Bahati Bill is perverse and silly; such a law would never be enforced anyway

On the morning of February 16, the BBC’s Network Africa programme broadcast two strange tales. Uganda was in the news again. As has been the case in more recent times, it was again for the wrong reasons — the Bahati Bill, a draft piece of legislation targeted at homosexuals and fronted by ruling-party Member of Parliament David Bahati, was making its way through different stages on its way to becoming law. It was causing much controversy.

It caused just as much noise many months ago when Mr Bahati and similarly minded MPs who entertain the debatable notion that homosexuality can be taught and spread, first brought it to the House for debate.  

Mr Bahati and his allies claim, among other things, that they are motivated by what in their opinion is a noble cause: To ensure that their children and grandchildren are protected from people who would teach them how to be homosexuals. In deeply conservative Uganda, the idea of a sexual act between two men, consensual or not, is repugnant and provokes some fear among large numbers of people who have never knowingly met a homosexual.

The tendency is to imagine that “men who love other men” are morally depraved and also “not well,” and will likely force themselves onto any man or boy they may happen to fancy. And what does one do with such dangerous people? The answer is simple: Ensure they do not harm any one. This is the context within which Bahati and company are operating; they are ploughing a rich furrow of pre-existing prejudice influenced by local ways of being and seeing the world, of which homosexuality is said not to be a part. They know they have a large audience of ready believers.  

It is tempting to imagine that highly educated people who also tend to be well-travelled and exposed, and likely to be familiar with the longstanding, highly complex, and unsettled debate on homosexuality and its causes, are likely to be more tolerant and to adopt a “live and let live” attitude toward the gay community. This is true of many. There are, however, people in this category whose views remain very much at par with those espoused by their less exposed relatives back in the village. They are in academia, journalism, the legal profession, banking, medicine, education, business, etc. Suggest that homosexuals should be allowed the space to be themselves in the same way the rest of us have been, and they react as if that is the lousiest argument they have heard in a long time.

What they find particularly galling is what they say is the determination by foreign governments and foreign human-rights groups, usually European and American, “to impose their homosexuality on us.” It does not help matters that the same foreign governments do not react with similar vehemence when opposition political activists and dissidents are treated worse than homosexuals.    

Back to the BBC broadcast. Two men who claimed to have escaped persecution in Uganda and are now in Kenya, spoke about themselves. One said that where he once lived, “the whole village,” including women and children, had attacked his house. And then he was arrested by the police who at first had come to rescue him, and taken to presumably a police cell where “50 men” assaulted him sexually and physically. He did not say how he eventually got out.

The second man’s tale was just as grave. He had been arrested by members of the Special Forces Group. Among other tasks, the SFG ensures the president’s personal security. The man alleged he had been taken to the SFG’s barracks in Entebbe, and been beaten with metal bars until, apparently, his uncle came for him.   

Granted, the police and the military in Uganda are not above behaving in ways that do nothing to enhance their collective reputations. Their readiness to conduct themselves in ways that show them in a bad light usually goes up a few notches when they are dealing with the government’s political opponents, whom they treat with special viciousness. However, the two men’s stories leave so many holes as to sound far-fetched.

Such stories are hardly rare. Africans seeking to migrate to Western countries in search of the good life often seize on the hysteria provoked by the ill-advised behaviour of their governments, such as legislating against sexual orientation and oppressing minorities generally, to tell tall tales of persecution. It works. Western immigration officials who treat bona fide travellers with scepticism and meanness often melt on hearing such tales. 

The Bahati Bill, if it ever gets passed, will most likely have no impact on the day-to-day lives of most homosexuals in Uganda. Limited law enforcement capacity will combine with opposition from the international gays rights lobby to render it redundant. Rather than entertaining its presentation in the House and earning themselves such bad publicity, the ruling party should spend their time tackling the big social, economic and political problems bedevilling the country.