Whose Anti-homosexuality bill?

On December 20, 2013, the parliament of Uganda passed the anti-homosexuality bill that had been on the floor of parliament since 2009. The bill will become law if the president of Uganda, Yoweri Kaguta Museveni, assents his signature to it. This private member bill, among other things, provides for a sentence of life imprisonment for anyone convicted of homosexuality, which covers gays and lesbians. This article explores the politics of the bill other than its morality, il/legitimacy, ethics and legality.

Since the bill was passed, there has been extensive debate about its moral, ethical and legal standing. On the one hand, human rights activists across the world have condemned the bill saying that if it is passed into law, its implementation and enforcement will amount to blatant abuse of human rights.  On the other hand, proponents of the bill and a wide section of Ugandans have applauded the passing of the bill, and reiterated its necessity and importance in upholding and fostering cultural and religious values.

Resistance against homosexuality in Uganda and other parts of Africa is part of European religious colonial legacy and a result of deeply entrenched cultural and traditional beliefs and practices. In a bid to spread Victorian morality in Africa, European missionaries through religious movements, teachings and crusades preached against homosexuality and sodomy. This formed the foundation on which the currents faiths were built. Uganda's population is highly catholic (33%), Anglican (33%) and Muslim (16%), and most followers of these religious faiths still view homosexuality as a practice that is against their religious values, norms, procedures and biblical teachings. As a matter of fact, ever since the bill was passed, the archbishops of both the catholic and Anglican churches in Uganda have come out to condemn acts of homosexuality, and have called for redemption and of homosexual individuals in society.

This lack of acceptance of the gay community is compounded by very conservative cultural beliefs that are rooted in the philosophy of continuity of life.  Uganda’s tribal communities are founded on clan system, genealogical lineage, and ancestral history. The three form the tenets on which social and cultural identity is built and sustained. The sense of being is not only derived from individual existence but also through procreation, having a wife or wives and a husband or husbands, and getting subjected to cultural rituals such as rites of passage. Patrilineage, which is common in most African societies has roots in procreation and vice versa. An African clan or tribe cannot imagine that their son or daughter can live ad grow up with having biological children. Reproduction ensures this continuity of life and orientation into earthly and ancestral life and worlds. Any practice that threatens this belief is vehemently resisted, fought, and discredited.

Whose anti-homosexuality bill?

Debate about anti-homosexuality bill has focused on the ethics, morality, legitimacy, and legality of the bill. Yet, the bill seems to be serving political interests than the purpose for which it is purportedly drafted (to preserve the cultural and religious values of the people). Because the bill appeals to the cultural and religious sentiments of majority of Ugandans, politicians and legislators are using it to mobilize political support among Ugandans as we move towards the 2016 general elections. Ever since the bill was passed by parliament, a largest percentage of Ugandans have come out to show their full contentment with the bill on social and electronic media. The approval rate for legislators has drastically increased.

The government of Uganda is also using the bill to divert attention away from continued abuse of human rights, collapse in rule of law, and violent political harassment of members of opposition that Uganda has witnessed in the recent past. The international media and Western government seem to be obsessed with the bill each time it is debated in parliament and have not given other pressing human right abuses the attention that they deserve. this serves the current Kampala regime well. With this bill in their hands, the government of Uganda has added another weapon to their arsenal (in addition to having military troops in Somalia) to keep Western government, media, and organisations in check.

Is homosexuality a western imposed practice?

There is a popular belief among sections of Uganda's population that homosexuality is a foreign practice imposed on local communities to serve the ulterior motives the West (Europe and north America). This is contrary to the reports that homosexuality existed in pre-colonial African society. In fact, while appearing on BBC and CNN in 2012, the president of Uganda, Yoweri Kaguta Museveni, acknowledged that homosexuality has always existed in Africa, but people never had debates about it in public (he calls this exhibitionism).  The more Western governments and human rights organisations directly intervene to ensure that the rights of sexual minorities are observed, the more the belief that homosexuality is a Western imposition gets entrenched within the local community. LGBT activists whose local campaigns are funded by western organizations also vindicate this suspicion. The west has also turned  blind eye on other forms of human rights  abuse in Uganda. Hesitancy by Western government and human rights organization to come out and strongly condemn other forms of human rights abuse is seen as betrayal, playing double standards and being insensitive to the plight of other many Ugandans who suffer grave injustices, abuses and violence. As one of the Ugandans commented in one of the debates about the bill: “The proponents of gay rights are as wrong as the proponents of anti gay law, when political opponents are killed and persecuted, those bazungus [people from the West] are silent. Are gay rights more important than other human right?” 

Uganda's armed forces breaking up a meeting of unarmed protestors. Such abuses are rarely condemned by Western governments and human rights organisations.

Western governments and organizations making mistakes

Ever since the bill was tabled before parliament, western governments and organizations have been calling for cuts in foreign aid to Uganda with aim to mount pressure on the Ugandan government and parliament to shelve the bill. By tying human rights to aid money and handouts, the West is making three mistakes and disservices to the gay community in Uganda and beyond: 1) the West is creating an impression that human rights can be bought or negotiated using financial and logistical resources and handouts. Human rights are human rights. Using money and other resources to gain them is setting a wrong precedent that if these rights can be commoditized and negotiated using money they can be taken away; 2) they are putting the gay community at risk in cases where countries may decide to do away with aid, mobilize local resources and continue to enforce and implement laws against sexual minorities; 3) the West is confirming the longstanding suspicion that homosexuality is a Western idea that is being imposed on local communities using threats to cut aid, and financial and logistical facilitation of gay right movements and campaigns.

The proponents of the anti-homosexuality bill are making the Ugandan society more homophobic. Those who are challenging the bill (both locally and internationally) are radicalizing local homophobia. Advocacy, publicity and activism for and against homosexuality will only leave the gay community in a more precarious position. Local politicians will continue to front this bill to cover up for their legislative and political failures as we move towards 2016 general elections. The anti-homosexuality has a lot to do with local politics than the moral, ethical and legal status of the people of Uganda. 

Justine Sacco is not alone.

On December 20, 2013, Justine Sacco, the now-former director of communications at IAC made a tweet on her way to South Africa: “Going to Africa. Hope I don't get AIDS. Just kidding. I’m white!” The tweet immediately went viral, causing storm and strong condemnation on social, electronic and in print media. Sacco has since apologized for her reckless ‘joke’. In her statement, she regretted “For being insensitive to this crisis — which does not discriminate by race, gender or sexual orientation, but which terrifies us all uniformly — and to the millions of people living with the virus.” Sacco’s predicament is testimony that maybe the African gods, spirits and ancestors have said "ENOUGH IS ENOUGH".

Sacco’s insensitive tweet represents the longstanding Western characterization that Africa has endured since it first made contact with the Western world. Since pre-colonial period, Africa has had disdainful labels such as dark continent, primitive society, third world, least developed society, and, currently, high risk region, all coined by elements in the West. This western condescending attitude is represented, for example, in Hugh Trevor-Roper’s 1963 remark that “perhaps in the future there will be some African history… But, at present, there is none; there is only the history of Europeans in Africa. The rest is darkness…and darkness is not a subject of history.” In 1969, Henry Kissinger, the former U.S. secretary of state, amplified Trevor-Ruper’s statement when he posited thus: “Nothing important can come from the South. The axis of history starts in Moscow, goes to Bonn, crosses over to Washington, and then goes to Tokyo. What happens in the South is of no importance.” Even after making such a statement, Kissinger went ahead and won a joint Noble Peace Prize together with Le Duc Tho in 1973.

Sacco’s statement is reflective of the stereotypes that the West has fabricated about Africa. These stereotypical images of Africa are derived from movies such as lion king, and biased and superficially selective media coverage.  For example, for some people in the West, watching The Last King of Scotland, Kony 2012, and War Dance is knowing everything about Uganda. Yet, Uganda does not live in the past. Idi Amin, whom the movie Last King of Scotland is based on was deposed from power in 1979 (before many of us were born). The war in Northern Uganda, which War dance reflects ended in 2005. However, construction of realities about Uganda based on these historical experiences has continued even when conditions have considerably changed.

In some instances, the people who visit Africa only get obsessed with what they perceive as negative/bad experiences to feed their stereotypical sentiments about Africa. To convince their stereotypical friends and family members back home that they have been to “Africa” (they mostly say Africa instead of particular countries in Africa that they have visited), they take photo of bad roads, makeshift houses, homeless people, malnourished children, etc. In their world of imagination, a better Africa does not exist.

Kigali, the capital city of Rwanda. An image like this is rarely captured by Western visitors who come to Africa.

This attitude has a lot to do with class struggle than racism. It is about hegemony and supremacy, both fueled by national origin more than race. It is a dangerous form of patriotism where national pride is built around the attitude of looking down upon other societies. I have met none-white people whose perception of Africa is extremely negative and patronizing. The interaction between Africa and the West, in most part, is infested with Africans being treated as kids and listening signposts that need to be lectured to. Before the 2012 elections in Kenya, Johnnie Carson, the former U.S. assistant secretary of state for African affairs lectured to Kenyans that “choices have consequences”. This is one of the very many cases where the West is presented as noble while Africans are perceived as savages that do not have and cannot find means to mobilize themselves and tackle challenges that affect them. 

For the West to retain relevancy and control over Africa, they have to continuously pander to and present the fabricated images of a helpless/needy, begging Africa. This is clearly reflected in the “Machine Gun Preacher (2011), a fiction film based on the LRA. In the film, a retired alcoholic and drug-using biker from Minnesota comes to Northern Uganda and South Sudan upon converting to Christianity. He finds the children under constant attack from the LRA and becomes the hero who leads armed raids to rescue them.” (Mwenda, 2012). The impression created in this film is that a Western retired alcoholic and drug-using biker is much more effective and efficient than trained members of any African military force.

As Steve Biko once noted, “One of the most difficult things to do these days is to talk with authority on anything to do with African culture [politics, economics, social issues]. Somehow Africans are not expected to have any deep understanding of their own culture or even of themselves. Other people have become authorities on all aspects of African life ... There is so much confusion sown, not only among casual non-African readers, but even among Africans themselves, that perhaps a sincere attempt should be made at emphasizing the authentic cultural aspects of the African people by Africans themselves.” This common consciousness that is cultivated in the West is getting deeply entrenched in Africa that for every problem on our (African) continent, a solution must be sought from the West (Mwenda, 2012).

Some continental Africans are squarely culpable for lending credence to this Western characterization of Africa. Executives, economists, artists, politicians, religious leaders, social workers, policy makers, researchers etc crisscross European and North American cities and boardrooms to market trauma, hunger, wars, malnourishment, AIDS, in exchange for handouts. The elites that stay home preoccupy themselves with founding non-governmental organisations and writing project proposals to attract donations from the West. The level of  dependency and “donorism” (as president Museveni calls it) has reached an alarming, self-defeatist, and appalling stage. Moreover, this money rarely reaches its proposed recipients.

Justine Sacco’s words are spoken everyday, by so many people, in so many different ways/versions. This is what we (African immigrants) are bombarded with in our day-to-day interaction with people in West and the Western media. It is time for Africans and non-Africans to come out and challenge this Western characterization that is symptomatic of deeply seated hegemony, "orientalism" (Said 1978), “alterity” (Mudimbe, 2013), and “orientalization and otherization of Africa” (Mazrui, 2005).  The African gods, spirits and ancestors are singing  "ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!" Let's all respond in chorus!

Alfdaniels Mabingo is a Fulbright Fellow at New York University

Did South Sudan ask the real questions?

For more than a week now, South Sudan has been embroiled in a military conflict that has claimed more than 500 lives. This conflict is a result of what the South Sudan government alleges to be a failed military coup/mutiny orchestrated by Riek Machar, South Sudan’s former vice president.

The roots of this conflict reside in the military struggle between military groups in South Sudan and the Khartoum government that started more than 30 years ago.  Whereas SPLM/A was the dominant force in this struggles (with its military leader, John Garang at the forefront), there were so many other military groups and ethnic militias that were engaged in this struggle such as South Sudan Defence Forces (SSDF). It is worth noting that these different military groups controlled territory, some of which was and is still mineral rich.

After signing the Comprehensive Peace Agreement  (CPA) with the Khartoum government in 2005,  SPLM/A was trapped in a conflict of interests. Some leaders within its ranks such as John Garang pursued the idea of a new (unified) Sudan whereas others preferred secession of South Sudan from North Sudan. John Garang pushes the idea of a new Sudan with hope that he would be the first black president of the new Sudan. Both Arabs and non Arab Sudanese endorsed his ambition and vision when they massively welcomed him and the SPLM/A leadership to Khartoum on July 08, 2005, a gesture that shocked the Khartoum regime.

Dr. John Garang. Maybe his dream of a new/unified Sudan had solutions to the crises in Darfur, South Kordofan and South Sudan

It seems that after signing the CPA in 2005, the SPLM/A leadership preoccupied themselves with finding a compromise between these two interests. This may have weakened the internal capacity of the new state to fully focus on the existing political and military challenges of the time.

One of the areas that the SPLM/A government needed to urgently address was how to assimilate and integrate other military groups and militias into one military structure. Instead, the SPLM/A created a structure where the military groups and militias remained militarily semi-autonomous with all the infrastructure and fully fledge chains of command. SPLM/A just coopted leaders of these groups into government but never dissolved their military structures into one unified force.  Worst of all, these leaders wielded influence authority and control over their respective groups. As such, these semi-autonomous units became a bargaining tool for political and economic self-aggrandizement by their respective coopted leaders.

This volatile arrangement created internal dislocations and instability and fed secessionist sentiments and threats of breaking away inside South. This fragility was compounded by the fact that some military groups were tribal in composition, and they controlled territory and mineral wealth.

It should be born in our mind that ever since she attained independence in 2011, South Sudan has been under siege from Sudan (north) over disputed border territories. The tension between the two countries reached its peak in 2012 during the Heglig crisis when soldiers of both countries clashed in the border town of Heglig. Additionally, South Sudan has been a ground on which the Ugandan government and that of Sudan have continued to settle their military scores. Since 2011, SPLM/A government has been engaged both internally and externally, an act that has denied it ample time and space to concentrate on finding solutions to internal challenges facing South Sudan.

Mineral dealers who bankroll leaders of different armed groups and militias in exchange for unconstrained access to mineral resources have also fueled the internal conflicts in South Sudan. If the current crisis is not resolved this behavior will do none but escalate.

As planes evacuate foreign nationals from South Sudan, let's remember that there are millions of South Sudanese whose only home is South Sudan. The danger with this crisis is that it might energize or be energized by other armed conflicts in nearby areas such as Democratic Republic of Congo, Chad, Central African Republic, and Darfur.

South Sudan people are caught in the middle of this conflict. It is only a political solution that can deliver peace and hope to their hearts

It is politics that brought all these warring military factions together. The same politics can help these same groups to mend fences. Politics is the only womb that will give birth to peace, hope, and prosperity for the people of South Sudan. The current crisis is begging for a political solution.

Alfdaniels Mabingo is a Fulbright Fellow at New York University