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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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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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A freshly rejuvenated Ugandan homophobic lobby goes to work 8

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In a communiqué they have entitled “Statement from Concerned citizens,” a freshly energized anti-gay cabal hasn’t wasted much time going to work on Speaker of Parliament, Rebecca Kadaga, with their singular intention being to pass the Bahati Nazi anti-gay bill. In Kadaga, who is running for president in 2016 if she were a day, they are apparently preaching to the choir.

Long though it is, it’s best to put down their deliberations verbatim … even if only for posterity:

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

Statement  by Coalition of Religious leaders, Civil Society

Organizations, Parents, Children & Citizens of Uganda

[Delivered at Public Meeting  with Speaker of Parliament, Rt. Hon. Alitwala Rebecca Kadaga at the CHOGM Gardens next to the Parliament of Uganda on November 9, 2012]

The Rt. Hon Speaker of Parliament, Members  of Parliament

Religious Leaders Civil Society Leaders Parents

Students

Ladles & Gentlemen

All protocol observed

Rt. Hon. Speaker, we thank you for making the time in your busy schedule to come and meet us as a coalition of religious leaders, civil society leaders, parents, and students who are here representing the citizens of Uganda.

Many of our people who came to welcome you at the airport last week were not able to see you and were not able to properly  welcome you back in our warm Ugandan sty/e. For that matter, we now wish to welcome you properly  back to Uganda after doing such a wonderful job of standing for our values and culture in Canada. We thank you for accepting our request for this meeting.

We also wish to now thank you officially  as Ugandans for the brave and firm way that you defended the sovereignty of our nation. You did not allow yourself to be bullied or .intimidated by Canada and other powerful Western nations that are fond of arm-twisting developing nations to force them to adopt Western culture some of which is perversion such as homosexuality.

We thank you as a nation and honor you for following the example of the President in making a historic stand in the face of such arrogance as was being displayed at the IPU meeting.

Indeed this brave stand you made as one of the delegates turned out to be the GIANT STAND that represented the position of all the right thinking nations of the world.  We have heard of how delegates from African, Arab, Asian and South

America gave you a standing ovation  after your prolific  defense of our culture and morals.  We say BRAVO to you Hon. Speaker. We as Ugandans are proud of you and you have made us proud.

 Rt. Hon. Speaker, we are gathered here this morning very troubled by what we consider as a serious threat  to our children, marriages, families, culture, convictions and our very way of life.

Rt. Hon Speaker, allow me to refresh your memory.

In the  early  months  of  2009, information came to  light  that  our  children  were being molested  and recruited into  gay activities  (homosexuality and lesbianism). This was being carried  out by well-organized and well trained  homosexual groups operating  in  our  schools  and  institutions of  higher  learning  with  funding  and backing from some Western governments and international organizations.

The whole nation  was outraged  and on April 23, 2009 a petition was delivered to Parliament with  signatures  from  all over the nation  asking Parliament  to urgently take measures to safeguard our children and nation from the onslaught of this destructive vice of homosexuality.

Rt. Hon Speaker, the petition was received by none other than yourself when you were the Deputy Speaker. Subsequently, on October 14, 2009, Hon. David Bahati the MP for Ndorwa  West tabled the Anti-Homosexuality Bill [AHB] in Parliament.

The  AHB  raised  unprecedented international  reactions   and  response  mainly coming from  international gay activists, international organizations  and Western nations that have come under the influence  of the gay agenda. While the spirit of the AHB was mainly to provide  protection to the innocent children  of Uganda, the gay activists using the  powerful Western  media  which  they  control, deliberately distorted the facts about  the bill and misled the world  into  thinking that the AHB was a “hunt gays and kill gays” bill. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Uganda as a nation  was then  put  under  pressure to block the  AHB. To this end, government   officials,   MPs  and  the   President   were   pressurized   using  every possible means and in every possible  international forum  to  drop  the  AHB. The international gay machinery  and Western  governments then  poured  millions  of United States Dollars in Uganda to support the gay agenda in Uganda.

 Some of the things that this money was used for include: training  and building the capacity of Ugandan gay activist groups, recruiting and training  lawyers to defend homosexuals   in  court,  directly   offering money  to  people  in  key  positions  to oppose the  AHB and threatening them  with  denial  of visas and other  threats  if they   don’t    agree.   They   also  sponsored    programs   in  the   media   that   are sympathetic  to  the  gay agenda, offering money  and favors to  lure  weak, needy and poor  Ugandan  youth  into  homosexuality/lesbianism. They further embarked on strategic  activities in  our  institutions of  higher  learning  where  students  are directly  and deliberately indoctrinated with  gay-biased information in the lecture rooms right  from  first  year. It is deplorable and indeed  sad to note  that  students who refuse to accept the gay philosophy are deliberately failed.

In the  early  months  of  last year, some  sections  of the  international gay activist groups began celebrating their  success in managing  to  ”kill” the  AHB. However, the  bill  has  managed  to  stay  alive  and  has successfully  crossed  from  the 8th Parliament to the 9th  Parliament.

Rt. Hon  Speaker, we  are  grieved  as Ugandans  to  watch  this  drama  of  events happen  before  our  very  eyes as the  vice of  homosexuality  takes its toll  on our children  and  nation. Parents  mourn   quietly   as their   sons  and  daughters  are molested in schools by homosexuals  and they have nowhere  to turn for help.

Young boys  are  constantly  sexually  abused  with  impunity by  powerful personalities and their  cries fall on deaf ears as their  abusers threaten them  and boast  of  being  ”untouchable” in  our  very  nation,  where  according  to  the  law books  homosexuality  is  still  a crime.   As though   that  is  not  enough,  there  is rampant  availability of pornography. Also numerous  movies and soap operas that are broadcast  in the  nation  contain  homosexual content.  This is all a deliberate strategy by the gay agenda to desensitize our children  and reprogram their  minds and attitudes to accept homosexuality as a viable and equal alternative  to heterosexuality.

Rt. Hon. Speaker, we cannot sit back while  such destructive phenomenon is taking place in our nation. We therefore as responsible citizens feel duty bound to bring this  matter  to  your  attention as the  leader  of  Parliament  so that  you our  law makers can do  something to  quickly  address this  deteriorating situation  in our nation.

 We  therefore  stand   united   as  Ugandans  on  this   matter  of   homosexuality regardless of our tribes, ethnicities, political affiliations, social and religious backgrounds and wish to state as follows:-

i.        That  we  support  the  stand  that  His Excellency the  President, you Rt.Hon. Speaker and the government have taken on homosexuality  stating that it is a vice and as such is not an acceptable behavior  in our nation.

ii.       That  we  will  stand  behind  the  government  and  all  our  leaders  and encourage  them  to stand firmly  and defend  our position as a nation on homosexuality  in   all   fora,   whether    local  or   international.  We  as Ugandans are ready to pay the price of maintaining our values, cultural and  societal  norms  whatever  the  cost might  be. We categorically  say that we will not sell our national  birthright in exchange for a few dollars to softening on the vice of homosexuality.

iii.       We encourage  all leaders at all levels to emulate  your good example Rt.

Hon  Speaker  and  that  of  the  President  to  accurately  represent  our position as a nation on homosexuality.

We now request you Rt. Han Speaker to use your good offices to:-

i.            Urgently  have the  Parliament  debate  and pass the  Anti-Homosexuality Bill without any further delay. Nothing  would  make us happier  than a dully passed anti-homosexuality bill as a Christmas gift this year.

ii.        Institute a parliamentary committee to  investigate  the  extent  of  the recruitment of our  children  into  homosexuality· and the  impact  of this vice in our schools, institutions of higher learning and any other relevant areas of our society.

iii.       Establish a safe mechanism  whereby  our  sons and daughters who are molested  by homosexuals can be protected from  harm by the homosexual abusers and their machinery.

iv.       Maintain homosexual  behavior as a crime in our law books.

v.            Explore  ways  of  collaborating or  working together with  the  religious groups,  civil  society  groups,  other  stakeholders  such  as schools and universities to find viable interventions to mitigate the damage that has been   wrecked    in   our   society   by  the   gay  agenda   that   has  been operational in our nation for some time now.

In closing, we are aware that some of our youth have been misled by gay activists and  have  been   led   into   the   vice  of   homosexuality  using  inducement   and enticement. We  are  also aware  that  there  are  those  whose  surroundings  and other  factors  leads them  to  same sex attractions. For such people, we extend a hand  of  love  and  understanding and give  them  the  good  news  that  change is possible through  counseling, guidance and spiritual  and professional help.

To this end, no Ugandan  should sentence themselves  to a life of misery because of the false gay propaganda  that  change is impossible.  Many  homosexual  people have been successfully restored  to heterosexuality over the centuries.  Change is possible  and  our   religious   leaders  and  civil  society   organizations   with   the appropriate competencies will  spearhead the move to· bring  restoration to those Ugandans who need it.

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

Members present:
1.3 0% of Ugandan MPs were present at the conference.
2. The main religious leaders were present
3. The Mufti was represented by the Imaam from Old Kampala,
4. Alex Mitala from the National Born Again fellowship.
5.Kiganda from Kingdom FM who also leads the Kampala Pentecostal Churches in Uganda
6. Joseph Serwadda from Born Again Faith Federation who also heads Impact FM and Victory Church
7.  Martin Ssempa
8. Simon Lokodo  – Minister of Ethics and Integrity
9. Hon David Bahati, MP
10. Speaker of Parliament – Hon Kadaga (chief guest)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Frank Ocean’s open-heart venting coming to you in Africa

Coming Out, Gay - Education, Gay Relationships, Gay Social • Tags: , , , ,

A kiss in the dark/A  certain time I can call you/A letter of love/But no name did you sign/Pretending to all that we were just friends when I saw you/I didn’t know that you wanted me to be/I didn’t know that you wanted me for your, to be/Your secret love … (Luther Vandross)

There are  singers/musicians in Uganda that I know are gay. I have interacted with them as gay men and women, have seen them seeking gay love, have witnessed their hopes for love, struggles and  disappointments with their  gay relationships and listened to  their doubts about same-sex loving in a country where the entire phenomenon is all too often defined by the empty-mind din of people like Martin Ssempa, James Nsaba Buturo and Simon Lokodo.

And so it doesn’t surprise me at all when I now see those erstwhile gay men run around with girls,  professing undying love for one after the other, often in their songs. There is nothing for it but to fall into line and toe the straight line if you wish to remain musically relevant in Uganda.

But is there really nothing for it?

Attitudes towards homosexuality in Uganda are indeed changing. The views of the younger generation are discernibly more sophisticated than those of their parents where homosexual loving is concerned. Since life is about the young replacing the old, it stands to reason that It should only be a matter of time before gay Ugandan musicians are pouring their hearts out a la Frank Ocean.

About a year ago, I had a discussion with one of the most successful musicians in Uganda today who is, I should guess, about 15 years younger than me. Having met in an environment where my sexuality was not a concern, I was introduced to him as ‘our gay friend.’ He didn’t miss a beat, and we went on to discuss why being gay was such a big deal in Uganda etc. His enlightenment was as refreshing as it was, in my mind, an eye-opener that the struggle for acceptance even in Uganda is heading in the right direction. This musician already knew some of the gay musicians I knew and wasn’t fazed in the least that they ‘swung on the other side’ to use Ugandan parlance.

And, of course, as Uganda’s schools seek to attain international standards, the issue of homosexuality has to be tackled in classrooms as part of the curriculum. British GCSEs and other international curricula demand that human differences be acknowledged and tolerated. This might send shivers of horror down Simon Lokodo and Martin Ssempa’s spines but there is nothing they can do about it if their government is authorizing private schools to adopt international education standards. Those come with, among very many other things, requirements that children be educated to appreciate  that being gay is part and parcel of life.

So, it will be only a matter of time before we dance to thinly veiled homosexual-loving lyrics from one of our young gay singers in Uganda. The views expressed by our young people especially give me confidence that if we are alive long enough, we shall have a Frank Ocean heartfelt gay outpouring in Uganda in my lifetime.

So, I only have to pray for time since … where there is time, there is life.

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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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Enemies the African gay community needs desperately 2

Gay - Political, Martin Ssempa • Tags: , , , , ,

When the Reverend Jerry Falwell died on May 15, 2007, it was a milestone for both the evangelical and gay movements in the United States albeit for different reasons. The evangelical Bible belt lost one of the most vocal leaders it had ever had and the gay movement lost one of the most vocal enemies it had ever been fortunate to have.

Jerry Falwell

With the Moral Majority movement that he established in 1979, Falwell excoriated abortion, homosexuality and pornography with such venom and ferocity that America sat up and listened. The Moral Majority lumped the tripartite “evils” together and galvanized the religious right behind any political candidate that agreed with their message. But they also unwittingly did homosexuality (especially) a favor: they brought it into mainstream discussion and their constant fulminations against homosexuals helped keep it there, helping mainstream America realize that homosexuals were not the threat Falwell intractably said they were.

As his influence waned, Falwell’s outlandish views seemed to grow. At the height of Falwell’s paranoia, he condemned a cartoon character in the BBC’s children’s program, theTeletubbies, as being gay. Then he famously blamed gays, lesbians, feminists (among other “evils”) for the September 11 terrorist attacks on New York City and even the remaining flag bearers who still believed in Falwell’s sanity hid away in embarrassment, leaving him exposed and alone. Jerry Falwell, therefore, died as much of heart problems as he did of melancholy at being sidelined by even his once staunchest followers, and rendered irrelevant by a country that had once seemingly eaten out of the palm of his hand.

Over the years, listeners had, rightly, wondered how preaching hate was compatible with the overwhelming Biblical message of love and inclusion. Others silently wondered what Falwell wanted them to do with their children, relatives and friends who were homosexual and most realized that he really had no practical answers to their silent queries. So, thanks to Falwell’s fire and brimstone excoriation of the tripartite vices, much of thinking America resorted to common sense and their natural decency. Falwell became a lone figure, whistling in the dark, with only his most fervent and intransigent followers bothering to take him seriously.

As one of his eulogists, Dr. James Dobson, put it: “Jerry’s passions and convictions changed the course of our country for the better over the last 20 years.”

One couldn’t come up with a more apt description of Falwell’s defining influence on the legitimizing of the tripartite “evils” as Falwell them. The irony is striking.

Uganda, too, once had her own Falwell who, alas, was silenced when she was fired; Miria Matembe. As Minister of Ethics and Integrity in the 1990s, Matembe did more to highlight the existence of homosexuality in Uganda than any other politician. Thanks to Matembe, she even got the president and his wife to wade into the debate. Both, made outrageous pronouncements, with the President going so far as to advocate that homosexuals should be arrested and imprisoned. Ugandans sat up and listened.

Thanks to Matembe’s stridency, homosexuality became mainstream discussion in the late 1990s and sound minds took a more critical look around the phenomenon. No straw poll has ever been taken but the general agreement seems to be that, thanks to Matembe, every educated Ugandan now knows or has heard about a male or female homosexual. In 2007, a poll claimed that 95% of those questioned were against homosexuality. It would be flattering if the 95% also comprised 95% of the Ugandan population but that is wishful thinking for the time being. Better still, the level of intellectual discourse on this subject keeps on rising and, with it, acceptance.

Rev. Luke Orombi

There was a worry for a while that no one would take up Matembe’s mantle but the signs are promising; latterly, Pastor Martin Sempa, Minister Nsaba Buturo and Archbishop Luke Orombi have taken up the battle cry and they keep the flame of homo-paranoia burning with helpfully shrill and outlandish pronouncements, all of which are gleefully lapped up by the press.These are necessary voices to “change the course of [Uganda's] history on this subject for the better. It is indeed a case of any publicity being good publicity and if this sounds desperate in view of the negative, yes sometimes even ignorant messages, coming from the anti-gay leaders in Uganda, it is. Ugandan homosexuals should, therefore, look at the lack of local press coverage (it cannot have helped that the ruling was handed down two days to Christmas) in light of the defeat Justice Arach handed to the Uganda Government as a missed opportunity.

While the court ruling itself was undoubtedly excellent news, that it didn’t make the headlines should be a cause for disappointment.Ugandan gays thus need Sempa, Orombi and Nsaba Buturo the way the American gay movement needed the shrill and dogmatic views of Jerry Falwell in the 1970s and 1980s.

It is Oscar Wilde who once said that the only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about at all. The gay community in Uganda continues to need the attention of the media and so every avenue needs to be explored to make sure that the subject is in the press as often as possible. Yes, it is a question of any publicity being good publicity but things are still tough for the Ugandan gay community so it makes sense to take advantage of any publicity, whatever its tenor, at this point in time.In that light, the gay community in Uganda needs enemies such as Martin Sempa, Luke Orombi and Nsaba Buturo – desperately.
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