Tag Archives: John Baird

2012 gone – bring on 2013 9

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2012 is behind us so it is time to think about what to expect in 2013. On occasions like this, it’s best to let one’s mind wander and not try to be terribly structured.

2012 is a year Uganda’s Speaker of Parliament, Rebecca Kadaga, will not look back on with unbridled pleasure. When she rose to the post of Speaker in 2011, Kadaga mounted and rode a wave of public disgruntlement against Yoweri Museveni’s tired, uncaring, thieving, bungling administration, and impressed even die-hard skeptics, such as yours truly, with her crusading zeal to put “country first.” Openly warring with Museveni’s Squealer-like puppet, Prime Minister Amama Mbabazi, Kadaga emboldened the ruling NRM caucus in Parliament and hitherto docile parliamentarians started asking pointed questions about their own government’s wanton corruption, fecklessness,  lack of new ideas and drift.

Kadaga was repelled by Mbabazi

Rebecca Kadaga was repelled by Amama Mbabazi

Alas, Kadaga then came a-cropper when she was lured into consorting with convicted felons over the Bahati [Nazi]Anti-Gay Bill. She promised the bill to Martin Ssempa who had just been convicted of fabricating sodomy evidence against a rival pastor – for Christmas – and then failed to deliver it. Thanks to events running away from Kadaga, time run out on the Bahati [Nazi) Bill in 2012, not least because the President, who we all know is against the bill, chose to use up an entire afternoon the bill could have been debated to indulge in ... gossip. Kadaga thus lost her last opportunity in 2012 to deliver her [Nazi] Christmas gift to Martin Ssempa and with it went her credibility where political maneuvering is concerned.

Museveni: took up precious Parliamentary time in December to "gossip"

Museveni: took up precious Parliamentary time in December to “gossip”

Kadaga got a political bloody nose in 2012, which the death of her octogenarian father did not help. She will come back again in 2013, and you can expect her to continue making noises about this and that. She has, however, already showed that she is prone to moving her political chess pieces without a lot of thought and will, going forward, struggle to maintain her moral high ground given her failure to deliver on what should have been an easy bill to pass in 2012. She of course, should be advised to steer her office clear of political controversy as well as be more discreet about her political ambitions, but only time will tell whether she is willing to play a more subtle form of politics.

Frank Mugisha & Kasha Nabagesera

The faces of gay Uganda: Frank Mugisha & Kasha Nabagesera

2012 has been a spectacularly successful year for Ugandan gay rights activists, thanks largely to events that have been driven by others. To the activists’ direct credit, 2012 saw Uganda’s first ever gay pride march in Entebbe which was eventually broken up by the police. Yours truly doesn’t believe in such things as pride marches because they go against his sensibilities. But it is not lost on him that parades serve a useful ‘public awareness’ purpose especially when activism is faced with boorish, foolish, intemperate, obtuse and tactless foes such as Uganda’s current Minister of Ethics and Integrity, defrocked Catholic priest Simon Lokodo.

Lokodo should really have known to leave activists well alone when they met in hotels and public gardens because, of course, they were doing no harm even if they didn’t have the right to assemble which they did. But, no, he kept on charging in there, likely tipped off by someone inside the gay camp on at least one occasion,  like a bull in a China store which of course played right into the gay advocates’ hands. Still, even after conferences were disrupted and a couple of gay-themed plays were stymied, one got the feeling that the gay debate in Uganda had stalled, that the public weren’t interested in it. The activists’ tactics on the ground weren’t really producing the kind of impact they wanted.

A lot of Ugandans on Facebook clearly need an education

A lot of Ugandans on Facebook clearly need an education

All that changed of course when John Baird confronted Rebecca Kadaga in Quebec in late October. The furor that incident unleashed reverberated around the world, thanks to Kadaga’s intemperate, impolitic and, dare one say it, totally over-the-top response when she returned home.

So, due to foreign intervention, the last three months of 2012 have generated some of the most heated debates around homosexuality Uganda has ever witnessed – on local radio, in the papers, and most especially on social media in cyberspace. Baird’s harangue thus proved to be a godsend to the limping gay cause in Uganda in ways he likely didn’t expect.

Ruled for gay rights: Justice Stella Arach Amoko

Ruled for gay rights: Justice Stella Arach Amoko

Where to next? The Bahati bill remains in Parliament and will be passed by Parliament if it is debated regardless of what local activists and our friends abroad do. So, the way forward is to find a way for the bill not to be debated on the floor of Parliament or to prepare for a constitutional challenge if it is passed.

My own feeling is that the bill should be debated and passed so that it can be challenged in the courts. This would serve to take it out of the political arena and, hopefully, draw a line under the [mostly cynical] jockeying by both friends and detractors which has helped shape public debate, yes, but which has also left the core issues unresolved.

A lot of well-schooled Ugandans remain astonishingly illiterate on the homosexuality issue and so need an education. Raising the debate to a more intellectual, highbrow, legal, level will give a lot of our brothers and sisters who have gone to school but remain ignorant a different, less hysterical and/or hackneyed perspective.

The other reason this issue needs to go to court is precedent;  the gay side in Uganda has never lost a legal ruling in the three or four times gay activists have taken our enemies to court in the recent past. With such great odds, I would bet my last cent that the Bahati Bill would be ruled unconstitutional in less time than it takes to say “bigoted.” But first it has to be passed for the courts to consider any challenges.

Is it risque parades we are after?

Is  flaunting it at parades what we are after?

The activists on the ground should also continue to expect questions about what exactly they want to achieve. I have asked the questions and continue to hear them being asked by others in more muted tones.

Are they looking for acceptance in Uganda? If so, what form should it take? Is it about gay marriage? Every sinew in my body tells me it shouldn’t be and I haven’t heard any Ugandan activist argue that marriage is what it’s about so we can dismiss that line of thought. Or can we?

Is it about gay men and women being allowed to love each other freely (in private) in Uganda? What about those, like yours truly, who feel we are already doing that in the broad context of the inhibited sexual sensibilities in Uganda?

Is it about putting it out there, on the airwaves, in public parks, in bars and on the streets as one sees in San Fransisco’s Castro District? If so, how do we hope to cut and paste that model into a country like Uganda where heterosexuals frown upon flaunting their own relationships?

Or is it about attaining equal access to social services such as HIV/Aids treatment  and other health and wellness programs which heterosexuals already take for granted?

Is it about lifting the confidence of gay men and women all over the country to believe in themselves enough to pool together to set up gay venues (bars, clubs etc) that they call their own?

In other words, with and without help from our friends abroad, for whom and for what are we making all this noise in the press, in conferences around the world, in dramatic stage productions, on podiums accepting accolades, in television debates with a lunatic Martin Ssempa?

If the struggle is not really about those who front it, because most struggles are usually larger than those who front them, do those we assume to be representing really know what it is we are trying to do for them, and have they bought into the agenda we espouse? How have we ensured that they are on board with what we are trying to achieve?

If we were to take a poll of gay Ugandans today, how confident are we that they would all be able to say in one sentence what gay activism in Uganda is about?

What will the matrix of success following all this gay activism in Uganda be? What will need to happen  (and to whom) in order for us to say that the gay struggle in Uganda has succeeded?

When I speak to gay men and women from all walks of life in Uganda, I get the impression that those are the broad questions whose answers they still want clearly articulated.

The communication chasm between leaders and led still needs to be bridged.

Still.

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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:

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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

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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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The case for Kadaga 2016 4

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Provocative profile: Rebecca Kadaga

Fact: Yoweri Museveni’s 26-year-old government is so spent, so riddled with corruption, so obviously incapable of delivering the most basic services to the masses, so irretrievably dysfunctional that only a change at the helm will bring about any change.

Fact: Unless the challenger to Museveni’s rule comes from within the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM), no one from the opposition parties can  unseat Yoweri Museveni because the odds are stacked too high against them even if they had a coherent message.

Fact: The people of Uganda are so tired of their government but are wary of throwing it out because the opposition, due to factors best discussed on another occasion, offers little in the way of viable alternatives.

So, what’s the solution then?

A hitherto untainted but credible candidate from within the ruling National Resistance Movement itself.

That’s where Rebecca Kadaga comes in.

Highly educated and feisty, Speaker of the House Kadaga has found the perfect platform to run for the highest office in the land. She was given the nod by the current Museveni administration in the hope that it would be business as usual, with Parliament merely rubber-stamping everything Museveni sent them. Museveni immediately regretted having offered his support. Kadaga and Museveni’s Prime Minister, Amama Mbabazi, have clashed openly and so ferociously that the president has had to intervene to separate them a couple of times.

Populist: Kadaga knows how to play to the gallery (here with Olympic gold medal winner, Kiprotich)

She has already shown that as Speaker of the 9th Parliament she isn’t the fawning poodle her predecessor was. At this point, she is the most visible and outspoken NRM personality there is after Museveni so she has a lot going for her. All she needs now is to deliver a really significant parliamentary blow to Museveni and she will really ride high.

She may have been given such an opportunity by the clash she had with Canada’s Foreign Minister, John Baird, and we might as well see Kadaga pushing for and achieving the passage of the anti-gay bill that had lain dormant until John Baird helped revive its embers.

Once the NRM get used to it that Museveni is vulnerable, Kadaga’s candidature will begin to look really credible. Then you will see the most almighty battle to try to get rid of her – which should lend her even more credibility. Remember Museveni and his crony, Mbabazi, have tried twice already to pull her down a peg and both efforts backfired when she their machinations became public  and Kadaga won the public’s sympathy. She is quite astute in the way she denies this and that and then asks pointed questions in forums where she will be quoted liberally.

Demonstrably incompetent – Museveni’s crony, Amama Mbabazi

She has locked horns with Museveni over how much say Parliament should have in the passing of the budget. She has already drawn her line in the sand and we are now waiting to see if Museveni will blink.

Only the other week Kadaga held up the swearing-in of a new cabinet because one of the nominated ministers, IdahNantaba, had questionable morals. Rumors abounded that Nantaba was Museveni’s mistress. Kadaga walked away from the skirmish and Museveni got his woman, but with Parliamentary procedures circumvented. The point had been made, however, and no one will now look at Nantaba as anything other than another Museveni skirt.

The evidence is in all the papers that the man some had touted as a possible successor to Museveni, Amama Mbabazi, can’t run a bank, or his own ministry where more than $60 million of donor money was embezzled on his watch. So how can he run a country? He is damaged goods and he now serves one purpose – to parrot whatever Museveni orders him to. Vice President Edward Ssekandi is a laughing-stock all over the country because it is widely accepted that he needed help to steal his parliamentary election in February 2011 (he couldn’t even pull it off on his own). Even if he was presentable enough, Ssekandi is an old style, crooked-deals-in-a-smoky-room administrator who has no scruples or principles as his unsuccessful interference in KCCA’s demolition of an illegal structure in Kampala showed.

Yes, yes. Museveni’s son, Muhoozi is being touted as a possible shoo-in. So is his Museveni’s wife, Janet. While those two can’t be written off given Uganda’s putrid dish politics, they lack the political credibility, and so would have to be imposed. It’s inconceivable that Muhoozi, a totally unknown quantity whose meteoric rise through the military ranks can only have been engineered by his father, could go out on the hustings, campaign for office and win.

Janet Museveni believes that prayers will solve all Uganda’s problems – something that is patently ridiculous, and which most Ugandans understand to be so. She thus also lacks credibility. Besides, she has been at her husband’s side over the 26 years the country has meandered from one corruption scandal to the other, 26 years that have not seen  a single public school, hospital, road built or repaired to an acceptable standard. How come the prayers she so believes in haven’t worked?

Kadaga hangs with the high and low: with Parliamentarians and village women (second R)

On almost every issue that gets a politician elected in Uganda, Kadaga is saying what the majority want to hear. Her political antennae are serving her very well indeed. Yes, even on the LBGTI issue which is the latest political hot potato Kadaga has had to deal with, she has passed the test with aplomb. The activist LGBTI side will not like how she has reacted but she deftly played the political card Canada’s John Baird handed her. She wouldn’t have been a politician worth her salt had she reacted any other way. Baird’s boo-boo will hopefully be a salient lesson to the human rights agitators out there who tend to forget that they are in a war that must always take into account the political realities of the recipient countries.

Kadaga’s chances for 2016 look very bright indeed and, you know what, whether or not the Bahati Nazi anti-gay bill passes on her watch, this gay man likes her … a lot.

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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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Kadaga (Uganda) 3 – Baird (Canada) 0 12

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

“We are not a colony or a protectorate of Canada.” (Rebecca Kadaga)

In what is not going to hurt Rebecca Kadaga’s chances at the ballot in 2016 at all, she has taken on John Baird, Canada’s Foreign Minister and, in my mind, won hands down. Rebecca Kadaga is the current (and first female) Speaker of Uganda’s Parliament.

Invited to a conference, entitled ‘Citizenship, Identity and Linguistic and Cultural Diversity in a Globalised World’, Canada’s Baird apparently saw it as an opportunity to lecture Kadaga (and by implication, Uganda) about the death of David Kato about 20 months ago, implying that Kato’s murder was a state-inspired crime.

Kadaga would have none of it and went for him in a way that only someone of her confidence in the law (Kadaga is an accomplished lawyer) would. She was absolutely right, again in only a way someone with a good understanding of the law can be.

Please listen up Mr. Baird and all your hand-wringing friends all over the world who have elected yourselves  yes, elected yourselves, to wail louder than the bereaved:

Uganda’s legal system is not, cannot be perfect. It must be rife with miscarriages of justice, many of which will never be righted if only because Uganda lacks the resources to revisit cases that might have been decided incorrectly. But that imperfect law is what Uganda has and it passed the verdict that Kato was killed in a lover’s tiff.

Until you pay for your own superior investigation and prove otherwise, it’s game, set and match on that case. Kato was killed by an angry male lover and that is all there is to it. I have indicated before that there are many elements to the police investigation that I found disquieting but the verdict is the verdict is the verdict. Until I can prove otherwise, I, too, have to live with it.

I know all these friends of ours out there (many of them, dare one say it, making a living off of the back of gay rights issues in sub-Saharan Africa) wanted a different verdict, namely one that would advance their assumption that Kato was killed by the government of Uganda. They didn’t get it so Kadaga is absolutely right to call out their arrogance when they use their high offices to call out Uganda’s elected officials  about legal cases that have been settled in courts of law that the people being lectured to had nothing to do with.

Canada’s Foreign Minister was thus out-of-order to harangue Rebecca Kadaga in the way he did. If he has evidence that David Kato was killed by the state, he should have taken her aside and given it to her. Or better still, he could have stood up on his bully pulpit and presented it to the world. But for him to try to publicly embarrass his own guest was rude, supercilious and, frankly, boorish. Kadaga was thus absolutely right to stand up to this man.

“as a Speaker of Parliament, it is my responsibility to protect the rights of Members of Parliament; hence I cannot deny them the right to move private members’ Bills. The debate on homosexuality is not a settled matter.” (Rebecca Kadaga)

Even on the question of gay rights, which I feel Canada has a right to lobby Ugandan officials about, Baird should never have tried to talk at Kadaga the way he did. It was a breach of diplomatic etiquette if not condescending.

To put it in context, you will not find a single incident where a Canadian Foreign Minister, past or present, has talked to a Saudi Arabian or Kuwaiti official in the way Baird talked down to Kadaga. Yet those countries have far more egregious gay rights abuses than Uganda. Indeed Baird will not talk publicly down at an American official either. Yet more gay men and women have been killed in the last three years in Washington, DC (population 600,000) than have been killed in Uganda (population 33m) in the last 5 years.

So, let me turn again to our friends in the gay rights struggle. Please listen up one more time:

Much as you are ready to wail on our behalf at the drop of a hat, we, Ugandan gay men and women, are the ones who will live with the consequences of your bull-in-a-China-store recklessness. Stop acting as though this baby belongs to you – it doesn’t. You merely alienate people we shall eventually need when you embarrass our elected officials in public.  Consult before you charge.

Finally, terrible though the Bahati Bill might be, Uganda’s Parliament has a right to debate it if that’s what it decides to do. You can lobby from the sidelines, you can arm-twist whoever with threats to withdraw foreign aid, you can even lecture and give ultimatums – preferably in private.  Should the law nonetheless be passed, then you can impose sanctions and whatever other measures you consider fit. You, (well, your ancestors) introduced this parliamentary system of governance to Uganda, remember?

On a related but separate note … I must admit it’s getting very difficult for this Ugandan gay man not to like Rebecca Kadaga very, very much.

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