2016 Presidential Aspirant, Mike Mukula, is a very interesting man.
Accused of having pilfered Global Alliance for Vaccines (GAVI) funds while he was state minister for health, Mike Mukula wrote a check for 240m/= ($100,000) as recompense. This, despite having initially denied anything to do with the theft of GAVI funds. So, it should perhaps be assumed that, even if he was innocent, Mukula was struck by a bolt of kindness and he decided to write GAVI a $100,000 check. Believe me, you won’t find many Ugandans who are that generous, and especially not ones who have held high office as Mukula has done.
Forever dapper: Mike Mukula
It must thus be with the same magnanimity that Mukula decided to wade into the homosexuality debate. Check him out here telling the youth to shun homosexual activity because it constitutes an adoption of a foreign culture.
Odd as it might sound, I agree with Mukula. I, a Ugandan gay man of so many years (well, I have never really been anything else), also don’t want Ugandan youth to take up homosexual practices. How can that be good for them when they still have their education to complete on top of all the other challenges they face in an increasingly ruthless world?
It is when Mukula talks about Ugandan (African?) culture and homosexuality as mutually exclusive that I get a little lost. Can a man who is that smart, intellectually and sartorially, really be serious that homosexuality is alien to Uganda? Mike Mukula surely knows about gay chiefs and kings in Uganda’s past. He also cannot be oblivious to gay government officials and ex-officials, who dabble in gay sex or have dabbled in gay sex in their past, walking Uganda’s streets today. If I know about them, the very well-connected Mukula must know them, too.
So, Mukula is either being deliberately obtuse or he, too, has fallen prey to the Rebecca Kadaga syndrome; that of opening his mouth without thinking through the long-term implications of his words.
Of course he is right to caution the youth against homosexual activity – they have the rest of their lives after they reach the age of maturity to explore that.
But for an educated man of his ilk to think that homosexuality is somehow a sign of a foreign culture?
I don’t get that, Mike, I really don’t.
Which brings me to the question that keeps me awake at night; why don’t these politicians simply shut up about matters of sexuality if all they do when they open their traps is embarrass themselves with ignorant, if not hypocritical, statements?
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- A freshly rejuvenated Ugandan homophobic lobby goes to work (sebaspace.wordpress.com)
- A letter to Rebecca Kadaga – from a supportive gay Ugandan (sebaspace.wordpress.com)
- Rebecca Kadaga trapped between a rock and hard place! (sebaspace.wordpress.com)
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