Improper Human Rights: Ghana and Uganda

Tongue in cheek, that title.
There is this organisation in Ghana a promoter of ‘Proper Human Rights’. Apparently its promotion of proper human rights includes support of the anti-LGBTQ+ bill currently in Ghana’s parliament.
And Stephen Kaziimba, Archbishop of the Church of Uganda, Anglican also had an interesting argument. As he whipped the Anti-Homosexuality Act, 2023 he intimated that the LGBTQ+ agenda had corrupted ‘proper human rights’

Sarcasm over the top? No.
Dr Justine Appiah Kubi is an executive member of the Coalition for Proper Human Sexual Rights and Family Values,  He supports the Ghana anti-homosexuality bill,  the ‘Promotion of Proper Human Sexual Rights and Ghanaian Family Values Bill, 2022’;.
A proud Ghanaian, he lauds the Ghanaian bill for being not as intolerant as the Ugandan law…, and bearing the beneficence and tolerance of Ghanaian culture.
(I am Ugandan…, I would agree as to Ugandan intolerance, if I didn’t know that at the moment there are reports of Ghanaian Kuchus being viciously attacked, stabbed in broad day light, on the streets of Accra, and Ghanaian twitterati championing the ‘straightening’.)

Says Justine Appiah Kubi;

“.., the bill is tolerant enough to ensure that no harm befalls individuals in the queer community, although Ghanaians might not condone LGBT and its activities.

This level of tolerance, Dr. Appiah-Kubi emphasised, is reflective of the Ghanaian culture.

Additionally, he described the bill as a good one, explaining that, “the spirit of the bill wasn’t necessarily to really hurt people who are into homosexuality, but really to prevent these absurd, LGBT things that are coming to nations and using political strategies, using UN, using the other CSOs” to champion their agenda.”

 

What do I know about Human Rights?

Actually I know very little. Surface stuff. It is human rights. Concerns human beings. And rights being what we believe human beings are supposedly entitled to. And rights imply responsibilities.

What does the Ghana’s anti-LGBTQ+ bill actually state? I posted what could be gathered from the media on Ghana’s bill.

 

·         Identifying as LGBT is criminalised. 3 years in prison.

·         Advocacy is criminalised. 10 years in prison
Campaigning for LGBT rights, dissemination of information

·         Conversion therapy (from LGBTQ to straight sexual orientation!) is validated.

·         limits provision of health services to the LGBTQ+ community. Including HIV services.

·         encourages citizens to report neighbours that are homosexual.

 

Last time looked into the mirror, I was a human being.
We are human beings, and as such, human rights do concern us. Personally, I would think that that is hard to parse.
Stephen Kaziimba, Archbishop is not convinced.

Here is what the Archbishop of the Church of Uganda, Anglican, Dr Steven Kaziimba Mugalu had to say, on at least 3 occasions, when he was whipping up pressure on the President to sign the bill into law.

 

“Homosexuality is currently a challenge because it is being forced on us by foreign actors against our will, against our culture, and against our religious beliefs. They disguise themselves as human rights activists but are corrupting real human rights by adding LGBTQI+ to their agenda,” he said.
the pre-Easter message from the Archbishop.

 

““They disguise themselves as “human rights activists,” but are corrupting real human rights by adding LGBTQI+ to their agenda.”
That was the Easter Sunday summon, 2023

 

“being forced on us by outside, foreign actors against our will, against our culture, and against our religious beliefs. They disguise themselves as “human rights activists,” but are corrupting real human rights by adding LGBTQ to their agenda.”
lavish thanks to the President for signing the Bill into law.

 

So, what is the promotion of human rights with the exclusion of LGBTQ+ rights?
Now, that is the true head scratching moment.
Are Kuchus human? Are African LGBTQ+ people actual living human beings? Are they worth inclusion in the conversation about basic, inviolable rights that other human beings, other Africans, are entitled to?

Not rhetorical.
Ghanaian industrialist, William Mensah-Ansah was quite confused and confusing about the issue.
How do you protect individual human rights without recognising that LGBTQ+ Africans are actually individuals whose rights have to be protected? He was confused, but advocates a common African position in the African Charter for African nations around the exclusion of rights for Kuchus. LGBTQ+ Africans.

Are Kuchus, LGBTQ+ Africans human enough to be included in the Human Rights that the rest of African human beings should enjoy? A profound question, because, in the African, Ugandan and Ghanaian and other context, LGBTQ+ rights are so ‘foreign’ that they cannot even think of rights for the homosexual. We have been thoroughly dehumanised, in their eyes. No longer human, it is okay to kill us, legally in the eyes of the law. Because we are inhuman.

Rhetorical flourishes those? I really, really wish it was so. But, my dear brothers and sisters, my fellow Africans, do not really think the LGBTQ+ human being is human, even our African-ness is debatable.

 

gug

Lynching the suspected Kuchu in Africa, How real is the risk?

 

This is a post that I should have written long ago. But I am reluctant to do it. Because I am an African, a Ugandan, and I am a kuchu living in Uganda.
It is true. I as a kuchu in Uganda, and in Africa, I can be killed, by a mob of enraged Ugandans and Africans, if and because I am suspected to be kuchu.

There. I have written the cursed words.

Why the reluctance?
I am a human being. I am conflicted, knowing the potential for fatal violence of my lived reality, even as I block it out. Of course I block it. I am a human being, and that is how we treat unpleasant realities. Denial.
It works. But it also means that I am reluctant to pen an article that will strip away my blinders, make me look at the nakedness of danger I flaunt every single day.

Yeah, I am at risk of being killed by a mob of people who come to know and suspect that I am kuchu. An LGBTQ individual.
Plain fact.

So, why write the post now?

Started with a twitter post. Someone was killed in Kakuma refugee settlement in Kenya.
Kakuma is known amongst kuchus in Uganda. If you dare take the risk of getting out of Uganda, seeking asylum on the strength of persecution for our sexuality,  that is where you will end up. But, it is also a violent place. One report quotes:

 

“the "extreme discrimination and violence" faced by "several hundred" LGBTQ+ people living in the camp, which hosts 200,000 refugees and asylum seekers in north western Kenya.
They find themselves victims of "hate crimes, acts of violence, including rape, and other serious human rights abuses",”

 

One might argue that those are special circumstances. Displaced people in a camp. I am a kuchu living in my community, in my village and hood, so to say. Am I at risk?
Unfortunately the answer is yes.

Violence targeted at people’s perceived sexuality is a world wide phenomenon. Widespread and quite severe, in South Africa, and Brazil. In much of Africa, it is the vigilante attack by a mob of mobilized citizenry that is the danger hanging over our coming out.
Here is a reminder and note from the recent debate of an anti-homosexuality bill in the Parliament of Ghana (July 2023). The person quoted was on a television broadcast.

 

“"I don't accept that when someone is caught in the act, they should be beaten to death. No! We are against their acts but it doesn't mean they are not humans," he said”

Dr. Benjamin Otchere Ankrah has sounded caution to Ghanaians not to inflict bodily harm on any person suspected of or caught in the act of homosexuality. According to him, though he strongly supports the anti-gay bill before Parliament, he however cautions the citizenry not to take matters into their own hands.”

 

That is a very real possibility for an Kuchu in Africa to consider. And be aware. And move circumspectly.
(Never mind the condescension in that opinion. Benjamin Otchere Ankrah above doesn’t want us kuchus ‘bodily harmed’, but strongly supports the bill. Parse the difference…, he is a very upright and moral human being, whose love for sinners like us is..!)

The updated US travel advisory alluded to the risk of vigilante violance.
Thing is, however incensed Ugandans might feel that the US gave the advisory in revenge for them passing the Anti-Homosexuality Act 2023, the concerns of the US state department are specific and pretty spot on. The updated travel advisory states:

 

“LGBTQI+ persons, and those perceived to be LGBTQI+, … could face harassment or attacks by vigilantes.””

 

Remember the lesbian couple in Jinja, arrested in March 2023 and in prison over the Easter period? A mob of parents in fear of the contagion of homosexuality went to the school where one of them was teaching. They would have lynched her, if she wasn’t in custody at that particular point.

True, the judge in her case then denied her bail for some time, reasoning to protect her from her community… I think that was bullshit. The judge just wanted the ‘suspected homosexuals’ in jail…, even without being convicted. And indeed, they both got bail.
We are kuchus. We know how to negotiate our safety. We have several years’ practical experience doing exactly that. Not perfectly, but believe me, we would rather risk death by mob outside prison than the mercies of the state’s guests, thank you very much.

A more typical example was this report in another part of the country; Kamuli, Uganda. The report of the article was 13^th March 2023

 

“Rogers Wabuya and Derrick Wamwangu, both residents of Bukiabi sub-county were rounded up by residents from a lodge in Bumbo town council on Saturday.

Fred Timbwa, an eyewitness, says that residents stormed the guest house following a tip-off from one of the workers. Mathew Nabiswa, a paternal uncle to Wamwangu, says that the residents stormed the guest house armed with machetes, axes, stones, bricks, and sticks to lynch the duo but were saved by the Bumbo town council LC III chairperson, Joseph Kamuli.”

 

Take good note of those few very relevant details. A couple went to a hotel, presumably seeking some privacy to have sex. Consensual sex. A worker at the hotel noted them. The worker then went out of their way to tip off others. A mob mobilised. They stormed the ‘guest house’, armed with ‘machetes, axes, stones, bricks and sticks’
From the eye witness account, it was luck that there was a noted leader who prevented a mob killing at that particular moment in time. Most likely they were beaten.

Sadly, that is the reality of what can happen to any of us kuchus in Africa. It was the same scenario that that commentator in Ghana was thinking about in the quote above.

Two countries, miles and miles apart; one in East Africa, the other in West Africa. And the same kind of ‘spontaneous violence’ to lynch the suspected homosexual is a risk that is understood as part of what is possible.

Why is this so? Why would this be so?

 

gug

Conflicting orthodoxies; The Kuchu’s Right to Faith and Belief (2)

One of the most challenging and spine chilling thing for the kuchu of faith in Africa is the apparent ‘orthodoxy’ of beliefs…, that the religious in Uganda Ghana and Africa, the main religions apparently down right frown about our sexuality. The frowning, the condemnation, the hell and brimstone, spit, thorns and faeces throwing condemnation…, it is held up as unchallenged orthodoxy in much of the African setting.

Yet this is not true…, this is not true at all.

This observation can be surprising for any kuchu on the ground. We live in our bubbles of poverty and circumstances enforced. What we know is what is in the country, the capital and economic big cities, at most. We are not exposed to the wider world, bigger than ‘Uganda the Village’.

And what we see is near universal condemnation.
When the Mufti of Uganda wants us exiled on an island in Lake Victoria so that we can ‘die out there’, that is what we hear. When the Archbishop and Primate of the Church of Uganda espouses his anti-gay views at the pulpit day after day, which is what we hear. That is what is reported in the country, on the ubiquitous radios and televisions airwaves. When Pastor Aloysius Bujjingo, the SALT media mogul, gay bashes in public Pastor Kayanja, televangelist of ‘Miracle Center Cathedral’ and Kayanja ministries, poor Pastor Kayanja (powerful man as is) can barely push back, because the charge is homosexuality.
Homosexuality is the worst of stigmatisation, in Uganda.

Yet this religious ‘orthodoxy’ is a sham. In the major religions believed in most of Africa, there is serious dissension on the subject of homosexuality. And, many in those same religions embrace homosexuals, in various different ways, a sharp contrast to the supreme anti-gay bashers who actually embarrass some of their friends with their fanaticism (like the gay porn showing Pastor Martin Ssempa).

Take the Catholic Church in Uganda.
Oh yes, they frankly bear no love for the African Kuchu, confessing Catholic or not. And they will not preach so, the good Catholic Fathers of Uganda.
Yet, in the face of the reigning Pontiffs parsing of anti-LGBTQ+ feeling, they couldn’t openly air their distaste. Pope Francis is welcoming of LGBTQ+ people, (which is a shock, shock, shock, to any Ugandan Kuchu who happens to be Catholic in faith.) Pope Francis believes, and teaches that singling out the ‘sin’ of homosexuality from other sins is hypocritical. And further, he encourages outreach to Kuchu Catholics; the love of Christ is apparently for Kuchus too.

I repeat, this view would be shocking news to most Catholics in Uganda, to kuchu Catholics most.
The Catholic Fathers of Uganda disagree with Pope Francis. And, faced with actually having to preach an inclusive love by Christ, or going against their popular homophobic prejudice, they chose the coward’s way out. Silence. A resounding silence.
They chose not to comment on the Anti-Homosexuality Bill, 2023 in Uganda. They then opted to inform the world that they were waiting for the text of the Anti-Homosexuality Act, 2023 before they commented…, and, I am personally to hear any comment from the revered fathers of the Catholic Church in Uganda.

But, it is important to remember that their silence has been very effective as a vehicle for anti-kuchu, anti-gay sentiment. They are the biggest denomination in the country, Uganda. Knowledge that their revered leader, the Pontiff was openly anti-criminalisation of homosexuality would have been a shock and set back to the anti-gay forces in Uganda. They were silent…, it was not reported. And Pope Francis chose not to comment openly on a subject that his Bishops in the country supported covertly.

In Ghana, legislator Amidu Chinnia Issahaku relies on this false orthodoxy in this article, claiming religious and spiritual support for his anti-gay views, in this oped. Of course he doesn’t mention that the reigning Pope of Catholics disagrees with him. Nor that the Archbishop of Canterbury also disagrees with the Bishop of Accra…,

The shism of the Anglican Communion.
Instructive.., that a crucial part of Anglicanism disagrees with fanatical anti-gay attitudes.
Again the dispute has been of long standing. But, the Kuchu in Uganda, and in much of Africa, who happens to be Anglican is more than likely not in the know. When Archbishop Welby wrote his letter to the Archbishop Kaziimba of the Church of Uganda, that was the first that many got to know that there were actually Anglicans who had a parsing on the whole homosexuality debate. A parsed outlook, fractured…, but not the orthodoxy which apparently includes supporting the death penalty for the homosexual, in practice, if not in principle.

Of course this is not suprising. ‘Orthodoxy’ in a religion and unity of thought is an impossible aim. We are human beings. We joy and rejoice in our differences.., and thought orthodoxy is sheer lunacy (personal POV).
That is a matter of fact…, yet for the African LGBTQ+ individual, the kuchu, is led to believe that they are so evil and such sinners that they cannot believe, are not welcome spiritually before their God. That its either their spirituality or their faiths. An impossible choice.

It is not often that Kuchus are even exposed to the fact that the major religions actively disagree with that point of view.
That, in a way, is profound insight that was partly gifted to me when I was searching for answers for myself.
I became disgusted with the lies and obfuscation and lack of common decency with our leaders of mosque and church. Way long ago in the evolution of my spirituality. It is still quite relevant today, to the Kuchu on the streets of Kampala, Nairobi or Accra, and anywhere in Africa.

We are, people of faith. And though some reject us, there are others who affirm us. Our humanity, our sexualities, our loves.
And, it is our humanity’s right to have a faith and knowledge of faith, that might or might not contrast with the ‘orthodoxy’ of anti-kuchu sentiment forced upon us.

We are Kuchu. We are human beings. We can be people of faith. It is an intensely personal decision.., and it is ours to make, personally.

 

gug

The Kuchu’s Right to Faith and Belief (1)

We Africans are a spiritual people.
The reasons for that might be myriad, and frankly un-understandable to me as an individual, but, it is an enduring fact of social existence on the continent. Growing up and living here, one cant help but be impressed at the depth and breadth of spirituality and beliefs.
Kuchus, (LGBTQ+) Africans, are also deeply spiritual people, like other Africans.
That is also matter of fact. These are our people, we cannot reject our people, even when the leaders disdain and attack us. We are, for all our putative crimes, we are African. With the blessings and curses that come with that identity.

Most, Africans, in Africa, strongly and vigorously prescribe to an inalienable right to faith, belief and religions, as a strongly held convictions.
An apparent paradox to that is that many of my fellow Africans would seek to deny the Kuchu, the (LGBTQ+ African) the right to belief, on account of their sexuality. Indeed, many fellow Africans fervently seek to convert the Kuchu to their own interpretation of faiths and scriptures.

I am African. I reverently and fully embrace my identity as African. And yes, poke my finger in the metaphorical eye of any who would seek to deny my identity as African.

My inalienable right to faith and belief I also embrace.
Oh yes, I do. I do not believe. And, I strongly believe that as strong as your right to believe what you believe is, that is as strong as my right not to believe in what I don’t believe in.
Oh and yeah, it started off being cheeky…, ended up…, well, an earned scepticism.

Quite a number of fellow Africans have interpreted my lack of a confirmed faith as a result of my sexual orientation. That is not accurate. The vast majority of kuchus that I know are people of faith. They believe, and are members of the major faiths and religions.
And, Kuchu believers have a right to faith, as inalienable as that of any other African’s.

Logical, isn’t it?
Yet I have sat across a table from and listened in wonder as prominent ‘believers’ sought to impress on me how faithless it was to be kuchu. That because I am kuchu, that definition totally defines my spirituality as godless, demon possessed, anti-god, anti-morality, anti-humanity. Anti-gay rhetoric in Uganda, and quite a bit of Africa denies our humanity, and much of the semblance of what, in our African eyes, marks a human being. Check out this, a report on the debate on an anti-homosexuality bill in the parliament of Ghana on 5^th of July.

 

“Minister ..,Dan Botwe, who described as “madness” the activities of lesbians, gays, bi-sexuals, and transgender (LGBT) humans.. a Satanic force that should not be allowed to fester.., For him, “eternal vigilance” should be exercised by the country”

 

It is the rhetoric of dehumanisation, embraced by the prominent influencers, and firmly believed by leaders, political, religious and spiritual in a lot of Africa.
We inhale all that toxicity, and we kuchus also tend to believe it, till we stand up and assert that, hell on earth, we are still demonstrably human, and our spirituality, an inherent part of our humanity, cannot be taken away from us. Simply because we are as human as those who are throwing the stones, the anti-gay.

After the debate on the anti-homosexuality bill in the Ghanaian parliament this month, it was time for Ghanaian politicians to go all out and preach and articulate their hate of the Ghanaian Kuchu.
Hey, I am a Ugandan. The cycles of hate are becoming quite predictable, in Uganda and outside.
Hon. Amidu Chinnia Issahaku (MP for Sissala East) of Ghana is apparently cashing in. He was hitting the airwaves, and took the time to pen titled Ghanaian Culture and the Gay Menace. Ironically regurgitating the talking points of the American Far Right in American Cultural Wars. The originality was…, distinct, is the word.

But, Hon Issahaku first had to impress on his Ghanaian audience how much against scriptures the kuchu is.
He quotes Christian scripture, and Islamic scripture. He hints that African religion, pre-colonial, was anti-homosexual (that assertion is suspect to say the least)
Preaching to the converts, as most anti-gay activists in Africa do, and love to do. The aim is to shower up their credentials as upright and moral human beings, prominent members of society.

A distinct fact they ignore, as Amidu Chinnia Issahaku did ignore, is that Kuchu (LGBTQ+) Ghanaians exist.
And, they believe. They are human beings, and have a spirituality that is undeniable as human beings. And, of course they have come to a reconciliation of their faiths and beliefs, and their sexualities.

Amidu Chinnia Issahaku believes that because he interpretes religion as unwelcoming to Kuchu Ghanaians, that there are none that welcome them. Thankfully, we do have alternative communities that welcome us. And, the Rt Honourable member would be quite flabbergasted that the reigning Pontiff of the Catholic Church actually welcomes us. And there are quite a number of alternates to his apocalyptic vision of our evilness.

Of course, there are some like me…, ahem, ahem, ahem.
I sincerely don’t believe, even though I believe in your right as a human being to believe.
But, I have come across ‘believers’ who insist on quoting their scriptures in my surprised face…, and I ask myself, what part of ‘I don’t believe’, don’t they understand? I get them.., I am an African, a human being. Surely I must believe…,
Those discussions have evolved my thinking, but I sincerely don’t appreciate being informed of how bad I am supposed to be according to your scriptures, however holy you believe them to be. I just don’t believe.

In all his fervency, Amidu Chinnia Issahaku and other anti-gay people in Uganda, like Martin Ssempa and Stephen Kaziimba, fail to grasp something important. Which is quite frustrating, to them, I imagine. They can use their powers to silence us, but, because we are, and we are human just like them, we will always claim and embrace our basic humanity.
Their counter is dehumanising and objectifying us; classic pathways of prejudice, still balking at the basic fact challenge. Our humanity; we are human.

We are Kuchu. Our right, as human beings, and as Africans to faith and belief is a pragmatic matter of fact. We are. And, we are human beings. And, we are spiritual.
Faith is a personal thing…, and we will always embrace our own spirituality and spiritualties. Dehumanising rhetoric, however holy and righteous it sounds runs counter to our experience of humanity. Its like the struggle one has to impress another that a rock is bread. Reality wins out.

Or at least so we hope.

 

gug