Tag Archives: Bahati Bill

Rebecca Kadaga trapped between a rock and hard place! 7

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Speaker of the House: Rebecca Kadaga

Not a lot of people know or realize it just yet but Uganda’s Speaker of Parliament, Rebecca Kadaga is in political trouble.

Needled by a meddlesome do-gooder, Canada’s John Baird, over the death of a gay activist in 2011, Kadaga lashed out at him, shrilly lecturing him that Uganda is not a Canadian colony or protectorate. That went down extremely well in Uganda and, in hindsight, John Baird likely regrets the ill-considered way he confronted Kadaga.

It would have been alright if that had been the end of the matter.

Upon her return to Uganda, however, events spiraled out of Kadaga’s control when, upon landing at Entebbe Airport, she found the rabidly homophobic David Bahati, Martin Ssempa and James Elspeth Nsaba Buturo waiting to greet her as though she were a Ugandan Joan of Arc. It all went to her head and she forgot that as a Parliamentary Speaker she cannot be seen to be taking sides on political issues. She pompously announced that she would make sure that the anti-gay bill passed, the country wanted it, and so on and so forth. With every high-minded pronouncement, Kadaga was digging herself into a deeper hole. Now she is in a mess she likely wouldn’t be in if she hadn’t shot her mouth off like a Kalashnikov.

How so?

Kadaga really does want to be president of Uganda. If you doubt this, check out this telling New Vision interview she gave recently on the subject. Her reticence, some might argue ‘downright refusal’ to rule herself out of the presidential running, speaks huge volumes.

But the elections are still 4 years away and sane minds are justifiably asking themselves if it was/is wise for Kadaga to reveal her political cards so soon.

Country First … about time, too, after 26 years!

Remember that Kadaga has been at loggerheads with the Prime Minister, Amama Mbabazi, who is the president’s right hand man mostly over what she sees as their mal-administration and scant attention to the countriy’s most pressing priorities such as health, education and infrastructural development. In effect, she has been at odds with the president himself and, indeed, the president has had to intervene more than twice to separate the two when the internecine fighting spilled over into the press.

We all know that Kadaga thinks her government isn’t putting the ‘country first’ as evidenced by the telling caption she has on her Facebook page. That maxim strikes a chord with most Ugandans who are fed up with the wanton thieving, kleptocratic, selfish, bombastic but hollow leadership that characterizes every facet of Museveni’s 26-year-old government. So, Kadaga is on safe ground when she calls for the country to be put first …

At last, here is a politician from the ruling party calling out her own government albeit in veiled tones.

But Mbabazi and Museveni are not going to go away simply by Kadaga craftily using Facebook captions to dig at their incompetence and impunity. They have been around long enough to know that elections are not won 4 years in advance and so they can afford to wait for Kadaga to make mistakes.

She seems to have made one with the Bahati bill because whether it passes or not, Kadaga cannot come out the other side smelling of roses.

If the Bahati Bill doesn’t pass by Christmas, she will look foolish after her near-hysterical hullabaloo about it and the bizarre bed fellows she allowed her office to be associated with in the name of passing it. Right now, everyone is looking at the calendar, waiting to see if Kadaga can deliver the Christmas gift she promised Martin Ssempa, the convicted felon, and his motley crew of conniving pastors.

If the bill passes by Christmas, then Kadaga has to live by her claim that Uganda can do without foreign aid if the donors follow through with their pledge to withdraw their financial support to the country. Remember that the gay lobby is now the most powerful single minority entity in Uganda and, rightly or wrongly, has forced Museveni to his knees several times. So, when donors threaten to plug the faucets on account of the Bahati [Nazi] bill, it is no idle threat to Museveni.

Kadaga wrong on this, too: Donor money is critical to Uganda

Already, even before the bill has been debated on the floor of Parliament, the headlines are awash with the dire consequences for Uganda’s economy that the suspension of donor funds due to the massive theft of over $60m from the Office of the Prime Minister might wreak. Now, imagine if even more donors follow through and withdraw aid money on account of a morality bill designed to target about 500,000 of the country’s gay population. Kadaga will have to explain how that is in the interest of the 33,500,000 Ugandans the cuts to their aid will hit.

Ugandan newspaper headlines: Withdrawal of donor money will hurt Uganda – badly

There is also another, more sensitive, reason why Kadaga will eventually lose political capital if the bill passes. Already in her 50s, she is not married, and has no biological children. Uganda’s female population already outnumbers men and most of them are mothers of course. Even if it might seem attractive at this point, very few Ugandan mothers will look kindly at a female politician, who has never had a child of her own, passing legislation that might end up getting their children killed or jailed. In Luganda we have a saying that aptly describes the situation: ensi egula mirambo; ngowuwo si gwebasse (it is easy to be indifferent towards death – if no one you know is being killed). Mothers will bay for Kadaga’s ice-cold blood if, as should surely be the case, their gay children are rounded up and killed or jailed because of nothing other than their being gay.

Finally, Kadaga’s throwaway claim that the country wants the Bahati Bill is based on a fanciful premise and, oddly for a politician, an impolitic reading of the situation on the ground. Martin Ssempa, David Bahati, James Nsaba Buturo and their ilk want the bill – mostly because they stand to make hundreds of thousands of dollars from extreme right-wing (mostly American) religious organizations who are fighting in Africa the morality war they have already lost in the United States. All told, the Ugandans who stand to gain directly from the passing of the bill stands at around … a paltry 100 souls!

Uganda really can’t do without foreign Aid!

But Uganda is a country with 34million people and  they aren’t  interested in who is sleeping with who in the privacy of their homes. If they were, our neighbors know where we live and you would have seen mass lynchings of gay men and women all over the country. None of that is happening because Ugandans are quite simply not that kind of people.

Yes, you will hear how 95% of Ugandan are opposed to homosexuality but it is also safe to argue that this figure doesn’t take into account the majority of Ugandans who don’t understand what they are opining about or who give knee-jerk responses that they can’t explain 5 minutes later. No, Ugandans don’t care one way or the other if gays live in their midst and it is opportunistic pastors and some people from the pro-gay side who make a living perpetrating the falsehood, who have painted the clearly wrong picture that Uganda is homophobic. It isn’t.

So, a bill that only myopic politicians and cynical pastors want is being touted as the panacea for Uganda’s moral decadence and Kadaga has ill-advisedly signed on to the silliness which, if made law,  will never pass the basic litmus test of legality or enforceability. On the more pessimistic side, Kadaga’s die is already cast and she will now forever be seen as the Speaker who took sides in a scheme that sought to suck the life out of the Ugandan economy just to please a handful of bigoted pastors.

It’s not the kind of legacy she wants to run on in 2015-16 but … to quote again from Macbeth … she is now “stepped in so far that should [she] wade no more, returning were as tedious as go o’er.”

President Yoweri Museveni and his prime minister, Amama Mbabazi, have Rebecca Kadaga exactly where they want her; on the political ropes.

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Let the Bahati Nazi Anti-Gay Bill be passed! 6

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Surrounded by “school children and teachers” (it’s not clear where they got them from in the middle of a school day, during examinations time), Uganda’s foremost homophobes have written a lengthy communiqué demanding that the Bahati anti-gay bill is debated and passed by Uganda’s Parliament as a Christmas gift to … themselves.

It’s time for their wish to be granted.

I have actually come to the conclusion that the best possible outcome IS for the Bahati Bill to be passed. Within hours, it’ll be in constitutional court, it’ll be repealed without a doubt (as it is in breach of several constitutional provisions), and everyone will be able to get on with their lives. The actual reality is that Ugandans pretty much stopped caring a long time ago, that is, assuming they ever did. … … The bill is a red-herring.  Always has been. (James Onen aka Fat Boy)

There are a number of reasons why debating and passing the bill is now the best outcome:

1. It is time for this bill to stop hanging over the gay community like a nuclear cloud. If it is passed by Parliament, as it surely will,  then we can deal with its consequences “as is” as opposed to as we guess it might be.

2. All these so-called pro-children pastors and politicians have used this bill to enhance their profiles, raise hundreds of thousands of dollars from evangelical extremists abroad, all in the name of saving children and Christianity as we know it, and will continue to do so as long as the bill lies comatose in Committee. The dishonesty this bill has engendered needs to finally be stopped.

3. Even the gay community needs to get closure on this bill one way or the other. As things stand, we have all these rag

It’s time for my close-up Mr. DeMille

tag LGBTI organizations, some with just one executive and a fictitious list of members, who talk to well wishers in yonder lands and ask for money on behalf of the gay community in Uganda ostensibly to fight this bill. If it is settled by Uganda’s courts, the bona fide gay lobby could then focus on raising awareness for issues that actually impact the gay community in Uganda such as HIV/Aids plus other health and wellness crises that have taken a back sit because they don’t grab the headlines, don’t make for sensational copy.

4. The Speaker of Uganda’s Parliament, peripatetic Rebecca Kadaga, (who I must admit I like a lot) is currently riding high in Uganda on the back of just this bill. She seems busier than a bee these days; turning up one morning in Quebec to spar with Canada’s foreign minister, the other she’s getting off the plane at Entebbe Airport to a hero’s welcome, the next she’s chairing human rights meetings in London, and the next she’s dancing the Tamenaibuga on top of a pick-up truck in Kamuli.

It is time for this bill to pass so that we can examine her stalking horse candidacy critically in the light of more deserving national concerns. It is very well for a politician to milk a vote-getting issue dry, albeit it one that tramples the human rights of a cross-section of her fellow citizens, but it is quite another for her to be given a free ride on everything else simply because she stood up to a boorish Canadian foreign minister.

I find myself on the extreme spectrum of those who want the damn bill to pass. I am curious to see how in the hell they’d enforce such a crappy law. (not to mention I plan to abuse it, BUM-CHECK road blocks … (Kim Bakugan John)

5. Last but not least, Sebaspace is sick and tired of talking about this bill. Let’s get it debated, passed, thrown out by the courts and then I can finally work on my edifying tome that I know will win me the Nobel Literature prize that I so deserve but which I can’t quite focus on yet because of all the din surrounding whether I will be in jail or alive once the damn bill is passed.

In fact it will be in my literary interest if I am thrown in jail or killed on account of this bill. Imagine those worldwide headlines … and my adoring fans screaming my name to the Pope to make me a saint …

Gay literary genius a martyr!  Uganda’s foremost gay literary genius jailed for life … Homophobic mob flashes gay literary genius in middle of a pot-holed street! … Jailed Ugandan gay literary genius up for a Pulitzer Prize … Ugandan gay genius the new Oscar Wilde … Sebaspace aced by Bahati Nazi law!

Let this bill be passed.

All right Mr. DeMille, I am ready for my close-up.

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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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Simon Lokodo heads a quasi-Gestapo unit in Uganda 10

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

Uganda has a Ministry of Ethics and Integrity, headed by a defrocked Catholic priest called Simon Lokodo. He was defrocked by the Catholic Church because he joined active politics against express orders not to do so.

Minister of Ethics – Simon Lokodo

There are, however, two odd elements to this ministry. The first and most obvious one is that the location of its offices seems to be a secret. The Ministry of Health’s headquarters are in Nakasero, near Mulago Hospital, the country’s leading referral medical facility. The Ministry of Finance and that of Foreign Affairs sit next to each other, across the street from the Houses of Parliament. The Ministry of Agriculture is embroiled in a corruption scandal, but we know it is in Nakasero and is about to be re-located back to its old home in Entebbe because they have run out of money to pay the exorbitant rents they signed up to.

The Ministry of Ethics and Integrity has no offices that you can walk into and ask questions. If you try to get access to their location, you are directed to call, make an appointment etc. so that they tell you where you can find them.

Secondly, you will not find, if you look for them, the terms of reference for Uganda’s Ministry of Ethics and Integrity. That means that the minister of Integrity can, more or less, do as he pleases.

And that is exactly what the ministers who have led this ministry have essentially been doing. They have acted as investigator, the police, judge, jury, executioner, seemingly with total impunity.

That makes a ministry without an office, without a staff that anyone can name (apart from the minister, of course) something akin to a Gestapo intelligence unit; accountable to no one, capable of launching forays into any establishment and accusing occupants of anything it wants, holding press conferences and claiming to have all sorts of evidence (adduced by itself of course) about anti-state activities … and getting away with it because no one really knows what it should be doing, how it operates, who it reports to, and there seems to be no avenue to question it.

Like his predecessor, James Hornsleth Nsaba-Buturo, Simon Lokodo can basically do as he pleases, just like a Gestapo official.

And doing as he pleases he is.

Check him out driving 30 miles to a public hotel and forcibly shutting down a human rights meeting - on just his personal whim. A few days ago, he did it again, this time shutting down an LGBT meeting organized in a Kampala suburb – because it was “engaged in illegal activity.” At no point, however, has Minister Lokodo attempted to explain what illegal activity was taking place. He has glibly mentioned “promotion of homosexuality.” Even if that was what the meeting was about, which it wasn’t, there is no specific law (yet) in Uganda against “promotion of homosexuality.”

You will not see Lokodo called to Parliament to explain his actions. Yes, homosexual sex is illegal in Uganda but isn’t it curious to any parliamentarian that Lokodo is now behaving as though being homosexual and/or discussion of gay issues is also illegal?

Even David Bahati‘s Nazi anti-gay bill that seeks to turn parents, teachers, counselors and doctors into gay informers, has not yet been passed into law. On what basis, then, is Lokodo personally breaking up LGBTI meetings with brute force, and manhandling participants out of their hotel rooms?

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Kahinda Otafiire under siege 1

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Has ridiculed the Bahati Bill: Minister Otafiire

The story about Minister Kahinda Otafiire’s ethical troubles wouldn’t have been of interest to yours truly in corruption-riven Uganda if it hadn’t been for one thing.

In the troubles that the gay community has had with cynical politicians and money-hungry pastors, one person in Yoweri Museveni’s cabinet has stood steadfastly (and openly) against the Bahati Nazi anti-gay bill: Kahinda Otafiire.

Otafiire has held a number of cabinet positions over the years, most lately the Justice portfolio. Where most Ugandan ministers have chosen to look on in supine cowardice, Otafiire has repeatedly gone public to make his skeptical views known. And, goodness gracious me, has he minced words when he took the microphone?

There are, of course, other cabinet members who know that the Bahati bill is a foolish piece of legislation that will only serve to turn criminals of parents, doctors, priests and counselors. But they don’t have the guts to speak out. Not so Kahinda Otafiire who has freely demanded of detractors to explain why it is their business who is doing what in the privacy of their bedrooms.

Being Minister of Justice would normally put Otafiire in a good position to kick David Bahati and his Nazi bill in the teeth. But this is Uganda where the Minister of Justice wields as much influence as the president lets him. So, despite Otafiire’s outspoken rubbishing of the Bahati Nazi bill, the pronouncements that have any impact are those of the president.

In that light, Museveni’s interview with the BBC, in which he admitted yet again that gays are not a Western import, would be more influential in shaping debate. But, despite his troubles with ethical lapses, Otafiire’s contribution to the discussion is no less helpful.

I guess it is a question of being grateful for any friends, wherever you can find them.

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Uganda Government Speaks: Bahati Bill will continue 6

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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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