Gay activist Gerald Ssentongo said activists would file a petition in the constitutional court against the bill if it were passed into law. Credit: Henry Wasswa/IPS

By Henry Wasswa
Dec 6 2012 (IPS)

Gay activist Gerald Ssentongo of Uganda is afraid to talk openly about his cause. Not only that, but he is terrified of being “caught” socialising with gay people and only meets his friends at night in out-of-reach places.

“The fear for our lives is everywhere, but it has increased of late. I am now verbally attacked and last month my friend was assaulted simply because she said she was a lesbian. The attacks can happen in any scenario,” the 35-year-old told IPS.

His concerns come at a time when the parliament of this East African nation has revived the infamous Anti-Homosexuality Bill, also known as the “Kill the Gays” bill.

Member of Parliament David Bahati introduced the bill in 2009. At the time it proposed the death sentence for people who engaged in intercourse with same-sex, under-aged or disabled persons. A convicted HIV-positive criminal who engaged in same-sex intercourse would also be given the death penalty.

In addition, the bill proposed a life sentence for a person convicted of touching another person of the same sex “with the intention of committing an act of homosexuality”.

However, threats from Western nations to cut aid and lobbying by international human rights groups forced the Ugandan government to shelve the bill.

Homophobia heightened in this conservative country in early 2011 when one of Uganda’s leading gay activists, David Kato, was murdered after a local tabloid, Rolling Stone, published his name and those of 99 other alleged “known gays and lesbians” under the headline “Kill the Gays”.

His death drew international condemnation. As a result the bill was set aside for discussion by President Yoweri Museveni and was allowed to expire in May 2011.

But the government revived it in November 2012. The Ugandan Speaker of Parliament Rebecca Kadaga recently said that the country’s culture had “no space for gays” and she vowed to push the bill into law “as a Christmas gift.”

However, the bill currently standing before parliament is slightly different from the 2009 version.

“The death sentence was removed,” one of the members of the parliamentary committee that amended the bill, Meldad Lubega Sseggona, told IPS. “The sentences now range from a few years in jail to life imprisonment for the convicted. The bill is now entirely in the hands of the speaker of parliament.”

But much still remains of the original bill. Life sentences will still be handed out to people convicted of engaging in same-sex intercourse. And the current bill also proposes a three-year sentence for a person convicted of failing to report a homosexual offence.

“It has passed through the committee and will be tabled for debate before parliament soon,” Sseggona said.

Ssentongo and other gay activists said that legislation against gays would only place them in danger from the community, which has yet to accept their existence.

“Apart from the few elite, many people think the bill is already law. We have already been made criminals in the eyes of the public,” he said.

Julian Pepe Onziema, an activist with the gay rights group Sexual Minorities Uganda, told IPS that the NGO’s members were trying to raise awareness about the dangers of passing the bill into law.

“The bill should be removed in its entirety. It is a bad law. It should not be there in the first place. Removing the death sentence is useless because a life sentence is already bad enough,” she said.

“We are lobbying the international community. We are trying to create as much awareness as possible despite the odds we face. We are telling the world that the parliamentarians are rushing to pass a bill that many people do not understand. They have not addressed the dangers involved (for gays) thereafter,” she said.

Activists are worried that revisiting the bill creates tension in an already uneasy co-existence between gays and the general public. Activists who were previously engaged in rights campaigns have gone underground, fearing for their lives, Ssentongo said.

“When we are in a group and start talking about homosexuality, people begin whispering. We fear this can trigger others and result in mob justice.

“In 2009, our movement was growing fast, but now only a few people are active. In recent days many have even completely gone into the closet. Things are worse now. I cannot even own a car because with it, I can be easily identified,” Ssentongo said.

“Issues of human rights violations should not be left to Africa alone. We are calling upon the international community to do everything within its power so that the bill is stopped,” he said.

In recent months several European countries, including the United Kingdom, Norway, Denmark and Ireland, suspended aid to Uganda over corruption involving the diversion of millions of dollars in Irish aid.

Germany has also suspended its budgetary support to the country, saying its decision is related to the anti-homosexuality bill.

German Federal Minister for Economic Cooperation and Development Dirk Niebel was quoted as saying, “if discrimination against human rights is passed through the Ugandan parliament, this would have consequences for our cooperation.” Uganda still depends on Western financiers for 25 percent of its annual budget.

But Ugandan government spokesman Fred Opolot denied that Germany’s decision to suspend aid was due to his country’s anti-gay stance, and argued instead that it came after reports of aid mismanagement.

Opolot told reporters on Dec. 3 that the government supported parliamentary debate on the anti-homosexuality bill.

“The issue should not raise alarm because the death penalty was dropped from the bill, and Ugandans should be allowed to talk about this issue which affects their country,” he said.

Ssentongo said gay activists would file a petition in the constitutional court against the bill if it were passed into law.

Charles Kayongo, a Ugandan bar owner, and his wife Eunice, have defied traditional beliefs and refuse to have more than two children. Credit: Dennis Kasirye/IPS

By Henry Wasswa
KAMPALA, Nov 15 2012 (IPS)

Charles Kayongo of Uganda is a father of two girls aged five and three. And even though age-old traditions among his ethnic group, the Baganda, say a man should have an unlimited number of children and a son as an heir, Kayongo refuses to have more children.

Like a growing number of cash-strapped young parents in this landlocked East African nation who yearn for a modern lifestyle, he says that he and his wife, Eunice Kayongo, want a small family.

“Enough is enough. I do not want any more children. I discussed this with my wife, and we have been using pills and condoms for the past two years. The cost of food, of sending them to school and buying medication is already too high for me,” the 33-year-old tells IPS from his home in Mukono town on the outskirts of Uganda’s capital, Kampala.

Kayongo, who owns a bar, says he spends 10 dollars a day on his family and earns a total of 440 dollars a month.

“I am interested in family planning because it helps us live a better life. I make sure I go with my wife to the clinic. I have to plan financially for my family.”

Uganda has one of the world’s highest population growth rates at an annual rate of 3.2 percent. The country’s total population is currently 34 million. 

“One million people are added to the Ugandan population annually, but the resources are not increasing at the same rate,” Anthony Bugembe, a programme officer at the Population Secretariat in the Ministry for Finance, Planning and Economic Development, tells IPS.

Kayongo is among an emerging generation of young Ugandan husbands who are beginning to defy the old African tradition of fathering large numbers of children and are opting for smaller manageable families.

Lynda Birungi, from the national family planning group Reproductive Health Uganda, says more young fathers are becoming involved in family planning than before largely because of financial reasons. However, these men are still a minority.

“Out of every five women who come to our clinic, only one comes with a man. But over 20 years ago, no men came. These days, the young generation of male partners want a better standard of living and feel that they can attain this by having small families,” Birungi says.

Meanwhile, in the southern African nation of Malawi, what started as a travelling theatre of only 10 police officers 11 years ago has now grown to a movement of over a thousand men preaching against gender-based violence, which fuels unwanted pregnancies and increases maternal mortality.

The group, the Men’s Travelling Conference (MTC), is a team of mostly men and some women funded by the Norwegian government and the United Nations Population Fund.

In 2003, the MTC marked the annual 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence, an international campaign calling for non-violence against women and children that is held from Nov. 25 to Dec. 10, in a unique way.

Men from Kenya, Zambia and Ethiopia converged on Malawi’s capital Lilongwe after travelling there by bus. Along the way, the men stopped at each community they passed, and left behind the message that violence against women was destructive and that men hold the power and responsibility to stop such violence.

Now every December the MTC travels by bus to various communities in Malawi to educate men. Wisdom Samu is one of the men who travel with the MTC.

In September 2001 he lost his wife shortly after she gave birth to their seventh child.

“Through the MTC, I have learnt that I was to blame. I never allowed her to use family planning methods because I wanted more children,” Samu tells IPS.

Samu has since become a role model and has persuaded many other men from his community of Namitete – situated 50 kilometres outside of Lilongwe – to become involved in family planning.

“I tell them to listen and plan together with their wives, and to allow their wives to use modern family planning methods,” he says.

Samu’s story is echoed across Malawi, a country where 13 women die every day from avoidable pregnancy-related complications.

“It was these scary statistics that made us think outside the box…We agreed to recruit and mobilise male supporters at all levels and sectors to push the agenda through drama, song and discussions to tell men that its time they sat down and planned smaller families with their wives,” Emma Kaliya, chairwoman of Malawi NGO Gender Coordination Network, tells IPS.

As Malawi strives to involve more men in family planning, the West African nation of Mali is slowly but surely making progress.

The country’s Millennium Development Goals report by the U.N. Development Programme in March 2010 said that Mali’s maternal mortality rate had dropped from 582 to 464 deaths per 100,000 live births between 2001 and 2006.

This is partly because of intensive campaigns to involve men in family planning.

“Ten years ago, my clinic in Bamako only used to receive women, but today the women are being accompanied by their husbands and that to me is a sign that what we are doing is working,” says Mountaga Toure, executive director for the Malian Association for the Protection and Promotion of the Family, known by its French acronym as AMPFF. The association is an affiliate of the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF).

“I sometimes see men coming on their own to collect contraceptives for their partners, saying that their wives are too busy to do that,” he tells IPS in a telephonic interview.

This, he says, is a massive change in a deeply Muslim country like Mali.

Toure says that the AMPFF, in partnership with the IPPF, is deliberately encouraging men to talk about what has always been regarded as taboo.

“To make them understand, we talk about the economy and whether it can allow any man to support 10 children … this makes them understand the reason why they need to plan with their wives how many children their pockets can support,” Toure says.

Meanwhile, back in Uganda, Kayongo’s decision not to have more children has not gone down well with his mother.

“My mother wants me to have sons, but I do not want more children. It is my decision,” he says.

*Additional reporting by Mabvuto Banda in Malawi.

Uganda conservationists are concerned that increasing numbers of people have begun eating primate meat. Credit: Samson Baranga/IPS

By Henry Wasswa
ALBERTINE RIFT REGION, Uganda, Oct 25 2012 (IPS)

Conservationists struggling to protect the remaining population of Ugandan chimpanzees have raised concerns that people around wildlife reserves in the west of the country have taken to eating the primates.

“There is now an issue of eating bush meat. We did not think Ugandans were eating primate meat but we are starting to observe that monkeys and chimps are being eaten. This is scary. The threat to their survival has been growing bigger,” according to Lily Ajarova who runs the Ngamba Chimpanzee Sanctuary, located on an island of the same name in Lake Victoria in the Albertine Rift region.

The sanctuary, which houses 48 primates rescued from human captivity, was set up with the help of the Jane Goodall Institute and is managed by the Chimpanzee Sanctuary and Wildlife Conservation Trust.

Decades ago, tens of thousands of chimpanzees roamed the thick tropical forests that then covered a vast tract of land in Uganda’s Albertine Rift region. The area covers the western arm of the Great East African Rift Valley from north-western Uganda to the extreme southwest, along the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

But according to the World Wildlife Fund, chimpanzees have already disappeared from four African countries, and are nearing extinction in many others largely due to deforestation and the hunting of the primates for bushmeat. Currently there are only an estimated 5,000 chimpanzees in Uganda, conservation officials say.

Most of the remaining chimpanzees in this country are protected in six main game and forest reserves in the Albertine Rift region, while others are trapped in forests owned by individuals.

Ajarova told IPS that although her team of conservationists had first noticed people eating primate meat in western Uganda two years ago, those engaging in the practice had mostly been immigrants or refugees from neighbouring DRC. It was rare for locals in this East African nation to eat primate meat, she said.

“There are many other parts of the world where primate meat is eaten but this had not been happening in Uganda. We began witnessing this over time. It has been developing slowly and we ourselves only got wind of it when we were in the field two years ago,” she said, adding that it was now “an emerging problem.”

The recent arrivals of immigrants from the DRC have created a shift in the population balance of the area and have had an effect on local culture, she said. In July the Minister for Relief, Disaster Preparedness and Refugees Musa Ecweru said that Uganda was struggling to feed the large number of Congolese fleeing the fighting in North Kivu Province in neighbouring DRC. There are an estimated 16,000 Congolese refugees in western Uganda.

“There are lots of Congolese refugees in the area and they may have influenced the local people to eat monkeys and chimpanzees,” Ajarova said. “This has not been a part of Ugandan culture in the past, but now it is becoming an issue. We have found that the habit is now rife in the whole (western) region. It is rampant in almost all the villages we visit.

“We have from time to time seen villagers carrying carcasses of monkeys and, on occasion, chimps,” Ajarova said.

Officials also believe that people have taken to eating primates because the Albertine Rift region is poverty-stricken and people mostly depend on forest resources for survival, as they cannot afford to purchase meat.

“People are desperate, they are poor as this is an underdeveloped region. They mostly depend on forest resources, including game meat, and this may have forced them to resort to eating primate meat,” Ajarova said.

Experts are now worried that the new trend could lead to a possible outbreak of Ebola, a haemorrhagic fever that is often fatal, which is believed to be transferred to humans through contact with an infected animal.

“This is a serious problem. Any meat that is eaten has to pass through proper veterinary inspection, even if it is from farms. People eating primate meat run a risk of getting infected with zoonotic diseases, including Ebola,” said Andrew Seguya, the executive director of the Uganda Wildlife Authority.

“There is no Ugandan tribe that traditionally eats primate meat, but there are many Congolese refugees in that area and the Congolese may have spread the habit to locals,” he said.

“Ebola is spread through direct contact and it’s thought that these primates are carriers of the disease and may transmit it to humans through other ways, including faecal matter. There is even a school of thought that AIDS might have been transmitted from primates,” Seguya, a veterinary surgeon, told IPS.

The western district of Kibaale, in the Albertine Rift region, was hit by a suspected Ebola epidemic in July. Health officials are yet to confirm that it was an Ebola outbreak. But according to media reports 17 people died.

Meanwhile, Ajarova said efforts are being made to change people’s attitudes towards eating primate meat through education programmes and the setting up of animal-rearing projects among villagers.

“We are telling people to stop eating primate meat, informing them that it is dangerous to their health as they will get diseases like Ebola. This is one of the key messages in our education programmes,” she said.

“We also use FM radios to pass on conservation messages to the communities. These reach out to large numbers of people at one go,” Ajarova said.

Children with the mysterious nodding syndrome usually suffer from epilepsy, contious nodding and also from malnutrition as their seizures are triggered by food. Courtesy: Gladys Laker/Kitgum NGO Forum

By Henry Wasswa
KAMPALA, Sep 20 2012 (IPS)

On a wet earth littered with fresh fruit from a large mango tree in Tumangu village in northern Uganda, Betty Olana (42) sits on a papyrus mat watching over four emaciated children infected by the mysterious nodding syndrome that leaves victims mentally challenged and nodding repeatedly when they see food or cold water.

One of them is her daughter, Joyce Laram (15), who sits with her mouth agape, and saliva running down her chin. The sick children rarely speak and even when the do, they utter unintelligible words only understood by their parents.

“It is mostly at night, when the moon is up that she gets delirious. She hardly gets sleep at night. She cries out suddenly and we have to tie her up. She is now saying: ‘I am seeing ghosts. The ghosts are there. I am seeing them with my eyes. Please protect me,’” Olana told IPS of her daughter who was completely normal until the age of 10.

Victims of the unexplained neurological condition experience numerous symptoms, including continuous nodding, mental retardation, epilepsy, rashes and trembling hands. Many of the infected also suffer from malnutrition as their seizures are triggered by food.

“At the beginning, she started nodding. She has been on medication (for epilepsy) for a long time. The medical people say it is epilepsy, but I do not think so. I think this child, like the rest in this village, is haunted by the spirits of the dead,” Olana said.

Health experts say that the disease is non-communicable. But scientists remain in the dark about the fatal disease that has no known cure, and which first appeared in Tanzania in the 1960s. The Ugandan government estimates that as of January, 200 children have died from the disease.

The children have to be watched constantly as some have fallen into fires and rivers, while wild animals have eaten others. Some parents tie their children to trees or lock them up when they go to farm or to the market. But many have been abandoned.

Now, parents and relief workers in northern Uganda, where nodding syndrome is prevalent, are angry that the government is not doing enough to combat the disease.

The region has been left devastated by the country’s war with the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), headed by Joseph Kony. It was one of Africa’s longest-running conflicts, which began in 1978 and has since moved to neighbouring South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

The LRA has been accused of human rights abuses, including the abduction of 20,000 children, the murder of almost 100,000 civilians, mutilation, slavery, torture and rape.

Nodding syndrome, which mostly affects children aged three to 18, was first officially reported in Kitgum district in northern Uganda in 2008.

But it has now spread to four other neighbouring districts. The independent charity group Kitgum NGO Forum, which first announced the outbreak of the disease in the area, estimates that as many as 5,000 children are infected, but government health officials say there are only 3,200.

In the village of Tumangu, which lies on a plain dotted with thorny shrubs, mango trees and cassava gardens, virtually every home has a child with nodding syndrome.

Some parents in Tumangu, torn between dividing their time working on their smallholder farms and caring for their children, have set up a communal network where people take turns watching over groups of infected children.

It has become increasingly necessary, as there have been reported cases of sexual abuse against young girls with nodding syndrome.

Gladys Laker, who heads Kitgum NGO Forum, said that although the government moved in late last year to contain the spread of the disease, “the attention to nodding syndrome has now gone down and we are seeing girl victims being raped.”

“We have data from a recent report indicating that the sick girls have been sexually abused and made pregnant. Men take advantage of the condition these children are in to rape them,” Laker told IPS.

“Although these children are sick, those who have not been completely overtaken by the symptoms of the disease are encouraged to go to school. That is when these men waylay them. Their parents cannot keep watch over them all the time, and when they go to their smallholder farms, some of these children are sexually abused,” she said.

It has left William Owacha concerned about the future for his 17-year-old daughter, Susan.

“This is serious,” he said referring to the incidents of rape. “The government should move in quickly because there is neglect.”

“I am worried because she has no future. Susan is now useless. She cannot communicate properly, she has no appetite and gazes into space all the time and all of a sudden, she falls down. She is not a normal person. The situation here is alarming because our children are increasingly getting infected. Here in Lameiti village (in northern Uganda), we parents are weeping,” Owacha said.

But the director general of Uganda’s Health Services, Dr. Jane Achen, told IPS that the number of rape cases were minimal.

“We have heard of a few cases. It is not widespread and this should not cause alarm because it will be handled,” she said.

She denied allegations that the government was not doing enough to combat the disease. She told IPS that at the beginning of 2012 the government released about 1.4 million dollars to purchase anti-epileptic drugs, malnutrition supplements, and food for the victims. The government plans to release a further 1.6 million dollars, she said.

Achen said that the Ministry of Health also set up four regional reception centres for patients and plans to build rehabilitation facilities to care for those children who are mentally challenged.

“The infections have not gone up and the number is about 3,200. We have done all that is possible to contain the spread of the disease and handle the victims. As a result, people have become aware of the disease and report any suspected case to the authorities,” she said.

Yeko Lupa, who heads the government’s Nodding Syndrome Task Force for Kitgum, told IPS that there were efforts to protect the sick children.

“Parents leave these children at home and these drunkards take advantage of them and rape them. I know three of these girls who were sexually abused and became pregnant and two have already delivered,” Lupa said.

“We are trying to address this problem – sensitising people not to take advantage of these children. It is not easy because we cannot trace these men. These girls cannot remember who (raped) them because they have a very poor memory,” he said.

Meanwhile, it appears that there is evidence of a link between nodding syndrome and river blindness. River blindness is an eye and skin disease spread by an infected blackfly. Experts from the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United States Center for Diseases Control carried out tests on samples from the victims, after a request from the Ugandan government for assistance last year.

Dr. Joachim Saweka, WHO’s head in Uganda, told IPS that although the results of the tests are not conclusive, there is evidence of a link between the two diseases. River blindness has been rampant for years in Northern Uganda in areas along riverbanks.

“Ninety-three percent of the nodding disease cases occur in the river bank areas where river blindness is common. We have cases that show a strong link between this disease and river blindness but we have not established the neurological link. Investigations are still going on,” Saweka said.