?

Also, why is there such a time lag between the silly, ignorant pronouncements from your ministers and members of Parliament that young people are being recruited into homosexuality and your repudiation of these foolish claims? Hire me to monitor and alert you to such paranoia so that it is addressed by [what would be] our office promptly.

Please, Mr. President … hire me. You can reach me on supakoja@yahoo.com. I am available for discussions (interviews if you like but I am really so good you would be missing a critical opportunity not to jump at my offer)  any time, at your convenience of course. I recognize that there is a time element to this so I hope you will respond to my excellent idea quickly, certainly before the next delegation of human rights activists from the USA, Britain or Canada come calling which we all know they will.

I not only promise to help you clean up Uganda’s battered reputation as the worst place in the world to be gay; an utterly outrageous claim when viewed against places such as the United Arab Emirates Saudi Arabia, Zimbabwe, Iran, rural Georgia and North Dakota, (USA), I will also help you figure out ways of taking the  politics of mendacity, exaggeration, obfuscation, double speak, opportunism and hysteria out of the debate.

I agree that you have fundamentally changed your position and are not an enemy of the gay community despite what some on our side rashly claim. But you could surely do with a consultant to fine-tune your ‘gay’ message and infuse it with much needed consistency.

Hire me.

Please.

Related articles

• The Bahati Anti Homosexuality Bill: The Stage Is Set (sebaspace.wordpress.com)
• Please stop this exaggeration, please!
• Museveni again rubbishes the notion that gays are a Western import

David Cecil gets it 4

David Cecil rightly differentiates between leaders and led

On another forum, a discussion is going on following remarks attributed to David Cecil the playwright who whose play, The River and the Mountain, got him deported from Uganda.

David Cecil is quoted as saying: “Uganda is not a terrible place and most people are not homophobic but they are conservative,” said Mr Cecil. “There are pastors preaching hate, they are the problem.”

I couldn’t agree with him more on the homophobia. I tried to illustrate way back in 2010 that Ugandans then were no more homophobic than the South Africans, Americans or the French of 2013.  Attitudes towards homosexuality worldwide are deeply visceral and the difference tends to be in the lengths governments are willing to go to discourage their citizens from acting ruinously on the feelings they are perfectly entitled to.

In that light, the Scandinavian countries are years ahead of almost any place else in the world on this question. Homophobic sentiment exists in Sweden and Denmark, too. But the politicians are setting an example by leading the campaign to actively discourage the feelings from going beyond that,and perhaps even change them to acceptance and tolerance.

But it is on the issue of ‘conservatism’ that I want to dwell at this time.

My suspicion is that David Cecil is confusing ignorance and/or lack of education about homosexuality with conservatism. There is scant evidence to show that most Ugandans are conservative. What they are is unschooled about some aspects of life and sexuality, and too many of them hide their lack of knowledge in bombastic, shrill, often foolish knee-jerk throw-aways that observers mistake for conservatism.

Then there are Ugandans who are incapable of logical thought who, largely because this country’s education system focuses largely on churning out examination grades rather than critical thinking,  run to the Bible and “tradition” as their refuge.

Just like their politicians, Ugandans often yell instead of asking questions to get educated

The ignorant ones , who are not  familiar with or educated about homosexuality,  simply parrot what they heard Martin Ssempa yell out. If you try to engage them in an intellectual exploration of the issues, they are visibly at sea. Since Ugandans typically don’t want to admit that they don’t know, it is little wonder they opt for ignorant din instead.

Ssempa is of course a cynical and opportunistically homophobic pastor who knows that he is talking nonsense all the time but nonetheless tries to encourage his listeners to be homophobic because he is hoping it will get him paid. It all makes for great mindless noise – sadly – which many people mistake for “conservatism.”

Remember that more than 50% of Uganda’s population is under 25 (48% is under 15). That is precisely the age group that is demonstrably more open-minded about sex and sexuality – to Martin Ssempa’s acute frustration since it is also the age group he really wants to convert in his homophobic petri dish sermons.

See why it is a complete misunderstanding to argue think that Ugandans are homophobic or conservative?

That said, David Cecil has clearly used the years he has spent in Uganda rather well. He never met my grandmother who died at the ripe old age of 96 but he would be correct if he realized that she was not homophobic or conservative.

Having only gone to Bible school, she wasn’t the kind of woman anyone today would call educated. But she showed critical thinking and an enlightenment that a lot of schooled Ugandans would do well to emulate.

How so?

My grandmother knew David Kato. He lived down the road from her own house. She also knew that he was gay and spoke about how odd it was that a man could ‘unite’ with another man that way. But she also knew to mind her own business and made sure she never raised Kato’s homosexuality with his mother whom she also knew well. One of her step sons, my father’s brother, spoke positively of David Kato at his funeral and my grandmother would have totally approved.

My grandmother had more sense than ten Martin Ssempas and do you know how I know that? She was angrier about the wanton abuse of office by government officials than she was about  homosexuality. She recognized that homosexuality was a curiosity but would not expend energy on it because she was aware that she had known ‘odd’ people like that all her life and they had never affected her life the way lack of drugs and doctors in hospitals had robbed her of children, grandchildren and great children.

Uganda is not at all a terrible place, and the majority of Ugandans are not homophobic or conservative. The pastors and politicians preaching hate for their own opportunistic, selfish, ends are the problem.

Related articles

• What makes Pastor Martin Ssempa (PhD) tick? (sebaspace.wordpress.com)
• Uganda deports British theatre producer over play exploring gay issues (guardian.co.uk)
• I was flung into cell with killers and rapists for staging ‘gay’ play (standard.co.uk)
• Uganda ‘deports’ UK theatre producer (bbc.co.uk)
• Please stop this exaggeration! Please!!!!!! (sebaspace.wordpress.com)
• I am embarrassed to be African!

The Bahati Anti Homosexuality Bill: The Stage Is Set 4

We are finally approaching the denouement to the saga that the Bahati Anti Homosexuality Bill (AHB) has been since 2009. The players are lined up and we must finally see the end to this drama.

The Major Players around Uganda’s AHB

Here is an attempt to summarize what is at stake:

President Yoweri Museveni:

In 2010, following pressure from Hillary Clinton and other Western diplomats, Museveni put his authority on the line and ordered his

Doesn’t want the bill: Yoweri Museveni

National Resistance Movement (NRM) members of Parliament (MPs) to drop the bill because it was a matter of ‘foreign policy‘ that was not theirs to resolve. The MPs resentfully capitulated and the bill failed to get out of committee. It lay comatose for nearly three years until Canada’s John Baird resuscitated it with his withering attack on Rebecca Kadaga last October. Museveni must be  irritated that he has to deal with this bill again, especially with the attendant implications for his authority and foreign policy (read foreign Aid) if it is debated and passed.

Museveni has no interest in the AHB, doesn’t want it debated at all, but will now work more quietly to kill it because he can’t employ the public, paternalistic, tactics he used in 2010.

The Parliament of Uganda:

Uganda’s Parliament is overwhelmingly NRM. This 9th Parliament has proved to be more prone to straining at the leash against the executive,  because it has more young(er) MPs who are impatient to assert their authority as Parliamentarians. The problem for them is that too many NRM MPs are still beholden to the president for their seats (a lot of voters really vote NRM because of Museveni, rather than the MP) so they haven’t got enough guts to stand their ground when the president clips them behind the ear, passes them a few sweeteners or threatens them with political annihilation should they not fall into line.  You sense that more of them are increasingly ready to try and use the AHB to give Museveni a bloody nose and so you will see them attempt to debate and pass it.

Rebecca Kadaga

Her authority on the line: Rebecca Kadaga

Kadaga nailed her colors to the AHB in an ill-advised attempt to bolster her presidential ambitions. At a stroke, she compromised her office which is supposed to be neutral and she also put herself directly in the cross-hairs of President Museveni who cannot have taken too kindly to her thinly veiled shot across the bows at his administration.

He stared her down when she led her Parliamentary troops up the hill because of the death in unclear circumstances of a young Parliamentarian, Selina Nebanda. Museveni insisted that there was no need to recall Parliament over that controversy and, despite her earlier blustering that Parliament would be recalled, Kadaga led her troops back down.

Already wounded by the skirmish with Yoweri Museveni over Selina Nebanda’s death, Kadaga’s authority will be damaged irreparably if the AHB  never makes it to the floor of Parliament. She will thus do whatever she can to at least have the bill debated on the floor. She must be looking for every avenue to save herself further political humiliation, having promised and failed to deliver the AHB as a 2012 Christmas present.

The Evangelical/right  vs the Liberal/Left foreign legion:

It is true that the bill was conceived with the support of American evangelicals such as Scott Lively. But they hadn’t reckoned with the

Private Courts Inc justifies their actions which put 200 Ugandan students and their lecturers out on the streets

fierce backlash from Liberal/Left leaning organizations who took up the mantle and have, since the AHB was introduced in 2009, done whatever they can to guide the message as well as the tactics against their right-wing foes in America and the government authorities in Uganda.

To these two enemies, the AHB is but a mere Trojan Horse for their left/right  ideological battle for hearts and minds. Uganda is but one of the battlefields on which they will fight to the death. Others are Cameroon, Liberia, Nigeria, Ghana and so on. The American evangelicals started the battle in Uganda but have since lost ground due to their domestic flock getting cold feet at the idea that they could be responsible for the judicial killing of citizens in foreign places. They also don’t have the stomach to withstand the ferocity of the liberals’ response especially given that the American political climate has clearly turned against right-wing extremism as shown by Barack Obama’s resounding trouncing of the Republicans in successive elections.

The East African has an example of the left’s unrepentantly agenda-driven, personal, ruthless, egotistic, condescending, colonial, take-no-prisoners attitude that they bring to the internecine ideological battle. In that instance, one individual from a company calling itself Private Courts Inc.  pressured Victoria University to close, without bothering to consult the LGBTI community in Uganda, thereby putting the future of 200 students and their lecturers s in jeopardy, and creating the wrong impression that the LGBTI community in Uganda didn’t care what happened to anyone else as long as their agenda was put on a pedestal.

In fact the LGBTI in Uganda, some of whom have friends at the university, found out who the prime mover had been when The East African’s article was published, weeks after the fact. The Private Courts Inc. personnel who wrote the haranguing e-mail to Victoria University last visited Uganda in 2011 but she doesn’t hesitate to lecture anyone and everyone she doesn’t agree with as though she is the Alpha and Omega of the poor, helpless, downtrodden black gay boys and girls in Uganda that she must save from a fireball of hate and bigotry. She clings to a patronizing and racist attitude she would never use had she been dealing with any African-American community in the United States. But, hey, she is a self-appointed white savior from San Francisco who knows better than all the backward black African people in a “tiny country” so her superiority makes her best suited to decide what is good for them.

It is clearly not only the evangelicals using the AHB for their own egoistic reasons.

Uganda’s LGBTI Community:

Just a pawn in the ideological war: David Bahati

Last, and least, is the LGBTI community in Uganda. Even though they are the people who will bear the brunt of the effects of the AHB, events  have evolved over the last 4 years in such a way as to make the gay community but a parenthesis in the various power and ideological battles the bill has spawned.

The fact that the West is funding all the LGBTI activities in Uganda makes the people on the ground but mere marionettes. Yes, that means that Martin Ssempa and David Bahati are as much a tool of the American evangelicals as the Ugandan LGBTI community are of the left/liberal camps in the West.

It is a noble fight that the LGBTI activists are fighting in Uganda but it is also, sadly, true that very little of what is going on in Uganda’ corridors of power, in San Francisco’s Private Courts Inc.  or at Scott Lively’s Abiding Truth Ministries is driven by the realities of the gay population on the ground who are but mere pawns in much bigger, and sometimes tangential,  political games.

The activists must, of course, keep lobbying Parliament (I think the message and tone need to be adjusted but that is another discussion) and keep engaging with anyone they can on the AHB. The alternative would be to give up; infinitely worse given how much they have already put into the fight.

When all is said and done, the Anti Homosexuality Bill’s fate can only be decided once and for all if A) President Museveni finds a way of getting it thrown out of Parliament for good, B) Uganda’s Parliament comes to its senses and rejects it out on their own volition or  C) it is debated and passed and it goes to court for a final, legal, ruling on its constitutionality.

If Parliament stands its ground, Yoweri Museveni’s options are limited. In that happenstance, the solution to this protracted battle will be for Parliament to pass the bill, and the courts take it up, thereby finally taking the opportunistic politics out of play.

 

UPDATE/CORRECTION: After I posted this, it has been brought to my attention that the Private Courts person, Melanie Nathan, who wrote the e-mail to Victoria University has actually never been to Uganda.

Related articles

• What makes Pastor Martin Ssempa (PhD) tick? (sebaspace.wordpress.com)
• Ugandan politician rubbishes the Bahati [Nazi] Bill (sebaspace.wordpress.com)
• Questions the anti-gay brigade struggles to answer (sebaspace.wordpress.com)
• 2012 gone – bring on 2013 (sebaspace.wordpress.com)
• Rebecca Kadaga trapped between a rock and a hard place
• Bahati anti-gay bill revived to teach Museveni a lesson

What makes Pastor Martin Ssempa (PhD) tick? 7

In full flow: Martin Ssempa (PhD)

Given a new lease on life recently, Martin Ssempa, the charismatic but provocative, prurient  and excessive proponent of gay hate Uganda has ever known, continues to try to stay relevant in the ongoing homosexuality debate.

He has a radio talk show, is on Twitter (@martinssempa) and seems to have walked away from a criminal conviction more emboldened, even if also chastened.

So, what makes Martin Ssempa tick? How come this middle-aged, balding man still manages to make such waves in Uganda?

In order to understand Martin Ssempa, it helps to look to another firebrand anti-gay crusader from a different continent and era:  America’s Jerry Falwell.

When the Reverend Jerry Falwell died on May 15, 2007, the evangelical Bible belt lost one of the most vocal anti-gay leaders it had ever had, and the gay movement lost one of the most vocal enemies it had ever been fortunate to have.

With the Moral Majority movement that he established in 1979, Falwell excoriated abortion, homosexuality and pornography with such venom and ferocity that America sat up and listened. The Moral Majority galvanized the religious right behind any political candidate that agreed with their message. But they also unwittingly did homosexuality (especially) a favor by bringing it into mainstream discussion, thereby enabling America to gradually realize that homosexuals were not the threat Falwell said they were.

As evidence of Falwell’s paranoia, he condemned a cartoon character in the BBC’s children’s program, the Teletubbies, as being gay. Then he famously blamed gays for the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on New York City. Even the remaining flag bearers who still believed in Falwell’s sanity hid away in embarrassment.

At the height of his fame Falwell (2nd from left) hobnobbed with the Reagans

Over the years, listeners had, rightly, wondered how preaching hate was compatible with the overwhelming Biblical message of love and inclusion. Others silently wondered what Falwell wanted them to do with their children, relatives and friends who were gay. So, thanks to Falwell’s fire and brimstone excoriation of homosexuals, prostitutes and single mothers, most sensible Americans resorted to education, common sense and their natural decency, and paid less attention to Falwell.

You could literally juxtapose Martin Ssempa’s anti-gay trajectory in Uganda onto Falwell’s almost to the dotted eye and crossed tee save for one element:

When the going got tough, Canyon Ridge distanced itself from Ssempa

Money.

Always able to rely on his followers for fundraising, Jerry Falwell wasn’t driven to rant and rave against prostitutes, gays and unwed mothers by money.

But, despite clearly being desperate for a lifetime paycheck, Martin Ssempa is all but broke. For the longest time, Ssempa relied on handouts from organizations such as the Canyon Ridge Christian Church of Las Vegas, but they all cut ties when Ssempa’s message degenerated into calling for the judicial execution of his fellow citizens.

Martin Ssempa’s continuing problem is twofold:

Kayanja (right) successfully sued and embarrassed Ssempa

Thanks to some spectacular advocacy, Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG) and Freedom and Roam Uganda (FARUG) have repeatedly scored resounding successes, up to and including forcing President Museveni to admit in international interviews that homosexuality is not a Western import as many ignorant detractors love to argue. Led by Frank Mugisha (SMUG) and Kasha Nabagesera (FARUG), those two organizations have achieved phenomenal success in raising the profile of the gay movement in Uganda, and with their success has come endorsements from notables such as Hillary Clinton and the Robert Kennedy Human Rights Award.

In fact, for better or worse, gay activism has been the most successful minority rights movement in Uganda in recent memory.

Compare that to Ssempa’s achievements over the same period: he managed to alienate his erstwhile American evangelical friends with his vile, putrid dish showing of graphic pornographic videos even during church services. Then he got entangled in a stratagem to tar a fellow pastor, Robert Kayanja, with the brush of pedophile homo-sodomy for which he was sued and convicted in late 2012.

Ssempa is now a convicted felon who must have been relieved that well-wishers came to his rescue to pay the $400.00 the judge fined him for perverting the course of justice, coaching witnesses, and conniving with others to sully the reputation of his rival.

Ssempa drowned out by Generation Y excesses

The second frustration in Ssempa’s continuing attempt to convince Ugandans that he is still relevant is a generational one. He appeals to and preaches mainly to young, university-educated students. But growing evidence shows that it is precisely that generation (50% of Uganda’s population is under 25) in Uganda that is increasingly looking at sex and sexuality through a much more morally nuanced prism.

Wait Training’s statement abandoning Ssempa (Sebaspace)

So, Ssempa is trying to convert precisely those people who a) don’t have much money to pay for his sinking crusade and b) whose far more liberal socialization makes his outlandish anti-gay vituperation fall on barren ground.

Martin Ssempa also freely admits that in his heyday he spent a whole year at university having sex with any woman who could have him. Thus, at the very least Ssempa’s exhortation to the youth of today to abstain till they get married smacks of hypocrisy.

Martin Ssempa doesn’t care a hoot about whether homosexuality is eradicated from Uganda because, of course, he is educated enough to know that is impossible. He doesn’t care about the youth and, worst of all, he doesn’t care about HIV/Aids in Uganda because if he did, he wouldn’t have been doing his utmost to make sure that gay men and women continue to be excluded from HIV/Aids-related treatment programs.

Ssempa’s shrillness also belies a deep-seated problem for him. He tends to latch on to the argument about the majority of Ugandans being against homosexuality. But when you ask him if he would have joined the 73% of Americans who supported the miscegenation laws that barred blacks and whites intermarrying until the Supreme Court’s deeply unpopular 1967 intervention (Ssempa’ is married to a white woman), he ignores that question.

In a nutshell, Martin Ssempa is running a cynical, insincere campaign based on mendacity, demagoguery and sophism.

Martin Ssempa’s worst nightmare is for what happened to Jerry Falwell to happen to him: for Uganda to make an intelligent, considered, thoughtful  examination of the arguments.  That’s why his preferred mode of debate is showing graphic pornography in church services, waving sex toys on television, and raving like a lunatic. He hopes that if he makes as much empty noise as possible the sensible arguments for tolerance and common sense will be drowned out.

If, as the omens portend, the tide continues to ebb away from his type of mock-indignation, vitriolic, mindless hysteria, Martin Ssempa will follow Jerry Falwell into a slow but inexorable decline into total irrelevance.

Then,  like Jerry Falwell in his twilight years, Ssempa will cut a forlorn, aging figure echoing in the wilderness.

But without Jerry Falwell’s money …  or  legacy-building savvy.

Related articles:

• Heroic Ugandan Activist Makes Pastor Martin Ssempa Look like the Devil in TV Debate (oblogdeeoblogda.me)
• Questions the anti-gay brigade struggles to answer (sebaspace.wordpress.com)
• Another door shuts for Martin Ssempa
• Martin Ssempa – unwanted publicity
• Martin Ssempa loses another cash cow
• Martin Ssempa forced to resign from the Oral Roberts University Board of Reference

Uganda’s Christine Ondoa has HIV/Aids questions to answer 1

Aids/HIV infections in Uganda are rising by about 1.5% a year, bucking a trend that saw the country being touted as the model for HIV/Aids prevention and treatment back in the 1990s.

15,600 of new HIV infections in 2010 were among MSM: Aids Information Center report

There is an ugly secret as to why the numbers are rising and will continue to rise as surely as night follows day:

The government of Uganda has totally ignored homosexuals, men who have sex with men (MSM) and sex workers in their HIV/Aids prevention and treatment campaigns.

First off, and for the benefit of many Ugandans who continue to display a worrying failure to understand the definitions:

Homosexuals are men/women who are only emotionally attracted to those of their gender. Men who have sex with men are … men who have sex with men, and they can do so even when they are not emotionally attracted to them, such as in prison where there is no alternative!

Then there are also men/women who are emotionally attracted to both women and men respectively.  These are called bisexual.

MSM can be straight, gay or bisexual. What unites MSM in Uganda is that they generally indulge in gay sex in secret (down low) unless they have come out to their loved ones and friends which is almost unheard of.

The fact of the matter is that, mostly due to the stigma surrounding homosexual sex in Uganda and much of Africa, homosexual men are still sleeping with and/or marrying women in large numbers. Their homosexual feelings don’t go away, of course, so they keep up respectable married facades and then sleep with men whenever their gay johns hit them.

If you are walking down the aisle with your man he is not gay, yes? If your son is walking past you as he exits the church with his new bride and you are shedding tears of joy, you can breathe a sigh of relief because he is not gay, yes? If your son gives you a grandson, he is not gay, yes?

Wrong, wrong and wrong.

Your boyfriend, husband, son, could very well be a man who has sex with men or a totally homosexual man who has found a way of compartmentalizing his gay feelings to please you, his relatives or fit into society.

“So, what is the problem if my son, husband, brother is gay and he has found a way of hiding it, up to and including having a family?” I hear you ask.

Because he is nonetheless still sleeping with men – in secret. Because he is doing so secretly, the chances are that he cannot keep one partner since he gets his gay kicks in whenever he can, wherever he can, with whoever he can. Even if he could settle with just one male partner, the infrequency of their rendezvous usually means that the partner will have sex with other men. After all, who is going to sit around waiting for his married lover to steal time off, perhaps once every month or quarter, to be with him?

Prayer can heal Aids: Minister of Health, Christine Ondoa

Unofficial figures suggest that there are at least 500,000 MSM and lesbians in Uganda. Let’s assume that only 250,000 of them are male (should be higher but never mind). Let us also assume that just 50,000 of the 250,000 are sleeping with men and women. Now imagine if the 50,000 have two female sexual partners; a wife and girlfriend on the side. If they were to catch HIV from a male or female partner, try to gauge the multiplication effect this might have on the men and women they are sleeping with, and the men and women the partners are in turn sleeping with. How does 100,000 new  infections from just that cohort sound?

Precisely.

That’s why it boggles the mind that Uganda’s Ministry of Health is still showing no interest at all in making the spread of HIV/Aids in the gay community the priority it should be. How can an entire cadre of sensible, educated, knowledgeable professionals really hide their heads in the sand in the face of such a glaring gap in their HIV/Aids prevention and treatment program?

How come the government is ignoring the damning research its own people have come up with?

Uganda’s Minister of Health, Christine Ondoa, surely has a lot of questions to answer.

Related articles

• Ugandan HIV campaign targets “cheaters” (gantdaily.com)
• HIV/Aids is already killing LGBTI Ugandans! (sebaspace.wordpress.com)
• Uganda’s ‘anti-homosexuality bill’ would be disastrous for HIV response (crofsblogs.typepad.com)
• HIV-positive activist to Uganda: Stop impeding AIDS battle (76crimes.com)

Victoria University – a counterproductive step 7

Victoria University, an affiliate of the UK-based University of Buckingham, has announced that it is to close its campus in Uganda on account of the Bahati anti-gay bill.

Money quote from the Vice Chancellor:

“Over the last few months, the University of Buckingham has been in discussions with our partners, Edulink, who own Victoria University in Kampala, Uganda, about our continued validation of some of Victoria University’s courses. We have both become increasingly concerned about the proposed legislation in Uganda on homosexuality and in particular the constraints on freedom of speech in this area,”

Really? A center of learning is closing its doors solely on account of discriminatory legislation instead of writing briefs on behalf of or in support of those fighting the legislation? Why does that make any sense? What message does that send the students at this school? That you should close down and run when faced with policies you don’t like or agree with?

A New Vision reader’s [edited] comment sums up my own thoughts:

My opinion is that gays should be tolerated as long as they do their things in private as we all do . But now , I am about to change my mind . It seems that homosexuals are more intolerant than I thought . They are a wicked and selfish … Why on earth do you close down a University just because politicians are about to make a law that you don´t like ? Is there any country where everybody likes the laws their leaders make ? If homosexuals had a country where they are the majority, would they allow other people to have a voice ? Why don’t they close when government shoots people ? Why don´t they close when some Ugandans are not allowed to demonstrate? Why don`t they close when politicians steal money that is supposed to help the sick ? It has been always said that homosexuals have an agenda to recruit . Is this the evidence that the allegation is true ? University is the place where people are provided with the keys to open all doors. If a government is taking away “freedom of speech” from the people, isn’t that the reason why a university should stay open  at least with the aim to teach students that free expression is a right?

From a  gay Ugandan man I say …

Amen. Amen, Amen.

Related articles

• Anti-gay bill claims more collateral damage
• 2012 gone – bring on 2013 (sebaspace.wordpress.com)

Hollywood “shunned” Liberace ‘biopic’

And quite understandably, too.

Check out at this money quote which summarizes why, had I been a Hollywood executive, I wouldn’t have financed the movie about Liberace’s life for a mainstream audience:

While I see your points about homophobic Hollywood, I think this is more of a generational issue than one of sexual orientation. [Las] Vegas can’t even keep its Liberace museum open anymore, and ‘seventies period pieces like Boogie Nights and Studio 54 peaked fifteen years ago. The average age of people old enough to have cared about Liberace at the time has to be at least 55 or so now, and why would young, hip movie goers pay money to see a cheesy flick about some excessive queen their grandfather’s age? Putting Matt Damon to work in a gay role is a good idea, but a seventies soap opera just isn’t the vehicle for it.

Over-the-top camp: Valentino Liberace

Yes, he blazed an outlandish trail in Las Vegas but, even in this day and age when gay-themed movies win Oscars (Brokeback Mountain and Boys Don’t Cry refer), Liberace’s life would have been too corny, too hackneyed, too one-dimensional to appeal to today’s  kids, men and women without whom the cash tills won’t ring. Movie executives have to make calculations that ultimately should make their studios money.

At least Liberace has been resurrected on HBO. We should see that as a very positive thing, sit our butts down and watch it on television.

Which reminds me … someone has my entire series of Sex and the City (HBO, 1998-2004) that I can’t seem to convince them to return without doing hand stands.  I wonder how Liberace would have handled that situation.

I must watch Steven Soderbergh’s HBO biopic to find out.

Related articles

• Matt Damon and Michael Douglas Say ‘Behind the Candelabra’ Will Respect Liberace’s Legacy (hollywood.com)
• Black, gay, artistic, need your audience? You are in trouble!
• Saying it with a splash of color
• Outing the dead
• Of all the men (and women) I’ve loved before

2012 gone – bring on 2013 9

2012 is behind us so it is time to think about what to expect in 2013. On occasions like this, it’s best to let one’s mind wander and not try to be terribly structured.

2012 is a year Uganda’s Speaker of Parliament, Rebecca Kadaga, will not look back on with unbridled pleasure. When she rose to the post of Speaker in 2011, Kadaga mounted and rode a wave of public disgruntlement against Yoweri Museveni’s tired, uncaring, thieving, bungling administration, and impressed even die-hard skeptics, such as yours truly, with her crusading zeal to put “country first.” Openly warring with Museveni’s Squealer-like puppet, Prime Minister Amama Mbabazi, Kadaga emboldened the ruling NRM caucus in Parliament and hitherto docile parliamentarians started asking pointed questions about their own government’s wanton corruption, fecklessness,  lack of new ideas and drift.

Rebecca Kadaga was repelled by Amama Mbabazi

Alas, Kadaga then came a-cropper when she was lured into consorting with convicted felons over the Bahati [Nazi]Anti-Gay Bill. She promised the bill to Martin Ssempa who had just been convicted of fabricating sodomy evidence against a rival pastor – for Christmas – and then failed to deliver it. Thanks to events running away from Kadaga, time run out on the Bahati [Nazi) Bill in 2012, not least because the President, who we all know is against the bill, chose to use up an entire afternoon the bill could have been debated to indulge in ... gossip. Kadaga thus lost her last opportunity in 2012 to deliver her [Nazi] Christmas gift to Martin Ssempa and with it went her credibility where political maneuvering is concerned.

Museveni: took up precious Parliamentary time in December to “gossip”

Kadaga got a political bloody nose in 2012, which the death of her octogenarian father did not help. She will come back again in 2013, and you can expect her to continue making noises about this and that. She has, however, already showed that she is prone to moving her political chess pieces without a lot of thought and will, going forward, struggle to maintain her moral high ground given her failure to deliver on what should have been an easy bill to pass in 2012. She of course, should be advised to steer her office clear of political controversy as well as be more discreet about her political ambitions, but only time will tell whether she is willing to play a more subtle form of politics.

The faces of gay Uganda: Frank Mugisha & Kasha Nabagesera

2012 has been a spectacularly successful year for Ugandan gay rights activists, thanks largely to events that have been driven by others. To the activists’ direct credit, 2012 saw Uganda’s first ever gay pride march in Entebbe which was eventually broken up by the police. Yours truly doesn’t believe in such things as pride marches because they go against his sensibilities. But it is not lost on him that parades serve a useful ‘public awareness’ purpose especially when activism is faced with boorish, foolish, intemperate, obtuse and tactless foes such as Uganda’s current Minister of Ethics and Integrity, defrocked Catholic priest Simon Lokodo.

Lokodo should really have known to leave activists well alone when they met in hotels and public gardens because, of course, they were doing no harm even if they didn’t have the right to assemble which they did. But, no, he kept on charging in there, likely tipped off by someone inside the gay camp on at least one occasion,  like a bull in a China store which of course played right into the gay advocates’ hands. Still, even after conferences were disrupted and a couple of gay-themed plays were stymied, one got the feeling that the gay debate in Uganda had stalled, that the public weren’t interested in it. The activists’ tactics on the ground weren’t really producing the kind of impact they wanted.

A lot of Ugandans on Facebook clearly need an education

All that changed of course when John Baird confronted Rebecca Kadaga in Quebec in late October. The furor that incident unleashed reverberated around the world, thanks to Kadaga’s intemperate, impolitic and, dare one say it, totally over-the-top response when she returned home.

So, due to foreign intervention, the last three months of 2012 have generated some of the most heated debates around homosexuality Uganda has ever witnessed – on local radio, in the papers, and most especially on social media in cyberspace. Baird’s harangue thus proved to be a godsend to the limping gay cause in Uganda in ways he likely didn’t expect.

Ruled for gay rights: Justice Stella Arach Amoko

Where to next? The Bahati bill remains in Parliament and will be passed by Parliament if it is debated regardless of what local activists and our friends abroad do. So, the way forward is to find a way for the bill not to be debated on the floor of Parliament or to prepare for a constitutional challenge if it is passed.

My own feeling is that the bill should be debated and passed so that it can be challenged in the courts. This would serve to take it out of the political arena and, hopefully, draw a line under the [mostly cynical] jockeying by both friends and detractors which has helped shape public debate, yes, but which has also left the core issues unresolved.

A lot of well-schooled Ugandans remain astonishingly illiterate on the homosexuality issue and so need an education. Raising the debate to a more intellectual, highbrow, legal, level will give a lot of our brothers and sisters who have gone to school but remain ignorant a different, less hysterical and/or hackneyed perspective.

The other reason this issue needs to go to court is precedent;  the gay side in Uganda has never lost a legal ruling in the three or four times gay activists have taken our enemies to court in the recent past. With such great odds, I would bet my last cent that the Bahati Bill would be ruled unconstitutional in less time than it takes to say “bigoted.” But first it has to be passed for the courts to consider any challenges.

Is  flaunting it at parades what we are after?

The activists on the ground should also continue to expect questions about what exactly they want to achieve. I have asked the questions and continue to hear them being asked by others in more muted tones.

Are they looking for acceptance in Uganda? If so, what form should it take? Is it about gay marriage? Every sinew in my body tells me it shouldn’t be and I haven’t heard any Ugandan activist argue that marriage is what it’s about so we can dismiss that line of thought. Or can we?

Is it about gay men and women being allowed to love each other freely (in private) in Uganda? What about those, like yours truly, who feel we are already doing that in the broad context of the inhibited sexual sensibilities in Uganda?

Is it about putting it out there, on the airwaves, in public parks, in bars and on the streets as one sees in San Fransisco’s Castro District? If so, how do we hope to cut and paste that model into a country like Uganda where heterosexuals frown upon flaunting their own relationships?

Or is it about attaining equal access to social services such as HIV/Aids treatment  and other health and wellness programs which heterosexuals already take for granted?

Is it about lifting the confidence of gay men and women all over the country to believe in themselves enough to pool together to set up gay venues (bars, clubs etc) that they call their own?

In other words, with and without help from our friends abroad, for whom and for what are we making all this noise in the press, in conferences around the world, in dramatic stage productions, on podiums accepting accolades, in television debates with a lunatic Martin Ssempa?

If the struggle is not really about those who front it, because most struggles are usually larger than those who front them, do those we assume to be representing really know what it is we are trying to do for them, and have they bought into the agenda we espouse? How have we ensured that they are on board with what we are trying to achieve?

If we were to take a poll of gay Ugandans today, how confident are we that they would all be able to say in one sentence what gay activism in Uganda is about?

What will the matrix of success following all this gay activism in Uganda be? What will need to happen  (and to whom) in order for us to say that the gay struggle in Uganda has succeeded?

When I speak to gay men and women from all walks of life in Uganda, I get the impression that those are the broad questions whose answers they still want clearly articulated.

The communication chasm between leaders and led still needs to be bridged.

Still.

Related articles

• Museveni plots to oust Kadaga
• Rebecca Kadaga trapped between a rock and hard place! (sebaspace.wordpress.com)
• A freshly rejuvenated Ugandan homophobic lobby goes to work (sebaspace.wordpress.com)
• The case for Kadaga 2016 (sebaspace.wordpress.com)
• Uganda will pass anti-homosexuality bill this year, says Speaker (guardian.co.uk)
• Muhame ends up on the wrong end of a $2,100 bill
• The anti-gay pastors’ Decadus horribilis
• After the gay defeat for the Uganda government, what next?

Mike Mukula delivers a clanger! 7

2016 Presidential Aspirant, Mike Mukula, is a very interesting man.

Accused of having pilfered Global Alliance for Vaccines (GAVI) funds while he was state minister for health, Mike Mukula wrote a check for 240m/= ($100,000) as recompense. This, despite having initially denied anything to do with the theft of GAVI funds. So, it should perhaps be assumed that, even if he was innocent, Mukula was struck by a bolt of kindness and he decided to write GAVI a $100,000 check. Believe me, you won’t find many Ugandans who are that generous, and especially not ones who have held high office as Mukula has done.

Forever dapper: Mike Mukula

It must thus be with the same magnanimity that Mukula decided to wade into the homosexuality debate. Check him out here telling the youth to shun homosexual activity because it constitutes an adoption of a foreign culture.

Odd as it might sound, I agree with Mukula. I, a Ugandan gay man of so many years (well, I have never really been anything else), also don’t want Ugandan youth to take up homosexual practices. How can that be good for them when they still have their education to complete on top of all the other challenges they face in an increasingly ruthless world?

It is when Mukula talks about Ugandan (African?) culture and homosexuality as mutually exclusive that I get a little lost. Can a man who is that smart, intellectually and sartorially, really be serious that homosexuality is alien to Uganda? Mike Mukula surely knows about gay chiefs and kings in Uganda’s past. He also cannot be oblivious to gay government officials and ex-officials, who dabble in gay sex or have dabbled in gay sex in their past, walking Uganda’s streets today. If I know about them, the very well-connected Mukula must know them, too.

So, Mukula is either being deliberately obtuse or he, too, has fallen prey to the Rebecca Kadaga syndrome; that of opening his mouth without thinking through the long-term implications of his words.

Of course he is right to caution the youth against homosexual activity – they have the rest of their lives after they reach the age of maturity to explore that.

But for an educated man of his ilk to think that homosexuality is somehow a sign of a foreign culture?

I don’t get that, Mike, I really don’t.

Which brings me to the question that keeps me awake at night; why don’t these politicians simply shut up about matters of sexuality if all they do when they open their traps is embarrass themselves with ignorant, if not hypocritical, statements?

Related articles

• Time for Uganda’s major players to pronounce themselves on the Bahati Bill (sebaspace.wordpress.com)
• A 16-year old Ugandan gets it on the Bahati [Nazi] anti-gay bill (sebaspace.wordpress.com)
• A freshly rejuvenated Ugandan homophobic lobby goes to work (sebaspace.wordpress.com)
• A letter to Rebecca Kadaga – from a supportive gay Ugandan (sebaspace.wordpress.com)
• Rebecca Kadaga trapped between a rock and hard place! (sebaspace.wordpress.com)
• Ugandan politician rubbishes the Bahati [Nazi] Bill (sebaspace.wordpress.com)