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.

 

gug

The (Much Maligned) ‘Americans’

 

Ask someone on the streets of Kampala about the premier foreign supporters of homosexuality and the most probable answer will be ‘the Americans’.

Who are these dastardly ‘Americans’?
That answer has lots of nuances which a poor Ugandan will most likely not even understand. They just know that the name of ‘the enemy’ is ‘the Americans’; -that was no slip of the tongue from the doctor.
And, it is not only in Uganda. In Tanzania, Zambia, Ghana, Zimbabwe, it is ‘the Americans’ who are reportedly eager to press the poor African to embrace homosexuality.
It bothers me, a lot. . We are invisible! We kuchus, we the African LGBTQ+ individuals,  are not even counted as ‘promoting homosexuality’, except as agents of ‘The Americans’.  We are just the proximal cancer, the ‘cancer’ that is already here and has to be removed…, tut tut tut!

The question is also nuanced, because it is Americans who have come to Africa and told us that ‘the Americans’ are pushing a ‘homosexual agenda’.
Oh yes, the American Far Right is also American! (Check out the reporting on one such conference in Uganda)

For some reason, maybe because they come in with Bibles and talk about ‘African Sovereignty’ and talk about ‘the Americans’, we simply don’t equate those Americans with ‘the Americans’. Quite confusing…

The dastardly, bad and evil ‘Americans’ supposedly control the world, the UN system, and promote homosexuality. They are apparently characterised by President Biden and Vice-President Kamara Harris. The current administration of course.
So, who are the others, the ‘good Americans’, intent on telling us poor, ignorant Africans about the dangers from the ‘bad Americans?’

Trying to figure out the ins and outs of America’s Cultural Wars as exported to Africa…,
I am really laughing and crying and kind of feeling deeply ashamed. We are literally pawns in a forever war. We are a battle on the side, our leaders colluding in something they don’t understand at all, but are passionate and very, very willing front line warriors.

No, I am not, and I will not be apologising to my people.

I am one individual, a very poor person. I don’t have the facilities of the State. I just have an internet connection, and I read what is publicly available on the internet.
Why shouldn’t the President of the Republic of Uganda have good intelligence of what is happening in his backyard? Why doesn’t he know of what is happening with his allies the US government? Why should President Museveni be a pawn in a game that he should be very, very aware that it has been ongoing for years?

The Presidency, the State of Uganda is not one person. It is a pool of the intelligence of the nation, of all those working there.
And then of course there is the Parliament of Uganda. The MPs; Asumani Basalirwa and the others, the Speaker of the Parliament of Uganda are all willing dupes and pawns, frontline soldiers in this war. The American Cultural Wars.

It is quite disturbing to realise that even if the State in Uganda is apparently clueless, the Church of Uganda, Anglican and its Archbishop (Stephen Kaziimba), is actually quite clued in. Archbishop Kaziimba is playing on the world stage, and he knows it. So are the very, very silent Catholic Bishops. They know, and have picked a side. How can the State of Uganda claim and act ignorance?

Why does the State and other public actors like Parliament in Uganda seem to be personally unaware of the body politic of the whole wide world?
Why are they playing into the stereotype of the poor, ‘put-upon-on’, ignorant African? This is not ‘rocket science’. This is knowledge of the world.
Asuumani Basalirwa claimed to the BBC that he didn’t know because he was a Moslem, and the missionaries are Christians. Lies, on top of the bullshit. He should be even more ashamed because he is playing pawn for ‘Christian Fundamentalists’, from his point of view.

Truly, truly, Uganda is a Village.
It doesn’t help that Ghana is also acting clueless, Ugandan style. And of course so are the other nations of Africa. Believing that ‘some Americans’ come to Africa to teach us about our own ‘Sovereignty’ to fight their own government, simply for the good of old Africa.

 

gug

Erasing the Kuchu: the LGBTQ+ African

 

Oh yes, this is a thing. A concept ringing true, and that seems to account for quite a lot of the anger other Africans feel for Kuchus, LGBTQ+ Africans.
It runs thus; Africans are so pure that Kuchus don’t, or didn’t exist in Africa. The whole idea of LGBTQ+ is foreign, an importation from the ‘West’.

It is complete nonsense. Yes, it is ignorant nonsense.
Sadly, quite a lot of Africans fervently believe this. And, a lot of our powerful leaders believe the nonsense, using that as the excuse to cement their homophobia.
Oh yes, we Kuchus accept that we are different. You might not like us, but we are African. That is part of my identity, our identities. We are queer Africans.

The nonsense is cemented by a lack of knowledge and the perpetuation of ignorance about sex and sexualities.
Africans as individuals know about sex. But, the sex averse, sex negative, sex shame that has been imported [mainly], means that we don’t actually cement our knowledge of sex and sexuality. What we know has to be confirmed by scriptures.., and you can imagine what ‘scriptures’ are believed to say about sex.

Back, to the apparent need to erase the Kuchu African, the LGBTQ+ African.

I remember the days when our dear leaders were questioned about LGBTQ+ Africans. The early days of the HIV epidemic. And it seemed like a scientific curiosity. In the rest of the world, gay men were an important facet of the epidemic. The epidemiology and science was quite concrete. Why were they not so in Africa? Was it true that in Africa, the HIV epidemic was only heterosexual?

Our dear leaders were incensed. No, there was no such nonsense as gay Africans. That was only in the evil, decadent ‘outside’, especially the ‘west’.
Oh yes, even Museveni was caught uttering such stupidities.., I don’t know whether ignorant utterances that the whole world knows aren’t correct but are uttered as truths in the village we call Uganda become gospels. [Yes, they do.]

So, given such erasure, we came out.
We actually made a demonstration, silent, mouths taped shut, in an international conference in Kampala, Uganda. The days of denial that gay Ugandans existed were over.
We were chased down after the demonstration. But, the mere fact that we had actually challenged the erasure was empowering. No longer could our dear leaders claim we didn’t exist. A precious few became visible.

And, we brought out the historical record. Hard to erase that which is actually in journals, as published papers, as long ago as when the Europeans started colonising Africa.
Myth bursting. Kuchus, LGBTQ+ Africans existed even before colonialism, apparently co-existed peacefully, before the introduction of the ‘One God’, colonial religions that banned, imprisoned, persecuted and erased knowledge of us.

Of course then the dear leaders changed the narrative. We were ‘few’, not many. Museveni made news, accepting that gay Africans existed, on BBC Focus on Africa program. A momentous assertion.

[Stupidities, we are mocked in our ignorance, but, if the leaders set themselves up for such a thing, what to do? Of course it had to be headline news, Museveni accepting that LGBTQ+ Africans existed. He is the one who had said they didn’t.]
Yes. We are a minority. A minority that is persecuted. We are closeted because of homophobia. Our invisibility, hurtful as it is, is a matter of survival.

Since we were, and the epidemic was, and we had come out, the relative outing of Kuchu Africans has been ongoing.
Matter of fact. Too many papers published, too much known now to actually stand and say, they don’t exist. The erasure is no longer working…, except in the anger by some Africans that we dare to exist, that we dare to come out. Dare to challenge the narrative of a homosexual less Africa.

But, the erasure continues. Or at least the desire, desperate, to erase.

The Anti-Homosexuality Act, 2023 is an attempt at erasure. In the Bill as written by Asumani Basalirwa, the very identities of gay, lesbian, transgender, etc were to be criminalised. It is not a mistake that the Act is genocidal, all homosexuals, as we are called, to be in prison for life [no parole], or the death punishment, for recidivism, being ‘serial’ offenders.

And when The Primate of the Church of Uganda, Anglican, GAFCON tribe, when Archbishop Stephen Kaziimba says things like

"homosexuality is currently a challenge in Uganda because it is being forced on us by outside, foreign actors against our will, against our culture, and against our religious beliefs"

Yeah, it is the same narrative. We gay Africans are not supposed to be, a foreign imposition... We poor kuchus, gay Africans, are of course not to blame for our sexual orientation…
But, we are. And the whole Anti-Homosexuality Act, 2023 is aimed at erasing us from existence. Yet we still are. We are not foreign. We are, Kuchus. We are LGBTQ+. We are African.

That is very, very painful to the likes of Kaziimba. No wonder death and life imprisonment. Matter of fact, ironic that the ‘foreign imposition’ that Kaziimba is fighting against he fights by imposing life imprisonment and death on Africans. Africans like me, Ugandans who are Kuchu.

 

gug

That updated US travel warning to Uganda

I cannot help but feel, deep in the depth my heart (which is paradoxically Kuchu, and Ugandan at the same time) that that traveladvisory is quite unfair. ‘Unfair’, ‘bad’, ‘unpatriotic’, and ‘very inaccurate’, and ‘not fair to poor old Uganda’, an assault on our ‘sovereignty’. This is what our dearest leaders are saying, no?

Or will it now be the sour grape reaction? We don’t really need those sinners in Holy Uganda.

Hoist on our own petard? I think that is the expression. And quite accurate. Uganda has very inelegantly scored an unprovoked own goal, a foreseen, unenforced error.
The world has begged us not to, we doubled, tripled down, that this is what we wanted. All the precious foreign currency that we wasted on lobbying in Washington DC, the amounts we spend to promote Uganda as a good tourist destination (Gifted by nature)…

A journo asked Asumani Basalirwa, mover of the Anti-Homosexuality Bill, 2023. “How many people are going to be saved from homosexuality by the Anti-Homosexuality Act?”
Very fair question, to my mind. The pain, felt and coming, what is it worth? The famous legislator’s reply is classic Ugandan, baffling with regards to his leadership credentials. ‘As a legislator, I don’t have to have the numbers’. Indeed!!!

Sigh..,

You know why the US travel advisory is unfair? It is because it is so accurate. Because it relies on the very text of the Anti-Homosexuality Act 2023. No wiggle room, no room for obfuscation, for asides for Ugandan leaders to cloud with lies and shade and offers to clarify. It is in the law of the country, the actual text approved by parliament, signed by the President.

The Advisory states-

“The May 2023 Anti-Homosexuality Act raises the risk that LGBTQI+ persons, and those perceived to be LGBTQI+, could be prosecuted and subjected to life imprisonment or death based on provisions in the law, and may be subject to mandatory reporting to the police if they are suspected of committing or intending to commit acts in violation of the law, and could face harassment or attacks by vigilantes. Supporters of the dignity and human rights of LGBTQI+ persons (including those of youth under the age of 18) could be prosecuted and imprisoned for multi-year sentences.”

Ours is the very bad and nasty habit of insisting that the sun is shining when the clouds are heavy and its raining. We Ugandans do so.., but, on the world scene, outside Uganda the Village, even Museveni should expect to be fact checked. And, he is.

The advisory reminds us of the other reasons why visitors to Uganda need to beware. Terrorism. Banditry and violence. Yes, they are endemic staples of Uganda. And as it states;

“Local police may lack appropriate resources to respond effectively to serious crime in most areas.”

The police will be too busy looking for homosexuals.

Yeah, we do have some severe problems. The petard of the Anti-Homosexuality Act 2023 is wholly of our own making. Price of our holiness, and purity and how fervently we seek to burnish our fundamentalist religious credentials. As the AFP statement put it, with an apparent lack of expression (Of course they are not going to call us out on it..)

“Lawmakers in the country (Uganda) argue that such measures are necessary to safeguard against (perceived) Western immorality.”
AFP

Indeed, the very lawmakers who steal, allocating to themselves money in the national budget and incessant sub-budgets, and steal from the poorest of poor, our siblings in Karamoja, stealing iron sheeting meant for roofs of housing in Karamoja.

Uganda the Holy marches on, indeed.

 

gug

Asumani Basalirwa of Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill 2023 Fame

 

Asumani Basalirwa, Member of the Parliament of Uganda, Bugiri Municipality, in the opposition, JEEMA Party. Famous for having introduced the Anti-Homosexuality Bill 2023 to the Parliament, and he is quite invested in it. He has promised that if it is nullified, he will move it again.

He is famous. Been making the rounds, a celebratory lap of victory once the Bill became an Act. He should, he is famous. And it might be the only bill that he moves that becomes law…, after all, he is in the opposition.

Typical Ugandan legislator indeed. Though he seems to be feeling the heat, complaining that it is the press that keeps talking about the Anti-Homosexuality Act 2023.., indeed. But, he has been talking to the BBC, Radio Deutche Welle and others. He is a politician.

And a liar.
Apparently he doesn’t have any idea about the American Right Fundamentalists visit.., [he says maybe because he is a Muslim!]. Well, I am not a believer.., but I know about the Family Watch International group conference in Entebbe which hosted a chunk of his MP colleagues and the President made the appeal to Africa to save the world from homosexuality. I wasn’t there, I am not a believer.., am not in parliament. I know the conference was there. Shame, a politician indeed.

A pawn of course-
Any member of the ruling NRM would have faced Museveni’s wrath for moving without permission. Technically he didn’t need the Executive to assent. The Inter-Religious Council for Uganda needed one.

He is a very proud legislator,
again and again, he reminds one in an interview that he is a legislator. But, typical Ugandan elitism, he believes that his legislative function is in a vacuum, where he ‘legislates’ and that’s all.
He says he doesn’t need to know how many people will be saved from homosexuality by the Anti-Homosexuality Act, 2023. Oh, he also doesn’t need to know how many people need legal aid, and he is bringing a bill to that end. Dear lawyer legislator, in this day and age, even I presume you need an estimate and a budget!

This is the guy who wrote the Bill to outlaw LGBTQ+ identity and he defined and criminalised ‘homosexual touch’!!!
Oh yes, read Asumani Basalirwa’s bill. It is in the annals of Ugandan history. According to what he wrote, even identifying as ‘Gay’ was enough to earn you prison.

As for the challenges to the HIV/AIDS program,
the proud legislators answers are informative. They are all a variety of ‘its doesn’t concern me’, ‘I am not to blame’, ‘Someone else should have checked’, ‘They didn’t tell me’, As I said, he is a mighty writer of the law, in the vacuum of his considerable experience.

And, he is of the elite of Uganda.
He doesn’t really care that life prolonging treatment of HIV for One million plus Ugandans was put at risk by his actions. Oh no, he goes for treatment to India or Turkey, or Dubai…, why the hell would he have to worry about his constituents who cannot fly out of the country for treatment?
Nope. He is a legislator, he doesn’t have to worry about any planning for the projected budget shortfall because of his bill. Others should do something.

Selfish, oriented to ‘I, myself, my concerns’, and that is all that seems to concern Asumani Basalirwa… Supremely ignorant and proud of not wanting to educate himself. A politician’s shrug of the shoulder, nothing concerns him, but what concerns him directly.

What a shining example of a legislator in Uganda!
Unfortunately, he is quite a good example of most of so called ‘Ugandan Elite’. Oh, they do call themselves that.

 

gug