CarnalNation

So what is it with the Ugandans anyway? Why the hostility to gays? As you've read elsewhere on this site, a Ugandan legislator has proposed laws that would outlaw homosexual acts and homosexuality. Penalties range from two or three years imprisonment for a person (you?) who doesn't report homosexuality that they merely know of, to life imprisonment or execution (by hanging) for convicted homosexuals. Now, African countries these days seem to have a low tolerance for homosexuality in general, but this seems extreme even by African standards.

This is not the first international controversy about homosexuality to come out of Uganda. It's quite a trip back in history to the first time, but it's a tale worth telling—a “learn from your mistakes or you might be forced to re-live them” kind of tale.

This story begins about 150 years ago in a land called Buganda. The ruler, the kabaka, was named Mwanga. Kabaka Mwanga was young and handsome and curious. Like his father, Mutesa, before him—indeed, like royalty in many times and places—he invited villagers in his domain to live on the royal grounds in exchange for their service and their loyalty. This presented an ambitious young person with unmatched opportunities to improve their life and that of their family. It also populated the ruler's harems—male and female—with enthusiastic court members.

Arab traders brought Islam to Central Africa from the East in the early 1830s. In the 1850s, the first Western foreigners arrived, followed closely by Anglican then Catholic missionaries. Mutesa, and later Mwanga, invited these foreign visitors to stay at the court or nearby. The missionaries arrived at Mutesa's court and set up establishments in the early 1880s not long before Mwanga became kabaka. These visitors taught them and their courtiers, or pages, of their home lands and ways of life. The Europeans invited the (male) court pages to learn to read, a new and exciting activity.

The visitors also taught the pages about their god—they had only one! The pages learned that the White Man's god was more powerful than their own gods and their kabaka. He, the Christians' god, did not condone their acts with the kabaka and his guests. He especially disapproved of sodomy. In fact, sodomy was so horrible in the Christian god's eyes that those who did it were doomed forever—even after they had left their human life. Pages who had been baptized in this new religion with this god were in a terrible predicament: They had to break their vow of loyalty to their kabaka, who fed and housed them, or they had to defy their newfound god and risk eternal damnation for the “abomination” of sodomy. Some became increasingly disloyal to the kabaka, refusing him service and arguing with him.

One day, Kabaka Mwanga returned from an unsuccessful hippopotamus hunt. In hopes of consolation, he went looking for his favorite, but Mwafu was nowhere to be found. Many other pages were absent as well. Mwanga suspected where he might find them—with the White Fathers, and he was right. Again he was refused sex.

This time Mwanga's fury ignited. He took his spear and, with the support of loyal guards, attacked the traitors. That night, pages were speared, dismembered, castrated, and killed. At least nine men died within two days.

Death is the time-honored punishment for traitors around the world. And these were not the first to die for their disloyalty to Mwanga. A turbulent 18 months of disagreements and punishments (beginning in January 1885) culminated a few days after the hippopotamus hunt, on June 3, 1886. The remaining traitors were marched to Namugongo Hill, the kabaka's execution spot.

Descriptions of this event are wrenching, graphic, and glorious. Written by the missionary witnesses, they contain all the gore, horror, and heroic details that make martyr stories juicy. There are the martyrs who profess to want to die for their god; the zealous, holy young converts facing their demonic ruler; those who call out “Katonda!” (“My God!”) Christ-like as they die; the men being rolled into reeds and bound as “human faggots” (the origin of the term for homosexuals?) to be burned; an apostate who turns from his new religion to avoid death by fire; and much more. All told, perhaps over one hundred died that day, and more died during the entire 18-month period. Forty-five of them became Anglican or Catholic saints.

During the years leading up to this event, lurid “news” stories had been sent home to Britain and France by missionaries and explorers who were looking for additional funding to continue saving the “savages” of “deepest, darkest Africa.” Following this event, the need was clearly greater—innocent Christians were being slaughtered by an evil sodomite! Support was forthcoming, and Buganda (and surrounding areas) became a British colony (Uganda) within 40 years, a result of the quickest colonization process ever in African history.

The conquest was not just physical. Today Uganda is almost 85% Christian (mostly Catholic and Anglican), the highest of all the African countries. Fewer than 2% of Ugandans admit to practicing pre-Christian spiritual traditions. And the nation's tolerance for homosexuality is the lowest in Africa.

The similarities between the historical origins of Uganda and the occurrences of this past year are eerie. In both cases, Christian missionaries from the West were involved from the start. A growing born-again Christian movement in Uganda is supported with money and prayers from abroad—America. Well-known American preachers [Rick Warren (pictured left), Creflo Dollar, and others] visit Uganda regularly with money donated by members of their congregations. The proposed law was first imagined at a March 2009 conference on the “gay agenda” in Kampala, to which members of the Ugandan Parliament were invited. Three (other) American born-again ministers spoke there as part of their ongoing ministries in Uganda. (For on-the-ground perspectives from gay Africans themselves, go here and here.)

While the proposed law is a direct result of that conference, it bears a striking resemblance to previous British colonial anti-sodomy law. The British law's maximum sentence for homosexuality was only fourteen years imprisonment, but Ugandan leaders have already increased it to a life sentence. Perhaps this was a way to reinforce the claims of some Ugandans that homosexuality was “imported” to their country.

In the late 1800s, the Christian missionaries claimed that homosexuality came to Uganda with the Muslims. Since the Bugandans had no written history before then, Mutesa and Mwanga were the only evidence to the contrary. And of course, they already had regular Muslim visitors. Religious anti-homosexual leaders within Uganda today claim that homosexuality is “an import from the West,” brought by rich foreign tourists.

Another similarity is the threat of execution tied to one's participation in homosexual activities. There is a difference in this, however. Now the government is proposing to do the executions for performing sodomy rather than for refusing it.