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Africa too poor and weak to defeat homosexuality
Author: Musaazi Namiti. PHOTO/COURTESY
What you need to know:
- We have to manage expectations. Beggars, they say, have limited choice.
Months before the first anti-homosexuality Bill was tabled in 2009, I met a European man with his Ugandan boyfriend at one of the hotels in Kampala. He had read a letter I had written about homosexuality in one of the major newspapers and asked me if we could meet.
I did not have any qualms about the meeting. I have, after all, worked with LGBTQIA+ outside Uganda. The abbreviation — for those who may not know — stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning, intersex, asexual, and the + means society is still learning more about humanity’s very diverse gender and sexual identities.
LGBTQIA+ brings together many different gender and sexual identities that often face discrimination and persecution (sometimes even in places where homosexuality is generally accepted).
At the hotel, we were to be joined by a married heterosexual (non-Ugandan) woman who was a friend of the European, but she did not turn up. So the three of us sat down and ordered drinks.
The European’s boyfriend, a dark-skinned man of average build, looked much younger. The European was probably 20 years older.
The drinks for the European’s boyfriend were on the European; I footed my own bill. As the conversation about LGBTQIA+ continued, the European told me he was planning to secure a visa for his boyfriend to England. The boyfriend listened intently, and I could see his face brightening up after hearing what the European said.
It was hard for me to know whether the young man was a genuine homosexual or someone pretending to be a homosexual hoping that his European boyfriend would serve as a stepping stone for him to start a new life.
Two years later, a German journalist phoned me and said she wanted to interview me about a woman who had been working in Kampala as a journalist but was seeking asylum in Germany because, she claimed, she was being persecuted in Uganda for being a lesbian. People who had worked with her told me she was lying.
These anecdotes bring me to what President Museveni said on Palm Sunday about homosexuality. Africa, he said, should take the lead to save the world from what he called “this degeneration and decadence which is really very dangerous for humanity”.
Easier said than done. It is hard to see how Africa can banish homosexuality if, as is alleged by people behind Uganda’s anti-homosexuality legislation, there is a spirited campaign by homosexuals to popularise their sexual orientation and make it acceptable.
Africa is too poor and weak to defeat homosexuality. The vast majority of its 54 countries depend on financial and technical assistance provided by Western countries whose influential LGBTQIA+ communities will ensure Uganda and other African countries pay a stiff price for enacting draconian laws against homosexuals.
None of this is meant to suggest that the government should not enact laws protecting its young people against sexual predators, but we have to manage expectations. Beggars, they say, have limited choice. Harsh economic conditions alone in Africa force young people to become homosexuals when, in fact, they are heterosexuals.
If Africa was rich and powerful, it would not only enact anti-homosexuality laws but it would also vigorously enforce them and perhaps export its polygamy. A Ugandan politician would marry, for example, a British woman and a Ugandan woman and live with them in the same flat in London or any other European city. The Europeans would do little or nothing about it.
But they insist that polygamy in their countries should be illegal. And homosexuality in other countries? It is about rights.
Musaazi Namiti is a journalist and former Al Jazeera digital editor in charge of the Africa desk
[email protected] @kazbuk
