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African Studies Review, Volume 55, Number 2, September 2012, pp.

77-95 (Article)

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DOI: 10.1353/arw.2012.0031

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ASR Forum

The Case of Gender-Based Violence: Assessing the Impact of

International Human Rights Rhetoric on African Lives

Locating Neocolonialism, “Tradition,”

and Human Rights in Uganda’s “Gay
Death Penalty”
Kristen Cheney

Abstract: In 2009, the Anti-Homosexuality Bill introduced in Uganda’s

Parliament reignited homophobic sentiment across Africa. Despite a well-
documented history of sexual diversity in Africa, claims that homosexuality
is “un-African” are being used to justify violence and exclusion. This article,
based primarily on a discursive analysis of public media sources, delves into
various cultural logics that reveal the tensions and contradictions in Ugan-
dans’ widespread opposition to homosexuality. U.S. evangelical influence,
postcolonial amnesia in regard to “tradition,” fertility concerns, and human
rights exceptionalism drive this moral panic over issues of sexual diversity.
Such sentiments must be addressed by confronting neocolonial religious
influence and cultivating renewed respect for human rights and Africa’s
history of sexual diversity.

Résumé: En 2009, la présentation d’un projet de loi anti-homosexualité dans le par-

lement ougandais a rallumé un sentiment d’homophobie à travers le pays. En dépit

African Studies Review, Volume 55, Number 2 (September 2012), pp. 77–95
Kristen Cheney is a senior lecturer at the International Institute of Social Stud-
ies of Erasmus University, Rotterdam. She is currently co-convener and advisory
board chair for the Anthropology of Children and Childhood Interest Group
of the American Anthropological Association. She is the author of Pillars of the
Nation: Child Citizens and Ugandan National Development (University of Chicago
Press, 2007). Her research focuses on children’s survival strategies amidst dif-
ficult circumstances in eastern and southern Africa. As a 2008–9 Fulbright Africa
Regional Research Scholar, she conducted ethnographic research with orphans
and vulnerable children in Uganda. E-mail: [email protected].

77
78 African Studies Review

d’un historique bien documenté sur la diversité sexuelle en Afrique, des revendi-
cations déclarant que l’homosexualité va à l’encontre de “l’identité africaine” sont
utilisées pour justifier des actes de violence et d’exclusion. En se basant princi-
palement sur une analyse discursive de sources provenant des media publiques,
cet article étudie de manière approfondie les différentes logiques culturelles qui
révèlent les tensions et contradictions émanant de l’opposition généralisée des
ougandais contre l’homosexualité. L’influence évangéliste américaine, l’amnésie
postcoloniale de la “tradition,” les problèmes de fertilité, et la création d’exceptions
concernant les droits de l’homme sont les moteurs principaux de cette panique
morale concernant la question de diversité sexuelle. De tels sentiments doivent être
remis en question en confrontant l’influence religieuse néocoloniale et l’encou-
ragement d’un respect renouvelé pour les droits de l’homme et l’historique de la
diversité sexuelle en Afrique.

In the fall of 2009, Ugandan Member of Parliament David Bahati intro-

duced a bill proposing tighter strictures on homosexuality. Though sod-
omy laws already existed in Uganda in the 1950 Penal Code and the 1995
Constitution, the bill proposed further measures, such as the provision that
a person could be put to death for “aggravated homosexuality”—meaning
the commission of a same-sex act with a minor, family member, or disabled
person—or in cases in which the “aggressor” is HIV-positive (BBC News
2009). Further, the bill would make it obligatory for people who “discover”
that another person is gay to act as an informant to the police. Those who
failed to do so would face jail time.
Dubbed Uganda’s “gay death penalty, the Anti-Homosexuality Bill
quickly gained media attention in Europe and the U.S., whose own “culture
wars” raged over the question of gay marriage and military service. The U.K.
and the U.S. expressed “grave concern” about the harsh penalties in the
bill, and Sweden threatened to pull all donor funding from Uganda if the
bill passed into law. In March 2010 Parliament was presented with petitions
with hundreds of thousands of signatures protesting the bill, mostly signed
by foreigners but well supported by Ugandan activists. But mass demonstra-
tions in support of the bill also occurred in Kampala and Jinja, and Ugan-
dan pastors showed gay pornography in their churches to incite violent
sentiments against homosexuals. Finally, a parliamentary review commit-
tee tabled the bill in May 2010, claiming that it was weak and redundant
in the context of existing laws (see Muhumuza 2010). Nevertheless, the
bill became the iconic instigator of a wave of African homophobia. Debate
over homosexuality—and violence against LGBTI (lesbian, gay, bisexual,
transgendered, and intersex) people—continues, spreading beyond Ugan-
da’s borders to other countries in Africa. In January 2011 the Ugandan gay
rights activist David Kato was killed in his home with a hammer blow to the
head after being singled out as a prominent homosexual in a tabloid paper.
Continued support by public figures for the Anti-Homosexuality Bill,
as well as ongoing denunciations of homosexuality as “un-African,” appears
 Uganda’s “Gay Death Penalty” 79

to stand in direct contradiction to Uganda’s public support for building

a culture of human rights. Uganda is clearly still experiencing growing
pains as the nation struggles with issues of rapid globalization. But whereas
Ugandans had been pursuing rather progressive policies in the recent past
that raised their esteem in the global community of nations, this seems like
unusually regressive behavior. Further, opposition to homosexuality rests
on a number of spurious arguments about “traditional African culture” and
misplaced accusations of neocolonialism.
This article, therefore, grapples with how to understand this disturbing
development in the context of Uganda’s progressive development success
story, particularly its popular embrace of universal human rights.1 While
the media have emphasized the influence of the U.S. evangelical commu-
nity on Uganda’s leaders, there is much more at issue here than a debate
about cultural values, or even about sexuality. Central to this issue are ques-
tions of “tradition,” reproduction (social and sexual), and human rights.
The recent outcry against homosexuality in Uganda is a textbook example
of a “moral panic,” a phrase coined in 1972 by Stanley Cohen, a criminolo-
gist studying the British public’s reaction to the youth subcultures of the
1960s. More recently, Gilbert Herdt has argued that moral panics over sexu-
ality usually conform to a familiar pattern:

Sexual panics may generate the creation of monstrous enemies—sexual

scapegoats. This “othering” dehumanizes and strips individuals and whole
communities of sexual and reproductive rights. . . . The pattern in these
reactions and counterreactions hinge[s] repeatedly on questions of nor-
mative sexual citizenship, reproductive accommodation and assimilation,
or sexual orientation and gender resistance and defiance. (2008:3)

Invoking the strength of Foucaultian “biopower”—“the subjugation

of bodies and the control of populations” by nation-states (Foucault
1990[1978])—moral sexual panics generate “reactive mechanisms of sur-
veillance, regulation, discipline, and punishment” in the service of moral
governance (Herdt 2008:1).
By contextualizing public discourse about homosexuality in Uganda as
a moral panic, I hope to reframe the debate about what is and what is not
“traditional” through the lens of precolonial and postcolonial understand-
ings of African sexualities. By this logic, defending purist notions of African
“tradition” actually entails upholding sexual diversity rather than buying
into the colonial missionary remaking of “heterosexual Africa.” I develop
four main counternarratives to the public discourse on the “gay death pen-
alty” and homophobic fervor.
First, in the debate, Ugandans have repeatedly characterized homo-
sexuality—rather than, for example, evangelical Christianity—as a colonial
imposition. This phenomenon, I argue, speaks to the success of the colo-
nial-era missionary erasure of Africa’s history of sexual diversity and masks
80 African Studies Review

the neocolonial aspirations of the U.S. religious right to globalize the U.S.
culture wars.
Second, perceived threats to sexual and social reproduction, particu-
larly fertility and the family, point similarly to postcolonial amnesia, as well
as myopia about contemporary circumstances that pose greater threats to
children and family.
Third, the Ugandan authorities’ extensive efforts to cultivate a culture
of universal human rights is undermined by the persecution of homosexu-
als. This has negative implications not only for homosexuals but also for
other minorities and their rights, which are protected by the 1995 Constitu-
tion. I argue that it is ultimately contradictory to exempt homosexuals from
protection under the law.
Finally, I suggest that to reverse these trends toward intolerance, Ugan-
dans must stop the co-optation of spiritualism by the Western religious right
and encourage more African/Africanist scholarship on sexual diversity.

History, “Tradition,” and Homophobia in Uganda

Tension between religion and homosexuality in Uganda actually has a long

and contested history going back to the story of Buganda Kabaka (King)
Mwanga and the Christian Martyrs. According to this story, these martyrs
were young male pages whom Mwanga had executed in 1886 for refusing
his sexual advances because their newly adopted religion (Catholicism)
taught that homosexuality was an abomination. (Many claim further that
Mwanga and other Ugandans had started to practice sodomy only after con-
tact with Arabs, who arrived in Uganda before the Christian missionaries
did.) As Neville Hoad (2007) points out, however, the historical records are
purposefully vague about what exactly Mwanga did—or attempted to do—
with his pages. We only know from written records that the act or acts were
abhorrent to missionaries and colonial administrators, to the point that
they were unmentionable. Whatever transpired, Mwanga would not likely
have identified himself as homosexual, as this was still an emergent social
identity at the time, even in Europe.
Despite this seminal event, recent news articles have made much of
the claims of Ugandans, and Africans more generally, that same-sex desire
does not exist in Africa and is somehow a Western imperial imposition.
Stephen O. Murray and Will Roscoe ably refute this claim in their book Boy-
Wives and Female Husbands: Studies of African Homosexualities (1998), which
shows not only that African homosexuality existed in precolonial times, but
also that it has persisted into modern times, despite missionary erasures
of sexual diversity and the criminalization of homosexuality by both colo-
nial and postcolonial governments. Colonial and postcolonial-era ethno-
graphic texts also suggest the existence of same-sex social and sexual rela-
tionships among several different Ugandan ethnic groups, including the
Langi (Driberg 1923), the Iteso (Laurance 1957), the Baganda (Southwold
 Uganda’s “Gay Death Penalty” 81

1973), the Bahima (Mushanga 1973), and the Banyoro (Needham 1973).
Further, Murray claims that “there are no examples of traditional African
belief systems that singled out same-sex relations as sinful or linked them to
concepts of disease or mental health—except where Christianity and Islam
have been adopted” (1998:270). Murray goes on to say that where such
practices existed, they were not only tolerated but also incorporated into
the social body with named roles and sexual identities. “This is significant,”
Murray claims, “because many recent historical and cultural studies of sex-
uality have claimed a unique status for Western sexual identities, especially
[the] “gay” or “homosexual” identity, as constructs produced by social and
historical factors specific to Western societies (1998:271). Marc Epprecht
(2008) has also shown that even where homosexuality is rarely invoked as
a social identity in modern-day Africa, same-sex acts do take place—and
these are not necessarily acts that can be defined by the term “survival sex”
(Lorway 2008:159).
There seems to be considerable distancing in African imaginations
between situational homosexual acts—which are indeed part of the African
social landscape—and homosexuality as an identity or lifestyle. The same
Ugandans who are baffled by the idea of two people of the same sex having
a committed relationship will talk fondly of their participation in boarding
school bonding rituals involving same-sex intimate contact, though they may
not necessarily define it as sexual contact or consider such activity a chal-
lenge to their heterosexual identities. Such experimentation is not always
discussed openly, but Epprecht notes that “in recent years this subtlety
has begun to change quite dramatically . . . [and] depictions of same-sex
sexuality are now becoming increasingly explicit and frank . . . ” (2008:8).
Though the term “homosexual” was not commonly used to describe a per-
son until the late nineteenth century (Foucault 1990[1978]:43), globaliza-
tion—cultural and economic—has tended to homogenize sexual identity,
even as it introduces broader audiences to the idea of homosexuality as a
social identity, such that diverse sexual practices have been collapsed into a
simple hetero/homo binary.
Despite the incredible diversity of sexual practices and identities, the
notion of homosexuality in Ugandan public discourse is rather general-
ized today, and despite the longitudinal documentation of sexual diversity,
homosexuality continues to be figured in recent Ugandan popular dis-
course as a foreign imposition, even at the highest level of government. As
Ugandan society changes rapidly, it is challenged by the diversification of
lifestyles—and has retreated to “tradition” to defend discrimination against
homosexuals. In line with Hobsbawm and Ranger’s (1983) claim that tradi-
tion is invented, moral panics often draw on arguments about preserving
“tradition,” which gets co-opted as a defense against the strains of moder-
nity. “Tradition” is being rewritten to serve contemporary political inter-
ests—and in this case, to legitimate persecution—although it can be argued
that this is happening on both sides of the debate. The difference, however,
82 African Studies Review

is that while sexuality scholars base their interpretations on available his-

torical data, the religious right bases its arguments on moralizing discourses
and the colonial erasure of sexual diversity. The same people who claim
that wealthy gays are coming from Europe and the U.S. to “recruit” young
Africans refute similar allegations of neocolonialism when it comes to evan-
gelical Christian influence.
When considering historical facts, however, it is perplexing that homo-
sexuality is seen as a neocolonial imposition while evangelical influence is
not. Perhaps this is because during the early colonial period the abolokole
movement’s alliance with evangelicalism was itself seen as colonial resis-
tance to a perceived spiritual malaise in the Anglican church (Ward 1989).
An editorial by MP Margaret Muhanga in the national newspaper New
Vision responded to an article about civil society organizations that came
out against the bill by calling those organizations “slaves living under neo-
colonialism” (Muhanga 2009). Part of the appeal of the evangelical pastor
Martin Ssempa is his assertion of autonomy and independence from inter-
national pressure, and his vehement rejection of the notion that his behav-
ior is influenced by “whatever a white man came and told him to do.”2 U.S.
President Obama, who is otherwise extremely popular in East Africa due to
his Kenyan heritage, is the primary head of state targeted in accusations of
foreign interference by Ssempa and other Anti-Homosexuality Bill propo-
nents. Even though other foreign leaders have spoken out more forcefully
against the bill, angry mobs shouted antigay slogans and carried signs that
read “Obama back off!” at pro-bill rallies. The U.S. religious right has made
similar accusations that Obama is trying to undermine “the traditional
family,” calling him names ranging from “Hitler” to “the anti-Christ.” The
similarities in the discourses used by antigay religious leaders in both places
thus indicate a link between African and U.S. culture wars over homosexu-
ality.
Meanwhile, as Ugandans and other Africans continue to claim that
the international community is pushing them to accept homosexuality
against their own cultural sensitivities, deleterious, evangelical-inspired
importations—such as the corrupt prosperity gospel and neoconservative
abstinence-only education programming funded by PEPFAR (the U.S. Pres-
ident’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief)—continue unabated. The latter
has actually contributed to the first increase in Uganda’s HIV infection rate
in twenty years (Human Rights Watch/Africa 2005). To a social scientist,
this disjuncture would be extremely problematic, but to many Ugandans, it
is not.
What Robert Lorway has written about Namibia also applies to Uganda:
“As the state crafted “homosexuality” as a threat to national survival, homo-
sexuality became linked to a multitude of emergent social problems and
tensions of the postcolonial era, such as criminality, national identity/
authenticity, globalization, and neocolonialism” (2008:150–51). The New
Vision reported that in a January 2010 speech to Members of Parliament
 Uganda’s “Gay Death Penalty” 83

President Museveni said that he had told U.S. Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton “that people come from Europe with money and woo young peo-
ple into homosexuality” (quoted in Olupot & Musoke 2010). Where the
Uganda Martyrs story has commonly been framed around the martyrs’
refusal to renounce their new religion, it has been refigured in current
discourse as a story about the martyrs’ willingness to die to defend their
opposition to homosexuality. Paradoxically, this historical repurposing of
the story not only represents what Wieringa (2008) calls postcolonial amne-
sia, but also a willing acceptance of the colonists’ own narrative.
Upon encountering same-sex practices in Africa, early missionaries
and colonial administrators used this discovery as further evidence of the
necessity of the colonizing mission. On the one hand, as Saskia Wieringa
writes, “there were those writers who invented a ‘pure’ innocent continent
in which those ‘vices’ were absent.” Many sexual practices, particularly if
they pertained to women’s agency or same-sex relations, were discouraged,
criminalized, and written out of the colony’s social history, and thus whites
invested themselves “with the moral duty to rule these ‘childlike natives.’”
On the other hand, “there were those who pointed out the depravity of the
black population by dwelling on the same-sex practices they documented.
This again was seen as ‘proof’ of the way blacks were close to nature and
needed the culturalizing strong hand of their colonial masters” (2008:210).
Because of this colonial history, the defense of diverse sexual practices was
once seen as colonial resistance (Hoad 2007:xi)—a point that seems to
have been entirely forgotten in current debates over sexuality.
Wieringa also points out that moral sex panics, as “deeply political
constructions,” utilize selective memory to marginalize sexual minorities
by manipulating the notion of “tradition.” Whereas “tradition,” at least
according to the “depravity” narrative mentioned above, “was seen (and
constructed as) the site of ‘moral decay’ in colonial days, ‘tradition’ is now
invested with nostalgia [i.e., the innocence narrative] and reconfigured as a
site of heteronormative ‘normalcy,’ while the West is seen as the site of per-
verse desires” (2008:205–6; italics added). Postcolonial amnesia thus con-
structs an Africa that has always been an exclusively heterosexual continent,
and the appeal to “tradition” is used selectively to erase social practices
such as same-sex relations from history. In this context, the present moral
panic over homosexuality can in fact be seen as a colonial inscription of
heterosexual norms on a more sexually diverse “traditional” Africa. Despite
widespread criticism that Westerners are always collapsing the diversity of
a continent into a singular idea of “Africa,” the same is now being done
by many Africans themselves who have co-opted the idea of a normative
“African heterosexuality” in order to marginalize homosexuals (see Tamale
2011).
The persecution of homosexuals in Africa by those in power is thus
nothing new, but what is new is the vehemence with which Bahati’s bill
threatens homosexuals with persecution. While the bill defines homosexu-
84 African Studies Review

ality as an “act” or “acts”—as have antisodomy laws, for example—the bill’s

use of the word “homosexual” is imprecise, with the distinct subtext that
being homosexual should be criminalized. The bill’s memorandum states
that “this legislation . . . recognizes the fact that same sex attraction is not
an innate and immutable characteristic”— a claim that not only legitimizes
the criminalization of intentional homosexual acts as willful (as opposed
to innate) behavior, but also enables antihomosexual activists to continue
to claim that homosexuality is something new and foreign to African cul-
tures. Another consequence of the bill and the threats it poses is that sexual
rights activists have been driven underground. As Lorway points out, “The
concealment of same-sex sexual practices, as a means of coping with antici-
pated stigmatization, renders struggles with discrimination, violence, and
sexual harassment invisible” (2008:164).

Evangelicalism, Public Discourse, and Homosexual Persecution

Today, a new wave of Western missionaries is taking advantage of the popu-

larity of the Evangelical movement and cultural conservatism in Africa to
support its own anti-homosexuality agenda. The Anti-Homosexuality Bill
was introduced shortly after several American evangelicals—including Scott
Lively, who has launched an international antigay campaign called “Defend
the Family”—spoke at a three-day “Seminar on Exposing the Homosexual
Agenda” in Kampala in March 2009. Lively, who claims to know “more than
almost anyone else in the world” about homosexuality (Johnson 2010),
and other U.S. delegates detailed a well-organized and well-funded mis-
sion to spread homosexuality by corrupting and recruiting youth around
the world. Such U.S. religious leaders have been spreading rumors that
gay advocacy groups are pouring money into Africa to promote homosexu-
ality (though there is little evidence of this [see Tamale 2003]), while at
the same time conservative U.S. political groups have put African religious
and political leaders on the payroll to prevent the spread of homosexuality
(Kaoma 2009:9).
This strategy suggests a ramping up of efforts to globalize the U.S. cul-
ture wars. Indeed, neoconservative evangelicals in the U.S. have been mak-
ing concerted efforts to build ties with African leaders in order to influence
local cultural attitudes as well as legislation in Africa as a way of propping
up the values of the religious right in the U.S. (Kaoma 2009). Herdt argues
that “panics are not an isolated phenomenon but a connective strategy
for the ways in which cultural elites can dominate media and discourse
in civil society” (2008:7). In this vein, Ugandan President and First Lady
Museveni have openly declared their ties with U.S. evangelical movements.
The Family, the same secretive fellowship of powerful U.S. politicians that
hosts the National Prayer Breakfast, claims Museveni as their “key man” in
Africa (Sharlet 2009). MP Bahati, the author of the Anti-Homosexuality
Bill—which is practically a verbatim recitation of the U.S. religious right’s
 Uganda’s “Gay Death Penalty” 85

position on homosexuality—is also purportedly a member of The Family

(Okong’o 2010). He is supported by U.S. megachurch pastor Rick Warren,
who is also a personal friend of the Musevenis. While visiting Uganda in
2008, Warren said that “homosexuality is not a natural way of life and thus
not a human right,” and then declared Uganda a “Purpose Driven Coun-
try” (Kaoma 2009:iv), meaning that its leaders are obedient to God and are
actively creating disciples of their citizen.3
First Lady Janet Museveni, a self-proclaimed “born again” Christian, per-
sonally went to Washington to persuade U.S. lawmakers to fund Uganda’s
abstinence and faithfulness programs to the tune of US$1 billion (Epstein
2007:188). Founder of the National Youth Forum in 1991, she has been a
champion of abstinence-only sex education programs that encourage sec-
ondary school students to sign virginity pledges (Human Rights Watch/
Africa 2005:44). Supported by Bush’s President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS
Relief (PEPFAR), these programs, with the guidance of U.S. Christian evan-
gelicals, discourage condom use in favor of teaching abstinence and faith-
fulness as a means of preventing HIV/AIDS, despite evidence that condoms
are just as effective—if not more so—than abstinence programming.
These same youth who were encouraged to self-regulate their behav-
ior to conform to Christian norms in which the only appropriate sex takes
place in heterosexual marriage and may produce children are now being
encouraged to reject homosexuality as deviant and “un-African.” Douglas
Feldman asserts that “the neoconservative ideological agenda is, often suc-
cessfully, using the AIDS crisis as a mechanism to change the values, beliefs,
and behaviors of Africans throughout the continent, to the detriment of
African cultures” (2008:11–12). This notion of a “slippery slope” of immo-
rality is thus effectively fueling moral sex panics, “displacing responsibility
for security and well-being from the self and community to real or imagined
others on the margins of society” (Herdt 2008:9).
In the age of HIV/AIDS, in which the major public health campaigns
have all capitalized on a moralizing discourse of “behavior change” (Thorn-
ton 2008), and particularly where that discourse is increasingly driven by a
neoconservative agenda, it is not difficult to see the moral panic over homo-
sexuality as a kind of displacement of moralizing discourses about sexuality
more generally. It is curious, then, that while the AIDS peril is a subtext to
the abstinence movement, gay men have not actually been charged with
“starting” the African AIDS pandemic, as they were by conservative Chris-
tians in the U.S.—who even coined the term “the gay plague.” Such a claim,
however, would require an admission that gays actually exist in African soci-
eties, or at least that homosexuality is indeed an African phenomenon—
thus, ironically, undermining one of the pillars of the antigay movement.
Nonetheless, the silence around homosexuality in relation to HIV/AIDS in
Africa also has to do with its illegality in many African countries that keep
antisodomy laws on the books (Lorway 2008:145). This denial of homo-
sexuality therefore has potentially negative implications for effective HIV
86 African Studies Review

prevention.4
Nonetheless, the current moral panic over homosexuality in Africa
cannot be dissociated from attendant heterosexual insecurities, of which
the AIDS pandemic looms largest. The AIDS pandemic and its moralized
responses have precipitated a climate for the sexual sanitization of society
using what Cathy Cohen (1999) has called a “politics of deviancy.” A case in
point is the viral YouTube video, “Eat Da Poo Poo,” starring the Ugandan
pastor Martin Ssempa (dudeuter 2010). Ssempa made international news
in early 2010 for showing gay pornography in his church in order to incite
violent antihomosexual sentiment. In the video he states, “I have taken
time to do a little research to know what homosexuals do in the privacy
of their bedroom. . . . ” He goes on to graphically describe male same-sex
acts before excusing the children in the room to show gay pornography to
an audience of religious leaders and laypeople, who overtly display their
disgust. The video shows extremely graphic pornography (such as fisting
and coprophilia) rather than mundane sexual acts, and concludes with a
dramatic exhortation: “As Africans,” Ssempa says, “we want to ask Barack
Obama to explain to us, is this what he wants to bring to Africa as a human
right? To eat the poo poo of our children!?”
Clearly the media play an important role in disseminating cultural anger
over marginalized sexual practices, and in today’s digital age that influence
is even more far-reaching. The “Eat Da Poo Poo” video has received more
than five million hits on YouTube, and though in some international circles
Ssempa’s excesses have made him a laughingstock, he has become a very
popular and powerful public figure in Uganda, including as the chair of a
National Task Force Against Homosexuality. Gilbert Herdt notes that “when
great sexual fears drive media to broadcast and exaggerate fears beyond
their local source, these panics have the effect of messaging the feared moral
decay through social and political tactics or media into everyday speech and
habits.”5 Wieringa cautions that “when a sexual moral panic is in full force,
rational explanations are no longer heard as the floodgates are opened for
ostracism, hate crimes, stigmatization, and violence” (2008:209).

Protecting Children, Protecting Reproduction

The Anti-Homosexuality Bill signals clear intentions to criminalize the very

existence of homosexuality, ostensibly to “protect the traditional family”
(BBC News 2009:1). It is striking how “the traditional family” is invoked
in the bill, when in fact Ugandans have always had very pliable family
arrangements that involve, among other things, widespread informal child
fosterage and polygamy (formal and informal). Yet tradition is reified in
the language of the bill in such a way that “the traditional family” is seen
as statically heterosexual, belying the multiple family formations that have
historically characterized—and continue to characterize—Ugandan social
and sexual reproduction.
 Uganda’s “Gay Death Penalty” 87

As a scholar of childhood in Africa, I have seen how children’s minds

and bodies in Uganda, like anywhere, are the grounds on which cultural
battle is waged. While children tend to be understudied as social agents
shaping a young nation, we can hardly deny that they matter greatly as
endangered symbols of that nation’s future whenever a society feels the
values they hope to pass on to their children are threatened. Thus, I sug-
gest that the perceived threat in Uganda is not merely about homosexuality,
and that it is not just a result of the antihomosexual fervor whipped up by
American neoconservative evangelicals. Rather, their effectiveness can be
linked to the overwhelming concern with population and fertility in Ugan-
dan society. Murray writes,

In contrast to the homophobia Western homosexuals confront, the social

pressure on Africans who desire same-sex relations is not concerned with
their masculinity or femininity, their mental health, their sexual object
preference and its causes, or the moral status of their sexual preference—
but primarily with their production of children, especially eligible heirs—and
the maintenance of a conventional image of married life. (1998:273; italics
added)

With the third highest total fertility rate in the world (Ugandan women
give birth to an average 6.77 children), Ugandans care a great deal about
fertility.6 During 2009 fieldwork for a study on orphans, I was repeatedly
struck by the recurring theme of fertility as a barometer of social stability,
both for the nation and for individuals. Of course, this is not unique to
Uganda; many countries view a steady birth rate as a sign that the future will
be secured through both sexual and social reproduction. But in Uganda
this concern is uniquely intense. While I was talking to rural Ugandan fami-
lies about the difficulties of absorbing orphans into their extended family
networks, one guardian struggling with food security told me, “It’s hard
because these children come into our homes, and we’re still having chil-
dren of our own.” My kneejerk response—“Then why are you still having
children of your own?”—was met with nothing more than perplexed head-
cocking.
Eugenia Shanklin has written that “children are the crux of the matter”
when it comes to African marriage and kinship (2004:271). I would extend
this to nationhood: children are seen as the future of a developmentally
young nation. Ugandans also tend to be very religious. So when church
figures like Lively tell Ugandan Parliamentarians that “‘the gay movement
is an evil institution’ whose goal is ‘to defeat the marriage-based society and
replace it with a culture of sexual promiscuity’” (Gettleman 2010), they are
likely to take him very seriously—not only because African religious and
political leaders have promoted exclusively hetero-monogamous cultural
norms, but also because they see homosexuality as threatening the pro-
duction of children. Interestingly, comments linking opposition to homo-
88 African Studies Review

sexuality with fertility concerns seem to come from Ugandan women more
frequently than from men. A Ugandan woman interviewed by the BBC
wondered rhetorically, “How will society get children if men start marry-
ing men?” (Mmali 2009). In an editorial for the New Vision newspaper, MP
Margaret Muhanga asked, “If all of us were to become gay, where would the
next generation come from?” (Muhanga 2009). In this configuration, the
fact that male homosexuals cannot reproduce earns them disdain because
the dominant spiritual and cultural outlook on relationships is that people
ultimately couple to procreate, thereby ensuring continuation of the (Chris-
tian) nation. Homosexuality is therefore seen as posing a risk to Uganda’s
future generations by disrupting both sexual and social reproduction.
But it may well be that women’s opposition to male homosexuality
specifically has more to do with perceived threats to their own well-being
than with child protection or the mere maintenance of fertility. Women in
particular are obsessed with the maintenance of their own fertility because
they see it as a way to secure material support from the fathers of their
children and their lineages (see Notermans 2004). Male homosexuality in
particular is thus being scapegoated not only because fears of sodomy fig-
ure it as deviant and criminal, but also because while men cannot bear
children, they are the heads of the lineages to which children belong—and
thus women who bear children for men’s lineages can use their fertility to
acquire entitlements from them. Like anxieties over fertility, moral sex pan-
ics tend to target women, repressing their sexual agency to maintain gen-
der hierarchies (see Herdt 2008; Tamale 2003; Wieringa 2008). But in an
era in which women’s reproductive role is threatened, women themselves
may turn to another scapegoat. With late capitalism and deepening pov-
erty straining the institution of marriage and threatening women’s ability
to secure financial support through making claims on the fathers of their
children, perhaps women see the acceptance of homosexual relations as a
threat to both their fertility and their ability to use their fertility to secure
financial stability through sexual relationships with men. If “men start mar-
rying men,” women’s precarious reproductive role in a rapidly moderniz-
ing but economically strained society is jeopardized even further.
The logical fallacy here, of course, is that it is highly unlikely that “all”
Ugandans—or even half of them—would “become gay.” Throughout the
world, self-identified homosexuals make up less than 10 percent of the pop-
ulation (Robison 2002).7 Even where gays and lesbians have been allowed
to marry legally, there has not been a marked increase in the ratio of homo-
sexuals to heterosexuals, and I could find no evidence that those countries’
fertility rates have been adversely affected by the advent of gay rights. In
countries where homosexuality has been normalized rather than criminal-
ized, homosexual couples may actually contribute to fertility rates by start-
ing families.
In light of this information, it would be counterproductive, literally
and figuratively, to pass a bill that would prevent homosexuals from rais-
 Uganda’s “Gay Death Penalty” 89

ing children. But branding homosexuals as child molesters is a common

strategy in moral panics over sexuality, and the Anti-Homosexuality Bill, not
surprisingly, figures family formations by gays and lesbians as another form
of homosexual recruitment. MP Muhanga tells Ugandans to “remember
[that] these homosexuals cannot reproduce. They must recruit, and they
want our children” (Muhanga 2009), and Bahati claims to be protecting
from molestation and recruitment children and youth who are “made vul-
nerable to sexual abuse and deviation as a result of cultural changes, uncen-
sored information technologies and increasing attempts by homosexuals
to raise children in homosexual relationships through adoption or foster
care” (BBC News 2009). Signs wielded at a 2010 inter-religious march in
support of the bill read, “Join the 1 million crowd march to protect Ugan-
dan CHILDREN!” (Talking Points Memo 2010).
Associating homosexuality with child-threatening deviance not only
demonizes and dehumanizes homosexuals, it also serves to leave children
even more vulnerable by diverting attention from the fact that children
are much more commonly exposed to heterosexual abuse and violence
by neighbors, teachers, religious leaders, and members of their own fami-
lies (The Joint Learning Initiative on Children and HIV/AIDS 2009). This
violence is growing with the increasing number of orphans entering the
already strained extended family network. So while children’s sexual secu-
rity is definitely being threatened by social changes, homosexuals or open
homosexuality are not the proven perpetrators. Indeed, this transgression
against children overwhelmingly happens at the hands of heterosexual
men within “the traditional family.”

Where Human Rights Stop: Homosexuality and Human Rights

Exceptionalism

What is perhaps most unfortunate about the Anti-Homosexuality Bill and

the general increase in the persecution of sexual minorities throughout
Africa—whatever its motivations—is how it signifies regression from adher-
ence to universal human rights standards. Uganda’s 1995 Constitution was
very progressive in its recognition of the rights of every citizen, includ-
ing specific provisions for historically marginalized groups like women,
children, and the disabled. However, as Herdt has written, “moral panics
overwhelm individual rights . . . [,] perpetuat[e] structural violence[,] and
reproduc[e] forms of inferior citizenship” (2008:17). The bill’s sponsor,
Bahati, following his friend Rick Warren, was quoted as saying, “Homosexu-
ality it is not a human right . . . ” (BBC News 2009). Ethics and Integrity Min-
ister James Nsaba Buturo took it one step further: “Homosexuals can forget
about human rights,” he said flatly (quoted in Gettleman 2010).
On the positive side, however, though the bill preemptively prohibits
the use of a term like “sexual minorities” for the explicit reason that such a
term might “legitimize homosexuality,” it may still be possible for gay rights
90 African Studies Review

activists to fight for protection from persecution by framing homosexuals

as a minority. Foreign Affairs Minister Sam Kutesa inadvertently supported
this possibility when he said, “It is a fact that if there are any homosexu-
als in Uganda, they are a minority. The majority of Africans, and indeed
Ugandans, abhor this practice. It is, therefore, not correct to allow this
minority to provoke the majority by promoting homosexuality” (quoted in
Candia 2009). Of course, who is provoking whom in this case is debatable.
But it is clear that while minority rights are somewhat limited in the 1995
Uganda Constitution, Article 36 does state that “minorities have a right to
participate in decision-making processes and their views and interests shall
be taken into account in the making of national plans and programmes.”
Further, Article 32 “places a mandatory duty on the state to take affirma-
tive action in favour of groups who have been historically disadvantaged
and discriminated against on the grounds of age, disability, gender and/or
any other reason created by history, tradition or custom” (Wairama 2001:9; italics
added). So the heterosexist reinvention of tradition, ironically, may actually
work in favor of gay rights.
If the LGBTI community in Uganda is not at least allowed to live free of
fear of death at the hands of the state, such discrimination paves the way for
further human rights abuses against any number of others categorized as
minorities. As Marc Epprecht argues, “Characterizing [LGBTI]. . . people
as an insignificant minority also underplays the significance of homopho-
bia in shoring up other prejudices in society . . . ” (2008:17). Sylvia Tamale,
a prominent Ugandan law professor who has been outspoken in defense
of women’s and gay rights, has repeatedly pointed out that colonizers used
moral superlatives similar to those being used in the homosexuality debate
to enslave and subjugate Africans, and that Ugandans managed to change
their attitudes about women’s roles, despite initial arguments that it was
“not in our culture” to have women professors or parliamentarians. These
arguments seem, however, to have fallen on deaf ears, as even female parlia-
mentarians are responding that “people should know where human rights
stop and on what continent!” (African Activist 2011).
This type of human rights exceptionalism is simply unacceptable;
Uganda cannot have it both ways.

Combating Sexual Discrimination in Uganda

I have exposed the contradictory logics at work in the debate around homo-
sexuality in Uganda in an effort to better grasp the historical, reproductive,
and human rights issues that are at stake in persecuting homosexuals. His-
torical evidence amply demonstrates that same-sex desires predate colonial-
ism and were locally validated. The recent intervention of powerful U.S.
religious conservatives in the debate suggests that, while popular discourse
frames homosexuality as a neocolonial imposition, it is the foreign evangeli-
cal influence that more neatly fits the description of neocolonialism. U.S.
 Uganda’s “Gay Death Penalty” 91

political and religious leaders are capitalizing on postcolonial amnesia about

African sexual diversity to strengthen antihomosexual arguments at home by
recruiting African political and religious leaders. As the Ugandan gay rights
activist Pepe Onziema succinctly put it, “Homosexuality isn’t the Western
import, homophobia is the Western import.”8 Politicians who introduce draco-
nian measures like the Anti-Homosexuality Bill stir up moral panics that help
consolidate their power through the moralizing construction of “tradition,”
the biopolitics of fertility, and human rights exceptionalism.
Though the Ugandan bill was temporarily tabled, it has paved the way
for more open expression of intolerance for homosexuals in Uganda and
across the region. In Malawi, a transwoman and straight man were arrested
after holding a traditional engagement ceremony, convicted of sodomy and
indecency, and sentenced to fourteen years in prison—though the presi-
dent pardoned them after a meeting with U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki
Moon (ReutersVideo 2010). In November 2010 Kenyan Prime Minister
Raila Odinga called for the arrest of homosexuals at a political rally, citing
public opposition to homosexuality as justification (Momanyi 2010). MP
Bahati has gained popularity even as he has threatened “to kill every last gay
person” (NPR News 2010).
In October 2010 a Ugandan tabloid called Rolling Stone (no relation to
the U.S. publication) published a “hit list” of prominent gays, with names,
photos, home addresses, and a banner headline that read, “KILL THEM!
THEY ARE AFTER OUR KIDS!” (CNN International 2010). Though the
Ugandan high court ruled that the tabloid had no right to publish informa-
tion about suspected homosexuals and gay right activists, a vigilante move-
ment of young people is now threatening those named by the tabloids by
invoking the authority of nationalism and child protection prevalent in
popular discourse: before David Kato was killed, he received multiple death
threats such as one that read “we shall come and deal with you as the youth
of Uganda” (quoted in Hagerty 2010). Though Sidney Nsubuga Enoch, fol-
lowing his confession, was sentenced to thirty years in prison for killing Kato,
his defense was that he had been defending himself from Kato’s unwanted
sexual advances, and the murder was not explicitly labeled as a hate crime.
Nevertheless, just as the Anti-Homosexuality Bill has reignited the
debate about the place of sexual diversity in Uganda and in Africa more
broadly, the international attention that the bill has garnered may ulti-
mately help bolster the Ugandan gay rights movement. Media attention
to the controversy has broken the silence on homosexuality in Uganda in
what Herdt calls “the Foucaultian paradox—[that] panics inflame polic-
ing and control while concomitantly spreading new sexual meanings and
cultural practices” (2008:13). Ugandan gay rights activists have been invited
to speak at international conferences on sexual rights and have received
awards for their courage to speak out.
Media attention has also fueled conservative backlash, however. Though
some say the bill will never pass due to international pressure, it has been
92 African Studies Review

reintroduced several times. The death penalty and reporting requirements

were dropped from the bill, but several more Western governments have
still threatened to cut aid if it passes, fueling even more support in Parlia-
ment. On February 7, 2012, the bill was reintroduced to chants of “Our
bill!” from MPs (GlobalPost 2012). A week later, Simon Lokodo, the Minis-
ter for Ethics and Integrity, broke up a conference of gay rights activists in
Entebbe, claiming it was an illegal gathering and threatening the arrest of
activists, who now fear for their lives even more (Voice of America 2012). In
June 2012 Lokodo announced plans to ban thirty-eight organizations that
he claims “promote” homosexuality (Jenkin 2012).
Such violence against homosexuals stems partly from a well-established
campaign to export U.S. culture wars to such places amenable to their anti-
gay stance. U.S. conservative evangelicals have thus made Uganda “ground
zero” of their battle with homosexuality. The U.S. religious right has suc-
ceeded in co-opting African spiritualism and homophobia for their own
political purposes. U.S. conservative evangelicalism therefore constitutes
the real neocolonialism in this case—not homosexuality. But the persecu-
tion of homosexuals can also be placed in the context of increasing repres-
sion of human rights in the Museveni regime.9 Numerous allies and donors
have appealed to Uganda to protect basic human rights, but these appeals
may not prove effective enough to overcome the exceptionalism applied
in this case. To soothe cultural anger surrounding the moral panic over
homosexuality and overcome the neocolonial imposition of homophobic
morality, not only must African political and religious leaders sever their
ties with powerful U.S. evangelicals and appeal to the more compassion-
ate, but more African and Africanist scholars must step in to the discus-
sion. Tamale (2011), among others, has pointed out the need for more
African scholarship about sexuality in order to help correct the selective
moral representations of a monolithically heterosexual Africa. In broaden-
ing the discussion to talk about African sexuality more generally, scholars
can help promote more progressive understandings of African traditional
and modern cultural logics, such as acceptance of diversity in all its forms,
and support for fundamental human rights.

Acknowledgments

Special thanks to the African Studies Centre at Leiden University, the Neth-
erlands, for inviting me to present an earlier draft of this paper in their
seminar series, and to discussant Gert Hekma of the University of Amster-
dam for his thoughtful feedback.

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Notes
1. Despite the adoption of the progressive 1995 Constitution that specifically pro-
tects the rights of women, children, minorities, and the disabled, as well as
popular perception of Uganda as a country making great progress with human
rights, various advocacy groups such as Human Rights Watch have continued to
be critical of Uganda’s human rights record. See Human Rights Watch (1999);
Human Rights Watch/Africa (2005).
2. Scott Lively told reporters he thought the bill was extreme but applauded
Ugandans who were standing up to “the gay agenda” (Gettleman 2010).
3. Warren went on to deliver the invocation at President Obama’s inauguration in
2009.
4. In May 2011, a PEPFAR technical report on HIV prevention recognized the
importance of addressing men who have sex with men in the struggle against
HIV infection. See PEPFAR (2011).
5. Herdt urges us, however, to “take note . . . of the paradoxical effect of some
media panics. . . . The reverse effect of purposely spreading the dangerous
knowledge, forbidden meanings, and corrupt practices into the general popu-
lation, [is] entirely counter to the presumed aim of containing or stamping
them out” (2008:13).
6. Source: http://www.indexmundi.com/g/r.aspx?v=31.
7. The number of people who report regular same-sex sexual contact is much
higher, however, than those who identify as gay or lesbian.
8. Onziema stated this at a panel discussion for the Movies That Matter Festival in
The Hague, Netherlands, March 28, 2011.
9. A number of recent Human Rights Watch reports have documented increases
in illegal detention (Human Rights Watch 2011a), unlawful prosecutions
(Human Rights Watch 2011b), and curtailing of freedom of the press (Human
Rights Watch 2010).