Weird, Queer Mood; Uganda, Ugandans on the World Bank

 

The World Bank released a statement. To dear Uganda; sorry, but our values and the values enshrined in the Anti-Homosexuality Act, 2023 are at war. We pause future aid.

Frankly, I am caught off guard.

Not by the fact that the World Bank would react like so. They are an important international institution. Quite vulnerable to politics and activism. Of course they do have values. And of course the Anti-Homosexuality Act 2023, Uganda’s beloved legislation of death and imprisonment to the homosexual…, it is weird out there bad.

Yet, believe it or not, Ugandans feel that they have been beset and bothered and are being set upon by the World Bank. How dare they!!!!

I understand, on a daily basis, that Ugandans, in Uganda, have a deep lack of understanding of who and what I am as a kuchu. It is sort of always in the background, that they think me less than human and evil and a demon. I hear it on radios and tvs and literally everywhere.
Yet, there is a part of me to which that chorus is water on a duck’s back. Always running off, never sticking. I am kuchu, and mature enough to know that that is no big deal.

Not so to my fellow Ugandans.
The Anti-Homosexuality Act 2023 is taken, and I have been told again and again and again by self righteous Ugandans, it is a measure of the Will of Ugandans in Uganda. It is their right, and right to have me in prison for life and on death row, simply because I am an evil homosexual.

They, fellow Ugandans, believe that.

And they are always supremely surprised that the rest of the world doesn’t believe so. That the world around actually condemns them for that act of great morality, the Anti-Homosexuality Act 2023.

So, the President, apparently receiving the news late, pens his frustration on good old paper with ink. Odd…, maybe the old man hasn’t moved on to more modern means. The resulting missive he posts on twitter, (forgive, he posts on ‘X’). An X post indeed.
I haven’t read it…, I get depressed by our apparent lack of understanding of the realities of life. All I thought was…, now, those notes will be great in a Presidential library years and years from now! Weird reaction!
His message, summarised, was Uganda will develop, with or without the World Bank. Sour grapes, I think…, but, I am one of the very bad homosexuals.

‘Bobi Wine’ Kyaggulanyi, beleaguered president of the biggest party in opposition, was chagrined. The World Bank should care about Uganda’s other human rights transgressions. Not only about the homosexual genocide inherent in the Anti-Homosexuality Act 2023, Bobi Wine whines and whinges.

Weird reaction, as expected…, we are Ugandans.

From parliament, a necessary re-adjustment of the budget. World Bank monies were presumed…,
Which really shows how clueless Ugandan politicos and leadership is.

I can get that Museveni was blindsided, Archbishop Kaziimba mounted a blitzkrieg targeting parliament, Speaker Among had her own political irons in the fire and poor Asumaani Basalirwa is simply a stupid pawn…
But, once the deed was done, all of the results were predictable. An international game of chess, and Ugandan leaders are playing strictly to the local audience, blithely forgetting the world is NOT ‘Uganda the Village’.

Basalirwa is crying that it is ‘unfair’, his beautiful Anti-Homosexuality Act is being taken out of context. This naïve dude then repeats that we should rely on ‘The Arabs’.
Such leaders we have. Not a clue to the realities of international economics, finance, politics. He believes ‘the Arabs’ will hand Uganda development aid because he Basalirwa is a Moslem… And that is the pawn that presented the Anti-Homosexuality Bill in Uganda’s parliament?
Yet, to be accurate, the members of Parliament are more than 500. To my knowledge, only 2 seemed to have dissented from actualising the ‘Will of the People’.

Besides ‘adjusting’ the budget for this financial year, the politicians are of course whipping up the homophobia.
Expected. As in, who is to blame? Of course it is us, the very, very bad, evil and demonic homosexuals. We are to blame, clearly, in the eyes of all right thinking Ugandans.

LGBTQ+ activists have taken a muted victory lap.
Of course they are. And, I don’t blame us. We are very many things, but we are not angels. Our country has written into the law of the land Life imprisonment and Death to us, simply because we are who we are. Yes, LGBTQ+ activists in Uganda are really angry. My anger has been spilling out now and again here…, but I am just one.

Yet, though they campaigned for the World Bank to suspend the loaning, I am not a believer in our supposed demonic super powers as kuchus; crediting their lobbying with the results is simply an abuse of my thinking and capacity at logic.

One would think that independent media and newspapers in Uganda would be more discerning. But, this is Uganda. One would be very wrong.
On the subject of homosexuality, in Uganda, that is the National Prejudice. Sanity is the first thing out of the window of the debate room. The rest is fevered emotional, emotive reaction.

But…, and an important but, many Ugandans believe that it is our lobbying that has caused the World Bank to suspend loans.
Clueless Ugandans. I marvel again, that ‘Homosexuality and Homosexuals’ as we are called, are the National Prejudice. Yank on that chain, and Ugandans bark and predictably go into convulsions. Thinking and thought and logic are suspended, until the haze settles.

It is ‘Uganda The Village’, indeed. Our very own thinking bubble rejecting any thought to the contrary; demonic, as in literal demon possessed we are. However free the internet is, however open knowledge is, it has to be taken in, it has to be processed. It has to be understood.
And Ugandans are unable to think clearly, because the subject is Homosexuality, our National Prejudice!

True, many Ugandans blame Kuchu activists simply because a scapegoat is desperately needed. That is the pragmatic politics, and we are a uniquely visible invisible scapegoat. A predictable misstep was done by the leaders, they have to explain why a move that they were warned from the start was quite predictable is now taking them by surprise, indeed.

I mean, how many times were they warned that this was going to happen? And those warning were rubbished as ‘pro-homosexual’, and the righteous Speaker Among told all how we could all do without the aid?

Yes, the mood in Uganda is queer weird. Quite predictably so.

 

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