Odio e diffidenza: la vita difficile degli omosessuali in Uganda
Der Spiegel
22 17 1
Michael Kawuba is sitting in his church office reflecting on tumescence. "We Ugandans get an erection when we see a beautiful woman," he says. "Anything else is unnatural."
During the day, Kawuba works as a financial advisor, but once he is finished, he rejoins the battle against homosexuality. A friendly man of 31, Kawuba is married and has three children -- and he is not one to rant. But every second Sunday, he preaches to the Kakumba congregation. "The Bible forbade homosexuality. God rained down fire onto Sodom and Gomorrah" -- he continues in this vein for hours at a time, standing behind a wooden pulpit. The sanctuary is spacious with a roof made of palm fronds. A band including guitar, bass and drums players pumps out gospel music while worshippers sing along, sway to the rhythm and stretch their arms heavenward as they call out "praise the Lord!"
On Feb. 24, God would seem to have finally heard their entreaties. That was the day that President Yoweri Museveni signed a law making "aggravated homosexuality" punishable with sentences of up to life in prison. A first draft of the law had even called for the death penalty. Michael Kawuba invited friends over for the event and they watched their head of state sign the new statute. "We cheered like we were watching football," Kawuba says.
According to one survey, 96 percent of all Ugandans find homosexuality unacceptable and many are in favor of locking away gays, lesbians and transsexuals. Uganda has long been a model country in Africa: Though the regime is authoritarian, the country is stable and economically successful. Now, it has one of the most draconian anti-gay laws on the continent, trailing only Nigeria's Muslim north, Mauretania, Somalia and Sudan. Now, homosexuality is a punishable offense in 36 of Africa's 54 countries.
Afraid of Attacks
The international community was horrified: The United States slashed development aid to Uganda, the Europe Union threatened to impose sanctions and the United Nations warned the country to uphold human rights. But the reactions have done little to help the gays and lesbians in Uganda: Many have gone into hiding or fled the country. They believe that a wave of arrests is pending. Most of all, though, they are afraid of attacks from anti-gay activists.
There are thousands of congregations like that of lay-preacher Michael Kawuba. They tend to be small, but are often radical. Many of them, including Kakumba Church, maintain close contacts with evangelicals in the US whose self-proclaimed mission is that of bashing homosexuals. In 2009, for example, the ultra-right-wing activist Scott Lively traveled to Uganda claiming, among other things, that gays are to be blamed for the Holocaust.
Michael Kawuba isn't prepared to go quite that far. "I don't hate gays," he insists. Indeed, he once even met with a homosexual man. "I wanted to know what they are like." But Kawuba was afraid to go to the meeting alone and arranged for two plainclothes police officers to accompany him to a hotel bar in the diplomatic quarter of Kampala, Uganda's capital. He and the gay man talked for a while before going their separate ways. But since then, Michael Kawuba thinks that he knows all there is to know about gays.
He speaks like a zoologist who has closely observed a dangerous species of animal. "The man was one of those who takes on the role of the woman during sex," he says. Such people tend to be more defensive, he continues. The really dangerous ones are those who take on the active role. They are also the ones who go after school children. "They offer money or sweets so that our children become homosexual," Kawuba claims, and proffers pictures of anal injuries to prove his point.
Homosexuality, Kawuba says, is learned behavior: You aren't born gay or lesbian, but it is a decision akin to that of choosing what sport to play. As proof, he notes that Luganda, the country's most-spoken language, doesn't even have a word for homosexuality. First, according to Kawuba's theory, it was the Arabs who spread homosexuality in Africa. Now, he claims, a Western lobby is promoting gays in Uganda in the hopes of receiving sex or pornographic materials from Africa.
'Arrogant Western Groups'
It is tempting to dismiss Kawuba's theories out of hand, but his beliefs are shared by a majority of Ugandans. Even the president says that "arrogant Western groups" are to blame for homosexuality in his country.
On the same day that Kawuba celebrated his triumph, Sam Ganafa and Dennis Wamala were also sitting in front of their television sets. They too watched the president sign the law -- and they knew that their lives had just become more complicated.
That same night, Wamala, 31, packed up clothes, a mosquito net and his computer and fled, a step he felt compelled to take because his neighbors know that he is gay. He moved into another apartment far away and is now careful to only visit cafés and bars where nobody knows him. Before he parks his car, he carefully looks around to make sure no groups of men are lingering about.
"We live in a cloud of fear," he says. "Each week feels like a year."
But he doesn't want to give up. He often wears a T-shirt from a lesbian-issues magazine he received at a gay and lesbian conference he attended in Berlin two years ago at the invitation of Germany's Foreign Ministry. It is a quiet, sly protest against hate. He just hopes that he doesn't run into anyone who understands German.
Dennis Wamala studied business administration and is the director of Icebreakers Uganda, a group that provides advice to gays and lesbians and lobbies for societal acceptance. They have found little success and their offices are now closed. The gay bars in Kampala have also emptied out and hundreds of homosexuals have left the country.
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