Report
Outcast
LGBT people in Uganda live under threat and fear.
T he Kampala night club seems like
your typical bar – a DJ blasting
raucous dance music, drinking,
laughing and even some furtive flirting
are the order of the night. However, this
remains one of Uganda’s few gay friendly
bars. On a recent visit, as the debate rages
over the controversial Anti-Homosexuality
Bill 2009, a current of fear and anxiety is
felt beneath the veneer of another night
out. One man notes wearily, “Why is that
so shocking to you? This is the country
that wants to kill and imprison us.”
While life has never been easy for
Uganda’s marginalised gay community, it
could get a whole lot harder should the
bill pass. Amos, an eloquent man in his
early thirties committed in a relationship
for many years notes, “Do some people
know? Yes. Do some people suspect? Yes.
Can they prove it in court? No. The new
bill changes that.”
As a group of seventeen human rights
organisations notes in a recent statement,
the bill “includes a provision that could
lead to the imprisonment for up to three
years of anyone, including heterosexual
people, who fails to report within twenty-
four hours the identities of everyone
they know who is lesbian, gay, bisexual,
or transgender, or who supports human
rights for people who are... The draft bill
seeks to imprison anyone convicted of
the offence of homosexuality for life.”
The bill – known as the Bahati Bill, after
David Bahati, the member of parliament
who privately tabled it in October 2009
– comes out of an environment that is
already deeply inimical to alternative
lifestyles and any perceived threat to
the traditional family. 94% of Ugandans
consider themselves religious and 95%
strongly oppose the legalisation of same-
sex relations.
As one of Pastor Rick Warren’s
purpose-driven nations, Uganda has become
a test-tube for Western evangelicals. The
coalescence of the church and the state
is the norm in this profoundly religious
28 January/February 2010
By Ariel Rubin
country that received millions of dollars
for its abstinence programs from the
Bush Administration.
Warren, the highly influential US
evangelical holds immense sway in
Uganda. While finally condemning the
bill after a great deal of recent pressure,
Warren remains the same man who,
in an April 2008 visit to Kampala, told
religious leaders that homosexuality is
not a natural way of life and, thus, not a
human right, “We shall not tolerate this
aspect at all.”
As Anglican priest Kapya Kaoma notes
in a recent article, the religious orthodoxy
of many African churches provided the US
religious right with a golden opportunity
to extend the church’s influence into
the government. According to Kaoma,
“Africans resonate with the denunciation
of homosexuality as a post-colonial plot.”
Ugandan homophobia, thus, ironically
doubles as an expression of resistance to
the West while being stoked and funded
by conservative leaders and church clergy
from the very same West. A recent news
item in the Vision newspaper, about Ethics
and Integrity Minister James Buturo’s
refusal to capitulate to donor country
demands to scrap the bill, sums up the
sentiment perfectly: We will not bend over
for aid, Butoro tells donors.
In a country where the notion of
atheism is scoffed at as a joke, and a
deep-seated fear pervades over the
undue influence of Western decadence
and liberalism, political elites have
managed to introduce the perfect bill to
distract much of the country from the
entrenched problems like corruption and
unaccountability.
This is a country whose tabloid daily
– The Red Pepper – routinely publishes
articles with titles like Homo terror and List
of tycoons who bankroll homos, in addition
to notorious dossiers of first names,
professions and physical descriptions of
alleged homosexuals.
As the campaigning season for the 2011
Independent World report
Ugandan elections is set to commence, the
Anti-Homosexuality Bill further presents
the opportunity for the ruling National
Resistance Movement government to
shore up popular support by vilifying an
already marginalised minority.
With the violence of the September
2009 riots still fresh and murmurs of
deep-seated unrest in this tribally-
divided country, the fervour over the
inflammatory bill has played directly into
the hands of those who introduced it.
As Sylvia Tamale – Dean, Makerere
Law School – warns in a recent debate
over the issue, “Anyone who cares to read
history books knows very well that in
times of crisis, when people at the locus
of power are feeling vulnerable and their
power is threatened, they will turn against
the weaker groups in the society.”
When discussing the bill, Tamale still
can hardly believe it came into fruition.
Clearly, the bill’s author is no lawyer, she
notes, as it violates tenets of the 1995
constitution while legally the parliament
lacks the power to nullify inconsistent
treaties or constitutional provisions.
“You cannot put this in a bill if you know
your international law.”
Indeed, one of the key consultants
and writers of the bill is not a lawyer
at all, but the controversial Ugandan
pro-family pastor, Martin Ssempa. This
is the pastor, who, over recent years,
burned condoms in the name of Jesus and
arranged for the publication of prominent
homosexuals’ names in local newspapers.
His abstinence-based HIV/AIDS work
was supported by the Bush White House
and he has close ties with the born again
Ugandan first lady, Janet Museveni.
“As Africans, we find the
whole subject of sodomy and
lesbianism an
unacceptable lifestyle.”
A Red Pepper dossier on homosexuals: Scan by Gay Uganda via Box Turtle Bulletin.

Independent World report January/February 2010 29

Protest outside the Ugandan High Commission in London: Photo by Russell Higgs/CC BY-NC-SA.
In a recent radio debate, Ssempa
repeatedly touches upon the overarching
threats he believes the bill will remedy:
the deracination of African culture and the
erosion of family values alongside anxiety
over the perceived increase of homosexual
recruitment and molestation of young boys.
Fears of insidious homosexual
recruitment plots are the norm in Uganda.
Even the president, Yoweri Museveni,
notes in worryingly in a November speech
that he hears “European homosexuals
are recruiting in Africa.” The odious
conflation of consensual sexual activity
between two adults and paedophilia
amidst the offensive and bizarre notion
of a Western gay conspiracy has gripped not
only the president but much of a fearful
public as well.
In a recent interview, Pastor Ssempa
explains, “I think it is important to
understand what sodomy is. It is
inherently unhealthy, a sexual lifestyle
that involves unmentionable acts such
as rimming, golden showers and brown
30 January/February 2010
showers. The anal sphincter, biologically,
is not designed or suited for sexual
penetration, and, by and large, many
boys and men have been infected and had
permanent damage from homosexual
behaviour.”
Even though the colonial-era penal
code already criminalises sexual relations
with a minor, the pastor believes the new
bill will provide equal protection before
the law for the boys who are molested or
raped, “This bill is gender balancing the
law.”
For Ssempa, the idea of a seemingly
monolithic and intractable culture is
deeply relevant. “First of all, I am an
African,” he explains. “And, as Africans,
we find the whole subject of sodomy and
lesbianism an unacceptable lifestyle.”
Joel, a soft-spoken gay activist decries
Ssempa’s version of culture as little more
than a tool to stir up people who find
something distasteful. After all, he says
laughing, “Did you know, a long time ago,
in Africa, women could not eat chicken?
Independent World report
Because, the meat was too sweet. So is
that culture? Are we going to go back to
that culture?”
Joel, remains an avowed supporter
of President Museveni and talks of how
wonderful he felt when he left his village
in his early twenties and realised he was
not alone. “When I came to Kampala, I
found so many people, even some small
organisations. I feel at home here, only
now this bill is really making it worse
on me. Really, I was so happy and I am
happy.”
He and his friends are worried, yet, as
they mingle and laugh at the bar, there
is a profound sense of defiance and pride,
“I think Ssempa has big people with guns
and everything, and, the way they are
threatening us, some of us, I think, we are
ready to die, because, there is no way I am
going to go away. And, I can not change.
They want to preach and they want to
educate. Me, I am not going to change.”
For Joel, the law will not help eliminate
homosexuality but simply continue to
Photo by International Women’s Health Coalition.
drive it further underground and make
it more dangerous by targeting medical
professionals, lawyers and organisations
who treat and work with homosexuals,
adding that by stigmatising instead of
educating homosexuals about the perils
of risky sexual behaviour, it will likely
end up exacerbating Uganda’s HIV/AIDS
crisis.
He notes the many straight men who
often come to the Kampala night club to
cruise and pick up men, “So many people
are married and are hiding in their culture,
when they actually are homosexual. They
are proclaiming ‘I am heterosexual. I am
not going to be attacked.’ But, then they
will come here. We will have fun and
tomorrow he will go.”
Joel adds forebodingly, “If you do not
protect me from HIV, you will also get it
tomorrow.”
Ultimately, activists fear the general
erosion of Uganda’s human rights culture
and the acute threat to democracy this
bill presents. “This is not all about sex. We
are talking about the right for people to
be employed, the right to access services
equally, the right to justice and the right
to freedom of speech and expression,”
says Val Kalende, a journalist and activist
for Sexual Minorities Uganda.
A pervasive fear lingers in Uganda
over how easily the bill, if passed, will be
used as another tool in the arsenal of state
intimidation. As opposition leader Morris
Latigo concedes in a recent interview, “It
is a very good bill in terms of opening up
new possibilities for mischief in Ugandan
politics.” Past allegations against
prominent opposition leaders like Olaru
Ottunu, that he is a homosexual while he
is secretly married to a white woman, and,
Kizza Besigye, that he is a rapist, are part
and parcel of politics as usual in Uganda.
This remains a country where the
ruling party can simply resort to McCarthy-
esque scare tactics to intimidate and
coerce any number of potential enemies
of the state. Homosexuality becomes –
like the purported communist threat of
Independent World report
1950s, in the US – an easy red herring,
allowing a fearful ruling party to bolster
its ideological support. As Sylvia Tamale
notes in a recent interview, “All you have
to do is send someone an unsolicited
email or SMS which has some homosexual
material and voilà... you will be guilty.”
While the debate continues to rage
on both sides, Joel is adamant, “Even if
they summon me today, I am not going to
leave... If the situation is too bad, I would
of course run to another country, but, if
the situation allows me to stay here then
no... I love my country.” �
Ariel Rubin is a journalist for the Kampala-
based newspaper The Independent. Online:
independent.co.ug
January/February 2010 31