Tag: gay rights

Bob Mugabe’s Birthday of gay- and foreigner-bashing

by Evan Lieberman2 Comments on Bob Mugabe’s Birthday of gay- and foreigner-bashing

When you’ve ruined a country, blaming other people is definitely an appealing political strategy: low cost, and often pretty effective. Long-time dictator Robert Mugabe played this tired song once more at his recent 88th birthday party in Mutare…

NGOs come with these stupid ideas, some to destabilise us. Quite often they support one party. We say to them get away from our country. Leave us to solve our political problems. Leave us to manage our own systems (see Mail & Guardian).

He also had a few choice words for the growing international pressure to recognize gay rights:

Please, young men and women, you don’t have the freedom for men to marry men and women to marry women. You have the freedom for men to marry women. That’s God’s freedom. That’s what created you and me.

And not surprisingly, the culmination of a speech knocking down these other actors was a plea for “unity” of the Zimbabwean nation…

We used to fight each other. Time has come for us to do our politics in a much more cultured way. Although our differences are ideological and sometimes quite negative, we should not regard them as a source of hatred.

Apparently, about 20,000 people attended the old crocodile’s celebration (Mail online), but in a country with massive poverty and fear of state-sponsored beatings, it’s easy to understand why an individual would show up for some free food and cake.

Anti-homosexuality in East Africa: The 21st century race problem?

by Evan Lieberman4 Comments on Anti-homosexuality in East Africa: The 21st century race problem?

Kim Dionne writes about the anti-homosexuality bill being re-tabled in the Ugandan parliament, highlighting the strategic use of anti-homosexuality as a basis for ending partisan conflict.

Meanwhile, lesbian students were suspended from school in Kenya as reported by The Standard. (This video is worth watching — the principal blames the poor performance of the school on lesbianism…)

The rise of homosexual scapegoating reminds me of Anthony Marx’s argument about the implementation of institutionalized white supremacy in South Africa and Jim Crow in post Civil War United States. In order to “bind the wounds” between English and Afrikaner in SA; and North and South in the U.S., blacks got the raw deal in both places. In East Africa, despite the threat of donor pressure, a similar strategy seems afoot for what might be analogous to the 20th century “color line.” Apparently, gay is the new black.