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In his book The Pink Line: Journeys Across the World’s Queer Frontier, Mark Gevisser writes: “My gender is between my ears, my sex is between my legs. My gender identity is who I go to bed as, my sexual orientation is who I go to bed with. Sex is what I do with my clothes off, gender expression is what I do with my clothes.”
I was reminded of this quote by the bill Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni signed into law recently, which in my view is one of the harshest anti-LGBTIQ+ laws. It stipulates that homosexuality will be punishable by death in Uganda.
Under the new law, the promotion of homosexuality carries a 20-year jail sentence. I am astounded by the silence of our government and that of the AU on this outrageous law.
Is the silence the result of African leaders always tiptoeing around each other or are they hiding behind the flimsy excuse of Uganda’s sovereignty?
Often it is said that Africa must be left alone to solve its own issues, meaning that the West should stop poking its nose into the continent’s affairs.
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But why are African leaders looking the other way at this grave injustice? Is it because they agree with the unscientific notion that being queer is a so-called Eurocentric and ungodly Western imposition on Africans?
Uganda’s position is inconsistent with what South Africa preaches and supposedly stands for in relation to human rights.
Our Constitution is unequivocal on this. But continuing to celebrate and laud our Constitution as one of the best in the world, without calling out our counterparts on the continent for their homophobic notions on what it is to be African, is the highest form of hypocrisy.
Our government and the AU should take a stand on this matter and stop the silence and the so-called quiet diplomacy when human rights are being violated by Museveni and his government.
The reality is that the LGBTIQ+ community in Uganda continues to face major discrimination and violence. These attacks are encouraged by religious and conservative leaders and supported by the country’ politics.
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We have heard and read about the brutal attacks on the LGBTIQ+ community in Uganda, yet our government remains silent. Does their sexual orientation make them less human such that they do not deserve equal treatment?
Progressive nations and the people of the world must be outraged by Uganda’s primitive and regressive laws on sexuality. The notion that Africans knew no homosexuality before their contact with the West must be exposed for the fallacy that it is.
Homosexual relations were accepted and commonplace in precolonial African society, including in Uganda. It was Christian missionaries, working in cahoots with colonial authorities, who planted anti-homosexual seeds and introduced the laws punishing homosexuality when colonies were established.
Museveni has taken this homophobia to another level, making consensual same-sex relations punishable by death.
Sex is something deeply personal and has a lot to do with identity. No country should impose its views on these matters on its citizens.
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The whole world stood with us during our darkest days at the height of apartheid without invoking this nonsensical respect for the sovereignty of countries.
I find James Baldwin’s words on identity sobering and instructive. In his book The Devil Finds Work, he writes: “An identity is questioned only when it is menaced, as when the mighty begin to fall, or when the wretched begin to rise, or when the stranger enters the gates, never, thereafter, to be a stranger ... identity would seem to be the garment with which one covers the nakedness of the self; in which case it is best that the garment be loose, a little like the robes of the desert, through which one’s nakedness can always be felt, and sometimes, discerned. This trust in one’s nakedness is all that gives one the power to change one’s robes.”
Ugandans, or any citizen of the world for that matter, must be given the right to change their robes from what is conventional when it comes to sexual orientation. Heteronormativity is not the status quo.
This is a human rights matter; it should therefore be the business of every individual who wants their rights to be respected and upheld. Taking away the rights of certain groups should have us all up in arms because it is a slippery slope.
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Today it’s the rights of the LGBTIQ+ community being undermined, tomorrow it will be the rights of women and children. Today it’s the LGBTIQ+ community in Uganda, tomorrow it will be us here.
It should be alarming for all of us that a government wants to interfere with what is not a choice – being queer is not a choice. If it were, I do not think people would be choosing a life marred by constant attacks, isolation, ridicule and harassment just because they had a different sexual orientation.
It should also be alarming for all of us that a government wants to regulate the behaviour of consenting adults, behaviour that does not in any way harm other people. Queer people living their lives freely does no harm to anyone.
Corruption, nepotism, crime and socioeconomic challenges – now, those are the real issues a government such as Uganda should be absorbed by.
When we criminalise sexual orientation, we make it difficult for people to access vital healthcare services. Access to healthcare and health education are critical for the eventual eradication of HIV/Aids.
This law will increase the number of people who opt to keep their HIV status a secret, out of fear of arrest, discrimination and stigmatisation. People will probably not seek medical treatment out of fear of being labelled as queer and thus facing imprisonment.
This law disempowers people from seeking help and worsens the HIV/Aids crisis. Healthcare professionals are compelled by the new legislation to report if they suspect that someone intends to commit the offence of homosexuality.
The confidentiality and dignity of the people is secondary to the surveilling of homosexuality to report that to the Ugandan government.
This speaks to the point I made earlier – when human rights are undermined, it is unlikely it will stop at just some rights. The violation will permeate other rights – as we see in this instance, the right to privacy and confidentiality is undermined. This legislation is likely to worsen violent acts of homophobia.
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I say this because this legislation can be likened to state-sanctioned homophobia, which therefore emboldens those who have always had a deep-seated hatred for the LGBTIQ+ community to further perpetuate this hate.
Those who agree with such regressive laws will often bring up the idea that homosexuality threatens the nuclear African family structure.
What these individuals do not raise is the issue of absent fathers and men having numerous children and then abandoning them, or choosing who they will father properly – and how that affects the African family structure.
As I write this, we are mourning the loss of Eusebius McKaiser, a man who was vehemently against such laws and who himself was open about his sexual orientation. And he challenged many of us to think differently about various societal issues.
Rest in peace, Eusebius. I am saddened by your passing. May your soul rest in peace and may your family find comfort.
Botha is a commissioner at the Commission for Gender Equality and writes in his personal capacity
