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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Mother Nature’s Natural Diversity of Sexuality

Quite often, those who don’t understand us claim we, Kuchus (or LGBTQ+ people) are ‘un-natural’. So wicked and deformed that ‘even animals don’t do what we do’. That is, have sex between individuals of the same sex.

That accusation can be quite potent, and cutting, in Africa. In Uganda.
In our environment, we are soaked in ignorance about sex and sexuality; a conservative reticence about such intimate issues, a general lack of understanding of sex and sexuality and, complete ignorance and myths about sex other than heterosexual sex (in the missionary position). We kuchus have to educate ourselves to the facts of life, swimming past the prejudice, and ignorance, and frank lies as told in our world.
Because Mother Nature and the Creator, in their purported wisdom and knowledge, don’t know the constraints that we humans hand to them.

Sexual Diversity is natural and part of nature.

I don’t know about ‘making them male and female’. I don’t know about the ‘couples of Noah’s Ark’.
What I know is that the natural world has abundant evidence of Same Sex behaviours in multiple animals and birds. And that there are quite a number of examples in nature of animals switching sexes (true) and even flipping genders as necessary. Without provoking hell fires and brimstone, no.

Humans are naïve and inquisitive.., and of course sex is one of the most interesting things on earth (I confess!). The little that we know as a matter of fact is amazing. Anti-gay, anti-homosexuality activists who dismiss us as being ‘un-natural’, ‘worse than animals’, ‘deranged’ are simply ignorant, a very common human ailment, curable by knowledge.

Nature has galleons of evidence of Same Sex behaviour.

To date, same sex behaviour has been observed and confirmed in more than 1,500 animal species. The more we study animals and observe them in sexual behaviour, the more that is confirmed. Multiple studies. Multiple observers. Over a whole length of time since we humans started observations, from our domesticated animals!

In some species, experts actually note:

 

… 'Within a select number of species, homosexual activity is widespread and occurs at levels that approach or sometimes even surpass heterosexual activity.'

 

And, with regards to how widespread same sex behaviour might be, it is noted;

 

““Some studies claim homosexuality may be a common as being found in up to 95 percent of all animal species””

 

Those observations apply to observed same sex behaviour by animals. And birds. And yes, even insects and others!
It is important to appreciate that Same Sex Behaviour is not simply sex: genital contact to orgasm. It is nuanced and varied. Grooming, genital contact, and frank intercourse occur. But so does social coupling, courtship, forming of long lasting pairs, parenting and nurturing of offspring like eggs, taking care of younglings as a couple. Seems like instead of ‘copying’ what heterosexual couples do, as our detractors say,( laughing at LGBTQ+ families,) we are actually reproducing in human life what occurs spontaneously in nature. Even to the forming of family/clan groups that are safe spaces for the same sex couple, (kudos flamingos!).

 

Sex switching, gender switching.

 

And, shame…, we worry about the rightness and wrongness of human sexual behaviour? Nature, in nature, there is shameless switching and flipping of the sexes. Go worry about your ‘morality’, and the simple changing of the dress covering you (or girls dressing like boys etc)…, nature very conveniently and naturally switches the sex, as and when nature believes it necessary. Now, isn’t that amazing!

 

“For example, clownfish exhibit gender nonconformity. All clownfish are born male , but the dominant males in the school turn female to lay eggs and reproduce.”

 

“Hawkfish, on the other hand, are even more gender nonconforming. They are born female, but once reaching adulthood, they can switch back and forth between male and female depending on the favorability in a given situation.”

 

And those are not the only sex switching animals. Check out this site on Wikipedia. Just follow the references at the bottom of the page.

Why, why that humongous diversity in mother nature?

I don’t know the reasons why. It is, which is simply amazing to the likes of me. But as to why there is such a huge diversity of sexuality in nature, I don’t know, and apparently the experts themselves don’t know.

Some speculate that it is nature being nature. It simply doesn’t have to explain to proud, hubris prone humanity what is. We observe, we perceive and see what is. We accept, or not. Nature continues to be nature. If we haven’t worked out the reasons, that is OUR problem as inquisitive humans. Nature simply is. We speculate this;

 

“There have been many different theories – including not enough females, establishing dominance, or blowing off steam – that may explain why animals might engage in homosexual behavior.
But the researchers believe their observations actually support a whole new theory – that the males who have sex together have an evolutionary advantage over their heterosexual counterparts.”

 

Others speculate that same sex behaviour helps to protect the pack directly or indirectly, protecting the group’s child-bearing members or even an insurance policy for offspring. The pack benefits in passing on genetics to off-spring, rather than a particular individual. Or it is practice for more effective sex leading to child bearing. Or it is to aid in social bonds. The reasons are many, and pure speculation. We don’t know. We just know it is.

Nature is humbling. Truly humbling.

It would be a lie to say I knew all this stuff before; and of course lots of people, kuchu and non-kuchu don’t know it. Maybe in the rarefied airs of universities.., but this is real life, nature out there, breathing and thinking and moving, even as we hit each other on the head. It is humbling.

Utility? For now, I don’t know. But good news to know that I am not weird, nor as ‘un-natural’ as I am famously known to be in Uganda, and in Africa. The mud is muddy, and sticky. Takes good knowledge to challenge and slough it off. And to actually wonder, what else is actually hidden, right out there in plain sight?
I humbly use the final words in the short article that set me off on this investigative journey.

 

“quote from Alex Johnson of Orion Magazine, who wrote about this topic:

“What, then, is natural? All of it. None of it. Instead of using the more-than-human world as justification for or against certain behavior and characteristics, let’s use the more-than-human world as a humbling indication of the capacity and diversity of all life on Earth.””

 

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The Power of A Story

 

Most Kuchus (LGBTQ+ Africans) on the continent relate to this strongly. We have been accused, heavily and with deep passion, of targeting children ‘recruiting children to homosexuality’. That was the Church of Uganda Anglican Archbishop’s 2022 Christmas message. Anti-LGBTQ+ advocates preach of our legendary perversity. Politicians shed crocodile tears. Apparently we have recruitment centres in schools!
Its infuriating. Most kuchus know it is simply untrue. Reputed allies are disturbed by the possibility. I commented on Rev Gideon Byamugisha’s fear here once. Anti-gay activists repeatedly harp on it, a dishonesty I will hold to their feet. They are liars. Many know they are. It is simply impossible to believe the likes of Martin Ssempa don’t know that most kuchus are not paedophiles. That he harps on it is a simple sign of his capacity at lying. Oh, I once blogged about Ssempa and his lies…, He has mastered the Art of the Big Lie. And if that demonises kuchus, that is well and good. Yes, I know.., he is a Pentecostal Pastor.

Back to the power of a story, or anecdote.

As opposed to a statistic, a story is something that an audience hears, understands and relates to. Real people, in real circumstances, doing real things, good or bad. A story communicates very well, to a wide audience.

I remember watching tv during the early days of CORVID-19; A press conference, President Trump and Dr Fauci.
The President was advocating for some weird treatment; chloroquine, or bleach as a cure. And Fauci stands up, quite bravely, contradicting His Excellency. What His Excellency had stated was not true: He had told a story, an anecdote, of a treatment curing corvid. But that was a story of one person, one patient, one individual. "n is equal to one”, said Fauci, puzzling us all.
You don’t make decisions from an anecdote; they might help you understand what is happening, but you need a bigger and better sample size of thousands or millions, instead of one.

What does that have to do with kuchus and LGBTQ+ individuals and ‘recruiting’ of children in Africa, what we are blamed for?
Very simple. The anti-gay people are picking and choosing anecdotal information, pointing to show what the ‘dreaded homosexuals’ are; and coming for your children.

Remember Ssempa in 2012-14 showing gay porn in church and other public spaces. Gross, XXX pics and movies of extreme sex; that that’s how we (‘homosexuals’) had sex! Which kuchu would dare contradict the ‘man of god’? He was the expert, the Anti-Gay Saint of Uganda, expert on homosexual sex.

The press in Uganda and Africa does the same. Stories on ‘homosexuality’ or ‘sodomy’ sell papers. The more lurid, sensational (and fabricated, pushed by anti-gay activists), the better. A straight line to silent, bewildered kuchus.

Here is one such story.
Of ‘defilement’ Ugandanese term for sex with an under-age person. A child (under 18, Uganda). The child is the 'victim’.
It is not a pretty story. A 19 year old man allegedly had penetrative anal sex of a 2 year old male child; neighbour’s child. The lurid details.

Almost as an afterthought, the following statement ends the report.

~~~

~~~

‘Defilement’ cases in Uganda are almost exclusively of male perpetrators. That report of is 12,780 cases of heterosexual ‘defilement’, with the rest being of male victims, and thus presumed ‘homosexual defilement’. And this is from the Police Annual Crime report for the calendar period 2022.

From that report springs out the factoid, small but significant. Most of the reported cases of sex with under-aged, children, were heterosexual in nature.
My calculator of those figures shows that heterosexual ‘defilement’ cases of 2022 reported by Uganda Police in their annual report were actually 98% of the total. The presumed ‘homosexual defilement’ cases were 2% of the total number of reported cases of defilement.

So, the lurid story in that article ’19 year old detained over sodomy’ represents 2% of cases of defilement occurring in Uganda over a calendar year.

This article, useful in demonising ‘homosexuals’ in Uganda, represented 2% of cases.
Instead of a wave of ‘homosexual recruitment of your children’, what is happening is in fact ‘heterosexual recruitment’ of the said children.

That is the power of the ‘anecdote’ in the minds of the masses.
The story can be cherry picked, not representative of reality on the ground, can be picked to mask the real story, hiding what should be obvious in plain sight and might be a distraction. That is what happened with Fauci and Trump above. That is  what is happening in Uganda.

It is sad, on very many levels.

We are an insignificant, demonised and stigmatised minority. Prejudice by the majority is a heavy blanket muting us. Even our cries of ‘that’s a lie’ are not heard.
The politicians say we are the ones lying. The pastors and sheikhs and bishops all say we are the ones lying. We don’t even have a place and space to say we are not lying. That would be ‘Promotion of Homosexuality’.

But, the facts and figures don’t lie.
We are accused of ‘homosexual recruitment’ of Ugandan children. In actual fact, ‘heterosexual recruitment’ of Ugandan children is occurring. Instead of what is happening in 98% of cases being discussed and solutions sought, anecdotes from 2% of case reports are blown up and out of proportion, and used to bay for our blood, in the literal sense.
Sleight of hand, yes. Quite effective, true. Doesn’t solve the problem; only masks the issues and scapegoats a minority. Yeah; Ugandan, and African style.

 

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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.

 

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