Category Archives: Uganda – Politics

The case for Kadaga 2016 4

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Provocative profile: Rebecca Kadaga

Fact: Yoweri Museveni’s 26-year-old government is so spent, so riddled with corruption, so obviously incapable of delivering the most basic services to the masses, so irretrievably dysfunctional that only a change at the helm will bring about any change.

Fact: Unless the challenger to Museveni’s rule comes from within the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM), no one from the opposition parties can  unseat Yoweri Museveni because the odds are stacked too high against them even if they had a coherent message.

Fact: The people of Uganda are so tired of their government but are wary of throwing it out because the opposition, due to factors best discussed on another occasion, offers little in the way of viable alternatives.

So, what’s the solution then?

A hitherto untainted but credible candidate from within the ruling National Resistance Movement itself.

That’s where Rebecca Kadaga comes in.

Highly educated and feisty, Speaker of the House Kadaga has found the perfect platform to run for the highest office in the land. She was given the nod by the current Museveni administration in the hope that it would be business as usual, with Parliament merely rubber-stamping everything Museveni sent them. Museveni immediately regretted having offered his support. Kadaga and Museveni’s Prime Minister, Amama Mbabazi, have clashed openly and so ferociously that the president has had to intervene to separate them a couple of times.

Populist: Kadaga knows how to play to the gallery (here with Olympic gold medal winner, Kiprotich)

She has already shown that as Speaker of the 9th Parliament she isn’t the fawning poodle her predecessor was. At this point, she is the most visible and outspoken NRM personality there is after Museveni so she has a lot going for her. All she needs now is to deliver a really significant parliamentary blow to Museveni and she will really ride high.

She may have been given such an opportunity by the clash she had with Canada’s Foreign Minister, John Baird, and we might as well see Kadaga pushing for and achieving the passage of the anti-gay bill that had lain dormant until John Baird helped revive its embers.

Once the NRM get used to it that Museveni is vulnerable, Kadaga’s candidature will begin to look really credible. Then you will see the most almighty battle to try to get rid of her – which should lend her even more credibility. Remember Museveni and his crony, Mbabazi, have tried twice already to pull her down a peg and both efforts backfired when she their machinations became public  and Kadaga won the public’s sympathy. She is quite astute in the way she denies this and that and then asks pointed questions in forums where she will be quoted liberally.

Demonstrably incompetent – Museveni’s crony, Amama Mbabazi

She has locked horns with Museveni over how much say Parliament should have in the passing of the budget. She has already drawn her line in the sand and we are now waiting to see if Museveni will blink.

Only the other week Kadaga held up the swearing-in of a new cabinet because one of the nominated ministers, IdahNantaba, had questionable morals. Rumors abounded that Nantaba was Museveni’s mistress. Kadaga walked away from the skirmish and Museveni got his woman, but with Parliamentary procedures circumvented. The point had been made, however, and no one will now look at Nantaba as anything other than another Museveni skirt.

The evidence is in all the papers that the man some had touted as a possible successor to Museveni, Amama Mbabazi, can’t run a bank, or his own ministry where more than $60 million of donor money was embezzled on his watch. So how can he run a country? He is damaged goods and he now serves one purpose – to parrot whatever Museveni orders him to. Vice President Edward Ssekandi is a laughing-stock all over the country because it is widely accepted that he needed help to steal his parliamentary election in February 2011 (he couldn’t even pull it off on his own). Even if he was presentable enough, Ssekandi is an old style, crooked-deals-in-a-smoky-room administrator who has no scruples or principles as his unsuccessful interference in KCCA’s demolition of an illegal structure in Kampala showed.

Yes, yes. Museveni’s son, Muhoozi is being touted as a possible shoo-in. So is his Museveni’s wife, Janet. While those two can’t be written off given Uganda’s putrid dish politics, they lack the political credibility, and so would have to be imposed. It’s inconceivable that Muhoozi, a totally unknown quantity whose meteoric rise through the military ranks can only have been engineered by his father, could go out on the hustings, campaign for office and win.

Janet Museveni believes that prayers will solve all Uganda’s problems – something that is patently ridiculous, and which most Ugandans understand to be so. She thus also lacks credibility. Besides, she has been at her husband’s side over the 26 years the country has meandered from one corruption scandal to the other, 26 years that have not seen  a single public school, hospital, road built or repaired to an acceptable standard. How come the prayers she so believes in haven’t worked?

Kadaga hangs with the high and low: with Parliamentarians and village women (second R)

On almost every issue that gets a politician elected in Uganda, Kadaga is saying what the majority want to hear. Her political antennae are serving her very well indeed. Yes, even on the LBGTI issue which is the latest political hot potato Kadaga has had to deal with, she has passed the test with aplomb. The activist LGBTI side will not like how she has reacted but she deftly played the political card Canada’s John Baird handed her. She wouldn’t have been a politician worth her salt had she reacted any other way. Baird’s boo-boo will hopefully be a salient lesson to the human rights agitators out there who tend to forget that they are in a war that must always take into account the political realities of the recipient countries.

Kadaga’s chances for 2016 look very bright indeed and, you know what, whether or not the Bahati Nazi anti-gay bill passes on her watch, this gay man likes her … a lot.

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Canada’s Baird gives Ssempa and Bahati a new lease on life 9

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Hero’s welcome: Kadaga was met by, among others, convicted felon, Martin Ssempa (Picture from Monitor Online)

As own goals go, it’s difficult to imagine a more spectacular one.

Canada’s Foreign Minister, John Baird, can’t have anticipated the negative impact he would elicit when he decided to publicly berate Uganda’s Speaker, Rebecca Kadaga, about the murder of a gay activist in January 2011.

The reaction from Uganda was unanimously hostile.  John Baird’s bull in a China store intervention had managed to rally the majority of Ugandans around a cause that had been pushed to the margins by massive corruption revelations, public disinterest and bread-and-butter politics. I, too, couldn’t help but agree that it was ill-timed, needlessly confrontational and condescending – a typical case of a white man ganging up on a black, African, woman in a manner that he would never have adopted had Kadaga been white, male, or a Saudi Arabian prince.

Rather predictably, Rebecca Kadaga has returned to Uganda to a hero’s welcome. Chief among those who went to meet her at the airport were none other than the convicted criminal, Martin Ssempa,  the author of the infamous Bahati Anti-gay Nazi Bill, David Bahati, and ministerial has-been James Nsaba-Buturo.

Thanks to John Baird’s intemperate and ill-considered harangue, the enemies of Uganda’s gay community have a new lease on life. Worse, Rebecca Kadaga, who is running for president of Uganda in 2016 if she were a politician, has been handed an incendiary political garland that she can use to rally Ugandans around.

You are not going to hear many gay sympathizers admit it but John Baird’s patronizing  intervention has turned out to be a godsend to our enemies. There’s a time and place for everything, especially in politics. We all know the Bahati Nazi anti-gay Bill is political and that it has been comatose – thanks almost entirely to Yoweri Museveni,  for pragmatics reasons. Any of our friends abroad need to consult with those on the ground as to how to move the discussion forward.

I refuse to accept that had Baird done that, he would have been advised by activists in Uganda to confront Kadaga the way he did. She had no known history of public anti-gay sentiment up to that point. She was there as Speaker of the House, not a gay/anti-gay advocate. Baird’s intervention thus stirred up a hornets’ nest – needlessly. He should have spoken to her about the issue privately.Talk about our friends shooting us in the foot.

The irony is that Kadaga who is in her 50s, is single and has never married, has been offered a convenient “out” by one of our own friends should anyone wonder why she is single when she runs for presidential office in 2016, which all signs suggest she will. Ugandans are not very sophisticated people and most will assume that she is a godsend since she stood up to a Canadian minister on the issue of gay rights.

The last and, perhaps, most incongruous irony is that despite her tough anti-gay rhetoric, Kadaga is our best hope in the unlikely event that  Museveni relinquished power in 2015-16. She can huff and puff all she wants but Kadaga cannot afford to alienate donors. Being a woman, she is also likely to understand better than male politicians the importance of embracing diversity.

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Kadaga (Uganda) 3 – Baird (Canada) 0 12

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“We are not a colony or a protectorate of Canada.” (Rebecca Kadaga)

In what is not going to hurt Rebecca Kadaga’s chances at the ballot in 2016 at all, she has taken on John Baird, Canada’s Foreign Minister and, in my mind, won hands down. Rebecca Kadaga is the current (and first female) Speaker of Uganda’s Parliament.

Invited to a conference, entitled ‘Citizenship, Identity and Linguistic and Cultural Diversity in a Globalised World’, Canada’s Baird apparently saw it as an opportunity to lecture Kadaga (and by implication, Uganda) about the death of David Kato about 20 months ago, implying that Kato’s murder was a state-inspired crime.

Kadaga would have none of it and went for him in a way that only someone of her confidence in the law (Kadaga is an accomplished lawyer) would. She was absolutely right, again in only a way someone with a good understanding of the law can be.

Please listen up Mr. Baird and all your hand-wringing friends all over the world who have elected yourselves  yes, elected yourselves, to wail louder than the bereaved:

Uganda’s legal system is not, cannot be perfect. It must be rife with miscarriages of justice, many of which will never be righted if only because Uganda lacks the resources to revisit cases that might have been decided incorrectly. But that imperfect law is what Uganda has and it passed the verdict that Kato was killed in a lover’s tiff.

Until you pay for your own superior investigation and prove otherwise, it’s game, set and match on that case. Kato was killed by an angry male lover and that is all there is to it. I have indicated before that there are many elements to the police investigation that I found disquieting but the verdict is the verdict is the verdict. Until I can prove otherwise, I, too, have to live with it.

I know all these friends of ours out there (many of them, dare one say it, making a living off of the back of gay rights issues in sub-Saharan Africa) wanted a different verdict, namely one that would advance their assumption that Kato was killed by the government of Uganda. They didn’t get it so Kadaga is absolutely right to call out their arrogance when they use their high offices to call out Uganda’s elected officials  about legal cases that have been settled in courts of law that the people being lectured to had nothing to do with.

Canada’s Foreign Minister was thus out-of-order to harangue Rebecca Kadaga in the way he did. If he has evidence that David Kato was killed by the state, he should have taken her aside and given it to her. Or better still, he could have stood up on his bully pulpit and presented it to the world. But for him to try to publicly embarrass his own guest was rude, supercilious and, frankly, boorish. Kadaga was thus absolutely right to stand up to this man.

“as a Speaker of Parliament, it is my responsibility to protect the rights of Members of Parliament; hence I cannot deny them the right to move private members’ Bills. The debate on homosexuality is not a settled matter.” (Rebecca Kadaga)

Even on the question of gay rights, which I feel Canada has a right to lobby Ugandan officials about, Baird should never have tried to talk at Kadaga the way he did. It was a breach of diplomatic etiquette if not condescending.

To put it in context, you will not find a single incident where a Canadian Foreign Minister, past or present, has talked to a Saudi Arabian or Kuwaiti official in the way Baird talked down to Kadaga. Yet those countries have far more egregious gay rights abuses than Uganda. Indeed Baird will not talk publicly down at an American official either. Yet more gay men and women have been killed in the last three years in Washington, DC (population 600,000) than have been killed in Uganda (population 33m) in the last 5 years.

So, let me turn again to our friends in the gay rights struggle. Please listen up one more time:

Much as you are ready to wail on our behalf at the drop of a hat, we, Ugandan gay men and women, are the ones who will live with the consequences of your bull-in-a-China-store recklessness. Stop acting as though this baby belongs to you – it doesn’t. You merely alienate people we shall eventually need when you embarrass our elected officials in public.  Consult before you charge.

Finally, terrible though the Bahati Bill might be, Uganda’s Parliament has a right to debate it if that’s what it decides to do. You can lobby from the sidelines, you can arm-twist whoever with threats to withdraw foreign aid, you can even lecture and give ultimatums – preferably in private.  Should the law nonetheless be passed, then you can impose sanctions and whatever other measures you consider fit. You, (well, your ancestors) introduced this parliamentary system of governance to Uganda, remember?

On a related but separate note … I must admit it’s getting very difficult for this Ugandan gay man not to like Rebecca Kadaga very, very much.

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Uganda at 50; people or things?

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Like porn actors, Ugandan politicians make too much exaggerated noise so its’ best to watch them with the sound turned off (Richard Mann/Mary Okurut/Castro Supreme)

Though the title might suggest that this is going to be a political polemic, it really isn’t going to be like that at all. For one, though I know I am, ahem, a genius political analyst, politics usually bores me quickly because once I figure out what the undercurrents are, I get mighty chafed at anyone who might try to spin it to their advantage.

To me politics is sort of like watching a porn movie – fascinating for about three minutes and then you find yourself fast-forwarding to the end when you realize that it is exactly the same stuff you saw the other day, albeit with different actors. Because politics in the real world politics can’t be fast-forwarded, I simply choose to tune out the din and focus on more wholesome pursuits.

As a gay man trying to eke out a life in Uganda 50 years after she was granted independence from Britain, what does it all mean to me?

Women protest police brutality: In 50 years Uganda hasn’t had an orderly transfer of power

Strange as it might sound to some, I don’t feel put upon by this government because I am gay, far from it. My sex life and sexuality are private matters and thus the idea that I have to live in a kind of secretive way where being gay is concerned suits me down to the ground. We are all mostly a product of our upbringing and I thus have no problem with matters of sex and sexuality being as murky as they are in Uganda.

Too many Ugandan politicians are so old and tired you can’t pay them to stay awake through anything

That’s why I have explained in the past that I don’t subscribe to gay pride parades, discussions of sex and sexuality on radio … that sort of [very Western] thing. That we don’t have the kind of sexual openness (some might say permissiveness) in Uganda that you see in San Francisco doesn’t bother me one bit. Open shows of affection, street love fests, sexuality parades etc are neither desirable nor useful in our African settings in my view.

I recall my first tentative steps into the gay world, when I walked out of my home and went to look for other gay men in Notting Hill, London. It was like a walk to the execution but, more than 20 years later, I wouldn’t exchange that experience for anything. It made me who I am today because I knew then beyond a reasonable doubt that if I could find the determination to go through with that terrifying ordeal to find other men who felt the way I did, it was indeed what I wanted to be. I have never looked back since. Every gay man and woman should experience running that gauntlet as they try to find themselves. Nothing, other than fire, can baptize you into the gay world better, I don’t think.

A tale of contrasts: the president’s $48m luxury jet vs. medical provision in Northern Uganda

That’s partly why I regret that Uganda has no gay bar to speak of. That should really be the next challenge for the gay community in this country. The bar cannot be on rented premises because that will be easily shut down by putting pressure on the landlord. If it is, however, on land that is owned by a gay man or woman, that would call for a battle royal reminiscent of the Stonewall Riots in 1969  if the authorities tried to frustrate it. That is the kind of fight I would be willing to engage in – one brought to otherwise peaceful same-gender loving men and women who are minding their own business. Then it would be time to take to the streets and airwaves in vociferous protest, if necessary in full undress.

Hospital bed where you might rest if you fly out on the presidential jet to give birth in Germany vs Uganda’s maternity ward at Mulago Hospital

Away from my relatively inconsequential life, I am perturbed that my Ugandan brethren have put up with the current government for the last 26 years. Okay, I get it that you can be married in a giddy euphoria to someone who turns out to be an ogre. But why would you stay married if you know what a good marriage should be like and it is clear yours doesn’t even come close? Fear of being lonely? Or is it the Stockholm syndrome where you resign yourself to your fate and even find solace in liking your captor?

Given the state of Uganda’s public schools, hospitals and roads, how could the cabal that runs this country be welcomed anywhere without being pelted with eggs and flour? Well, of course eggs and flour are too expensive for the average Ugandan so that might be a possible explanation.

Uganda’s schools: guess how many politicians send their children to government schools such as the one on the left!

Still, are Ugandans really so docile that they will continue to tolerate the wanton corruption running from the top ministers, civil servants and technocrats through every facet of daily life? When are we going to demand that our leaders stop thinking about only themselves?

Ugandans are dying, will continue to die, in preventable road accidents at staggering levels. Mary Karooro Okurut is on record exhorting the country to pray that evil spirits be exorcised from accident black spots

50 years after Uganda gained independence, it seems far more focus has been paid to erecting swanky buildings in the middle of Kampala (many of them secretly owned by Uganda’s rulers) than on providing quality public education, healthcare and practical measures to insure against needless loss of life. 50 years on, Uganda’s leaders seem content to lead the country in a direction that places emphasis on  ‘things,’ while ignoring human life and dignity.

One woman dies every minute during pregnancy or child-birth [in Uganda]

Call that what you will … in my book that is a state of affairs that leaves me with a lot of trepidation about the future.

Jennifer Musisi: fundamental change or cynical politicking? 1

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Indomitable: Jennifer Musisi

Uganda has a woman leader whose character and style of leadership (male or female) nobody has seen in a generation. She is the Executive Director of Kampala Capital City Authority and she is called Jennifer Semakula Musisi.

Appointed to be director of Kampala City by President Museveni, Musisi has taken on military generals and bigwigs claiming to be friends with the president and his brother, Salim Saleh, to the utter consternation and bewilderment of the entire country that had long resigned itself to their impunity.

How can she be so steely in the face of army generals, the president’s children, big name albeit shady “investors” who are being backed by the president’s kith and kin? The citizens of Kampala, and indeed the entire country, are shaking their heads in wonderment, and you sense that they don’t yet know what to make of it.

Yoweri Museveni: his Kampala game plan remains unclear

Has a president who has presided over the destruction of the country’s moral and ethical values finally found the resolve to reverse the gangrene? Or is this just mere politicking, with Jennifer Musisi being used by the president as a pawn in his scheme to gain the votes of Kampala City in 2016?

To understand why Jennifer Musisi’s take-no-prisoners approach to running Kampala city has astonished everyone, the following [edited] quotation from a friend (who returned to Uganda to live about 3 years ago) about the type of place Uganda is might help:

You have not met the average Ugandan! No one that lives in Europe or USA has met the average Ugandan. It has taken me 3 yrs to meet and to get to know this guy. You occasionally read about him in the news[papers] pouring acid on his ex, stealing billions of tax payers cash, forging land titles to steal his father’s property. Causing pain everywhere. I don’t know where Musisi came from. She is unlike any average Ugandan. She represents the false romantic view you develop in your mind about Uganda when you have been away too long. Moses Golola, P.S Kazinda,   Tinyefuza – these are the real Uganda. And you don’t meet them in Texas (USA) or Peckham (UK). You meet them here when you are trying to buy land, when you apply for a passport, when you’re looking for car spare parts, in Mulago Hospital when you have a dying patient, at funerals and weddings when they stand up to speak.

My friend is absolutely correct. Uganda’s morals, values, standards, ethics have sunk so deeply into the mire that there seems no alternative to blending in.

I am sure I told you about the 15 people who moved on to my land on Entebbe Road and claimed they were squatters. They were egged on by the local village leader referred to as an LC1 who signed documents for them. It turns out that the broker (who got a commission on each deal) is related to the LC. All in all the two acres of land were apportioned off for something like 60m/= ($25,000) with the broker and LC getting 5-10%. Not a bad living, fraudulent though it was. That’s Uganda today.

Finally, recently, I managed to get a meeting together for the issue to be thrashed out. By this time the claimants had grown to 28, 10 of them having “bought” in the three months it took me to get the meeting together. On a 2-acre parcel of land. After a lot of yelling, threats to kill me and goodness knows what else, it was clear that I was right and the claimants had been led up shit creek. 15 of them slunk away. One had built slap bang in the most desirable part of the land so I have nicely told him to leave. He won’t so I am already planning to send in goons in the middle of the night to forcibly raze his structure. He has young children but … that isn’t going to worry me at all under the circumstances.

Does that sound to you like a person who has spent the best part of 25 years away from this country?

Precisely.

Just 2 years ago, I would have waited for the law to take its course. But the courts of law are so corrupted that the Chief Justice admits it openly. A small case like mine could take 15 years to resolve. So, even the lawyers (the honest ones) advise you to just take the matter into your own hands and … demolish. Then whoever wishes can sue you if they wish.

That’s the Uganda Yoweri Museveni has helped cement over the past 27 years; morally bankrupt, lawless, corrupt to the core at every level of government, indifferent to the sick or dying, accepting of road accidents that kill thousands a year, impervious to child molestation, inured to violence against men, women and children … a morass of thieving, spineless, pliable, writhing, degenerate politicians, government officials, local and foreign contractors creating such a stench of corruption that all the oil of Arabia can’t cleanse it away.

Humble pie: Minister of Trade, Amelia Kyambadde (middle) tried to take on Jennifer Musisi at a recent demolition but was forced to apologize to her less than four hours later.

That is why we are all in a state of shock at Musisi’s steely, incorruptible, resolve. This country hasn’t known anyone like her in a generation. That brings us to speculate as to what it could all mean. Is it a change of heart in the man who has presided over the total disintegration of the entire country’s moral fabric or is it politics as usual, with Musisi just a pawn, a means to Museveni’s life-time ruling ambitions?

How so?

Populist but powerless and politically inept: Mayor Erias Lukwago regularly ends up on the wrong side of progress

I think Museveni’s calculation is that  If Musisi succeeds, he will take the credit for having rescued Kampala from the incompetent and rudderless leadership of her predecessors all of whom belonged to the opposition Democratic Party. Jennifer Musisi’s current opposition, and the presumptive alternative to her is a man called Erias Lukwago, the current mayor, who spends days and nights plotting how to wrest the initiative from her. But Lukwago is a totally inept politician who sounds far from literate, let alone scholarly. Jennifer Musisi routinely wipes the floor with him by simply being cool, calm, collected and not responding to his frothing. True to his character, Lukwago never fails to open his loud mouth, invariably revealing his limited political acumen.

Musisi has then set about demolishing illegal structures in the center of the city that everyone thought were inviolable since they are owned by government bigwigs. It has left her looking like a Colossus of Rhodes over Kampala. If she succeeds in bringing sanity to the bedlam that is Uganda’s capital city, it will be the final nail in the coffin of the opposition Democratic Party in the city – and that will suit Museveni just fine. That’s why he is willing to sacrifice his kin in the fight to win over the city. His relatives (rumors abound that they are the ones being fronted by all the shady investors carving up the city legally and otherwise) have nowhere else to go so he can let Jennifer Musisi take them on.

The rot that is Uganda has run so deep for so long that it is inconceivable that Museveni has finally had a change of heart and is now willing to eradicate it. The alternative then seems to be that Museveni has his eye on the city’s votes come 2016 (Kampala has never really had much love at the ballot box for Museveni and his NRM) and he might have found the perfect person to help deliver the city to him; Jennifer Musisi.

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Abolish the Ministry of Ethics and Integrity, silly! 2

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Now and then I allow myself leave to wade into Uganda’s largely puerile politics, especially if it is for a good cause. If you bear with me, you will see that I am a genius of sorts if I put my mind to it.

Every Ugandan who can read already knows that Yoweri Museveni, Uganda’s president, is on the back foot, having refused to look for an extra 260bn/= ($104,000,000) for Uganda’s health sector that his own  members of Parliament (MPs) have demanded before they pass his 2012/13 budget. His priority is building Uganda’s defense which he claims is already underfunded and, thus, cannot be touched.

This has led to raised voices, angry standoffs and even a confirmed hissy-fit walking out by the president when his own MPs refused to budge from their demand; if we can find billions to buy used MIG fighters from Russia, we can find the money to make sure that they are not overflying the graves of yet more mothers and children dying in childbirth, more than 300,000 a year and counting according to the government’s own figures.

“Cut spending again elsewhere” Rebecca Kadaga

All the yelling and gnashing of presidential teeth is totally unnecessary – if only Museveni would listen to the Speaker of the House, a feisty woman called Rebecca Kadaga who Museveni thought would be a fawning puppet like her predecessor (the current vice president) only to discover, to his dismay, that she has a mind of her own and exercises it rather more freely than he wishes. She recently asked Museveni and his cabinet why, if they had cut ministry budgets in the past to fight the war against Kony, they couldn’t do the same this time round to boost spending on healthcare.

That’s when a light bulb went on in my head.

Of course! Kadaga has nailed it! Start by getting rid of the Ministry of Ethics and Integrity and … voilà … that would be a saving of 4.2bn/= ($1.7m) at a stroke of a pen.

You might say that this is a drop in the bucket on the road to finding the $104m the MPs are demanding.

Not so if you consider what the Ethics and Integrity ministry’s role seems to be; looking for gay sex.

According to unofficial figures, there are 500,000 gay men and women in Uganda out of a population of 33 million: 2% of the population. Of those half million gay men and women, you have about 20 activists who constantly annoy Minister Lokodo (the current head of the Ethics Ministry) that he has spent his 2011/12 budget to run after them in hotel conferences, ferreting them out of their hotel rooms and rounding them up from public parks as they waved rainbow flags. All this in the name of trying to abolish … gay sex!

High maternal death points to a health crisis (New Vision, May 03, 2007)

And, as we all, know, the Ethics Ministry really doesn’t have anything else to do. In other words, Minister Lokodo and his staff have been allocated $1.7m a year to … look for gay sex, and they still haven’t found it because if they had, we would have heard about it.

So, rather than spending $1.7m to look for gay sex among 20 or so activists with whom the Ethics Ministry engages in fruitless running battles (equivalent to $85,000 per head), why not simply abolish that ministry and move that budget line to the Ministry of Health where the budget allocation is a paltry $8.76 per person?

The Catholic Church and the evangelicals can then take up the anti-gay slack when Minister Lokodo is put out to grass. The latter are already getting plenty of funding from the Bible Belt of the United States and elsewhere to fight homosexuality, and the former seem to be doing rather nicely inveighing against homo-sodomy from the pulpit whenever it catches their hypocritical fancy.

Now, imagine that: being able to save $1.7m and allocate it to dying mothers and children, while still being able to fight the unholy vice of homo-sodomy … without spending a single cent of Ugandan taxpayer money.

It’s really a no-brainer, yes?

All you need is a primary school certificate to do the maths. But this is Uganda … Tss!

Ugandan LGBTI activists seem to have a traitor in their midst 1

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If this report  is to be believed, there is a double agent, a spy, sitting in on LGBTI meetings and deliberations in Uganda. According to Uganda’s Observer newspaper, detailed planning minutes, strategies adopted from meetings, and names of organizations that have taken part in these meetings are in the newspaper’s and government’s possession.

Money quote:

This strategy involves “mapping out friendly journalists, as well as hostile and ignorant ones” with the objective of “identifying trainable journalists to become allies and objective reporters on sexual minority and gender identity issues”.

The plan is to raise a list of “40 journalists of a mixture of friendly, hostile and ignorant”. The strategy, whose aim is “gaining acceptance for the sexual minority groups”, with a time frame of June 2012 to June 2013, lists among its activities, workshops, talk-shows, barazas and parliamentary advocacy programmes for legislators … Shortly before leaving for an official trip abroad last week, an excited Lokodo, upon seeing the document, said he had finally obtained the information he needed to fight homosexuality in Uganda..

The documents the Observer claims to have seem to be the same ones that prompted Minister Lokodo to list a number of NGOs he was going to ban for ‘promoting homosexuality.’

Judas Iscariot

It’s fairly apparent that someone sitting in on these meetings also doubles as a government informant, a mole. In another private forum, the question had been raised (and wasn’t answered) about how Ethics Minister, Simon Lokodo, got advance notice of LGBTI meetings when most gay men and women in Uganda didn’t know about them until they had taken place or had been broken up.

It seems all has now been revealed apart from who the Judas Iscariot is, of course.

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Ugandan judge condemns anti-gay government bungling 1

Gay - Law, Uganda - Politics • Tags: , , , , ,

You might recall that Sexual Minorities Uganda sued Ethics Minister, Simon Lokodo, for breaking up an LGBTI meeting in Entebbe three months ago.

Well, that case got under way today and had to be postponed till July 6 because the defence didn’t have its tees crossed or eyes dotted despite having had three months to prepare.

In what could be a lifeline for them, Justice Eldad Mwangusya, the presiding judge, couldn’t hide his irritation at the disorganized nature of the government’s side as well as Minister Lokodo’s bully boy tactics which prompted SMUG to sue.

The judge’s rather unusual, pre-emptive, public complaint went something like this (and I am paraphrasing  from a third-party as I wasn’t in court):

“These [gay] people have a right of assembly. Why are these workshops being closed [when those closing them] don’t have data about what is going in them? If you are not aware of what the meetings will be about, why not send in your spies and see what is going on instead of closing them down without any good evidence that they are acting improperly? Some of these cases are a waste of time and resources, …”

Amen, Amen, Amen one is inclined to say about the judge’s remarks. Yet, therein lies the government’s potential temporary reprieve. It is surely difficult to see how a judge who has expressed what he thinks about a court case he hasn’t heard yet can hear it out dispassionately.

It should be interesting to see what the defence’s case will be. My prediction is that they are going to chop and turn a while longer and then they will ultimately fail to defend the case, losing it by default. They haven’t got a legal leg to stand on and they know it.

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Mea Culpa? 1

Uganda - Politics • Tags: , , ,

My first interpretation had been that it was a an attempt by Minister Simon Lokodo to justify his Gestapo tactics.

However, it seems as though greater powers than Simon Lokodo have prevailed and he has been forced to sign a hastily written and stinting mea culpa. Best to read it from the horse’s mouth here.

And here is an image of the government’s statement, apparently forcing its Minister of Integrity and Ethics to eat humble pie. Homosexuals will no longer be denied the right to meet and discuss gay issues after all. Or is it that what the statement is saying? My mind is not what it used to be so you will have to decide for yourself:

Statement from the Uganda Media Center website

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Simon Lokodo attempts to justify his Gestapo tactics 2

Gay - Human Rights, Uganda - Politics • Tags: , ,

Poor Simon Lokodo! He is a cabinet minister in Uganda who cannot even interpret correctly the law he purports to be defending. Below is his statement following the international outcry he stoked when he raided and scuppered an LGBTI  meeting that was meant to discuss human rights issues:

RESPONSE TO INTERNATIONAL CRITICISM ON THE ARREST OF GAY ACTIVISTS

Kampala

Uganda has come under criticism for intervening in a gay activists’ meeting that was taking place at a Hotel in a city suburb early this week. Police intervened in the meeting that was suspected to be promoting gay activities and questioned the participants who were later released.
The Government would like to state that much as promoting gay activities is illegal according to Section 145 of the Penal code Act, Uganda does not segregate against people of a different sexual orientation.
No government official is bent to harass any section of the community and everybody in Uganda enjoys the freedom to lawfully assemble and associate freely with others.
Cultural attitudes in Africa are very different to elsewhere in the world, 2/3 of African countries outlaw homosexual activity and 80% of East African countries criminalize it. Whilst at a global level more than 80 countries outlaw homosexual acts.
The government would like to encourage all Ugandans to be vigilant and stay away from unlawful activities that would get them in trouble with the law.

Rev. Fr.  Simon Lokodo
Minister of Ethics and Integrity

Simon Lokodo needs to be educated about section 145 of the Penal Code. That section  criminalizes homosexual sexual acts – sexual acts “against the order of nature,” and these have to be proved in court. It neither criminalizes being gay, in fact being gay is not a crime in Uganda, nor does it criminalize meeting to talk about gay issues.

Tss!

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