The heartbreak of Uganda

My visit in 2019 to investigate violence against lesbians found a vibrant, courageous, but trepidatious community with limited support from outside the region

A member of the lesbian community in Uganda

[I decided to post this piece today, more than three years after my visit, because of the devastating but long-dreaded news about the grotesque anti-lesbian and gay legislation passed this week in Uganda. Please support our sisters and brothers to fight and survive this dangerous new set of laws.]

I had long heard that the worst place to be gay is Uganda, a beautiful country in East-Central Africa. The ugly, often deadly, anti-gay bigotry is notorious amongst the international human rights community, and the liberal media regularly reports on the latest atrocity to befall gay men in the country.

But lesbians are rarely ever mentioned in reports about ‘homophobic’ violence. In 2019 I made contact with the only group in Kampala for lesbians, Freedom and Roam Uganda (FARUG) and was told they were desperate to see something specific in the press about the abuse and oppression women who reject heterosexuality experience in their country. I decided to travel from the UK to meet with these women to better understand the way that lesbians are subject to misogyny in countries where women have little or no status.

Whilst it would be easy for outsiders to dismiss Uganda as a country built on bigotry, many young people in Kampala are very liberal and politically progressive. It is difficult to draw a line between the mood of people in the country and those driving the legislation.

Before arriving in Uganda, I asked Gloria Mutyaba, Programmes Officer at FARUG if I could come to the monthly social for LBQ women at the FARUG offices to interview some of the members. We met in a small courtyard surrounded by high walls covered in barbed wire. Sixty women somehow manage to fit into the relatively small space and soon start to tell me their coming out stories.

“I told my best friend and she said, ‘You are beautiful,” says Dembe. “Are you telling me there are no men out there who want to be in a relationship with you, so you decided to go and have a relationship with girls?’ I told her, ‘No, it’s because I want girls.’”

FARUG is run on feminist principles: the understanding that the subservient role of women and girls in East African societies is the reason that lesbians face such extreme violence and oppression. “For gay men, the effects of homophobia are extreme,” says Gloria. “But they have the advantage of being a male in a patriarchal culture.”

The dehumanising of lesbians in Uganda is shocking and disturbing. Gloria told me about a survey directed at health providers FARUG about the specific needs of lesbians. One clinician responded by saying: "[I do not] care if these people don’t get medical attention. Nobody needs them in the community and I wish they would start to die one by one until they are all finished."

 “The stigma faced by this group made it almost impossible to access appropriate healthcare,” says Mutyaba. “Which leads to a risk of living with untreated illnesses.” Uganda is a signatory to universal human rights treaties and has an obligation to provide healthcare to its citizens without prejudice, but its government fails to comply when it comes to lesbians and gay men.

The hatred of lesbians has had a devastating effect on the lives of the women I met. Most healthcare workers in Uganda consider lesbianism to be a mental disorder, and although many policies in the country mention non-discrimination in terms of the wider LGBT community, not one policy covers issues relating to lesbians.

Many of the women I met told me they had been rejected from their families and the church, and a high number had been subject to punishment rape.

For some women, the price of living openly as a lesbian is simply too high. In 2018, Ugandan gay rights activist Val Kalende denounced lesbianism and announced she had ‘become’ heterosexual. Kalende had identified as a lesbian since 2002 and had been a member of FARUG since 2005. She had been back and forth between Uganda, the United States and Canada seeking political asylum because of her sexuality. But in 2018 she spoke in church about having “been saved”. This prompted one journalist to comment: “Kalende used to dress like a ruffian but has since styled up to dress as a lady.”

At the FARUG social that Friday I met Amanda who was present at the notorious police raid of the Venom bar in 2016 during a Pride event when armed police arrested, beat and sexually assaulted a number of customers. She recalled: “There were police all over the place accusing us of holding a gay wedding. They said we were thieves and arrested us on the premises. It was so scary.”

I am introduced to Simon Mpinga, pastor at the Living Gospel World Mission church in Kawuga village, on the edge of Kampala. I was with Nasiche, a lesbian who tells me she refuses to give up her faith “just because of those pastors that hate us”.

Mpinga greets us at the door of his small church, which is full of congregants enjoying plates of rice and beans. He is tall and handsome, wearing a brightly coloured t-shirt and a big smile. Mpinga runs one of the few churches that welcome lesbians and gay men. I asked him what specific problems lesbians face in Uganda: “Initially, the women were oppressed just for being women. So I think that the women are in double jeopardy. They are women and they are sexual minorities. Women are looked at as weak, they are unrecognised in society, especially in African society. We need to prioritise the lesbians.”

Ruth Muganzi from Kuchu Times, Uganda’s LGTB media platform set up in 2014 ensures that lesbians are properly represented as well as credited as the founders and leaders of the current-day LGBT movement. “Lesbians are devalued and told we just can’t get a man’, says Ruth. “But the truth is we are hated because we don’t want or need men. They hate that.”