Anti-Homo law could be a blessing in disguise for Uganda

President Yoweri Museveni

What now remains to be seen is whether the president is going to be able to withstand pakalast the heat that has since been lit by the West following his assent to the law.

The Europeans led by their domineering prefect, the United States, had until the enactment of this law, over talked themselves hoarse and worked themselves tirelessly to try to stop Uganda’s president, Gen. Yoweri Museveni from assenting to the Anti-gays Bill.

Subsequently, everyone had been waiting with bated breath to either or, not, see and hear the President assenting to the Bill in light of the ferocious fire that had been coming from the Western capital cities.

Uganda’s big man finally put the doubting Thomases to bed by sending that piece of law into operation and the US and it’s marionettes to hang.

The president’s assent would open a floodgate of threats directed towards him and his administration. The threats led by the US and it’s puppets were talking of applying a number of sanctions against the actors in the drafting and enactment of the new law.

Those threats would include travel bans and the withdrawal of millions of billions of shillings especially in development and Aids control funds.

One of the first direct recipients of those sanctions was the speaker of Uganda’s parliament, Annet Anita Among Magogo. In avenging against her, he US revoked Among’s passport.

The US’s puppets in the West are also likely to follow suit by slapping their own travel bans against Among and a number of key participants in the Anti-gays Law enactment.

Trying to justify the sanctions, the US and it’s gang of puppets argue how the new law will discriminate against a section of Ugandans and other foreigners residing and working here.

This pretence, as if the criminalization of robbery or terrorism would necessarily amount also to discriminating against the robbers and the terrorists themselves.

Let me state at this very juncture and time that gays and lesbians are not born as such just as robbers and terrorists themselves aren’t. What is contrarily true is that homosexuality and lesbianism are lifestyles people choose to lead for whatever reason only known to and by themselves.

The US also deceitfully and misleadingly states how the new law will stop a section of people from seeking treatment. That that will happen because the people the US is talking about will effective the enactment of this law, purportedly become fearful to disclose their sex-orientation to perhaps the people who works in the Uganda’s health centers .

For that reason, the US fears, those people will end up being denied their fundamental Constitutional right to access health services.

This lie is self-defeating and an absolute deception for which two reasons it ought not to be permitted to stand. And to state so, would certainly be to engage in speculation which has no place under the law.

This notion, keeping in mind the fact that neither does the law either expressly nor covertly state anywhere in it’s clauses that those working in the health centers will now be required to inquire into the sex orientation of those seeking their services prior to attending to them.

Neither does the new law suggests anywhere in its clauses that gays and lesbians aren’t legally supposed to be accorded medical services anywhere in Uganda effective the date of it’s assent by the president.

As a matter of fact, the beauty with this law is that it offers a window of immunity to those gays and lesbians ready and willing to reform.

In any case, the new law doesn’t criminalize and or permit any person to stigmatize anyone for merely looking like a gay or dressing like one.

In fact as long as gays keep their acts behind walls in a consensual and secret manner , the law does not affect them as long as one does not lure others.

Away from that, the US accuses the Ugandan administration of using the new law as a tool to endanger the lives of gays and lesbians as stated above.

Yet that is far and farthest off what’s really true. Contrary to what the US would want you and I to believe, that country is the one it itself which is actually guilty of what they are trying to charge the Ugandan administration of.

This is by trying to endanger the lives of a big section of Ugandans as compared to the population of those who are gays and lesbians.

And by the US captaining the shameless call for the withdrawal of funds being used currently by the government and other non-government agencies to fight, treat and control the scourge.

In what can be equated to addition of sizzling hot pepper spray to injury, the US has been shamelessly urging other donors of good-heart to follow suit and emulate such dangerous games of them.

Yours truly thinks that the lives of Aids sufferers, the US wants to put at so grave a danger by leading the shameless call to suspend the attendant financial aid, matters also just as that of the gays whose lives aren’t in danger at all by the way should they choose to live by the new law or shift to where what they deliberately choose to embrace, is permitted.

One would also think that punishing a crime in a setting where such crime is outlawed has never been a crime itself that would justify all sorts of sanctions and what have you.

Let’s quickly move on. The US threatens to withdraw billions of shillings from the Uganda’s limping economy if the President or Parliament doesn’t reconsider the Anti-gays law.

Other than being a curse, I dare say, that measure hard and scary as it looks, the Ugandan administration can profitably gain from it by quickly learning how to stop the wanton waste and gobbling up of public funds within its rank and file.

Uganda may not need, frankly speaking, to recklessly borrow or live by and on alms from the US and whoever else it is. But if only our leaders were willing and ready to stop the grand theft of public money that sees the country losing almost half of its annual budget to the thieves.

President Yoweri Museveni likes to compare his conflicts with western powers as existential wars. Speaking to NRM leaders at Kyankwanzi this week, Musevei said that if the west withholds its funding, his government to rationalize and cut wasteful expenditure.

Seriously speaking, merely because the US and the West contribute substantially to our own economy and wellbeing. Imagine. That seems to give to them the sense of entitlement and authority to abuse our sovereignty status by ordering us what to do and not to do and how to do it and not to do it.

That is the reason why when we don’t do what the US and the rest of the West want us to do, we end up oftentimes being threatened with insults and threats by the US and the West.

What would this call for going forward is a concerted and deliberate effort by our leaders to responsibly make use of our abundance of natural wealth and flora and fauna to get out of the deep poverty hole in which we are currently entrapped.

Only then and only then shall we be able to take our destiny in our own hands and stride without any hinderance or let from the US and it’s puppets.

Short of that, the overbearing US and the West are going to continue to direct us on what to do and not to do taking in mind the maxim that he who pays the piper calls the tune.

Consider this as well. The US which is purportedly very annoyed with both the Ugandan administration and our National Assembly over the enactment of the Anti-gays Law. Think hard.

The same country is shockingly in cahoots with another administration in Saudi Arabia whose similar law permits offenders of that law to be publicly humiliated by stoning them live to death. What an irony!

While offenders of that law in Saudi Arabia have often been actually stoned to death, but we are yet to hear the so-called world police, the US handing out sanctions to anyone of that country’s leaders or anyone else concerned.

If that’s not a plain case of double standards or high hypocrisy, I beg to be corrected what it is?

While the US continues to hobnob with the regime here as it goes about trampling upon people’s human rights and personal freedoms, it boggles the mind for the same US to be seen acting decisively when it comes to the gays and lesbians.

Should we conclude then that the rights and freedoms of gays and lesbians supersede those of the rest of Ugandans?

To wind it up all, a day is going to come when Africa is going to learn to stand on it’s own or to look East for solutions to it’s own problems.

That time is slowly but steadily unfolding before our own eyes. Look everywhere across Africa. You are surely going to see substantial projects worth trillions and trillions of dollars being enjoyed and effected by China, Russia and such emerging power houses from the East.

No wonder, Africa can afford currently to tell off the US and the West when it comes to who to support between Russia and Ukraine, between North Korea and South Korea and between China and Taiwan.

It is essentially because Africa has a new block in the East to turn to for aid and protection that the likes of President Yoweri Museveni can now afford to slap the US and the West straight in the face by signing off the Anti-gays Law and even go off to the wilderness in Kyankwanzi to mind his other businesses unfettered.

It’s for the same reason that leaders in South Africa can afford to reject the US and West’s orders to arrest Vladimir Putin and a hail of bombs do not necessarily come flying down upon Madibaland.

Look, the US and the West have done a lot of havoc for hundreds of years and lately in Vietnam, Libya Iraq and elsewhere.

This, by the US and the West arrogantly imposing themselves on the world as the world police. So much that the rest of the world has learned with time to resist what those in the West stand for.

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