Unpacking the geopolitics of Uganda’s anti-gay bill

On 1 March, 2023 the Ugandan parliament granted opposition MP, Mr  Asuman Basalirwa, leave to introduce  the Anti-Homosexuality Bill, 2023. This draft bill prescribes ten years of imprisonment for persons who will be found guilty of homosexuality, aggravated homosexuality, and persons who attempt to commit homosexuality. It also proposes a two-year jail term for those aiding and abetting homosexuality; and a five-year sentence for those promoting homosexuality. Landlords who rent property to homosexuals face a year in jail. Suspected Ugandan homosexuals living abroad could be extradited to stand trial in Uganda.

It is the latest peak of an anti-gay campaign in the country, which seems much more intense than previous episodes. Whereas in the past, the Ugandan government – and President Museveni in particular – has managed to manoeuvre himself around this issue, he has much less space today. In this piece, I first lay out the circumstances in which the current bill came about; after which I explain how the political and social context is different from the previous attempts to pass it. More concretely, I aim to show how President’s Museveni changing relations with the West, and his changing power base, has created a significantly different situation.

A rising storm

The current campaign properly began in August 2022, when Uganda’s NGO Bureau banned Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG), one of the country’s most prominent LGBTI organisations, for not having been officially registered. A few months after this, in November 2022, the Deputy Speaker of the Ugandan parliament raised the issue  at the ACP (African, Caribbean and Pacific States)-EU joint parliamentary assembly. The Deputy Speaker expressed his concerns about what he considered the persistent calls by the EU to adopt homosexuality, and how this could not be seen as a human rights issue. He repeated this more strongly in January 2023 when he told the Ugandan parliament of the “painful, grueling stories” he had heard, and how many kids and families were “dying in silence” from the “psychological damage of forced recruitment to homosexuality”.

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