Tayebwa: Playing to the gallery in Maputo while House at home is shaking

Deputy Speaker of Parliament Thomas Tayebwa caused quite a stir in Maputo, Mozambique, recently when he vowed to oppose plans by European Union countries to promote across-the-board human rights, including provision of non-discriminatory reproductive health services for all people including gays.

Videos of the speech, made at the 61st Organisation of African, Caribbean and Pacific States Parliamentary Assembly and the 42nd Session of the ACP-EU Joint Parliamentary Assembly, went viral and caused some people to hail Bwana Tayebwa as a hero of some sort. Methinks the Deputy Speaker should have saved his breath; because while the speech sounds heroic from far, it is far from heroic! Nothing more than a populist stunt. Everything falls apart when you begin analysing the finer details of the dynamics around it.

Firstly, the Deputy Speaker needs to be consistent if he is to sound credible. When he mercilessly caused the savage beating up of a Umeme employee at his construction site in Busabala, August 2020; Bwana Tayebwa didn’t exactly come through as a champion of human rights, especially since the young man was in the course of legitimate duty, disconnecting power which had been illegally connected. He apologised for the incident, but had he been in a civilised country, he would have not only been forced to resign his parliamentary seat; he’d also not have been considered a worthy candidate for Deputy Speaker of the august House.

Secondly, the Deputy Speaker seems keen on throwing out the baby with the bath water. One of the issues that should not be compromised in the debate over reproductive health rights is that people need to be given medical care regardless. The fox must first be chased away; then the hen warned against wandering into the bush all alone. So you cannot deny medical assistance to a woman who has aborted just because abortion is illegal in Uganda. Treat the young lady, ensure that she is back to good health and then deliver your lectures after.

When you encourage doctors to start discriminating against patients who have carried out abortions, it becomes a dangerous structural disincentive to young ladies to seek proper medical treatment – which is why you hear they have been found dead or someone lost a uterus, or some other unthinkable-cum-unmentionable stuff. Neither should you deny a gay person treatment because homosexuality is illegal.

The moment we begin choosing which person to treat and which life to save, at a time when people are in need of medical attention, we are encouraging a practice that is in itself unconstitutional and immoral. When doctors take the Hippocratic Oath – or its modern day equivalent – they promise to dispense medical care to all persons in need, irrespective of any other consideration.

Our hospitals treat to good health, armed robbers who sustained injuries in the course of a shootout with law enforcement. The prisons ferry suspected murderers, many of them caught red-handed in the act of taking human life, to referral hospitals, to ensure that they do not die of injury or sickness.

Hospitals treat thieves who were beaten to pulp by vigilant citizens and they ensure that people who left their own homes in the dead of night to go and forcefully take other people’s property, are nursed back to sparkling good health. It is hypocritical, after all this, to turn their backs to people who need treatment just because they do not agree with their sexual orientation.

Thirdly, if the Deputy Speaker were such a passionate defender of human rights, he would be making more relevant speeches in the Parliament here. He would be vowing to ensure that his own Members of Parliament, Muhammad Ssegirinya (Kawempe North) and Allan Ssewanyana (Makindye West) who are languishing in jail for over a year now, on charges everyone knows are trumped-up, do get justice.

He’d attack the shameful and scandalous conspiracy between the Executive and Judiciary to keep those poor boys in jail. Doesn’t make sense to play to the gallery in Maputo, when his own house back home is shaking at the seams and caving in.

Mr Gawaya Tegulle is an advocate of the High Court of Uganda    

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