Museveni — as Rome burns Nero launches anti-gay campaign
[Op-Ed]
Dictator’s Gay-Baiting Meant To Extend Politically Bankrupt Regime’s Life
Fellow Ugandans today, I wish to address three main issues.
The first one concerns the ongoing debate and the ultimate decision of Mr. Yoweri Museveni to sign into law the Anti-homosexuality bill. The second issue concerns Mr. Museveni’s decision to take sides in the conflict in South Sudan. And lastly I touch on the state of the African countries and what it means for our future as a people.
In the near future, I will inform all Ugandans on the practical steps being taken to defeat the Museveni regime. The resistance forces are working. Freedom And Unity Front (FUF) Chairman Prof. Amii Omara-Otunnu recently had an interview with Voice of America (VOA) on the issue of the Anti-Gays bill about to be signed by Mr. Museveni. He appealed to all, especially the international community not to give in to the Museveni-Bullying.
Let me say that FUF fully understands the cultural setting of this debate and also appreciates the feelings of those many who may detest homosexuality. Having said that, however, FUF recognizes the need for governments to approach such issues that divide opinions and affect rights of its citizens with uttermost sincerity, devoid of political opportunism.
FUF recognizes how emotive such issues that border on matters of social construction such as gender, sexuality, etc., within the contexts of culture, religion, social organization and political activism can be.
That is why leaders must exercise able leadership when handling such issues. Context: First, we need to understand the context in which this issue is being pushed and determined. It is at a time when Mr. Museveni and a few of his henchmen find themselves increasingly isolated both locally and internationally.
They are finding it hard to maneuver through the ever-shrinking political space in which they find themselves now. Therefore all populist actions and decisions by the regime for short term political gains, but which are potentially damaging in the long term, must be exposed and our people empowered to be on guard.
The oppressor uses these short term populist agendas to gain political capital which if not detected and resisted end up enslaving the people in the long term. We therefore need to be very careful. The current debate on the Anti-Gay bill and the deliberate targeting and positioning of gay people at the center of a hate- campaign orchestrated by Mr. Museveni and his group of political opportunists must be questioned and the motive behind it exposed.
This is important because it goes to the very foundation of the struggle for individual freedoms in a society and also underlines the question of principles and ethics on which leaders should be judged.
For, as governments usurp more powers, so does the space of individual freedoms shrink. So the battle for individual freedoms is a struggle that defines the ever existing struggle between governments and the people they govern, who, in the first place, hold all the power.
Right Vs. Wrong; Satan Vs. God: We must also note that the dictatorship has tried to frame the homosexual debate as an issue between wrong and right; a battle between Satan and God. The dictatorship presents it as a struggle to safeguard our children.
On the surface of it, these are noble intents and for those not accustomed to the workings of a dictatorship, they can easily cheer and go along. Just like when many cheered when Mr. Museveni duped the country and removed term limits only for us to be stuck with an aging dictator; and also like when, his hero now, Idi Amin, overthrew Obote in a military coup and thousands of our country men and women went on streets to cheer him, only to be devoured by his government.
Therefore, for those in the know, Museveni’s intentions are opportunistic, calculated and cleverly timed for political capital at the time his rule is under siege.
So for all those high-sounding reasons he is giving, Mr. Museveni is lying, as usual of course.
Opportunism: Mr. Museveni is an opportunist and manipulator. It’s about the Pentecostal lobby, about the unsuspecting Christians and Muslim voters; and he is now trying to neutralize Speaker Rebecca Kadaga’s own popularity by riding the same issue at the time he is fighting internal wars within his National Resistance Movement (NRM) party, or what is remaining of it.
But perhaps, most important, his major aim is to put in place a bad law to use against the opposition as when he tried to use the rape law against Dr. Kizza Besigye, to frame him and derail his presidential campaign, something the head of the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) at the time, Elizabeth Kutesa, confessed to before court during cross-examination.
Protection of Children: On the issue that the Anti-Gay law is intended to protect children, you wonder why a president would imagine that we need to protect our children in schools against homosexuals mostly or even only, as if it is alright for heterosexuals to abuse our children.
It does not matter whether the abuser is heterosexual or homosexual; the bottom line is that children should not be abused. So the law has nothing to do with the protection of children.
In any case, rape and defilement of children have been capital offences on our statute books for some time now. Therefore abuse of children by homosexuals cannot be any worse than by heterosexuals.
The current Anti-Gays bill that Mr. Museveni is running around with is intended to be a political weapon as he gears to unleash terror on leaders of the opposition when the electoral process for the 2016 presidential vote heats up.\
We also need to understand that there are laws already in place that cover all those areas supposed to be addressed by the new Anti-homosexuality law. So why this “new” law now?
I will explore this question further in my subsequent article.
Genuine Concerns Of Some Of Our People: As we embark on the struggle to expose Mr. Museveni on this issue, we are also aware about the genuine concerns and views of some of our people, on this issue of homosexuality: in the churches; in the mosques, the traditionalists, and so forth.
As true leaders who want social harmony and political maturity as we struggle for democracy and people’s individual rights, as we struggle to free ourselves from the current abuses which far outweigh the now over-blown “homosexual problem,” like the total collapse of the Ugandan state, we in FUF are ready to engage in this debate with all, in an atmosphere devoid of all political maneuvering and opportunism.
“Legal” Mechanism For Fighting Opposition: We in Freedom And Unity Front (FUF) take the lessons of history very seriously. We therefore call upon Ugandans to be careful not to hand over an undeserved victory in the form of a law that Mr. Museveni will use to suppress opposition leaders after framing them.
Mr. Museveni lied under oath, by proxy, that Dr. Besigye had raped a woman called Kyakuwa, only for the police and courts to expose his direct hand in that treachery and subversion of our legal and electoral processes.
Today, with the dictator under intense pressure to win the coming election at all cost, every law you hand to him, which has grey areas, is God sent to him. Fellow Ugandans, we must not play along with the tricks of Mr. Museveni on this one.
A Letter To Clergy And Lay Leaders Of Different Faiths: I am also writing an article addressed to clergy and lay leaders of different faiths in Uganda. This is a potent issue and therefore we all need to study it and master the facts and the falsehoods. Museveni’s opportunism must be exposed.
But we also need to know that dictators world over have always used such emotive issues to try and recapture lost political space. But they lost in the end; and he too will lose.
Homosexuality Has Nothing To Do With Race: Lastly, in my coming article, I further explore and refute claims made by Mr. Museveni when he arrogantly tries to associate homosexuality with race. When he tries to associate homosexuality with the White race, claiming that it is being imported to Africa by Europeans.
Whether there are interest groups in Europe and America involved in this is a different issue which can be explored. But what is definitely wrong is to associate homosexuality with race categorization.
Mr. Museveni’s wild claims don’t stand up to any scientific or historical scrutiny. Mr. Museveni’s claims show sheer ignorance. Actually, between 1933 and 1945, between 50,000 and 65,000 homosexuals perished in Nazi Germany during the purge. Other people like Jean Boisson think the figure was much higher.
Other Pressing Issues: Mr. Museveni’s crimes in South Sudan represents treachery and dangerous misadventures. The problems facing the South Sudanese new state and Uganda are due to Museveni’s misguided biased intervention in support of one side in what is clearly an internal conflict.
The Collapse Of The African Colonial State (neo-Colonial): I now turn to a serious existential threat to the very survival of Africa so that readers understand why we must not be distracted from the bigger task at hand by Mr. Museveni’s diversions.
Almost half of the African countries are now being held together by the old Imperial forces, as it were, or their financial capital. Look at how many countries in Africa now have French troops or other West European troops on their soils to suppress discontent of the inhabitants. From Sierra Leone where the British rushed to “save” it, and to other countries with outside troops: Mali; Central African Republic (CAR); Sudan; Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC); and, Cote d’lvoire.
In Uganda the United States sent marines to try and defeat Joseph Kony and they are still there. Many other African countries are being policed by foreign forces in the name of the United Nations.
Who pays for these forces? The Western Powers of old still bankroll all these operations, in Libya, Somalia, Congo, Mali; from North to South, West to East. The old colonial powers, and the new colonial overlords on the scene now, still manufacture all the arms we use to kill our people. They still control the financial institutions of the world as did their forefathers. They still control the technology and all the tools of science as they did before colonialism.
These powers control life in all African countries through their Non Governmental Organizations (NGOs), capital, technology and multinational companies much in the same manner that the Imperial British East Africa Company of the 1890s did when Britain colonized East Africa.
We hardly manufacture anything. Africa still sells primary products and imports everything; from the clothes we wear, which the West makes from our cotton which we export raw, to the toothpicks we use, made from the shrubs in China and India.
We depend on foreign aid to operate our poorly-run schools and collapsed health care services. Yet the apologists of the African betrayal constantly refer to the “wonder growth rate” on the African continent. The GDP of the entire African continent is equal to that of Germany, which stands at $ 3.4 trillion (US).
Germany has 80 million people; Africa has more than one billion now and has more resources and a surface area almost 30 times larger. Germany is 137,846 square miles; Africa is 11,677,239 square miles. The GDP of Africa South of Sahara is a mere $1.3 trillion which is the GDP of the state of Texas in the United States.
No wonder it’s hard to be taken seriously when the leaders of some African countries go and give speeches on the United Nations podium and, without shame, demand for a permanent seat on the UN Security council.
I read Mr. Museveni’s recent warning to the West not to interfere with his anti-homosexuality project. He says he will “defeat them” as he has always done. The same countries Mr. Museveni purports to have fought and defeated are planning to land man on Mars and to Land a Spaceship on a Comet at 24,600 mph after having been to the moon numerous times.
And given these grave economic challenges the continent faces, the greatest life-and-death issue according to these African leaders who have betrayed the continent, such as Mr. Museveni, is homosexuality.
Instead of being consumed by how to save the toiling Africans from extinction from hunger, violence, wars, diseases –imagine even diseases such as jiggers in the 21st century– Uganda’s president and Parliament are working on an Anti-Gay law.
The Historical Context And Our Challenge To Redeem Africa: Compare the old African state and the new post-colonial states.
The old Kingdom of Kush which was producing iron and other metals between 2000-1500BC; or Ghana empire by 830 AD; Bunyoro Kitara; Buganda; Ethiopia; and so forth.
Africans can redeem themselves and show distinct footpaths in our struggle to forge a new way.
The failure of the African rulers of the time is then juxtaposed with other experiences in other parts of the world: like that of the Roman conquest and rule of Britain for 400 years (43 AD-410 AD).
The conquest and subjugation of the Chinese by the Japanese. The defeat and utter devastation of the Chinese dynasties, the entire Eurasia –China, Korea, the Caucasus and substantial parts of Eastern Europe, Russia and middle East– by the Mongolian General Ghenghis Khan who ruled between 1206 and 1227 AD. He had built the largest contiguous empire in history, stretching from China to Caspian sea in a shorter period than Mr. Museveni has spent, 28 years, fidgeting on his so- called dream empire of two tribes.
We expose Mr. Museveni’s utter lack of grasp of the dialectical dynamics of history. This explains his many wrong prescriptions to the African problems and his own mistakes in Uganda and the region.
We need to confront ourselves with the hard questions: Has Africa recovered from the thousands of years of abuse it has endured over the ages? What would it take to turn Africa round? Can Africa survive under the current political mayhem and ideological bankruptcy of some of its political class?
What fundamentals has Africa got right that show it can survive in the current modern world of man-destroy-man? And what next for Africa?
We must think about these issues, not through the lenses of short-term personal gains, but through lenses which clearly show that the African and indeed the Black race, faces a real existential threat.
Today’s threat is comparable to that faced by the Black race when confronted by the Slave Trade and the destruction of African society, African human identity, and dignity.
Meanwhile Mr. Museveni is busy with his Anti-Gays law.
So now you know hypocrisy when Mr. Museveni bashes the old African chiefs — and how they were conquered.
The Musevenis of our time are the ones who have betrayed Africa. I hope history will make them account for their treachery against the African peoples and the Black race.
A lawyer by training, David Sejusa is a general and Member of Uganda’s Parliament representing the military. He is exiled in the U.K. after he accused Mr. Museveni of grooming his son Muhoozi Kainerugaba to replace him and asking for an investigation of what he said was a plot to assassinate senior political and military leaders who opposed the so-called Muhoozi-Project including himself. He is a leader in the Freedom and Unity Front (FUF).
