It’s Museveni vs Museveni on the Bahati Nazi anti-gay Bill

Janet and Yoweri Museveni

Okay … so Wikileaks has confirmed what most people knew already – namely that Uganda’s President and his wife each have their own cabals of power fighting for control within Uganda’s government.Thus far, old hat. The opposing camps by the president and his wife are an open secret that has been discussed in hushed tones for years in Uganda.

Uganda’s Monitor newspaper quotes Wikileaks saying that the then American Ambassador, on the advice of a presidential adviser who has recently fallen out with the president of Uganda, wrote a confidential memo intimating that Mrs. Museveni was behind the Bahati anti-gay bill that was tabled in Parliament in 2009 and thwarted by President Museveni in January 2010. The adviser, John Nnaggenda is on record condemning the anti-gay bill in December 2009 because, in his words, it was a bill “against love.”

If it is true that Janet Museveni was behind the bill, it just confirms my thinking that the president had nothing to do with its formulation. It should also be a reminder to the gay community in Uganda to pray that Museveni continues to rule for many more years. The alternative would be for religious fundamentalists to lead policy formulation in Uganda, something that will not augur well for the gay community whose current freedoms are, ironically, being protected by President Museveni’s autocratic tendencies. After all, it was his intervention in January 2010 that effectively killed the bill.

Janet Museveni is on record exhorting the country to adopt national prayer days on which to pray for corruption in Uganda to end. So, her religious fundamentalism need not be under any question given how publicly she wears her born again credentials on her sleeve. If she were to have more influence in matters of governance than she has already, we can safely say that she would support the return of the Bahati bill because she sees it as a religious imperative.

Those Ugandan gays advocating for the removal of Yoweri Kaguta Museveni be warned – what may come after him might be infinitely worse where the rights of the gay minority are concerned. He is not necessarily a friend of the gay community but he understands how the anti-gay bill could bring him terrible international political discomfort. The people sniping at his heels, such as his wife, seem to have no such concerns, choosing instead to let their God be their guide albeit selectively.

If Yoweri Museveni should leave power, the Ugandan gay community had better brace itself.

Parents? Which Parents?

I am a parent but Stephen Langa certainly didn’t consult me when he went to the press with his demands that Parliament revives the dead Bahati Nazi Anti-Gay bill.

It is always curious when you see men pontificating about children and/or families in Uganda. Yet it is men who are responsible for the family strife, spousal battery, child neglect and abuse that is as common as polygamy and drunkenness. It is indeed men who are behind the efforts that have frustrated the Domestic Relations Bill (DRB) in Uganda’s Parliament since … wait for it … 1964 (not 2003 as I once thought)! This secular country has refused to pass the DRB because more than 80% of Uganda’s Parliamentarians are still men – men who claim that they have to tread gingerly because of the sensibilities of the Muslim constituency who largely oppose the DRB. Yet the DRB would give women more rights over being sexually abused, being treated as part of the furniture when their husbands die and more rights to divorce abusive, violent, deadbeat husbands.Imagine the attendant protections for children inherent in the DRB that Langa has never once championed!

Stephen Langa (far right – excuse the pun)

Stephen Langa, that passionate, flag waving, advocate of family values and children’s rights, has not yet marched to Parliament over the DRB because he knows that the DRB is a lost cause, has been for more than 45 years, thanks entirely to men’s selfish instincts. So, what does Langa do? He looks for a soft target.

Uganda’s official figures show that millions are dropping out of primary school, thereby adding to the roll of young men who are going to grow up not having learned to respect women or be responsible husbands. Nothing to do with homosexuality there thus far. Langa, he of the Family Network has not yet marched to Parliament to protest the corruption eating away at UPE and reducing a well intended and great idea to a farce. He won’t any time soon either because, of course, he only opens his mouth when funds are running low at his Family Life Network and he wants his far right American taskmasters who are obsessed with gay sex to pony up yet more dollars.

Can you imagine that this man can stand before the press and claim to belong to something called the Uganda Coalition for Moral Values? Huh? Moral values? Which ones exactly when Uganda cannot provide basic assistance to landslide victims but finds trillions to purchase fighter jets in a country where 70% of the population lives on less than $1.00 a day?

Enough on this insufferable man already.

Listen up people: Uganda is NOT a Christian country!

I have argued this many times, most notably here, before but either I am talking to myself like John the Baptist in the wilderness, or those who keep arguing so have a copy of the Constitution no one else has.

Money quote from none other than Uganda’s The New Vision:

The misconception that Uganda is a Christian country is premised on the origins of our colonial masters, this is not the case because Article 7 of the Constitution of Uganda states that “Uganda shall not adopt a state religion”. 

This makes a total nonsense of the argument that religion can be used by politicians to legislate against homosexuality. What the Bible says or doesn’t say about homosexuality is totally irrelevant in a secular state that has to cater for all people, including atheists and believers in witchcraft. Indeed that is the same reason why these self-same pontificating legislators have, since 1964, refused to use the Bible to condemn adultery or polygamy both of which they themselves enjoy liberally and at will. The Bible, of course, espouses one man and one wife till death them do part but that is of no relevance in a secular country, isn’t it? As any cheating politicians will assure you  …. precisely.

Hallelujah, praise the Lord, the giver of life, the redeemer of lost souls.

Let’s now hear the arguments, the non-religious arguments, against homosexuality in secular Uganda.

Is that a deafening silence I hear?

Image of the Week – Uganda 1

Uganda’s newly appointed ministers take a nap during the president’s State of the Nation Speech (from Monitor Online)

Aluta Continua – the next frontier

The verdict was delivered with characteristic Ugandan confusion. The Bahati Bill, being debated in Committee, would be debated on the floor Wednesday, May 11 with amendments recommending a seven-year prison sentence for being gay instead of the death penalty. But, hold on, perhaps that amendment hadn’t been made after all, and death would be the price to be paid. Uh, no one seemed sure. Wednesday, the bill was no longer on the Parliamentary order paper. Yes, it was. No, it wasn’t. Uh … The bill would be debated on the floor of the House Friday the 13th. ‘Oh no, what a day to debate the bill,’ the superstitious minds agonized.

In the end, time run out on the bill and it wasn’t debated, killing it before it got out of committee. A huge sigh of relief went out in the gay community and, believe it or not, at State House. Uganda’s Yoweri Museveni will also have been watching the Parliamentary convulsions to see if the NRM MPs he had ordered to drop the bill dared defy him. In the end, the MPs blinked because there is hardly a  member of Parliament in the ruling NRM party who doesn’t depend on the president for patronage in some form or other. With the NRM enjoying an unassailable majority in Parliament, the bill was doomed once the President, at the behest of the international donor community, poured cold water on it in January 2010.

The celebrations are almost over in the Ugandan homosexual camp, the cleaners can clear up the debris and mop the floor. In our euphoria at the non-passage of the bill, however, we have been left with the choice of the devil and the deep blue sea. Had democracy, which we all know is the ideal, triumphed where this bill is concerned, it would have been passed in January 2010 and the law would have been granted open season to arrest homosexuals, turn parents, priests, medical personnel and counselors into informers. 

Thanks to presidential fiat the bill was stopped in its tracks. That leaves us Ugandan gay men and women thankful that the bill died because Uganda is really a dictatorship, and only a democracy on paper.

So, we now have two rather stark choices: embrace true democracy in Uganda with which we would have ended up either killed or imprisoned, or laud Museveni’s dictatorial inclinations which saved our lives. It sounds terrible, doesn’t it? Yes, it does but that encapsulates the situation we are in following the demise of the Bahati bill.

Of course, there is an alternative. An elected president of Uganda could come out categorically and say that he/she doesn’t support and will never support a bill that seeks to criminalize people on account of who they are. Museveni is best placed to say it since he is the one in office and, barring an act of God, will likely be around for another five years. My sense is that he will likely not because he is another typically African president who thinks of himself first. We know this because he was thinking about what it would do to his foreign Aid when he decided to intervene and stop Bahati’s bill. But therein lies a sliver of hope.

Museveni’s constant irritant and political arch-rival, Kizza Besigye, has already painted his colors to the decriminalization mast so we know that at least in that man we have someone we can rely on to bat on our side. The focus should thus be on putting enough pressure on the current president of Uganda to get him to start speaking about decriminalization, too. In AfroGay’s mind, that is the next frontier that the gay rights movement in Uganda needs to target. As I have argued before, we have the power,, albeit acquired with a ‘little’ help from our friends. We should use it to make sure that a Nazi bill such as the one Bahati tabled in 2009 never again sees the light of day in Uganda.

Oh Ugandans – a prayer

With Uganda’s Parliament closed without having brought the Bahati Anti-Gay bill to the floor for debate, one feels it is time for prayers. Trust in the Lord, we are always told, yes? But then we are also told that God helps those who help themselves. Both mantras seem fine in AfroGay’s eyes so he is going to trust in the Lord and also actively work on self-help.

Edward Ssekandi

The first prayer goes out to men like the outgoing Speaker of Parliament, Hon. Edward Ssekandi:

We (gay men and women) are Ugandans. Mr. Ssekandi, I have sat in discussions during which you lent your sage mind on a broad range of topics. I have sat in close proximity to you and listened to you dispensing wisdom that I found insightful. So, I know first hand that you are thoughtful man and a loving parent.  I don’t know where your political fortunes will take you, sir,  but I pray that you advise your successor that no parent knows what type of human being their child will turn out to be – that is God’s design. Your child is your child and you have to do the best with what you get. I pray that you advise your successor that creating laws meant to kill someone else’s son or daughter simply for being who they are goes against everything any parent would want to see. I thus pray, Mr. Ssekandi,  that you please beseech your successor not to entertain ever again an unjust bill such as the one David Bahati brought to Uganda’s Parliament in 2009.

I have another prayer for the Ugandan Diaspora in the United States. Throughout the ordeal that has been the Bahati Bill, we have been supported by individuals and groups, most of them comprising non-Ugandans. What of our own Ugandan groups such as Uganda North American Association, Gwanga Mujje, Banyakigezi, Twegaite who have a combined following of thousands? AfroGay asks this question because he knows a lot of people in all these groups who know him as a gay man. Indeed many in these groups know other Ugandan gay men and women who have no record of molesting children or indoctrinating anyone into the gay lifestyle. I thus pray that next time a bill to criminalize a section of Ugandans simply for being who they are comes up, you find it in you to speak up as a group. After all, we are friends when we party and friends when we are hurting, are we not?

A prayer wouldn’t be complete without thanks.Thanks need to go to my Ugandan friends in high offices who privately gave crucial advice that they didn’t have to give. True, the Bahati Bill was hatched on the watch of the current government albeit with the powers that be asleep at the switch. But, truth be told, they also acted to kill it. Not many want to admit it but, for one man, President Yoweri Museveni, the Bahati Bill would have been passed in Uganda’s parliament in January 2010 regardless of what Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama said about it. Such is the Neanderthal mindset of Uganda’s elected officials that they would have cut off their nose to spite their face. We thus have a lot to be thankful for that Museveni gave his word that the bill wouldn’t pass and acted to ensure it didn’t. Just think that the Burundian president did the opposite – overrode the vote of elected officials and signed a heinous anti-gay bill in the middle of the night.

Killed the Bill: Yoweri Museveni

It is perhaps a mark of how low Uganda’s politics is that we are grateful for one person overriding the wishes of an elected body. When you are fighting for your life, however, you have to take your mercies from wherever you can get them. In this instance, it so happened that our saving grace was a president who can do as he pleases regardless of what Parliament thinks or wants. I don’t know about you, but I am grateful that Museveni summoned his MPs and told them to forget the bill. The alternative for me as a gay man in Uganda would have been infinitely worse.

On that note, this gay man will say a resounding AMEN.

The Bahati Nazi Anti-Gay Bill Dies in Committee 1

My money is on the bill not reaching the floor of the house. It will do its rounds in committee and the Speaker of the House will keep on finding reasons to postpone it until time runs out on it in the current Parliament. (AfroGay, November 24, 2009)

 I told you so! The Bahati Nazi Anti-Gay bill has run out of time and has not been debated on the floor of the house where it was guaranteed to pass.

 If David Bahati, Martin Ssempa and their Nazi anti-gay friends have any sense, they’d better start reading AfroGay’s analysis and what he writes about them carefully.

Gloating is never nice but as you can see from the quotation above, I predicted two years ago what the fate of the Bahati Nazi anti-gay bill would be. Unfortunately for Bahati, and fortunately for the gay community in Uganda, Bahati was not paying attention.

Parliamentary time has run out on the bill and it now has to be re-presented in the next Parliament. That will take some doing at a time when the president, who is not interested in the bill for reasons I highlighted in 2009, is also having to confront an opposition whose fortunes have ironically been rejuvenated by his own government.

Disappointed: David Bahati

What next for the Bahati Bill? As long as Museveni remains in power, forget this bill. In fact, I am ready to predict that the bill will not return in any shape or form as long as Museveni remains president of Uganda.

Some have suggested that he was behind it but I believe, and I have said this before, that this bill caught him flat footed. But, once bitten, twice shy. Uganda’s Museveni will not allow the anti-gay bill to again return and create the embarrassment he had to endure at the hands of Uganda’s donors. Anyone who hopes to see it again in Parliament must wait for the current president of Uganda to vacate that office.

So, is this the absolute end of the anti gay bill? Oh, by no means. Our enemies are determined people and this bloody nose will only make them more emboldened to return. Their tactics will be markedly different next time round but return they will. They now know, however, that they have a formidable opponent, ironically (there is that word again) in the person of  the president of the Uganda without whom the bill would have sailed through Parliament at least a year ago.

David Bahati dare not say it but, as far as his Nazi anti-gay bill is concerned, he is one Parliamentarian who is very, very unhappy that Yoweri Museveni is the president of Uganda.

There are people who AfroGay has to thank for their help, some of it rendered without their realizing it. Since the help was rendered privately, the thanks will be given privately. Suffice it to say that the eventual failure of the bill was down to people who had nothing to gain from it not passing. Such selflessness in the face of a heinous but popular bill makes these people’s help incalculable. We indeed owe them a deep debt of gratitude.

Good night Bahati dear. See you in the next Parliament. No doubt you will return. Just be sure that we shall be waiting for you. And that’s not a threat – it is a promise.

Now, time to do what AfroGay does best when he is in good spirits – party.

Confusion reigns in Uganda – Cry my Beloved Country

Confusing: Monitor Headlines

Will he or won’t he be on the Kenya Airways flight? That is the question exercising Ugandans right now with regard to whether or not the leader of the opposition, Kizza Besigye, will be allowed to return to his country. The headlines (above), all from the same newspaper, tell their own story of the muddle surrounding Besigye’s return to Uganda.

AfroGay thinks it is all a carefully planned scheme to keep Besigye away until the president who has run Uganda for the last 25 years swears in. So, they are playing a game of cat and mouse, he said/she said, to make sure that the resultant disarray lasts long enough for the president to swear in.

Death warmed up: Kirunda Kivejinja

It is not helping that Uganda’s government has chosen a death-warmed-up minister called Kirunda Kivjinja who, until he propped up recently to blame bullet makers in Europe and America for the death of unarmed Ugandan demonstrators, AfroGay thought was dead.

Money quote:

The Minister also found it fitting to inform Ugandans that the government was not taking responsibility for those killed. Instead, he advised, Ugandans should blame the death on “the British and the Americans who manufacture bullets”.

To be fair, anyone who argues that bullet makers are responsible for those who die at the hands of bullets fired by military personnel cannot be living on this planet, can he?

My country, Uganda, is teetering on the abyss. Corruption, state incompetence, profligacy and disregard for the most basic standards of service such as functional hospitals, good roads, schools that teach and financial probity are threatening to engulf the 25-year-old regime despite winning successive elections, mostly on the backing of an illiterate, gullible and ignorant voting village population. Uganda’s core voters are 70% rural and they outnumber sophisticated, educated, enlightened, well traveled voters like AfroGay by a ratio of 3:1. To win, any politician thus need only appeal to the lowest common denominator by dishing out to the villagers sundry items like sugar, cooking oil, and paper bags full of cash that will, however, not last a week.

Unfortunately, the economy hasn’t done the things politicians expected when they were elected in February. Inflation is at a staggering 14% and rising, and prices for sundry domestic goods have shot through the roof. Those contents of the envelopes of cash that were handed out before the election in February are long since gone leaving the recipients with the sinking feeling that they sold their vote to Museveni at too low a price. The Uganda government, aware that their key constituents are disgruntled by the spiraling price inflation, is feeling rattled. They have resorted to draconian tactics of manhandling the opposition with all the military force possible when they are not drenching them with pink water cannon as they attempted to walk to work in protest at the roof high inflation.

It goes to show you that events, events, events will buck the most astute politician. As Uganda’s Museveni is finding out, he is no exception.

Uganda’s police sprays the opposition pink

You will no doubt have heard about the pink pound or the pink dollar. That is the disposable income that gay men and women are presumed to have, which lets them live, live, live, ostensibly because they usually don’t have children and all those other things that their straight peers have to agonize about before pulling out their wallets.

BBC: Opposition leaders sprayed pink

In Uganda, where the concept of the pink shilling has not taken root yet, what with the focus on more pressing issues such as thwarting the Bahati Nazi Bill in order to stay alive (or out of jail),  the government has nonetheless decided to experiment with turning opposition politicians pink – literally.

Hm … might this also be a subliminal response to the leader of the opposition, Kizza Besigye, for pledging four months ago to decriminalize homosexuality if elected?

To which AfroGay would say to the head of the military guys drenching opposition in pink: thanks guys but the pink color is really just a metaphor. There is no need to take it too literally.

Speaking of color … has anyone been able to find out what the military used to turn all that liquid pink in a country where classroom fine art paint is a luxury? Hm …

Related reading

1. Ugandan opposition leader barred

Cry my Beloved Country!

Disturbing images are doing the rounds following the arrest, jailing, freeing on bail and rearrest of Uganda’s main Opposition leader, Kizza Besigye.

The pictures (almost all of them pulled from the Monitor Newspaper) speak for themselves.If you want to read up on the story, it is here. 

Mr. Arinaitwe teargassed Besigye (right) at point-blank range

More of Mr. Arinaitwe’s handiwork

Following others’ orders

Following his own orders: Arinaitwe and his bride