Uganda: LGBTQ+ – an Open Letter to the 12th Parliament of Uganda
This week, Cabinet took their oaths at State House Entebbe, marking the formal beginning of what will be the government for the next half-decade, that is, 2026 to 2031. This was on the heels of a general election held in January and the constitution of Parliament late last month. Millions of Ugandans who stood in the hot African sun to cast their ballots did so with expectations and hopes. Those hopes must be honoured. This Parliament in particular, and government in general, have a solemn obligation to translate the will of the people into meaningful policy, legislative reform and accountable governance.
First things first. In both the Speaker’s (Jacob Oboth Oboth) and Deputy Speaker Thomas Tayebwa’s inaugural addresses, they both pledged to clean Parliament. This pledge, dear reader, is placed within the context of an ongoing crusade against corruption pledged by the President of Uganda, with its most popular and first notorious victim being the former Speaker and Bukedea Woman MP Annet Anita Among, a reality TV star in Uganda’s political theatre. This is a result of a profligate par excellence whose distasteful opulence riled the public and forced the country’s joint security teams to constitute investigations into her sources of wealth. And social media did give a whiff of maladministration in the legislative branch, and it stinks to the high heavens. The pledges by the new Speaker and Deputy Speaker are therefore not merely ceremonial. They are a response to a deep institutional crisis that has eroded public trust in Parliament as an institution of democratic accountability.
It is this same legislative branch, dear reader, that in March 2023 passed the infamous Anti-Homosexuality Act without regard for due process or justice to a marginalised community. This type of corruption is moral corruption, although the investigations currently being conducted are only fiscal in their scope. We should audit the 11th Parliament’s moral standing just as rigorously as we examine its financial misconduct. I wrote and warned at the time that targeting a marginal population was only a smokescreen, meant to prevaricate from the legitimate issues that Ugandans of good conscience had raised against a very inept legislature. History, it seems, has borne that warning out.
It seems the Ugandan voters were in agreement with that assessment of the 11th Parliament’s terrible scorecard. Evidently so, given the stunning attrition rate in the last general election. Out of 529 members of Parliament, only 185 returned, approximately 35 per cent. To bring the matter closer to home: virtually all the key sponsors of that atrocious law were defeated at the polls.
Asuman Basalirwa was floored in Bugweri, and the same is true for Sarah Opendi, another notorious politician known for her deeply regressive legislative agenda that sought to derail the progress registered by the LGBTQ+ community in Uganda. Incidentally, only Anita Among, the former Speaker, survived. Even her homophobic predecessor Rebecca Kadaga was floored in the NRM primaries and lost her seat in NRM’s Central Executive Committee. Dear reader, I suspect you sense a degree of schadenfreude at the ignominy visited upon the trilogy mentioned above. But contrary to that instinct, there is a deeper and more enduring lesson embedded in these events. The lesson is not merely about the downfall of specific individuals. It is about the long, slow reckoning of democratic accountability. It is about the fact that in a functioning democracy, however imperfect, the people do ultimately render their verdict.
I cannot say that we as a community have achieved everything we set out to by the way events have cascaded in the past few months. The road remains long, and the obstacles are real. But those events give a flicker of hope, and it is precisely on such flickering lights that our nascent community has survived for decades. We have learned to find courage not in certainty, but in possibility. And possibility, however fragile, is enough to keep going.
As I conclude, I appeal to Parliament to right yesterday’s wrongs. There is a catalogue, recorded in the Hansard and Gazette, in which heinous bills have been passed. These include the Anti-Homosexuality Act, which I fought tooth and nail against. That fight took a terrible toll on me in ways I do not wish to recount publicly. But Parliament now has a new and overwhelming mandate from the people of Uganda. I urge it to use that mandate to repeal such draconian laws.
First, to give the Ugandan LGBTQI+ community the freedom that is promised to every citizen by the Constitution of this Republic.
Second, to signal clearly to the democratic world and the international community that Uganda is a country governed by the rule of law and not by the fancies and whims of one individual or a clique of legislators pursuing a personal or populist agenda.
Third, and no less importantly, such a repeal will bolster investor confidence and tourism in Kisanja No Sleep as we seek to grow the economy and position Uganda competitively in a rapidly changing global order.
Justice and development are not competing values. They are complementary pillars of a truly sovereign and prosperous nation.
