Tag Archives: David Bahati

“Christianity is a mental issue in Uganda” 6

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The scathing analysis below was posted by someone else on another forum. With their permission, I am reproducing it, more or less verbatim, because I broadly agree with its thrust.

Holier than thou religious pontificating is the main reason Bahati’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill ever made it off the back of the drafting envelope, and it is pompous dogmatism that has kept the bill alive for almost four years now.

Ugandans also need an education urgently to understand that they live in a secular, and NOT religious, country. This means that religion should not, must not, be used to make national laws. Sadly, this lesson doesn’t seem to be sinking in and the Bible is constantly trawled out by fawning Ugandan Christians to justify why this and that moral code should be imposed.

Anyhow, here is that excellent excoriation of the hypocrisy, blindness and, dare one say it, ignorance of the Ugandan Christian:

The average Ugandan Christian is the most hypocritical, sadistic, evil, promiscuous, pretense-filled creature I have ever met; his/her concept of Jesus is weirdly wrapped around superstition, fear of hell, nauseating individualism, emptiness , meaningless religiosity and unusual levels of spiritual confusion.

The average Ugandan Christian is a cesspit writhing with jealousy, pettiness, sexual immorality, thievery, dogmatic heresies, selfishness and extraordinary ignorance. This piece of creation thinks that by attending religious services once a week and engaging in all manner of social filth during the other 6 days, it will earn eternal life.

Being ignorant and also spiritually illiterate, the Ugandan Christian is properly exploited by the eloquent con artist brandishing the Bible, proving that every day a Christian sucker is born in Uganda.

A Ugandan Christian thinks that s/he can bribe (tithing) God into giving him/her a BMW that will act as a tool for admiration /envy by the walking populations. A Ugandan Christian claims to know Jesus but a short discussion with him/her will prove that s/he knows Jesus as much as a hyena knows the origins of the universe.

The Ugandan Christian will joyously float in lakes of filthy wealth when his neighbor is dying of hunger; the Ugandan Christian man will have no qualms cheating on his wife 35 times a year; the Ugandan Christian will have no compunction prostituting herself to her lecturers to pass her degree; the Ugandan Christian harbors some of the most severe strands of jealousy you [will] ever come across.

The average Ugandan Christian man who spends all his fortune on alcohol to the financial detriment of his family will find no problem attending a church service. The average Ugandan Christian girl will find no problem sleeping with 140 men before she meets [the] man of her dreams and is whisked to the church for a ‘Christian’ wedding.

Christian Uganda is a religio-socio-economic filthy lake where all manners of sexual immorality, greed, individualism, corruption, alcoholism, pettiness, nudity, backbiting, jealousy and spiritual darkness find their roots and germinate, being water by the collective hypocrisy of members of this faith.

In short, Christians in Uganda have mental issues. (Kojo Cyril Ojigbani)

Amen, amen, amen.

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The Bahati Anti Homosexuality Bill: The Stage Is Set 4

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

The Major Players around Uganda's AHB

The Major Players around Uganda’s AHB

Here is an attempt to summarize what is at stake:

President Yoweri Museveni:

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

Doesn't want the bill: Yoweri Museveni

Doesn’t want the bill: Yoweri Museveni

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

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

The Parliament of Uganda:

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

Rebecca Kadaga

Her authority on the line: Rebecca Kadaga

Her authority on the line: Rebecca Kadaga

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

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

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

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

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

Private Courts Inc justifies their actions which led to the closure of Victoria University

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

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

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

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

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

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

Uganda’s LGBTI Community:

Just a pawn in the ideological war: David Bahati

Just a pawn in the ideological war: David Bahati

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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HIV/Aids is already killing LGBTI Ugandans! 9

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I have a prediction to make:

The headline-grabbing lawsuit brought by the friends of  Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG) against Scott Lively in Massachusetts recently will likely not succeed.

The basis of the lawsuit is that Lively incited hate and violence against Ugandan gay men and women through proxies such as Stephen Langa and Martin Ssempa, ” for the decade-long campaign he has waged, in agreement and coordination with his Ugandan counterparts, to persecute persons on the basis of their gender and/or sexual orientation and gender identity.”

I think Scott Lively cannot be proved to have incited any persecution of gays in Uganda. Yes, he has on various occasions said things we don’t like about gay cures and how gays are terrible for Uganda,  Africa and the world. That’s just his opinion and he is entitled to it. I believe  American and Ugandan laws entitle him to those opinions, too.

But, one suspects, that the American friends of SMUG who filed the lawsuit (SMUG could not afford such a lawsuit) knew this, and their real motive was a public relations (PR) one.  Observers can debate whether they used the most cost-effective tactic or not. I think their tactics have a place in human rights struggles such as the one SMUG is engaged in.

Which brings me to the real reason for writing this:

I think we should be doing more to move the debate forward in the gay community in Uganda. A commentator, Frank McMullan, recently suggested that I do that instead of peppering activists with questions. I think he had a point.

So, what do I think the gay rights struggle in Uganda should be about?

The gay struggle needs to augment the “We are here, we are queer/They are killing us” gay human rights movement, now the only currency doing the rounds in activists’ circles in Uganda and around the world, with an additional, serious, movement targeting the health and wellness of gay Ugandans in Uganda.

Frank Mugisha & Kasha Nabagesera

The faces of ‘Gay Uganda’: Frank Mugisha & Kasha Nabagesera

The  “they are killing us” activists have a place still. It is just that it seems that judicial killing of gays is all we are talking about and everything else, such as advocating for equal access to specialized medical care that Ugandan heterosexuals take for granted, is but a parenthesis. The reason for this might be that the current crop of Ugandan advocates already have enough on their plates. Given their schedules, it would be surprising if they didn’t.

There is thus a need for a different, medically qualified (or trained) arm to focus on the less ‘sexy,’, less headline-grabbing health and wellness issues.

Uganda needs a separate “HIV/Aids is killing us” message to push for studies to establish statistics, trends of HIV/Aids among men who have sex with men, and the general LGBTI population. It goes without saying that there are infinitely more  Ugandan gay boys (especially) who have died of HIV/Aids, due to neglect and lack of care,  in the last five years than have been killed by mob action or the law because they are gay.

We thus need to let the nascent movements trying to make HIV/Aids in the gay community in Uganda a hot topic, too, have room to breath because we can’t wait for the fight against “killing the gays” to be won for the fight against HIV/Aids in the gay community to get organized. Think of it as a two-pronged approach: health/public health/HIV AND Gay Rights with different protagonists leading each one since the expertise required is different.

If you sense an undercurrent of criticism, it is intended. I am of the view that, in the quest for the  “they are killing us” dollars and media space,  the “HIV/Aids is killing us” message  in our community has been relegated to an afterthought.

Yet you read that the incidence of HIV/Aids in Kenya (where information is more readily available and the fight against the spread of  HIV/Aids in the gay community more concerted) is 35% among men who have sex with men. It stands to reason that the statistics are grimmer in Uganda where studies are stymied by government disinterest and, little to no coordination in the community.

The only professional study I have seen on the HIV scourge in the gay community in Uganda, the CDC’s Crane Survey Report (2008/9) suggests to me that we are sitting on a problem so serious as to make the effects of David Bahati’s proposed anti-gay legislation look like a walk in the park. If nothing is done on the HIV/Aids problem in the gay community, the 1.5% annual rise in the gay infections being reported countrywide will shoot to 5% and beyond – as surely as night follows day.

The HIV/Aids problem in the gay community in Uganda therefore needs to be made a much bigger priority than it is at the moment. It would be fair enough for the current faces of  the “they are killing us” message to argue that they neither have the time nor the competence to fight every battle.

That’s  why the Ugandans willing to fight the “HIV/Aids is killing gays”  fight should be actively encouraged to step up to lobby Uganda’s government and anyone else they think will listen. Our friends in America and elsewhere should also be encouraged by the already established representatives of ‘Gay Uganda’ to organize PR exercises for that message, too.

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Victoria University – a counterproductive step 7

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

Money quote from the Vice Chancellor:

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

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

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

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

From a  gay Ugandan man I say …

Amen. Amen, Amen.

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Questions the anti-gay brigade struggles to answer 3

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No bill: Ugandan girls walking around in the nude

No bill: Ugandan girls walking around in the nude

Now and then, it helps to revisit the questions that we would like those supporting the Bahati [Nazi] anti-gay bill to answer. We’ve asked them ad nauseam but I am not aware that a coherent response has ever been provided anywhere.

1. The Bahati Bill was not a result of a spike in “gay recruitment in schools” or a threat to the family as is claimed. So, what prompted it? Money? There is a lot of money to be made by Christian evangelicals such as Martin Ssempa who will gladly fight, for hundreds of thousands of dollars, the proxy morality fight already lost in the United States. His vested interest and that of the people who pay his way is well documented.

Peripatetic Rebecca Kadaga - this time visiting the Pope at the Vatican

Pushing for bill: peripatetic Rebecca Kadaga – this time visiting the Pope at the Vatican

2. Do you know that under this bill, everyone in Uganda who knows a gay man/woman is at risk of a 3-year jail term if they don’t hand them in to the police? Did you also know that priests, counselors, doctors and parents are also mandated to turn in anyone they discover is gay? When did we last read about such stuff, “read” because most of us are too young to have seen it first hand? Does Nazi Germany ring any bells?

3. The Uganda government’s own figures show that 176 girls were molested by their male relatives last year. Those are the ones on record and it stands to reason that the true number is much higher. Do you know of even a faintly comparable statistic on the gay side? What then makes Bahati claim that gays are a threat to Uganda?

4. Ugandans (and their president, Museveni) keep on arguing that they don’t like the “flaunting it.” What sort of

Junket straight ladies flaunting it: Zari and Sylvia Owori

No Bill: Junket straight ladies flaunting it: Zari and Sylvia Owori

flaunting it in Uganda have they seen anywhere that requires Parliament to enact a law? Anything near what one sees with the ladies of the night at Speke Hotel or on the drink junkets on boat cruises on Lake Victoria? I have done most, if not all, the night clubs in Kampala, sometimes from Wednesday through Sunday and I have never seen a gay couple or a semblance of a gay couple ‘flaunting it.’ Am I looking in the wrong places?

5. How exactly do you recruit someone into any kind of sexuality? Would you make the same argument if a woman of 45 lured a boy of 15 into her bosoms and he went along? Or should we argue that this would be okay since she would be recruiting him into the ‘normal’ sexuality? If not, why isn’t Uganda also enacting a separate law for that sort of thing?

6. Child molestation/preying on the young (gay or straight) is already a crime on Uganda’s books. Why does Uganda need an additional law specifically targeting gays for stuff that both gay and straight people are capable of doing?

Conservative? Ugandan women routinely dispense with knickers

No bill: Ugandan women are increasingly caught out with no knickers

Finally, is Uganda really a conservative country? Do you remember happily married Gen. Kazini (RIP) and how he died in the bedsit of a mistress in the wee hours of the morning? Conservative? How about the recent Zari/Bad Black et al shenanigans? Conservative? Is the way girls dress in Club Rouge (micro-minis, roof high LBTs, no knickers, breasts hanging out etc.) reminiscent of the olden days that you want to see continue in Uganda? Do you know that there are night clubs in the heart of Kampala that host live sex shows (straight) if you have just 20,000/= ($7.00) for the entrance? Conservative? Really?

Or should we argue that Ugandans are conservative because they attend church in record numbers?

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A 16-year old Ugandan gets it on the Bahati [Nazi] anti-gay bill 4

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First you are blown away by the quality of writing – which tells you immediately that this is an exceptional young man. Then you are floored by the flawless reasoning.

Here is a very thoughtful piece from a 16-year-old Ugandan, a young man who puts the idiocy of the Bahati Bill and many Ugandans who support it in their place. And, no, this young man obviously didn’t attend Uganda’s Universal Primary Education:

*****************************************

It is easy for most Africans to blame their government for any national or political immorality, justice, and corruption. As stated in one of my previous blog posts, the Ugandan populace should feel no different. However, in light of the recent publicity surrounding the proposed Anti-Homosexuality Bill, I point a finger towards not only to the government, but also to the Ugandan people.

Last month, Rebecca Kadaga was involved in a row with Canada’s Foreign Minister John Baird over gay rights at a meeting of the Inter-Parliamentary Union in Quebec. When she returned home, Ms. Kadaga was met by [hundreds] of Anti-Homosexual leaders and supporters. This began the Speaker’s quest to ensure the enforcement of the Anti-Homosexuality Bill by the end of the year. The bill is meant to heighten the already severe consequences of homosexual acts or any support of homosexuality, meriting life in prison and even death in some cases. Earlier this week, Kadaga said that “Ugandans want that law as a Christmas gift. They have asked for it and we’ll give them that gift.” Having grown up there, I can attest to the extreme conservative climate present in Uganda. It is understandable that Ugandans would be hesitant in accepting homosexuality. That being said it doesn’t justify the attempted detainment and/or eradication of gays. This is an issue of human rights, a subject that Uganda has struggled with for decades. Citizens should be more empathetic.

The fact that the government is essentially harboring the systematic extermination of homosexuals is absolutely ridiculous and unacceptable, especially in the progressive world we live in today. Although, regardless of Kadaga’s big words, the likelihood of the bill passing is low, due to Uganda’s dependence of foreign aid and investment. The global community has expressed its strong positions against the bill and countries like the UK have already frozen their aid to the African country. Economically, “Uganda is still a colony,” says my father.

But even if the law isn’t officially instituted, the real tragedy is the number of Ugandans in favor of it. That a people could be so ruthless as to support the killing of thousands for something that is out of human control, that a people could be so closed-minded that they would harbor the detainment and death of thousands due to their sexuality or support of something that contradicts their personal beliefs, speaks volumes and will ultimately determine the progression of that people. That a people can preach love in their respective religions and campaign for peace from their government, while they simultaneously rally for the execution of the innocent, is the height of hypocrisy, and reveals the corruptions that exist within in the church.

Whereas religion should serve a peaceful and harmonious celebration of common beliefs, it is instead a way to justify savagery. Many Ugandans argue that homosexuality is an attack on the institution of marriage but I doubt that their mere existence acts as a threat to anyone or anything. Uganda has been plagued with a warped Christianity and it is this corruption that will limit its progression. Countless nationals have long criticized their governments for being ruthless, corrupt, and unjust, however. As this episode can show us, Ugandans are not much different from their leadership. So, before casting stones at the likes of Amin, Obote, and Museveni, it would be who of them, to asses their own sin.

(Kalanzi Kajubi)

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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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Time for Uganda’s major players to pronounce themselves on the Bahati Bill 10

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Want death/jail for homosexuals: Rebecca Kadaga and Cecilia Ogwal

We already know that Uganda’s Yoweri Museveni doesn’t like the Bahati anti-gay bill because he has said so publicly. Yes, it was wrung out of him by a persistent foreign press but Museveni is on record about his views which are that homosexuality is not new in Africa and, more pertinently, that he doesn’t want anything to do with this bill. His motivation for rejecting the bill is debatable of course – but that’s not our concern right now.

Don’t favor the bill: Kizza Besigye, Erias Lukwago, Yoweri Museveni

One of Yoweri Museveni’s long term advisers, John Nnagenda, is also on record condemning the bill because he, rightly, realizes that it is a bill against love.

We also know that the outgoing leader of the opposition, Forum for Democratic Changes’s (FDC) Kiiza Besigye would have decriminalized homosexuality if he had had the chance because he is on record saying so a month before the last elections which he lost to Yoweri Museveni.

Speaker of the House, Rebecca Kadaga, recently let herself be railroaded by personal political ambition into the anti-gay camp when she was ambushed by Canadian Foreign Minister, John Baird. She engaged in an undiplomatic spat with Baird which was not her creation, but which nonetheless ill-advisedly drove her into the cynical embrace of failed Ugandan politicians and criminal convicts.

Mike Mukula seems to see ‘jail time’ as an improvement on the bill

Right now she is,  to quote from Macbeth,  “stepped in so far that should [she] wade no more, returning were as tedious as go o’er.” Dokolo woman MP, Cecilia Ogwal needed no needling to go off like a fire cracker against homosexuality recently – something she had every right to do, and which put her sentiments on record.

A few years ago, around 2009, current mayor of Kampala, then member of

Always dapper: Mike Mukula (NRM’s Chairman in Uganda’s East)

Parliament for Kampala, Erias Lukwago went on record and explained that he thought the law was unnecessary but it was politically too risky not to support it. I for one read that to mean that he doesn’t support the bill.

But what are the rest of Uganda’s major politicians thinking about Parliament’s drive to criminalize ‘love?’

What does Uganda Federal Alliance’s (UFA) Beti Kamya think of the bill? Kamya has in the past waxed indignant about the sovereignty of Uganda’s Parliament but it’s not clear that she has ever clearly stated what she thinks about the merits/demerits of the bill itself.

Views on the bill unknown: Beti Kamya & Muhoozi Kainerugaba

FDC”s  presidential aspirants, Mugisha Muntu and Nandala Mafabi? I have asked Nandala Mafabi on his Twitter account about his views but am yet to see any response.

The Democratic Party’s (DP’) Betty Namboze? The National Resistance Movement’s (NRM)’s Mike Mukula, Janet Museveni? The army’s Muhozi Kainerugaba (also son to Yoweri Museveni)? He is not a politician but his name keeps on popping up as a potential president. He is also the de facto head of Uganda’s intelligence services so it stands to reason that his views on this bill are pertinent as, presumably, it will be part of his remit to collect ‘buggery’ data without which it will surely be impossible to prosecute homosexuals.

John Nagenda: This is a bill “against love”

Mike Mukula touts himself on his Twitter account as a 2016 presidential aspirant. Mukula seems to be suggesting that the bill will be more acceptable if the death penalty is removed and replaced with jail time. I have asked him why ‘loving’ should be penalized with jail time and I hope he will respond.

Museveni’s wife, Janet, hasn’t indicated so openly what her future political ambitions are but she is mentioned now and then as a possible shoo-in for 2016 should her husband, lo behold, give up the leadership mantle.

What are all these honorable and notable people’s views on the Bahati anti-gay bill? It is surely time for them to tell Uganda and the world what they think.

Why now?

Presidential aspirant: Mugisha Muntu

Simple. It is very likely that the bill will be passed by Uganda’s 9th Parliament. While no one should question the legitimacy of Uganda’s Parliament to debate even a heinous bill such as this one, it is important that politicians of whatever hue let their people know where they stand on it.

Beti Kamya and Muhoozi Kainerugaba, for instance, are not Parliamentarians. Yet they are leaders of sizable constituencies in Uganda, and so their views on a matter that seeks to criminalize homosexuals, their parents, doctors, priests and counselors should be made public.

So:

should gay Ugandans be jailed for 14 years simply for being who who they are? Should they instead be executed? Should parents, friends, counselors, priests, doctors snitch on whoever they find out is gay or risk a 3-year jail term? Should there be a separate law at all to target homosexuals in a way that heterosexuals are not targeted for crimes that either sexual persuasion can commit?

These are the questions our leaders need to answer once and for all.

We wait …  with bated breath …

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A letter to Rebecca Kadaga – from a supportive gay Ugandan 20

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

Madam Speaker, the right Honorable Rebecca Kadaga, Member of Parliament (MP) for the Kamuli District Women’s Constituency since 1989.

You are on a roll!

Over the last three weeks you have managed to hog the media spotlight almost exclusively, relegating Uganda’s president to a parenthesis. That makes you something of a wonder woman. It takes chutzpah to push Uganda’s president to the inside pages and you must be congratulated for stepping up in such a bold way.

First of all, Madam Speaker, welcome back from Canada.

You were absolutely right to stand up to John Baird when he upbraided you in public about the murder of David Kato. That case had

On a roll: Uganda’s Rebecca Kadaga

nothing to do with you and you were never part of the court case that eventually convicted Kato’s lover for that heinous crime. So, you did what you had to do for yourself and, indeed, for Uganda’s pride. John Baird would never speak to the Saudis or Kuwaitis in that manner – yet those countries have far more glaring gay and women’s rights abuses than Uganda.

But as with everything, Madam Speaker, please remember that hubris is a terrible vice in politics. By hubris, I mean an excess of pride, ambition or self-confidence. More often than not, it leads politicians to overreach.

Take your current involvement with failed politicians like James Nsaba-Buturo and convicted felons like Martin Ssempa and Michael Kyazze. While you have every right to listen to whoever wishes you to lend them an audience, as the Speaker of the House you represent the entire Parliament as well as the country. You thus cannot be seen to be siding with any one constituency even when their cause might further your own political ambitions. Speakers of the House have to be seen to be non-partisan, non-aligned, neutral. But of course you know this already.

Madam Speaker, this gay man wants you to encourage Uganda’s Parliament to debate and pass the bill. My reasons for this are detailed here. In short, this bill has hung over our heads like a cloud for three years now and it is time to resolve the issues surrounding it once and for all. If you support the bill because you feel it is against our culture, so be it.

But the facts don’t bear you out.

You are too smart not to be aware that Buganda’s Kabaka Mwanga was homosexual without any urging from colonialists. Uganda’s own president, the leader of your National Resistance Movement party agrees, and has admitted it publicly, that homosexuality has always been part of the African and Ugandan fabric. In fact, if you re-read

Wasn’t aware of the danger as he enjoyed himself: Damocles

your anthropology, you will find that homosexuality was tolerated before the white man came to Africa with his Bible – that foremost foreign import that our detractors love to subjectively, but liberally, quote from. I gather that you have no children of your own but it can’t be lost on you that all gay men and women in Uganda (500,000 and counting according to unofficial estimates) must have been begotten through heterosexual unions.

I thus disagree with your interpretation of the historical facts but feel that the bill should nonetheless go ahead since Uganda has a parliamentary system of making laws and the Bahati [Nazi] Bill which seeks to turn mothers, doctors, counselors into informers has already been tabled before the House.

homo bible 8393622_nMadam Speaker, allow me to take you back to Shakespeare and caution you against “vaulting ambition, which o’erleaps itself, and falls on the other side.” Given what you must surely know befell Macbeth and his over-ambitious wife, a little more circumspection, forethought, moderation before you speak might not come amiss.

Remember, too, the fable of Icarus who flew too close to the sun. Or that of Dionysius, the tyrant of Syracuse and his courtier named Damocles. You might be on a roll now, but there are all sorts of threats behind the glory you are seeking. A week is a very long time in politics but there are three more years to go to Uganda’s next presidential election – literally a lifetime.

Madam Speaker:

Hang on to your political ambitions. I would, however, presume to remind you that, as Speaker, you represent the entire country, including minorities – not just disgraced politicians, bigoted Parliamentarians or convicted religious prelates.

Madam Speaker:

Whether this bill is passed or not, you still have my support in your obvious quest to become the next president of Uganda – that is if I am not jailed and/or killed before 2016 by the legislation that you are so busy tying your colors to in which case my support will be moot.

From a gay Ugandan, living in Uganda, that you seek to criminalize purely on account of who he is, but who nonetheless supports your presidential ambitions because he is totally fed up to the back teeth of this uncaring, bungling, corruption-ridden, thieving, tired, rusted, putrid dish of a government.

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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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