By David G Maillu
President Yoweri Museveni alias M7 of the Republic of Uganda is fighting a losing battle in laying ground for prosecuting the gay community of his nation. He is a graduate of political science. But, it looks, the political science he did had no chapter of African sociology. In any case, the signed bill against the gay community is gender insensitive. Men are caught in the dragnet net of prosecution but not women. Women play the game woven in complexity which would make many of them get away with murder. Unfortunately men have no good natural bush to hide while playing the game.
The story is not only about sex but about sexual relief. The sexual pressure overpowers wills of men. Sex is the transport with which all living things arrive on the planet earth. You can attempt to hide that pressure from the outside world but you cannot hide from yourself. If you don’t pay tax to the god of sex in one way or other, through natural expression or through gay expression, it can turn round and destroy you.
President Yoweri Museveni is not telling young people how to go about relieving themselves from this natural force. Here the story starts. What is the cause of homosexuality? Is it brought to this part of the by the western culture? Has homosexuality existed in traditional Africa? Is it caused by cultural degeneration? Does it benefit the community in any way? Is homosexuality evil or not evil? Can we get rid of it?
Homosexuality is a natural force. It is a version of masturbation to get rid of that tension. There is no religion about it. Even animals engage in it to a certain degree,
Homosexuality has been non existent in traditional Africa for solid reasons. Even if it ever existed in insignificant forms, it belonged to the abnormal category rather than normality. It’s none existence was basically built on the rock foundation of people’s culture. The religion of African culture is that it is founded on natural forces. Nature is the both the constitution and God. No manmade liquid can beat the absolute taste of water. Or no factory egg with better taste than natural egg. And nature has made it that woman and man are each other’s tool of sexual expression.
The truth is, take it or leave it, the most satisfying sexual expression is between man and woman. Period. Any other expression can only be secondary or a mere first aid means of survival. There is no other method other than that coming together of male and female sexually is the ignition key to starting new life; in which the female egg has to be fertilized by the male egg. The law of creation is that neither male nor female can fertilize each other. As they say that don’t throw the baby with the bath water, homosexuality is throwing the essence of natural baby with the water. It should rest there.
Traditionally, focus of life was that a child was born to be brought up, go through initiation in preparation for adult life, get married, have children and become a parent, bring up children, get old and die. The other things were mere additions and details of that process. In that society you were guaranteed a partner of the opposite sex. Not any more in the modern world and this is the writing that President Museveni should read. The imported cultural values have drastically thrown tradition out of balance. It starts with the school curriculum we have imported, which strikes an unnatural separation between girls and boys. Boarding schools were the first institutions to introduce some forms of homosexuality and lesbianism. Other institutions were prisons, priesthood, training institutions, which included military and police colleges. When you are out there and you suffer from sexual tension, what do you do? You either masturbate or play sex with your most intimate friend. You can only try to bear the force of sex to a certain extent, but you can’t suppress it for ever. Any attempt to do that can create damaging psychological reactions.
Now, that separation from opposite sex and forced denial of sexual expression due to new trainings and the rest has further been complicated by economic means. It is becoming increasingly difficult for young people to have sexual partners. If you want to know the bitter truth, ask the unemployed young persons out there how they solve their sexual problems. Tom, an example, graduated from high school four years ago and since then he has been looking for the elusive job. He dreams of getting married one day. But when will that day come? As things are on the ground, he can’t afford to get married at all.
Going by the cost of living, getting married for the unemployed is getting more and more difficult and expensive. The girl on the street is looking for an employed man to marry her. There are too many unmarried girls out there because the men to marry them are afraid of getting married due to economic reasons. No girl would dare marry a man with empty hands for the sake of sex. The fact that they are unemployed and unmarried does not kill their sexual pressure. So, how are they addressing that pressure? Again, they either masturbate or engage in homosexuality because it is the cheapest means of addressing that form of survival.
The pressure of the new life has tempered with the social engine. Things have fallen apart. The dragon of sex would not let them free. The stage is set for criminal expressions, unnatural and forced sexual expressions that include rape, prostitution, faked love affairs, squads of hit-and-run by boys that leave girls pregnant. Religions put aside, the stage set for fast growing gay community. They are crying for their space in the nation and President YoweriMuseveni would not hear of that. Instead, he is going after their neck.
The sex ration births of Kenya are 49 percent males and 51 percent females. Mathematically, number of females outweigh males by two percent. In traditional society, that surplus was observed by polygamy. In other words, there were no free women out there to engage in unnatural practices such as lesbianism of prostitution. The value of woman remained balanced and at par with the value of men.
Today, polygamy is too expensive for the average person because of economic demands. So, that surplus number of women remains unmarried. Economic rules are telling us that today children are not as valuable as they were in traditional. For many people it is too expensive to have children. That discourages men from entering into polygamy. The unpublished story is that today there are too many girls who would jump on the boat of polygamy, at least, to have a husband, but men run away from them. Consequently, the market value of woman has gone down. What are those many unmarried women out there going for their emotional survival? One of the means is wrecking marriages, inviting married men to engage in infidelity. They are the unwanted women, so they push for their space by whatever means, some of which become criminal. They become lesbians. Others end up in becoming single mothers. The guess of what they could do t with their children is just as good as mine.
What is going on the nation today is creation of fertile grounds for breeding a culture in which homosexuality survives. Unfortunately, in order to address this problem we have got no any other alternative way but going back to the cultural drawing table and overhauling the system. We should go for the nation the holistic and natural way of solving the sexual problem of the nation. That should start by addressing and putting that traditional natural and binding relationship between man and woman. Sexual expressions should be made naturally assessable to the ordinary person.
The first step to be taken should be in putting mechanisms in place which would make it possible for the nation to take away the surplus number of unmarried women. This can be done through encouragement of family values and supporting polygamy. Unfortunately, the necessary successful overhaul can only be achieved at a heavy price. That move should start by taking pride in our cultural values.
