TRISTEN TAYLOR: Ugandan thoughtcrime and SA home affairs bigotry

The Ugandan parliament passed a new anti-LGBTQ bill on March 21 that includes life imprisonment and the death penalty for “acts contrary to nature”. To justify the vote for executions the parliamentarians used the old bugbear of family values, selective biblical readings, self-declared African traditions and the haunting spectre of roving bands of homosexuals predating on all and sundry. 

Not only does the 2023 Anti-Homosexuality Bill increase the penalties for same-gender sex, it also criminalises any attempt to have homosexual sex, and the bar is pretty low in terms of what qualifies. Touching another person’s arm the “wrong” way is enough.

But harshly punishing both the deed and the attempt was not enough for these parliamentarians. They decided to introduce Orwellian throughtcrime. The bill states that anyone who “holds out as a lesbian, gay, transgender, a queer, or any other sexual or gender identity that is contrary to the binary categories of male and female” should be sent to prison for 10 years.

Apparently, simply saying “I am gay” is enough to rent asunder the fundamentals of nature and cause Ugandan society to be consumed in a fiery apocalypse of sin. 

President Yoweri Museveni still has to sign the bill before it becomes law, but don’t hold your breath for an outcome that does not involve rounding up gays like the Nazis did. Museveni has a penchant for fixing elections, arresting journalists and muzzling the opposition. His commitment to human rights is as strong as his desire to attend a pride parade. 

Museveni believes homosexuals are disgusting, that gay oral sex gives you worms, and that no-one is gay by nature. You have to be, in his “scientific” view, taught to be queer. According to him, “homosexuals are actually mercenaries. They are heterosexual people but because of money they say they are homosexuals. These are prostitutes because of money.” 

When criticised about Uganda’s approach to homosexuality many Ugandan politicians fall back on a “don’t you degenerate Europeans tell us what to do” style of argument. During the debate on the bill trade minister and bigot David Bahati said: “This is about the sovereignty of our nation; nobody should blackmail us, nobody should intimidate us.” Museveni said in February that “we are not going to follow people who are lost. These Europeans are not normal, they don’t listen.”

There is the temptation to chuckle. Like many of the other 32 African countries with anti-LGBTQ legislation Uganda’s law is merely an update of colonial era legislation. The Ugandan 1950 penal code states that “Any person who (a) has carnal knowledge of any person against the order of nature; or (b) has carnal knowledge of an animal; or (c) permits a male person to have carnal knowledge of him or her against the order of nature, commits an offence and is liable to imprisonment for life.” 

But while the irony might appeal to a dark sense of humour, something very important is being obscured. Appeals to African culture and tradition are often used to defend anti-LGBTQ legislation. In effect, the people who hate gays are defining not only what African culture is but also what it should be. Thankfully, Africa is not a country and there are differences of opinion. 

In a 2019 high court ruling that decriminalised homosexuality in Botswana judge Michael Leburu described the colonial laws as belonging “in the museum or archives and not in the world”. He went on to say — contrary to Museveni’s quasi-Nazi fake science — that “sexual orientation is not a fashion statement. It is an important attribute of one’s personality.”   

Twenty-two African countries do not have anti-LGBTQ legislation, including all the former Portuguese colonies. While discrimination against LGBTQ people does exist in these 22 countries, as it regrettably does in every society on the planet, these nations are on the right side of the forces of history.

The concept that LGBTQ people are not to be killed, thrown into jail and repressed is now part of common human thought. Ideas such as freedom and equal rights may ebb and flow in practice, but once first expressed they do not disappear easily.

Bastions of liberalism

The problem is that Museveni and the SA department of home affairs have not quite managed to grasp that the world has changed. SA’s approach to LGBTQ rights has generally been calm and collected. We were the fifth country to legalise gay marriage — the 2006 vote in parliament was 229 for and 41 against. Apart from one abstention, all of the ANC voted for the bill, while 54% of the DA voted against. 

Back then, even the liberal West that Museveni rages against had not progressed as far as we had. The so-called bastions of liberalism, Sweden and Norway, only legalised it in 2009. Britain, the former colonial power of Uganda and Botswana, only managed to make it legal across the entire UK in 2020. 

At least in urban areas, South Africans appear to support gay marriage. A 2021 Ipsos online opinion poll showed that 59% of people support legal same-sex marriage and only 15% are opposed; 12% think same-sex couples should be able to obtain some alternative legal recognition. Moreover, 69% think LGBTQ couples should be able to adopt children. These numbers are almost exactly the same as those in the US. 

Yet home affairs is completely out of step. Over and over again researchers show that immigration authorities routinely deny and frustrate refugee status for LGTBQ people fleeing oppression, including from Uganda. A Heinrich Böll Foundation study in 2018 concluded that just 4% of LGBTQ refugees were granted asylum status. Home affairs is, like Uganda, on the wrong side of history. 

The protection of LGBTQ rights and the abolition of the death penalty are among the governing ANC’s greatest achievements. The party has stuffed up so much else, but on these matters it stood tall. As an African president and the leader of the ANC Cyril Ramaphosa has only one real path to take.  

The president should not only call out Museveni’s disgusting intolerance but also publicly open up our doors to LGTBQ asylum seekers. This is Ramaphosa’s opportunity to show moral courage and defend progressive African values. 

• Dr Taylor, a freelance journalist and photographer, is a research fellow in environmental ethics at Stellenbosch University.