I would like to make a few comments that connect to two excellent recent Kubatana blogs­the first by Amanda Atwood concerning Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill and the second by Catherine Makoni concerning the troublesome PSI research/adverts.

Both blogs effectively highlight worrying ideological agendas and human rights violating desires for control over peaceful citizens.  Moreover, both blogs increase our awareness of the negative consequences when political leaders, research projects, and TV ad executives allow fear of difference to direct the way they think and how they develop policies, design research, and disseminate information.  It is with pain in my heart that in the last few days I have been inundated with people spewing ideas predicated on fear of difference.  Just the other day I read a fear of difference article by William Lungisani Chigidi entitled Shona Taboos: The Language of Manufacturing Fears for Sustainable Development.

It is of course important to discuss taboos or what are also called avoidance rules so as to better understand some of what shapes the complex cultural, economic, health, political, judicial, and social issues and circumstances in Zimbabwe, and world over.  What shocked me and made my stomach turn is that Chigidi overtly advocates that Zimbabwean society ought to instill more fear and formally adopt more avoidance rules to ensure that citizens “appropriately” conform to a morally upright socializing process.  Chigidi writes:

For example, the avoidance rules can be employed to tackle the HIV/AIDS pandemic.  For instance, why can’t it be said that ‘If you have sex while you are still young you will suffer from chicken pox’;  ‘If you become intimate with an animal your private parts will disappear one day’; ‘If you kiss a boy/girl you will lose all your hair’; ‘If you hug a boy/girl you will be raped by a vagabond’; ‘If you become intimate with a relative you will die in your sleep’; ‘If you become intimate with another man/woman (homosexuality/lesbianism) you will be struck by lightning.’  Avoidance rules such as these, and expressed in descent Shona language of course, will invoke in the minds of the young frightening images that will scare them from improper behavior.  That could save lives.

I’m not sure I want to write a blog per se.  More I think I want to rant.  This article is one of the most unsettling things I have ever read.  How in the world can someone so overtly advocate instilling fear, in children no less?  Why in the world does someone think it makes sense to tell children flat out lies?  What would be wrong with thoughtfully engaging children, adolescents, and adults in dialogue to better understand and appreciate human diversity, while also unpacking what drives inequities and injustices in the world?  At least Chigidi’s aim is to save lives.  But, it is not fear nor fear of difference that are going to save lives.  Discussion and productively celebrating difference is what saves lives.

And finally, one last quibble about the article.  Simply to say that writing homosexuality/lesbianism is unnecessarily repetitive.  Albeit a pejorative term, homosexuality describes a sexual relationship between individuals of the same sex.  A homosexual relationship could be between men or between women.  Why use both homosexuality and lesbianism to reference the same thing?  The answer, in part, lies in the analysis that Catherine’s blog presents concerning troublesome representations of women.  In the case of unnecessarily using lesbianism when already having used homosexuality, we are looking at the opposite end of troublesome representations of women and their sexuality’s.  If women are not problematically cast, as Catherine writes, as highly sexed, morally depraved individuals, the other common casting follows the patriarchal worldview depicting women as sexually passive and meant only to serve men’s needs.  With this ill-conceived line of thinking then, the term homosexuality is perceived as unable to incorporate a female same-sex sexual relationship given that, in a patriarchal worldview, women (straight, lesbian, or bisexual) don’t choose to have sex.

Aids Free World has released their report Electing to rape: Sexual terror in Mugabe’s Zimbabwe. Based on interviews with 72 survivors and witnesses, and documentation of 380 rapes, the report describes the deliberate, systematic use of rape as a campaign tactic by Zanu PF.

According to their press release:

The testimony demonstrates that the rape campaign waged by ZANU-PF in Zimbabwe was both widespread and systematic, with recurring patterns throughout that cannot be coincidental. For example, the striking similarity of rhetoric about MDC political activity made before and during the violence; the uniform physical and emotional brutality of the rapes; the specific types of beatings and weapons on common parts of the body; the modes of detention and locations of the rapes; the circumstances and concurrent crimes as part of the broader attacks; and the consistent refusal of police to investigate and refer these cases for prosecution, taken together, demonstrate a systematic, organized campaign.

Read more here

I was reading Ugandan feminist and lawyer Sylvia Tamale’s powerful response to the Anti-Homosexuality Bill last night.

In a scathing assessment of this legislation, and the damage it would do to Uganda’s legal and social framework, she quotes Martin Luther King Jr., writing “Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is love correcting everything that stands against love.”

Regarding the bill, a few important points stood out for me.

For example, objectives of the Bill include to protect “the family unit” from “internal and external threats,” and to protect Ugandan children, youth and culture.

Tamale acknowledges the many issues which threaten Ugandan families such as rape, child abuse, domestic violence, sexual predation, poverty, patriarchy, civil unrest and poverty.

According to a 2005 report by Raising Voices and Save the Children, 90% of Ugandan children – the vast majority of whom are children of heterosexual parents living in heterosexual “family units” – experience domestic violence and defilement.

According to a 2006 national study by the Ugandan Law Reform Commission, 66% of people across Uganda reported that domestic violence occurred in their (again, predominantly heterosexual “family unit” type) homes, and that the majority of the perpetrators were “male heads of households.” The Uganda Demographic Health Survey of the same year put this figure at 68%.

As Tamale writes: “I do not see how two people who are in a loving relationship and harming no one pose a threat to the family simply because they happen to be of the same sex.”

She continues “Homosexuals have nothing to do with the hundreds of thousands of families that sleep without a meal or the thousands of children who die unnecessarily every day from preventable or treatable diseases such as malaria, diarrhoea, measles, pneumonia, etc. Homosexuals are not the ones responsible for the lack of drugs and supplies at primary health care centres.

Not only does the bill not achieve the stated purpose of protecting Ugandan families and their children, it also “requires Uganda to opt out of any international treaty that [it has] previously ratified that goes against the spirit of the bill.” This would require Uganda to violate – or change – its Constitution, which obligates Uganda to honour all international treaties it ratified before the Constitution was passed in 2005.

Read more of Tamale’s thoughts on the historic, social and legal ramifications of this bill here.

I’ve been feeling increasingly sickened by The Anti-Homosexuality Bill (yes, that’s its official name. At least it’s not trying disguise sheer hatred with a euphemism) currently being debated by the Ugandan Parliament.

As summarised by the Guardian’s Xan Rice in Kampala:

Life imprisonment is the minimum punishment for anyone convicted of having gay sex, under an anti-homosexuality bill currently before Uganda’s parliament. If the accused person is HIV positive or a serial offender, or a “person of authority” over the other partner, or if the “victim” is under 18, a conviction will result in the death penalty.

Members of the public are obliged to report any homosexual activity to police with 24 hours or risk up to three years in jail – a scenario that human rights campaigners say will result in a witchhunt. Ugandans breaking the new law abroad will be subject to extradition requests.

A landlord who rents to homosexual tenants risks seven years imprisonment.

Ugandan feminist and lawyer Sylvia Tamale shared her concerns about the Bill at a recent public dialogue and in this article.

News reports suggest that the bill is likely to be passed – even though doing so would violate international human rights treaties to which Uganda is a state party, such as the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, and would jeopardise Uganda’s international standing and assistance. Sweden has already pledged to cut aid to Uganda if it passes the legislation. But Uganda’s move into oil production makes it less likely to be sensitive to international donor pressure.

Ironically, the drive for the bill came in the wake of a seminar hosted by Ugandan organisation Family Life Network, which brought in American evangelical speakers known for their anti-homosexual stance. According to Rice: “After the conference Langa arranged for a petition signed by thousands of concerned parents to be delivered to parliament in April. Within a few months the bill had been drawn up.”

Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG) is working with the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC) to protest the legislation. Email the Ugandan officials listed below and add your voice to these protests.

View the IGLHRC sample letter here

• President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni – info@statehouse.go.ug
• Prime Minister Apollo Nsibambi – ps@opm.go.ug
• Speaker of the Parliament Edward Ssekandi Kiwanuka – speaker@parliament.go.ug
• Minister of Gender, Labour, and Social Affairs – ps@mglsd.go.ug
• Med Kaggwa, Chair of the Uganda Human Rights Commission – uhrc@uhrc.ug
• Directorate for Ethics and Integrity – info@dei.go.ug
• Mathisen Gørild, Chair of the Uganda Diplomatic Human Rights Working Groups – gorild.mathisen@mfa.no
• Dr. Ruhakana Rugunda, Permanent Representative of the Republic of Uganda to the United Nations – ugandaunny@un.int
• Send a copy to: communications+action.alert@iglhrc.org

No government has the right to tell its citizens when or whom to love. The only queer people are those who don’t love anybody.
~ Rita Mae Brown, speech, 28 August 1982

Condemn the victimisation of Ugandan gays and lesbians.

Writing on her blog Ramona Vijeyarasa quotes the Civil Society Coalition on Human Rights and Constitutional Law who said that this Bill is an attempt to “wish away core human rights principles of dignity, equality and non-discrimination, and all Ugandans will pay a heavy price if this bill is enacted.”

Speak out and sign the online petition here.

Ethan Zuckerman writing on his blog My Heart’s in Accra got me interested in a New York Times article entitled Taint of Corruption Is No Barrier to U.S. Visa. Apparently Teodoro Nguema Obiang, the agriculture minister of Equatorial Guinea and the son of its ruler, has a $35 million estate in Mailbu, California.

Ethan reflected as follows

As the New York Times reported this weekend, the strong evidence that Obiang is systematically looting his nation’s treasury hasn’t prevented him from getting US visas and visiting his estate several times a year. So why does Obiang get to play in Malibu while Robert Mugabe is forced to live it up in Hong Kong? According to the US State Department officials quoted in Ian Urbina’s New York Times story, the answer is simple: Zimbabwe doesn’t have oil, while Equatorial Guinea does.