| Today the Enemy is Homosexual, Tomorrow it Could Be You! |
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by Christine Butegwa Bats, criminals, twisted…these were some of the words used to describe homosexual or LGBTI people last week at a public dialogue in one of Uganda’s ‘historical’ public universities. The public dialogue was one of the first opportunities for the promoters and opposers of the controversial anti-homosexuality bill to debate the bill on the same table in public. Since the bill was tabled as a private member’s bill in the Ugandan parliament on 14th October 2009, there has been heated debate in the media but not to a public audience like the one at the university. The principle architect of the Anti-homosexuality bill, Hon. Bahati, MP for Ndorwa West County, has repeatedly insisted that his intention with the bill is not to fan hatred among the Ugandan population, but to protect the ‘traditional family’. The reality however, judging from the abusive words that were uttered during the public dialogue, and the emotive and sometimes inflammatory discussions in the media, in pubs, cafes, eating joints, and other gathering places in Uganda shows that the bill has the potential to split an already polarized country further into divisions of who is a human being and who is not, who is entitled to be a citizen and who is not, which tribe should be given more rights and recognized over the other. As Uganda prepares for its next elections in 2011, as citizens, we are concerned that freedom of the press and information is slowly and surely being curtailed, much needed electoral reforms have not yet been made, the state of infrastructural development in the country is still at a snails pace despite the 1 trillion shillings allocation in the last budget, agriculture still gets less than 5% of the budget and yet it is the mainstay of the majority of our population, maternal mortality, child mortality, violence against women, and new HIV/AIDs infections continue to rise, including the fact that 30,000 children are born with HIV/AIDs in Uganda every year, and now married women are more vulnerable to HIV infection than any other group, with the international community declaring that Uganda is unlikely to meet its MDG3 goals in these areas, our hospitals and health centres do not have the drugs, equipment and doctors needed by the population, 34% of the population continue to survive on less than a dollar a day with this figure being higher in Northern Uganda, and pervasive corruption in public institutions means that most of our resources end up in the hands of a few individuals rather than benefiting the country. These are the real threats to the ‘moral fabric’ and the ‘traditional family’ in Uganda today! Instead of the government spending the hard-earned money of its tax-payers where it is needed most, to improve our quality of life, the government and law-makers are letting us down by equating homosexuality to terrorism (the anti-homosexual bill asserts extra-territorial jurisdiction, thus homosexuality and/or its ‘promotion’ are added to the very short list of offences which fall in the ‘political offences’ category). Christine Butegwa is Regional Coordinator, Africa Programmes with Akina Mama wa Afrika (AMwA) |