Teach a man to fish or give him the fish? 1

You know the age-old adage about how if you give a man a fish you feed him for a day and if you teach him how to fish he is fed for a lifetime?

The former is what aid agencies tell you they want to do when they set up development programs in Africa and elsewhere they have decided, usually unilaterally,  that their money, technical expertize and presence are needed.

Papa Chavez

What brought this into sharp focus for me was the death of Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez recently. The “poor” came out in numbers almost not seen since Jesus conjured two fishes and a loaf of bread into a feast that fed the 5,000. The jury is still out as to whether Chavez really gave his poor people a fish or taught them how to fish. And it is on that issue that it seems appropriate to segue to Uganda.

It is absolutely true that if you have money to give away, you will always have willing takers.

And so, it seems, it is the case for what passes for gay activism in Uganda. In just a matter of two or three years, the number of gay activists organizations in Uganda has mushroomed from around 5 to more than 30. All of them seek funding from have foreign constituencies in Europe, the United States, Canada, South America, Britain trying to … help. Most of the would-be helpers are Chavez-like paternalistic do-gooders with clear terms of reference to showcase their caring credentials.

Some of the donor organizations, however, don’t seem too interested in accountability for the money they disburse. The popular rationale for this tends to be that they can’t demand accountability from the oppressed and downtrodden who are operating in secrecy. The oppressed gays, lesbians, bisexuals (LGBTI) of Uganda would be putting themselves at risk if they so much as cast around for a part-time auditor to make sure that donations are being used for the reasons highlighted in their proposals, wouldn’t they?

Gay activism is the latest “sexy” bleeding heart bandwagon to roll into Uganda. on the back of a pro-gay worldwide wave that is sweeping everything in its path. So far so good; after all what caring soul would decry any efforts to help the downtrodden?

An example of a Ugandan LGBTI public begging bowl set up on the internet a couple of months ago -  and eventually pulled down

This being Uganda, savvy people haven’t taken long to figure out that there is money to be made in gay activism. I have it on reliable authority that some donors are nonetheless disbursing to groups and individuals enough money to pay 10 teachers’ salaries in Uganda for 8 months -  even when they are cautioned that they might be funding little more than a jamboree of conspicuous consumption. I have received e-mails from people complaining that money sent to them for their “security” is being diverted to other purposes by their leaders.

Then there are the fictitious membership roll calls. My phone number and name appear on the members’ lists of two relatively new Ugandan LGBTI organizations. But I am not aware of when I signed up to be their member or attended any of their meetings.

Left-right dichotomy

Can the donors really be this gullible?

Yes and No.

Yes, some of the organizations going around cup in hand in the West ‘on behalf of ‘suffering Ugandans’ are run by naive young people,  barely out of school, who are out of their depth in dealing with crafty Ugandans. The internet campaigns that have sprung up in the last few months are good examples of this.

No, in 2013 the more experienced donors know that there is waste and misuse of resources going on but gay rights are highly sexy worldwide right now and it is good public relations to be seen to be doing something towards the LGBTI cause in Africa. So they simply turn a blind eye to the more egregious evidence of charlatanism.

Why?

I think it is part of a worldwide ideological war between left and right in the Americas (mostly) and Europe that leads to such disregard for standards of accountability that the donors demand of organizations in their own countries and mainstream NGOs in the developing world. If Scott Lively’s Defend the Family is using money to fight the ideological battle for minds in Africa, the argument tends to go, so can the left.

With the right-wing in retreat even in their last bastion, the United States of America, the liberal/left wing has an excellent opportunity to prove their caring credentials by wearing their bleeding hearts on their sleeves. If some of the funds are being wasted, so be it; the wider goal of changing mindsets globally justifies relaxing some of the oversight on the donated funds.

It is a disturbing trend but you will not see it change soon because that is how practically every crooked, thieving, lying, inept regime in Africa has managed to stay in power; with a lot of unconditional help from friends in America, Canada, Britain, and Europe and so on.

As someone told me when I asked her about why the demand for accountability seems more lax with some LGBTI donors than one would normally expect, “it’s the nature of the beast.”

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The Bahati Anti Homosexuality Bill: The Stage Is Set 4

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

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

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

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 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

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.

Related articles

• What makes Pastor Martin Ssempa (PhD) tick? (sebaspace.wordpress.com)
• Ugandan politician rubbishes the Bahati [Nazi] Bill (sebaspace.wordpress.com)
• Questions the anti-gay brigade struggles to answer (sebaspace.wordpress.com)
• 2012 gone – bring on 2013 (sebaspace.wordpress.com)
• Rebecca Kadaga trapped between a rock and a hard place
• Bahati anti-gay bill revived to teach Museveni a lesson

HIV/Aids is already killing LGBTI Ugandans! 9

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.

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.

Related articles

• 2012 gone – bring on 2013 (sebaspace.wordpress.com)
• Large crowd of U.S. Gay Activists at MA Federal Court to Support Ugandan Gays against Pastor Scott Lively (oblogdeeoblogda.me)
• Ugandan sex workers post highest HIV rates (upi.com)
• 18,000 MSM Ugandans with HIV/Aids ignored
• The folly of ignoring the gay community in HIV prevention programs

SMUG “sues Uganda’s Attorney General and Lokodo” 2

Leading the charge: Kasha Nabagesera

Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG) seems to be on a legal roll at the moment. They recently filed a lawsuit against Scott Lively in the American courts for inciting the natives of Uganda to hatred under the guise of religious ministering.

Now, SMUG has apparently also sued Uganda’s Attorney General as well as the Minister of Ethics and Integrity, Simon Lokodo, in the Ugandan courts, for forcibly stopping a gay activist meeting that was going on in a hotel in Entebbe, near Uganda’s capital city, Kampala.

Lokodo, you might recall, was the minister who spoke for the government and assured the world that the Bahati Nazi anti-gay bill would be debated since to deny its debate would be to pervert the course of Parliamentary democracy. So far  so reasonable even if it isn’t what the gay community wanted to hear.

But then he took it upon himself to drive 30 miles to Entebbe and personally put a stop to a meeting that, for all intents and purposes, can’t have been illegal since all it was is/was a meeting. That is one thoughtless, impetuous, needless action he might come to regret at leisure.

The Attorney General is best advised to settle this one quickly if he has  looked at recent precedent. The Ugandan activists have sued the government and various other entities three times in the past 5 or so years. They have one three times. The Ugandan courts clearly have a mind of their own when it comes to issues of human rights, unlike in Zimbabwe and Cameroon where the courts routinely do the bidding of the state.

The lesson one learns from all this is that it is wise not to give up on the law. Uganda’s courts have surprised the pro-gay side three times already. Even when they take the side of the detractors, fairly or otherwise, it is important that the courts are forced to go on record on matters of human rights.

Let’s see how this pans out. It should be interesting times ahead.

Related articles

• SMUG sues Scott Lively (sebaspace.wordpress.com)
• Uganda’s government gifts gays a PR triumph! (sebaspace.wordpress.com)
• Uganda’s Gays See Progress In Public Opinion War (huffingtonpost.com)
• Uganda Government Speaks: Bahati Bill will continue (sebaspace.wordpress.com)
• Onyango Obbo misses the bigger picture (sebaspace.wordpress.com)

SMUG sues Scott Lively 1

One is not sure what to make of the lawsuit filed by Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG) against Scott Lively, and it wouldn’t be far-fetched to guess that it is meant to bog him down in lawsuits.

It even has the smack of mischief but one can see the bigger point it is trying to bring out. And that point is that (mostly white) evangelists making whistle-stop tours into Africa to propagate extreme far right messages camouflaged as religious ministering need to understand that their actions and words have far more import than merely reading Biblical superstition to the poor black natives.

“I don’t know that person at all.”Nsaba Buturo on Scott Lively

More interestingly for me is how Mr. James Nsaba Buturo, defeated member of Parliament, and dismissed Minister of Ethics and Integrity (Lokodo, his successor, has proved to be a similar bull in a China store) runs for the hills when asked about Scott Lively. I would have done the same, too, if I had so little to show for it after crusading against gay sex for a decade. One has to know when it is time to move on.

Also named in the lawsuit are Martin Ssempa, Stephen Langa and David Bahati. Ssempa is mired knee-deep in a gay related conspiracy-to-defame lawsuit that was about to be decided against him two months ago when, in a cruel twist of [calculated?] timing, the presiding judge was transferred. The lurid details of the case sounded like a soap opera, with tales of witnesses being smuggled into co-conspirators’ private offices, coached and cajoled – on tape.

Of course poor Stephen Langa had his 15 minutes of fame and went back to … whatever he was doing before the 15 minutes. And as for David Bahati, he continues to hog the limelight with yet another attempt to have his Nazi anti-gay bill debated in Parliament. If passed and signed into law by President Museveni, it will have parents, priests, counselors and teachers serving three years in jail for not informing the police should they find out that someone is gay.

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• Museveni again rubbishes the notion that gays are a Western import
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