Uganda’s ‘anti-homos’ war isn’t about gay sex

Recent weeks have witnessed a new outbreak of war against homosexuality in Uganda.

Wherever they can find a microphone, politicians are railing against homosexuals. Ugandan bishops are alarmed about homosexuals overrunning the motherland. Conservative dons at Makerere University have joined in the gay witch-hunt. This call to arms against “gayism” might be puzzling because it is unprovoked. There has been no gay pride parade, no public gay marriage, nothing. Because there are no such obvious triggers, it helps clarify something about the war against homosexuality; it is not about homosexuality. It is a red flag operation, code for a bigger social-cultural war. Homosexuality is its central narrative because it is emotive and a form of sexuality that neatly symbolises all the other forces threatening the good old social order.

Sex is, of course, at the core of this war, but not necessarily gay sex. The real culprit is sexual liberation.

READ: Schools cautioned against bursaries from gay groups

A few days ago on social media, Charles Mboowa posted, “My friend Paulo Masaba just witnessed this, and I quote him: ‘Am here in Namilyango queuing up for S1 registration but the level of hot single mums is alarming…’”

The rise of women has been highly disruptive in Africa to the traditional patriarchal social order. In both industrialised nations and Africa, among some communities, single mothers are already the majority. A  Gallup survey from three years ago found that  Sub-Saharan Africa, on average, had the highest percentage of single mothers in the world, at 32 per cent.

However, it is the number of highly visible, successful middle-class single mothers who are causing panic. Projecting power and independence, they have broken free from the old shackles of the family and the structure within which to have children as prescribed by traditional social police; the state, churches, mosques, the elders, and other moral guardians like the Mother’s Union.  Generally, everywhere in the world, black women’s bodies have been threatening and the site of very repressive politics. Both black and white malehood are afraid of black women’s bodies. Today, they are just too many of them about – on TV screens as anchors, on Instagram, in all their female bloom at things like Blankets & Wine and Nyege Nyege Festival, everywhere.  A black voluptuous, beautiful woman – especially if she is tall, rich and influential, is the ultimate in the world of the “unconquerable” and “uncontrollable”. She brings out the worst racism in white folks and extreme misogyny in black men.

In Kenya, too, the anti-gay tirade is rising. It is no accident that it’s happening with the start of the Real Housewives of Kenya streaming on Showmax. Few things have unsettled men’s world, like the Real Housewives series.

In homes, girls and young women have also rattled the cage, compounding the crisis. In January, businessman Frank Gashumba complained in a leaked conversation that his daughter  socialite Sheila Gashumba doesn’t respect him. This after he spent a fortune taking her to good schools and opening doors for her. He criticised her boyfriend’s dreadlocks as making him look like the brutal Lord’s Resistance Army rebel Joseph Kony. He wondered how, if Sheila didn’t respect him, she would respect her future husband.

In all likelihood, if Sheila gets married, she will not “respect” her husband, not in the way our grandmothers and mothers did. Maybe she shouldn’t.

The guardians are mortified at all the men braiding their hair, heavily tattooed, and wearing earrings – who are beamed daily on their home TV screens as sportsmen, musicians, and actors; nearly all the male role models of the children. As if that wasn’t enough, young women are no longer wearing polka dot dresses and white leggings, but boys’ shorts and heavy boots, and have rings in their navels, all along their ear lobes, noses, and who knows where else.

The above is only a bit about what the turmoil is all about. The old world is ending, and a new one, based on very different rules, is emerging.

Unusual alliances between racist white people and conservative black, brown, fundamentalist Christianity and fundamentalist Islam have sprung up over homosexuality. The racists in countries like the US fear that if too many of their citizens are gay and thus don’t reproduce in large numbers, they will be outnumbered and “replaced” by coloured people. It will happen, of course, with or without gay people.  African cultural guardians and national security politicians see an enfeeblement. As former Zimbabwe president Robert Mugabe said, these liberal sexual attitudes would undermine African security because it would soon have no soldiers.  In Uganda, the anti-homophobia train will run very strong and likely get more furious until President Yoweri Museveni leaves power, likely in 2031. Then it will be game over.

This is why I think the biggest surprise in Uganda is that they haven’t yet publicly paraded and shot homosexuals by firing squad.