by Mark Kennedy Nsereko
One . . . Two, Three intruders emerge from the kitchen into the dining room that lacks a dining table. A drinks table stands on the left while two divans brush against the other walls. The Uganda Waragi, Smirn-off vodka, Captain Morgan, and other bottles on the drinks table are empty at this hour. The uninvited guests clad in olive green uniforms disappear into the corridor leading to the bedrooms. There are others, a man and a woman. She wears a navy-blue jacket, the back announces POLICE in white bold letters, to disillusion anyone still under the influence. They walk into the living room whose sofas are pushed to the walls to allow a dance floor. There’s no coffee table, no TV, just a DJ mixer on top of a big black speaker that insists on playing bangers instead of suspense music. It thinks we’re still on the dance floor voguing to Alien Superstar. I’m certain the bulbs in both rooms are off, but I can’t tell the source of the dim light. The intruders keep appearing and disappearing hindering my attempt to count them. I make out five. I remain unbothered (or in denial) in the single-seater sofa. One of them walks across the living room and exits to the front porch. The others return from the corridor having summoned everyone from bed. They have all of us in the dining and living room. As a friend rubs the sleep off her face, they tell us to sit down. Even those seated in the sofas feel inclined to find comfort on the cold tiles. The music issuing from the speaker remains unfazed in its attempt to lighten the mood. The head intruder asks who’s playing the music. We desperately look around, appealing to whoever’s phone is connected to the speaker to have mercy. When the music stops, the afande asks who owns the house.
She wears a navy- blue jacket, the back announces POLICE in white bold letters, to disillusion anyone still under the influence.
Last year, I woke up to a text from him saying that he was now straight. If only he said it that precisely. Perhaps, I’d have replied okay and life continued. He had sent a vague paragraph that echoed the offence of promotion of homosexuality in the Anti-Homosexuality Act, 2023 (AHA). Though I knew exactly what he had intended to say, I wanted him to interpret himself to me. I wanted him to be as clear as the Act. It defines a homosexual and homosexuality yet feels the need to stipulate that for the avoidance of doubt, a person who is alleged or suspected of being a homosexual who hasn’t committed sexual acts with a person of the same sex does not commit the offence of homosexuality. I would have preferred that he thumped his chest and be straightly proud. Before that text, in all our months of correspondence, he had always been short on pride. But even after that text, his messages still felt tense. I wish I could reproduce excerpts of his elaborate text for proof. Queerly, our chats show I am a delusional person apparently talking only to myself, on account of his 24-hour disappearing messages. Like many Ugayndans, the line between caution and paranoia is blurred by the need to be better safe than sorry.
I remember his clarification read something like “I do girls now,” or “I’m into girls now.” He was telling me it’s time to switch up, straighten my posture and drop whatever likeness could be considered suspect. As the Human Rights Awareness and Promotion Forum (HRAPF) Reports show, victims of homophobia are not usually arrested for specific sexual acts but rather how they are perceived by the police and public, judging by their appearance, demeanor, and whom they relate with. Although he wasn’t my boyfriend nor situationship, we had shared our eccentricity with each other. I presume this notice was his kind way of saying, take me off the list of Ugayndans you know. He didn’t even wait for Museveni to sign the Act.
The illusion that I was far from the AHA’s reach had then dissolved. Unfortunately, a number of persons as is documented in the HRAPF reports, had suffered violence and evictions from their homes even before the Act was passed by Parliament. On the 26th of May, 2023, I read WhatsApp statuses decrying, “How I hate this country,” “This country, Olemwa!” from persons who like me were appalled though not shocked. On Twitter, even persons that usually stay clear of the subject for obvious reasons liked tweets rebuking the Act. Those brave enough to be seen endorsing pro-gay tweets retweeted tweets condemning the Act. Some went beyond and tweeted about the Act in the subtlest way like my WhatsApp colleagues had. They dressed their tweets as general concern for human rights of others, as though they were not the others. They raised their fists and joined the fight, hoping to be mistaken for allies. Those “allies,” the guy who turned straight, and my acquain- tances who hated Uganda on the day the Anti-Homosexuality Act, 2023, was signed into law, spoke the language of Ugayndans: the equivocal language. The language with which you tell a fellow boy you like him without telling him you like him. The language that woos a fellow girl, leaving room for explaining that it’s normal for girls to compliment each other when she reacts otherwise. A language married men use to ask for other men’s bodies. A language you learn from within, that you grapple with and sometimes lose, causing you trouble, because unlike popular belief, there is no Gay Academy.
Courtesy of the artist.
That language manifests in the fight for our rights. The fight weak- ens when we are mute. We remain a myth to the public, faceless, easy to villainize, too ashamed to reveal ourselves. While allies are perceived as people driven by avarice; always ready to dish out valiant statements, then lining up to be handsomely compensated by foreigners for their efforts. Unlike women, differently-abled persons, and other minorities who, despite various hindrances, can be placed next to their struggle, we can’t risk living without masks. So we hold on to our language. A language that brazens out of some and is whispered by the many. The language is within, like our color that radiates off some Ugayndans as flamboyancy while for many, it glows beneath their skin like rubies hidden in a chest. As a writer, this language spills through my pen. I wrote my first colorful poems in this language. I said, while relying on obscure diction to unsay in case I needed a defence. Some may see it as creative use of metaphors, and maybe it was.
I’m also intrigued by our language. How we exchange passion using simple words that elude the public. I am spellbound in this fantasy realm where relations are so ethereal they’re spoken in a dialect of their own. However ephemeral, I remain crushed by how language can dehumanize. The word homosexual sounds so scientific that it seems to describe something alien to Uganda. In Luganda, they call it okulya abisiyaga, and I’m repulsed. But it’s in the midst of all the chaos that I learned a better description. The Buganda Kingdom Media House news anchors called it omukwano ogw’ebikukuju. “Omukwano” is love, “bikukuju” is wearing clothes inside out. It sounds so poetic: love that is inside out. No wonder they detest those blessed enough to experience that.
I said, while relying on obscure diction to unsay in case I needed a defence.
Days after the Act was assented to, I received a WhatsApp message informing me a friend’s tranniversary celebration, which had been slated for June, was postponed until further notice. It was a slap across the face. When we talked, she expressed her devastation. Her mother noticed how disheartened she was. But my friend couldn’t speak her truth. She said nothing, like the teenage boys who can’t reveal to their parents that the butterflies in their stomach flicker for other boys. These boys were taught desire should only go one way, that they shouldn’t allow themselves to be tricked, recruited, or coerced into anything else. Anything else is cursed. And because there is no recruiter, these boys believe themselves to be cursed. They can’t unburden themselves, there’s no one to trust, and so the burden eats them from inside. Luckily, for my friend, those days are gone, she now has a small tribe to hold hands with today. Trans women struggle with transition given the inaccessibility of the hormones they need and passing privilege, or “passability” as she calls it. It dictates the acceptability of a trans woman not only by the public but unfortunately within queer spaces as well. Therefore, making one year since commencement of hormone replacement therapy was a milestone for her, and for the rest of us an opportunity to be in a place beaming with colorful aura. The Kampala party scene can be rather unfriendly and dull—unsafe for uncensored colorfuls and boring due to the bland exuberance that lacks the savoriness of queer flamboyance.
While my concern was a postponed party, a friend’s friend currently residing in Nairobi recounted a sequence of horrific incidents that followed the assent of the Act, necessitating his inadvertent migration. He was summoned by his area chairman, who, together with his landlord and three police men, informed him that it was now illegal to live alone in a house as a single boy or girl. He knew they meant a boy like him: feminine. They accused him of having his boyfriends sleep over and advised him to get packing. A woman always lurked outside his rental and peeped through his window in fulfillment of her duty to report acts of homosexuality as was bestowed upon her by section 14 of the Act. I presume the AHA overrides the constitutional right to privacy. His window was stoned. The neighbors taunted him with homophobic slurs, and he was physically assaulted by unknown men. Perhaps the constitutional right to human dignity and protection from torture, or degrading treatment, doesn’t apply to humans that are subject to this Act. He found shelter with a friend who was also kicked out because he was living with a boy and “two boys could not live together.” He and some friends took refuge under an organization that was relocating trans women to Kenya. He emphasized how he was disabused of the existence of a queer community. He learned the truth of the rumors that some gay rights NGOs are business enterprises hawking queer agony to donors. The lack of communalism shook his core: “Everyone is looking out for themselves.” Yet some don’t have to look out for anything because
they’re insulated by privilege. Privilege that allows their androgyny and colorfulness to blossom unbothered in high-end spaces. Privilege that makes some say the AHA is our fault; gays have quietly existed in Uganda since forever. They insist, we overly-gay Gen Zs are rubbing it in everyone’s face provoking such laws. That is the Ugandan story, the same script of the “elite” who chastise those who demonstrate against poor governance. They accuse them of disrupting peace and blame them for the violence meted out on them by state security agencies, forgetting we’re all victims of this government. The difference is they can afford to pay themselves out of some of the poor governance. We fight each other instead of the true enemy. The enemy responsible for poor governance and the Anti-Homosexuality Act.
He was summoned by his area chairman, who, together with his landlord and three police men, informed him
that it was now illegal to live alone in a house as a single boy or girl.
Everyone is thinking it. We’re afraid of the police but we fear that thing more. It is present. Somebody is silently reciting an imaginary rosary while another promises God that she’ll never partake in such parties if He saves her today. Whoever lied to their parents about their plans for the night is devising airtight lies to explain how they ended up being arrested with colorfuls. I stare at a guy who’s partying with us for the first time; I now believe melancholy can contort a pretty face. I’d swear he has made up his mind that loving men is not for him. The thing chants and grins. It snarls, exposing sharp fangs on which numbers 1 to 17 are inscribed. It wiggles its tail. Its long forked red tongue licks on our surplus fear that evaporates and floats in the air. It looks down on us laughing at those praying to God because it too is an instrument of God, enacted by His chosen disciples at Parliament. It whispers in afande’s ear, “If you look harder, you’ll find it.” With its horned scaled head, it gestures, pointing to the boy who threw a shirt over his crop top when the intruders walked in but afande doesn’t see. Afande commands us to divide ourselves according to gender. The thing mocks the trans and non-binary. It was hoping they’d stand their ground and tell on themselves but this humiliation suffices. Afande sniffs on for a whiff of anything: the dutiful neighbors reported a sex party happening. How can they let taxpayers’ fuel, which was used to come all this way, go in vain? Another afande holds an AK47 strapped to his shoulder, he casually waves it. We’d be relieved the muzzle is facing the floor, but we are sitting down. The floor hosts over ten lawyers. I’m sure afande will be moved if we pull out our phones and point to section 2(5); for avoidance of doubt, a person who is alleged or suspected of being a homosexual, who hasn’t committed sexual acts with a person of the same sex does not commit the offence of homosexuality. He’d love to be reminded the Director of Public Prosecutions issued a directive that no charges should be brought under the Act without her sanction. Perhaps this directive will save us from the rubber- necking neighbors and these glaring overzealous afandes.
Courtesy of the artist.
The boy pressing against me requests I push aside to allow him to unfold his legs and relieve them of the numbness caused by hours of sitting uncomfortably due to the limited room on the floor. My mind is in the Constitutional Court, which heard the petition against the AHA last December but hasn’t issued judgement. Will the Court uphold our constitution and international treaty obligations by pronouncing itself on the right to love? Will the justices inform Ugandans that public opinion, morality, and other obscure notions don’t take precedent over human rights and constitutionalism? I hope the Court knows that when the Constitution says judicial power is derived from the people and shall be exercised in the name of the people and in conformity with the law and with the values, norms, and aspirations of the people, it does not exclude Ugayndans. I’m pleased the petitioners also averred that freedom of expression includes expression of sexuality. Perhaps the Court annuls the AHA on technicalities like it annulled its predecessor in 2014 and leaves the Penal Code Act provision on unnatural offences which proscribes having carnal knowledge of any person against the order of nature, to hold the line while we wait another nine years or less for other legislators who have nothing to offer except more written hate. Will the cycle ever end? Like India, whose courts decriminalized same love in 2009 only to recriminalize it in 2013, and ultimately decriminalize in 2018? Even worse, the Court might uphold this license that strips one of their humanity rendering the violation of all their rights justiciable. I suppose lynching and locking up some Ugayndans is a fair price for the protection of children, African values, and Biblical morality. Yet the Sexual Offences Bill, 2019, which provided for a sex offenders’ register, criminalizing marital rape and failure to report defilement, child sex tourism, supply of sexual content to a child, and amicable settlement of defilement cases was never signed into law. It is reductive for Ugandan politicians to always invoke African values only on matters of sex. There is more to African tradition than how women should dress or where the penis can and cannot enter. Where is Ubuntu? Does pillaging taxpayers’ money to be driven in plush rides, leaving mothers and babies for dead in dilapidated hospitals resonate with Africanness—humanness? How hypocritical that a circus of crooks ordained themselves the guardians of Biblical morality. The Anti-Homosexuality Act is hardly about protecting children. It is for the government to hoodwink Ugandans into thinking it has our best interests at heart—for afandes to earn a living extorting suspected homosexuals, and for homophobes to feel validated and more righteous.
After all, unlike heterosexuality, being gay is all and only about sex. The afandes not finding the sex party they expected as was reported by the nosy parker neighbors is an anticlimax that must have stung. Too bad Ugayndans can’t throw a party, celebrate one another, or associate, unless it is to fuck!