Yoweri Museveni and the evolving story of homosexuality in Africa

Uganda's President Yoweri Museveni has told the World Bank to go to hell. He was reacting to the Bank's decision to suspend funding to Uganda after the country's parliament recently passed a severe anti-homosexuality law. Keep your loans; Uganda will develop without them, a defiant Museveni said in a strongly worded statement.

What was unusual about this collision was that the World Bank has not previously gone out of its way to openly link gay matters to the loans it gives out. Not as far as I know.

Usually it is Western governments and their pushy diplomats who do so through threats of imposition of sanctions. The World Bank has in the past preferred to navigate above this particular fray. Of course, the Bank has always been under the thumb of the West, and specifically its top shareholder, the US. Ever since the Bank's founding in 1944, the Americans gave themselves the prerogative of always appointing the institution's chief executive. That situation remains.

Museveni has particular disdain for gays or people generally referred to by the initials LGBTQ — as is the fashionable term these days. He has a colourful way he likes to explain them. "If I lock up these same-sex fellows in prison and I one day hear they've managed to procreate together, I'll immediately set them free." Or words to that effect.

The Ugandan leader reminds me of the late Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe. He also loathed same-sex relationships with a passion and never countenanced attempts to force him to allow them the slightest leeway.

Being a man who was very precise with words, he had choice epithets against them like perverts.

Museveni and Mugabe are by no means exceptions. It's not an exaggeration to say that across sub-Saharan Africa, homosexuality is taboo. Gays are generally considered abnormal creatures; a societal and moral aberration.

Homosexuality is actually widely criminalised. In Kenya, where we pride ourselves on having one of the most liberal constitutions on the continent, homosexual acts remain criminalised in the Penal Code under a law dating back to 1930. Our 2010 katiba may have chosen to fudge on this issue, yet it restated marriage "is between a man and a woman." Only in South Africa, where we borrowed much of the contents of our constitution, are homosexual rights enshrined. Still even there, the practice is widely despised, particularly within the Black community.

Tight squeeze

Sadly, times have changed, and in a way the Musevenis and their crowded company of gay haters in Africa will find wrenching to come to terms with. To their dismay, the LGBTQ issue has become a cause célèbre in the West, pushed by vocal pro-gay activist groups. Moreover, it is now apparent as with the Ugandan example that Western governments will not hesitate to use key institutions they control like the World Bank to propel their will. This puts Africa in a tight squeeze. Despite our moral protestations, we know we can't do without the funding and aid from the rich world.

Many African countries, Kenya included, have chosen to grit their teeth and not press this anti-homosexual cause. Few have the stomach to want to stage a fight like Museveni is doing. It's counterproductive, they reason.

The majority of the governments have opted to ignore their own anti-homosexual laws and stopped clampdowns on gays. If that will tone down the decibels from the West, so be it. The message being sent out is that we'll tolerate gays, as long as they do their acts strictly in secret. They're now treated rather like prostitutes are: allowed to exist but not to peddle themselves too openly. It's an uneasy live-and-let-live compromise.

Socially, the picture is changing too. Under the compelling influence of Western role-modelling, pockets of gays have been popping up in cities in many African countries — even Uganda. They are assertive and insist on “coming out.” The outright violence they’d have encountered from the generation my parents belonged to and those before them has receded. Only the heavy social stigma - and hostility - now remain.

Response

I wasn't surprised at Museveni's response to the World Bank's blackmail. No self-respecting, old-fashioned African man - whether president or goat herder - would succumb to such on a matter as emotive as gayism. Not even to his children. Many are the tales of African queers who refuse to get rehabilitated from their lifestyle being disinherited and disowned by their own kin.

Of course, African politicians will play up the anti-gay rhetoric because they know it's hugely popular with their voters, especially rural ones. That's the other dynamic foreigners often miss. The anti-gay Ugandan law has overwhelming public support - no question about it. A similar law contemplated by Nigeria a while back was also domestically very popular.

Will we continue to see similar clashes of values and cultural preferences? Sure. Consider polygamy. It is entirely normal - and legal - in Africa. Westerners think it's obnoxious.

[email protected]. @GitauWarigi