Category Archives: Uganda – Politics

Uganda’s government gifts gays a PR triumph! 6

Gay - Political, Uganda - Politics

Political own goal: Simon Lokodo

Uganda’s Minister of Ethics and Integrity, Simon Lokodo, came out less than a week ago and proclaimed that his government didn’t support the Bahati Nazi anti-gay bill, but would let it run its course in parliament because the process couldn’t be circumvented.

Then today, the same minister got into his ministerial vehicle, drove 30 miles to Entebbe and personally scuppered a gay conference that was being attended by representatives from Amnesty International among other foreign bodies.

His excuse?

The participants were engaged in “bad things” that they should be doing in their beds. The inference that the conference was about sex of course reflects directly on the misguided and foolish, but conveniently pat, notion that homosexuality is about homo-sodomy. This is a pervasive view in the church, too, where Leviticus 18 (thou shall not lie with a man as with a woman; it is an abomination) is used to drive home the anti-gay message that the Bible condemns homosexuality – it doesn’t; the Bible condemns homo-sexual activity but not homosexual loving (feelings of attraction) which doesn’t have to involve any kind of sex whatsoever.

But I digress.

Simon Lokodo is an ex-Catholic priest.  At 49, he remains unmarried, something of an oddity in Uganda but we are not here to mind his sexual business so we shall not bother to speculate as to why he remains without a wife in his middle age, or whether this might not indeed reflect on the idleness he has shown here.

What is worthy of comment is that the ineptitude this government is showing would be breath-taking if the political and personal  (for the gay men and women of Uganda)  stakes weren’t so high. How can a minister, even one as idle as Simon Lokodo, think that it is his place to personally put a stop to a conference convened 30 miles away from his office? Okay, he actually has no office, his ministry being there just for show, but how on earth could he think it made political sense to face the cameras and wax indignant about “bad things,” thereby showing his total ignorance of what he was talking about? Did he really think that a public gathering, in a public hotel, in the middle of the day was going to engage in sexual activity best restricted to people’s beds as he put it?

With this kind of bungling, how do these people hope to convince anyone that the government of Uganda is not supportive of the Bahati Nazi anti-gay bill?

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Uganda’s Minister shuts down Gay Conference 10

Gay - Political, Gay Social, Uganda - Politics

Uganda’s Minister of Ethics, Mr. Simon Lokodo, has personally intervened and scuppered a gay rights conference that was happening in Entebbe, a Kampala suburb. Yes, you guessed it: the minister really hasn’t got much to do which is why (how) he came to be the one who showed up to stop the conference. Apparently he told the 30 or so participants that he was putting a stop to the conference because they were doing “bad things,” an apparent reference to sexual activity since he advised them to go do these things in their bedrooms. Uganda’s Daily Monitor has more details on what happened. And here is an NTV news report on the event.

The minister’s actions have elicited plenty of reactions, not least of all on Facebook. The Facebook reactions to this event are nothing if not instructive of the uphill battle that lies ahead to change minds (and hearts) in this part of the world. I have lifted the [excerpted but unedited] responses verbatim off NTV’s Facebook page.

    • Dennis Rolland‎5 million shillings for a head of a homosexual. deal?

      46 minutes ago · Like · 1

    • Edward Ssemuwemba Mseriously! i think he was really right.i don’t think these people should be given audience since this act is really wrong. i mean take a look at the Bible,the sodom and gomorah story..it’s just not right.

      46 minutes ago · Like

    • Mpuro DavidHe was right. Uganda is for God nt evil.

      45 minutes ago · Like · 1

    • Waiswa PhilipWe donnot even have that money to cater for meetings about that piece of shit.we should just get a way of getting them out of uganda.THERE IS NO ROOM FOR HOMOS.

      45 minutes ago · Like

    • JrAndy Ssemuwemba He was absolutely right! Meeting so that they devise newer methods of spreading the vice? I personally know of young boys that have gone through horrible moments due to homosexuality, how many do you want to become victims so as to put an end to this?
      Ssemuwemba Kampala

      44 minutes ago · Like

    • George Lujang LukaGay people are easy to spotout through their funny names eg. Edmund G.Amatta, Sugar Rush.

      43 minutes ago · Like · 4

    • Ivan SeguyaLets try 2 promote love & not hatred coz hatred and persecution rarely changes wht certain pple believe in.Jah bless.

      41 minutes ago · Like · 3

    • Edmund G. Amatta‎@Joseph n Bashir… The problem with our society today is that we so often get too sensational and end up creating mountains out of moles. Its is true that homosexuality is a vice, no qn about that……… Bt how widespread is it? There are far more complex and more crucial issues to fight against in this country outside an almost non existent vice. Focus on the issues that drive pipo into this vice, issues lyk economic upheavals… When u point at the homosexuals without tackling the root causes u r jst recommending an aspirin for an ulcer….

      36 minutes ago · Like · 1

    • Innocent Bua AThe minister was implementing the law even b4 it is passed.

      36 minutes ago · Like · 2

    • Bashir Delito WamerlahUgandans, pliz we should stop talking and discussing about homosexuality because its an indirect way of spreading it?

      35 minutes ago · Like · 3

    • Isaaks CunnilinghamHe should have gone ahead to castrate the men and remove the womens ovaries..as it were,they can still pollute our gene pool. His actions will go down the annals of Uganda;The Ones Who got away.

      34 minutes ago · Like

    • Maureen RazielaEven parents give tough love. We dont hate them. we hate what they do. i assured my son’s teacher last year. she gave them homework to read the words gay, homosexuality, and lesbian. what does a 5yr old get out of those words? wen we tolerate them, they teach our children what they do. he was absolutely right.

      31 minutes ago · Like · 1

    • Tumuhimbise RogersWe dont need 2 know about them!! If its okay, why do they ask 4 rights! Did Man & Woman ask for rights to Marry??

      27 minutes ago · Like · 1

    • Edmund G. Amatta‎@Isaac… Accept my apologies plz…. I am never going to stoop to your level

      27 minutes ago · Like

    • Akol Dominic KulioYes, He was very Naturally Right…this is Africa where we don’t entertain such practices as Homosexuality!

      26 minutes ago · Like

    • London PrintGeorge,go threaten the mosquitoes in your bedroom coz be4 i know it,u wil need the minister of ethics to intervene coz they dont hv the right to roam in your bedroom.hahaha,Ugandans dont seize to amaze me.

      26 minutes ago · Like

    • Wabuyekha JoshuaHe was right & I am wondering why the government is wasting resources on this Bill.Why can’t it be scrapped off at once?

      25 minutes ago · Like · 1

    • MaNe Felix TwixHomosexualz! r part ov our society n no law o rule n bill can erase dat.we shud just use da adaptive mthd.

      25 minutes ago · Like

    • Kayiira Jeffyes he was right, those gay wat.. don exist in normal humans

      24 minutes ago · Like

    • Bashir Delito WamerlahIts like EDMUND knows whats bad but he is pretending” fuck you Edmund Amattako”

      24 minutes ago · Like

    • Joseph Ikwap‎@Amatta You are not going to divert attention away from the topic, i grew up from a strict background that taught me howeva biting poverty there are certain things i would never do! Exchanging money for evil my foot!

      24 minutes ago · Like · 1

    • Duncan Atwoki MugumeYES!

      23 minutes ago · Like

    • Denis Seguyado we nid 2 abuse each other?

      23 minutes ago · Like · 1
    • 22 minutes ago · Like

    • Oscar K. MuhumuzaI don’t know-But if he was sure they were gay as they turned out, I suppor him. If animal farm was to be rewritten today, the pigs would lough at human for the un natural practice and it would be on their not-to-do list.

      22 minutes ago · Like · 1

    • Agaba Patrick AraalieYES-100%right,—morals.are.dieing,—this.is.another.war.Ugandans—should—prepare.to.fight!!!!—people.do.not.give.them.room,—-God–made.no.mistake.–to–create—-Man.and.Woman!

      20 minutes ago · Like · 1

    • Mulondo Dennis Adelthe minister really has ran out of duties; lets embrace the facts

      18 minutes ago · Like

    • Jimmy Olum DThere is a reason why God created man & woman….. No one is born gay, stop the lies?!

      17 minutes ago · Like · 1

    • Byuma Timothy Mawaali BhayaNTV,av already got the results TWO HUNDRED% UR SAYING HE WAS RIGHT AND ZERO % AGAINST, ofcourse the minority n less knowlagable.

      16 minutes ago · Like

    • Cassidy JoelI support the minister,they dont have a place in uganda its beta they relocate to those countries dat r supporting them.to hell wit them

      16 minutes ago · Like · 1

    • Johny NyanziGays are not human thy are walking deads. Minister go on.

      15 minutes ago · Like · 2

    • Agaba BrucePersonally i say yes he was right. They have a right to assemble just like any other ugandan, but the same constituion criminalises homosexuality in the first place . So they have no basis to argue, let them first overcome the bill in parliament, then they can start enjoying the freedom they say is being stamped on.

      15 minutes ago · Like · 1

    • Arnold L KatongoleYes.minister was right,to hell with the so called sex minorities we either do away with them or we burry our country

      14 minutes ago · Like

    • Edmund G. Amatta‎@Bashir… U claim to be so moral I wont dispute u on dat coz that z ur opinion of urself bt point is I can never even utter sme of the words that u r using on this forum, I find them so bespeakable….. Does it have something to do with my immorality!

      13 minutes ago · Like

    • King Ahmed AxamYes it was right that’s bull shit

      13 minutes ago · Like

    • Kenny AntonioHomosexuals need help, they are like heroin abusers; destroying their bodies but always trying to justify the act.

      12 minutes ago · Like

    • Johny NyanziEven GOD can’t 4give the gays thats why HE didn’t gave them any chance to repent.

      9 minutes ago · Like
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Uganda Government Speaks: Bahati Bill will continue 6

Gay - Political, Uganda - Politics • Tags: ,

Giles Muhame tweets about the Bahati Bill news

Uganda’s Minister of Ethics and Integrity has spoken: the Bahati Nazi Bill will continue.

He really didn’t have any other option but to concede this given that this is a parliamentary process. Don’t forget, too, that the first attempt at debating this bill was rudely halted by presidential fiat. This time round the same tactic cannot work especially since, as I tried to explain here, Parliament and the President are in near open warfare with each other over questions of turf, jurisdiction and integrity.

Chimpreports.com has the transcript that the Minister of Integrity (now there is an oxymoron in a country like Uganda) has put out.

It does not form part of the government’s legislative programme and it does not enjoy the support of the Prime Minister or the Cabinet. However as Uganda is a constitutional democracy, it is appropriate that if a private members bill is presented to parliament it be debated. (Ethics Minister, Simon Lokodo)

As I guessed many moons ago, oil is beginning to be a pivotal player in this saga. The legislators feel that they can show Uganda’s donors where to get off if the oil from Lake Albert starts to flow. In fact, the contracts being signed left, right, and center can only embolden Parliament against what they see as meddling from Britain’s Cameron and America’s Barack Obama.

It is for that reason that one has to look at how this entire story will eventually be played out with a little more circumspection than I have perhaps used in the past. Museveni’s own missteps in handling the economy and Parliament, plus the emergence of oil as a central player might run a coach and horses through my past predictions on the fate of the bill.

But this was just about reporting the government position on the latest maneuverings of the bill. More on what might happen eventually at some point.

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Bahati anti-gay bill revived to teach Museveni a lesson 11

Gay - Political, Uganda - Politics • Tags:

Uganda’s Parliament yesterday embarked upon a process that is going to take the country up the garden path. They resurrected the Bahati Nazi anti-gay bill, paving the way for it to be debated again in committee and, if they have their way, perhaps on the floor of the house.

The Bahati bill, put on life support by a presidential diktat in January 2010, has returned David Bahati to the rostrum of grandstanding (as I predicted it would) that will create a lot of froth but achieve absolutely nothing of tangible value on the issue of what the bill purports to be about.

You would think that our lawmakers would see sense when it was staring them in the face. But, no,

Yoweri Museveni

they rose in unison and cheered wildly yesterday as the hitherto comatose bill was given electric shock. The bill came alive, the cheers went up and everyone in the chamber slapped themselves on the back for a job well done.

What exactly was all the back slapping and ululating about?

Simple. Parliament is still smarting from the humiliation President Museveni dealt them on this bill in January 2010. Bahati had mobilized them, led them up the hill and then brought them back down with tails between their legs when Museveni told them in his characterically condescending manner that the matter was a foreign policy issue that only he dealt with. They have never forgiven him for that slight.

Parliament has thus been seething in a state of pique at having been publicly shown to be impotent in the face of a dismissive executive. It wasn’t the first time he had done that, of course, but this one rankled especially because Museveni made no secret of the fact that he was acting at the behest of foreigners.

Such is the hunger for Parliament to show that they matter in Uganda that, at the time in 2010, even Beti Kamya, a friend of the gay community if there ever was one, waded in and lectured the donor community about Parliament’s independence in Uganda.

Willing pawn in a proxy turf battle: David Bahati

Uganda’s Parliament is thus chomping at the bit, and this Nazi bill provides them an opportunity to show Museveni that they can give him a bloody nose.

Museveni hasn’t helped matters. He has presided over the worst corruption, nepotism, waste, incompetence, profligacy and cynicism that the country has ever witnessed. On top of that, he has been around for 26 years and the rust is showing in the faltering economy which has inflation running at over 25%. Even female ministers have blended in, brazenly stealing government equipment for their radio stations.

State house acolytes have been handed obscene amounts of taxpayers’ money on a presidential phone call. Thousands of hectares of forests are still being cut down in the middle of the night to benefit the president’s friends and political appointees. Tales abound of millions of dollars in suitcases being delivered by oil companies to government ministers’ homes as bribes to smooth the endorsement of ruinous if not dubious contracts, ministers are openly trying to bully the Speaker of Parliament and so on and so forth. An increasingly emboldened 9th Parliament,  is looking for every avenue to embarrass Museveni’s tottering administration.

Parliament is in a such a mutinous mood that they will thumb their noses at Uganda’s donors to pass this heinous bill – just to prove to themselves that they actually matter, even if the consequences for Uganda’s foreign aid could be dire – a classic case of cutting off their noses to spite their faces.

So, those cheers you heard yesterday and the chants of “our bill, our bill” had nothing to do with what the bill will achieve   – anyone with a modicum of intellect knows it will achieve nothing.

Parliament is frothing at the mouth over a redundant bill that will not, cannot eradicate homosexuality from Uganda because, if they pass it, they will finally have won their first ever victory over Yoweri Museveni since Parliament was reconstituted in Uganda more than 10 years ago.

Call it an ego trip if you like. If passing a daft, toothless, pointless, unenforceable anti-gay law is what it takes for Parliament to finally get one up on Yoweri Museveni and the patronizing donors that have propped him up for this long, so be it.

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Uganda’s ambassador runs away from LGBT questions

Gay - Political, Uganda - Politics
His Excellency Perezi Kamunanwire

Confronted by questions regarding Uganda’s recent ignominious Parliamentary record on lesbian and gay issues which saw the Bahati Nazi anti-gay bill (which would have had Ugandan parents turned into informers and gays executed) introduced in the House, Queerty is reporting that Uganda’s ambassador to Washington, DC chose to run away.

This is a pity because Ambassador Kamunanirwe is well qualified to speak about LGBTI issues in Uganda and elsewhere. His official bio shows him to be a man who has “directed programs in black studies and international relations. Starting in 2003, he has served as an adjunct professor at the Center for Conflict Management and Organizational Research associated with Sophia University in Bulgaria.”

Those are precisely the sort of credentials that would make His Excellency the ideal person to talk about Uganda’s relationship with its gay population you would think, especially on Martin Luther King Jr Day, that most venerable day of reconciliation.

A missed opportunity, surely!

Moralizers Ignore the Reality

Gay Social, Social Commentary, Uganda - Politics
12 of the mothers died in Uganda’s top hospital – Mulago

Consider the above headlines, both from Uganda’s Monitor Newspaper (December 27 2011 and December 27, 2011 respectively).

If you belonged to the Coalition for the Advancement of Moral Values, which one would you choose to comment on? The fact is that Mulago Hospital killed 12 mothers in just one day. The only reason we know that is that it was Christmas day. Else these numbers would not have been published.

If you do the rough mathematics, Mulago alone kills 12×365=4,380 women in childbirth each year. Indeed this is in line with past studies that suggest 6,000 women die in childbirth in Uganda each year. An urgent moral issue for the country you would think, wouldn’t you?

Now, do we know how many men or women have died in this manner as a result of private adult consensual homosexual sex in Uganda? Do we have any statistics on this anywhere? Despite calling a whole press conference on the subject, the Coalition for the Advancement of Moral Values didn’t say. Might that be because they don’t have any statistics to prove their wild theories and are instead flailing around like headless chickens?

So, of the two, which is the subject worth working up moral indignation and calling press conferences over? How can we Ugandans tolerate this kind of twisted mentality?

Uganda’s Museveni puts trains before gay rights

Gay - Human Rights, Gay - Political, Uganda - Politics
AfroGay can’t figure out what exactly Uganda’s, president, Yoweri Museveni was talking about, given that human life should be seen as more important than trains. But the BBC is quoting him talking about gays and railways.
 
Money quote from the BBC:

 Ah, yes, indeed. Electricity, roads, trains, medical care … all of which don’t exist right now despite billions of donor funds that have been channeled to Uganda to provide them. Doesn’t it then make sense that the donors who provide a huge percentage of the money that is supposed to go to these services that citizens (including gays) need, but which largely doesn’t find its way to the intended recipients, get tough about it?

Poor Herman Cain ran for president in the wrong country

Culture, Politics - World, Social Commentary, Uganda - Politics
Crashed and burned: Herman Cain

In a discussion on another forum, a friend said this of Herman Cain’s US presidential campaign that recently burnt and crashed due to accusations of marital infidelity: “Herman Cain is running for president in the wrong country.” He couldn’t be more right.

In Uganda, Herman Cain’s campaign would have picked up any allegation of marital infidelity and run away with it, praising Cain’s sexual prowess and, perhaps, making up innuendo-laden pet names for him. The electorate would lap them up and Cain’s star would rise even further on account of having mistresses on the side.

In Uganda, it’s more of an electoral liability not to have mistresses than to show a happily married facade with one wife and kids. “What is wrong with him?” most people would ask of any aspiring politician with just one wife and no whiff of ever having succumbed to the charms of a Jezebel, perhaps even fathering a nursery school of children in the process. The latter is what is considered normal, praiseworthy, manly. Having just one wife and two children with no hint of extra-marital affairs tends to be an electoral liability in Uganda if your more libidinous opponent chooses to exploit your squeaky clean image.

Gilbert (Mahogany) Bukenya

That is why Uganda’s former vice-president, Giblert Bukenya, won re-election in a landslide a couple of days ago following the nullification of his February 2011 election on account of bribing the voters. Nicknamed “mahagony” in part due to tales of his many extra-marital flings as well as his claim that he can’t be felled by his political enemies, Bukenya has a grocery list of mistresses from all walks of life and he revels in the implication this has for his sexual prowess.

Despite the mistresses, despite being accused of corrupt electoral practices, despite being accused of wanton corruption in the award of a multi-million dollar vehicle contract in the run-up to the 2007 Common Wealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) – a charge that is still being thrashed out in the courts – Bukenya was returned as MP for his Wakiso constituency with something like 77% of the vote. In the entire proceedings, his wife has stood stoically by his side, waltzed down church aisles with him when mistresses made press conferences about their sexual shenanigans with Bukenya and, though largely in the shadows, the official Mrs. Bukenya steadfastly stood by her man. There is nothing she can do about it since she and the retinue of women in Bukenya’s sexual wake are but a mere parenthesis in his political trajectory. Swinging his hook at will makes him all the more electable and lovable. His electorate understands that and so should the wife and mistresses.

That is Uganda; a country that AfroGay is sure Herman Cain would envy deeply given the spectacular disintegration of his campaign on account of … mere accusations of marital infidelity.

Bahati, Bahati, Bahati!!

Gay - Political, Uganda - Politics
David Bahati

Poor David Bahati. His anti-gay train crashed and the wheels came off, but he is still sifting through the wreckage, trying to salvage parts in the hope that it will run again.

It will not.

When time ran out on Bahati’s anti-gay bill in May of this year, it was not by accident and Bahati knows this. Powers greater than him had already intervened, more than a year previously, to kill the bill. Once Yoweri Museveni told his MPs that the anti-gay bill was a matter of foreign policy, the writing was on the wall. Of course Bahati and his friends kept on making noise, grumbling in the corridors and promising fire and brimstone. That all fizzled and the bill met the fate the president wanted it to.

Now, emboldened NRM members of Parliament (from the ruling party), emboldened mostly because of the government’s glaring missteps on the economy and mishandling of contracts to oil which no drop has been realized yet,  think they can do as they please. After all, they were elected by the people. One can allow oneself a wry smile at their naivete.

Anyone thinking that they will make noise over the anti-gay bill or the oil contracts that are still shrouded in mystery and get their way really doesn’t understand how governance in Uganda works. As the MPs who were howling like strays over the oil contracts are realizing, once the president gets involved, the tenor and direction of the debate changes quickly – in his favor.

Mark my words: as long as Museveni is president, Bahati and any other anti-gay MPs can rant about the anti-gay bill all they want. That bill will not become law even if it ever comes out of committee to be debated on the floor of Parliament which, too, is highly unlikely. Gradually, but surely, the howling will subside and the frothing rabble will go back to whatever idle members of Parliament do with themselves when they are not rising up in ill-fated opposition to the President’s wishes.

Janet Museveni denies role in Bahati’s anti-gay bill 2

Gay - Political, Uganda - Politics
Janet Museveni

Uganda’s First Lady is not a shrinking violet. When she is cross, she lets you know it by penning angry responses about things people have said she has done that she thinks they shouldn’t have said. So, a few days ago she had published in the government owned New Vision a feisty rebuttal to claims in the Daily Monitor (quoting Wikileaks) that she was behind the anti gay bill that David Bahati brought to Parliament in 2009 – a bill that was eventually aborted in January 2010 by her husband’s intervention when international pressure got too hot for him.

 Janet Museveni’s denial, especially her insistence that she fights her own battles, rings true. She is on record saying all sorts of things about homosexuality, all of them negative, to youths (as she did here in 2010) and all sorts of other groups she is privileged to be able to talk at simply by being invited.

“We used to have very few homosexuals traditionally. They were not persecuted but were not encouraged either because it was clear that is not how God arranged things to be.” Yoweri Museveni (November 2009)

In fact, her husband has been more contradictory on the subject of homosexuality. In late 1999 he asked the police to arrest and imprison all homosexuals, only to backtrack a few months later, due to pressure from Western donors, and say that homosexuals should be left alone. Then in 2009, before he left for the Commonwealth Summit in Trinidad and Tobago, he admitted to a youth at the inaugural Young Achievers Awards ceremony, an event organized by Tetea Uganda, that homosexuality has always been with us – we just didn’t talk about it. But on June 3 2010, he turned around and said that homosexuality was a Western import that the Church had to fight. The irony that he was asking a Western import (the Church) to fight “a Western import” seemed totally lost on the president but that is Museveni for you. At the same event, Museveni also told his listeners that Buganda’s Kabaka (King) Mwanga, a homosexual, had learned to be homosexual from the Arabs. One would have been forgiven for coming away wondering what one should take away from Museveni’s lecture: was homosexuality a Western import or was it introduced by the Arabs?

You will not find Janet Museveni going on record to speak through both sides of her mouth in that kind of manner. The reason for this is that she believes, and she tells the country regularly, that prayers can solve every problem. She once, for instance, stood up in Parliament and exhorted the country to go on its knees and pray for the eradication of corruption. Her message is thus fairly consistent: pray for every one of your problems and they will go away.

So, despite the possibility that she could have been a passive observer (and therefore complicit) during the process that brought the Bahati bill to Parliament, let’s give it to her that she had nothing to do with goading Bahati on as he drafted the bill in the middle of frenzied night prayer, on the back of a tithing envelope. If she had wanted to lead the campaign, she clearly could have since her views on this subject are already a matter of public record.

However, what Janet Museveni has craftily not done in her article is say whether or not she opposed/opposes the Bahati Nazi bill. Yet it would be important to know that. We know that her husband is against the bill because it is the politically expedient position for him to take given how much he is still beholden to Western money. But what about Janet? Yes, she is against homosexuality alright, but did she support the Bahati Bill? Was she disappointed when her husband killed it? Would she support it if it were to be tabled again in Parliament?

Those are the questions one wishes Mrs. Museveni had taken trouble to address in her ode to [lack of] journalistic integrity.