The Anti-Homosexuality Bill, 2009

It is now almost two years since a group of young Ugandan MPs within the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) tabled the notorious private members bill, the Anti-Homosexuality Bill. The bill proposed increased sentences for all forms of homosexuality, and the death penalty for any act of 'aggravated homosexuality' (defined in terms of 'serial offending', sex with a minor, sex with a person with disabilities, or sex for an HIV+ individual).

Led by David Bahati, MP for Ndorwa West, this reactionary political gesture challenged the public views of their party's leader, President Museveni, and his government's avowed commitment to social equity. As a result, the bill was immediately disowned by several senior ministers. However, Bahati and his conspirators used skillful PR and a sympathetic media to build popular support for the draft legislation. Their rabble-rousing may also have been tolerated because it served to distract public attention from growing social and political unrest.

In late 2009, the President attempted to squash the proposal by issuing an executive order against it, in which he claimed that the legislation had become a ‘foreign policy issue’ (given the widespread condemnation that it was by then receiving from donors, and from the international human rights community). He also appointed a special parliamentary committee that found '99 per cent' of the draft legislation to be either 'unconstitutional' or 'redundant'.

However, despite these, and other, legal rulings against it, the bill continued its passage through parliament, bolstered by the homophobic content of some popular radio stations, and print media outlets. One key forum for this sentiment became the radio ‘phone- in’ show, in which callers would typically take it in turns to berate either an individual gay man, or gay people in general. The print media – especially the tabloid press – also dedicated a growing number of articles to the subject. This toxic media environment reached its zenith in October 2010, when a tabloid newspaper called Rolling Stone published the photographs, names, and addresses, of 100 allegedly gay indviduals – including one Anglican Bishop – alongside a banned headline that read: ‘Hang Them’. 

For a thoughtful examination of this poisonous media environment, and its implications for Uganda's LGBT community, see BBC Radio 1 DJ Scott Mill's documentary on the subject, which was first broadcast in February 2011. The first part of Mill's film can be viewed here:

But encouraged by this media response to his plan, and by the support that he was receiving from certain sections of the Pentecostal-charismatic (P/c) Christian community, in early 2011, Bahati and the others attempted to revive their bill. With dissent growing around Museveni’s twenty-five year incumbency, the timing seemed right. Whether by cynical manipulation or unhappy political coincidence, the timing was in fact potent. In January 2011, just weeks before Museveni’s seventh election win, a prominent gay-rights activist called David Kato – who was one of those named in the Rolling Stone list – was brutally murdered at his home in Kampala. In one particularly shocking aspect of the case, fighting then broke at Kato’s funeral, when the presiding pastor delivered an anti-gay sermon. 

This time the international furore reached heightened proportions, and led in May this year to a major campaign putting pressure on the Ugandan parliament. As a result, the Anti-Homosexuality Bill’s passage was again blocked (this time on a technicality). However, reflecting just how emboldened the NRM's 'young turks' have become within the current (9th) parliament, it seems likely that Bahati and the others will again attempt to revive the draft legislation. Either way, the wider homophobia remains.

Earlier this year, Dr. David Mills and I were approached by members of All Our Children, an education charity with which we are involved, to comment on the current situation regarding both the bill and wider homophobia in Uganda, and to think through its implications for individuals and agencies who are working in the country. Our discussions on the subject eventually led to us drafting a 'briefing paper', and this has now been published on All Our Children's website. In this paper we look at the background to the current bill, and also at some of the wider historical, political and cultural dimensions to homophobia in Uganda. We hope that the paper - which can be downloaded here - will be of interest and use for a wide range of actors currently engaged in the country.

DJ M7

A recent opinion poll conducted by Afrobarometer left us in little doubt as to who is going to win the presidential election on 18th February: it placed Museveni on 66%, and Besigye on just 12% (with Otunnu and Mao on 3% each).

Certainly, the incumbent was always going to be the favourite here, given his privileged access to the 'levers of state'. Nevertheless, it has come as a surprise to many, even to veteran Uganda commentators, that he is so far ahead at this stage.

One of the reasons why Museveni is doing so well is the skill with which he (with his team) has controlled his media persona throughout these campaigns. Perhaps it is the case that all elections, the world over, now hinge on the way in which the protagonists present themselves in the media. However, it is worth remembering that in Uganda, this is a relatively recent phenomenon, given that most of the population, outside of the main urban areas, still have only limited access to print media, or to television - or in other words, to any form of visual media. Hence it is a masterstroke that Museveni's media persona in these campaigns has been centred around sound, or more specifically, a 'rap' song - one which has been played seemingly ad infinitum in recent weeks, on the dozens of radio stations which now broadcast throughout the countryside.

The origins of Museveni's song trace to a free concert that was held in Central Kampala a few days before the nominations closed, in late-October. Museveni arrived at the concert in full military fatigues, and proceeded to 'rap' to the gathering crowd (he was in fact reciting two well-known Runyankore nursery rhymes). His efforts were recorded, and were subsequently re-mixed as a campaign soundtrack by the fashionable Fenon Studios. The track was an immediate success, for two reasons.

Firstly, the song has galvanized Uganda's young urban voters to the president's cause. This constituency had previously been a mainstay for Besigye and his Forum for Democratic Change (FDC). Secondly, and more importantly, the way in which Fenon remixed Museveni's words recast his patter in the style of someone doing 'okwevuga'. This is a highly technical form of public oratory, by no means easily mastered, which involves a stylized form of rapid rhyme that is rich in allegory and metaphor - hence it is in some ways similar to (at least the more artful forms of) commercial 'rap'. The practice of okwevuga is today most frequently associated with wedding ceremonies, where guests sometimes use it in their speeches. However, it has also been associated, from pre-colonial times onwards, with skilled political leadership. In recent years, a well-known radio presenter in South-western Uganda used it in the credits of his show, and to powerful effect - for a period, his show became the most popular program on the airwaves.

Thus, with the song now playing day-in, day-out, in villages across Uganda, the population is constantly reminded what a capable leader they have. Listen to Fenon's song:

In the weeks following the release of the track, a number of newspapers, including Uganda's main Luganda-language paper Bukedde, poked fun at the song, by publishing pictures of Museveni's face spliced onto the body of various famous 'gangsta rappers'. Museveni's press secretary Tamale Mirundi reacted angrily to the images, describing them as 'offensive', and demanding that they be immediately dropped from future publications.

Yet Mirundi's reaction is itself illustrative. Because it shows that his team does not want any unauthorized images of the president to undermine their carefully constructed control of the aural media space - the very space in which their campaign is currently being won (and the fact that Zain telecom have now turned the song into a mobile phone ringtone is another interesting aside here).

A member of Besigye's campaign team recently quipped that if he wants to mount a come-back in the current campaign, then he will also have to release a rap-song. Otherwise, it will surely be DJ Museveni who is still in State House on 19th February.

Review- A Media Minefield (HRW Report)

I have just finished reading HRW's new report on Uganda's media, 'A Media Minefield'. The full report can be downloaded here.

The report's main argument is that 'freedom of expression across the country is in significant jeopardy' (p. 2), as the government seeks to rescind some of the media freedoms it introduced following its accession to power in 1986. The argument is that the government is making these moves in the run-up to this year's general election, in an attempt to stifle opposition campaigning on both urban and rural media outlets.

The basic tenets of this argument are sound, and there is little doubt that media freedoms have been gradually eroded in Uganda over the last few years. In addition, the government has increasingly sought to displace criticism of its own actions onto the media. In the most recent example, President Museveni had Monitor group Managing Editor Daniel Kalinaki and Sunday Monitor Editor Henry Ochieng arrested for 'forgery'. The charges related to a letter that Museveni himself had written to the Bunyoro Kingdom - promising to 'ring-fence' certain elected offices for ethnic Banyoro - which the Sunday Monitor had later published. Interestingly, the president never disputed that he had written the letter, but instead argued that certain of its details had been altered in the publication. That case continues. In addition, there is little doubt that the opposition has most to fear from these moves, certainly if the rhetoric of current Minister of Information and National Guidance, Kabakumba Matsiko, is to be believed. Matsiko is an example of one of the new generation of NRM firebrands' (about which I have written in previous blogs), who wastes no opportunity to attack the opposition. Matsiko is also one of the driving forces behind the new Press and Journalist (Amendment) Bill (2010), which if passed, will make it more difficult for independent outlets to report opposition views on certain key issues.

Nevertheless, as someone who has been researching Uganda's media environments for over a decade, I still found the narrative of this HRW report too simplistic, and its interpretation of the evidence too narrow. In particular, the idea that the 'expanded number of government regulatory bodies, which have mandates to oversee, control, and monitor the media' (p. 11) have been introduced only for purposes of limiting media freedom - i.e. for the government's own instrumental political purposes - fails to understand just how complex Uganda's media environment has become over the last 10 years.

Since the NRM first introduced their media liberalization reforms, in 1993, Ugandans have gained access to a quite startling array of international, national, and regional media content. For example, in the past 15 years, more than 100 new newspapers have appeared in the country, more than 50 new radio stations, and at least a dozen new TV operations (some of which, such as DsTV or GTV, have themselves each carried a dozen or more channels). Many of these new outlets have not lasted, not because the government has restricted them, but usually because they were simply not commercially viable. However, a number of those outlets that have survived have gone on to have quite powerful social effects.

I havedocumented many of these effects in my published academic work. However, to note just one example here, in the late 1990s, the leadership of a charismatic Christian sect, the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God, used broadcasts on a Western regional radio station, Radio Voice of Toro FM, to convince people that the world was about to end. Many of the MRTC's members then went on to die in an inferno at Kanungu.

In this context, then, the creation of ever more (and, I would add, ever more complex) regulatory bodies should be seen less, as an attempt by the government to undermine the media, so much an attempt by them to keep up with the increasingly complex realities that their own reforms had created.

A similar point could also be made in relation to this report's main case study: the events surrounding last September's Baganda ethno-nationalist riots in Kampala. Certainly, the behaviour of some police officers, in the context of the riots themselves, was totally unacceptable, with numerous allegations being made of journalists (especially photo-journalists) being attacked by the police in their attempts to cover the story. However, the HRW report also goes on to criticize the government's decision - taken at the height of the rioting - to close down the Baganda Kingdom's own radio station, the Central Broadcasting Service (CBS). This criticism seems misplaced to me. Throughout the first day of the rioting, CBS presenters dedicated large parts of their shows to ringing around various parts of Kampala and its surrounds, to ask members of the public (on their mobile phones), whether any rioting had yet taken place in those areas. These calls had the effect of alerting all listeners to the places in which rioting had not yet begun, following which mobs travelled to those locations to 'stir things up'. The station's modus operandi was similar to that used by certain Kenyan radio station during the post-election violence of 2008. For that matter, it even smacked of the behaviour of Radio Television Libre des Mille Colines (RTLM) during the Rwandan genocide of 1994.

In this context, then, it was in fact quite right and proper that the government should have pulled down the station's mast when they did, as parts of central Uganda teetered on the brink of even more serious ethnic violence. Certainly, the government have since made political gain by using this incident as a means to keep CBS off air (the station is currently suing the government over this decision, with the case due to be heard on 8th July). However, this alone does not invalidate the government's initial decision to turn-off the CBS signal when they did. Indeed, the rioting ended within just a few hours of the CBS shut-down (although there were other factors at play here as well).

Thirdly, the HRW goes to great length to argue that the government is today going to great lengths to curtail all media, throughout Uganda. However, looking at the list of cases included in the report's Annex, I am struck by the fact that most of the charges have actually been brought against quite a small network of journalists. Thus, this list of defendants does not represent a broad swathe of opposition media in Uganda, but a small clique within the upper echelons of the Monitor group (some of whom have since gone on to create their own outlets, such as the Independent, and Life FM). Whilst this doesn't justify the charges, of course - indeed, I have no doubt that many of them are false - it might suggest that the government are taking aim here at not, the opposition media as a whole, so much as a specific set of people within those outlets, with some of whom they have historic grievances (and the fact that Andrew Mwenda tops the list here, is no surprise). Thus, there are also a number of other opposition newspapers and radio stations in Uganda which are not represented on this charge sheet.

As I say, the basic tenets of this HRW report are sound. However, a more convincing attempt to sustain it would perhaps focus more on the problems that the New Vision group (which is government owned) have had in recent years. Whilst these did not lead to (significant) criminal charges, they did result in first William Pike, and then Els de Temmerman, resigning (in 2006, and 2008, respectively).

Moreover, a more nuanced report might also make more of the limits of the state in its attempt to control the media. Simply put, Uganda's new media environments have becomes so complex, and so 'globalized' (not least since the advent of the internet), that it is today doubtful that any state body, or bodies, could - at least in any simple sense - 'control' it.