And so the Uganda MPs came, bearing gifts of hate

 

By L. Muthoni Wanyeki

The year comes to an end on a frightening note across the region. Kenya’s descent into fascism is not masked by its grand infrastructure plans.

South Sudan’s erstwhile allies in government are back to the battlefield — mutually targeting not each others’ soldiers but ordinary citizens of ethnicities believed to be politically supportive of either side. Then there is Uganda.

The Ugandan parliament last week passed two Bills into law — the Anti-Pornography and the Anti-Homosexuality Bills. On the surface, the Anti-Homosexuality Bill purports to address legitimate societal problems. The sexual abuse of minors, for example. Or the deliberate infection of others with HIV.

To be frank, addressing those legitimate societal problems is just a fig leaf for the promotion of hatred and intolerance. Of women and their sexuality on the one hand. Of anybody who is not heterosexual and their sexuality on the other hand.

The Anti-Pornography Bill imposes a dress code for women. No miniskirts. No clothing that exposes parts of the body deemed sexually explicit — breasts, buttocks, thighs.

God forbid that women should have the right to choose how to express and present themselves to the world. Women clearly cannot be trusted to make their own choices about expression and presentation — the state has to make those choices for them.

We are back to the prehistoric notion that men only see women sexually. That they’re incapable of looking at women and appreciating what they see without going off into paroxysms of “corrupt morals” and “indecent acts and behaviour.” Thus, women must conduct themselves not as they feel, but in relation to men’s gaze.

The Anti-Homosexuality Bill is even worse. The death sentence initially proposed for repeated homosexual acts or homosexual acts with minors or by those who happen to be HIV+ was replaced with life imprisonment. What, in fact, are “homosexual”  acts? Do heterosexuals not also have anal sex? And perform oral sex?

Are such heterosexuals to be punished by life imprisonment too? What is meant by “repeat” offenders? We all — heterosexual and homosexual — cannot be other than we are. If we like and are attracted to men or women, one of the few pleasures in life is to be sexual with them — as often as possible. God forbid that gay men or lesbians be allowed to share in that pleasure. That would be “repeat offending.”

God forbid too that gay men and women find and support one another in understanding what their sexual orientation is. Or that they try to educate the public about this. For the Bill also makes it an offence to “promote” homosexuality.

The Bill goes further — it has the audacity to propose that it is an offence for Ugandans not to report on gay men and lesbians. This is the sort of thing that was meant to have gone out with the fall of the Berlin Wall.

The use of citizens by the state to spy and inform on one another. The opening of new channels for blackmail and extortion. It’s sick.

L. Muthoni Wanyeki is doing her postgraduate studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London