Homosexuality: A cross-cultural quagmire
Richard Moleofe | Friday March 7, 2014 16:46
According to him, one’s geographical global position has a greater bearing in informing our worldview from a variety of things ranging from culture to business. For instance, the way we conduct business in the African continent is entirely different from what they do in the West. Regardless of whether we may be applying business ideas that were learnt and transplanted from the West, the essence of culture will influence the way we conduct businesses including in our stock markets.
Therefore the current ragging ‘cold war’ between the west and the rest of us in the third world on issues of homosexuality is completely misguided and unfortunate. The latest of these skirmishes emanate from the enactment of an anti-homosexuality law in Uganda passed by Parliament. President Yuweri Museveni delayed the signing of this act into law as he called on a team of locally based scientists to thoroughly investigate if people can be born with natural homosexual tendencies. The scientific results came out in favour of the proposed law as the scientist clearly came out to say there is no human gene that orientates one to homosexual tendencies. We ought not to dismiss the findings by this team of scientists because Makerere University in Uganda is one that has class and in the early years after independence, it was Africa’s finest in the days of Uganda’s glory as the pearl of Africa.
What has followed lately is the economic clampdown on the Ugandan government for passing and signing the draconian law as the World Bank withheld $90 million of developmental loans to Uganda. The World Bank is demanding that Uganda should take a total package of both business and culture. The action by the West and in this case being their financial institution came swiftly and arrogantly. It must be noted here that anti-homosexual laws are generally found in most third-world countries such as in Latin America and the entire Asian continent. But it seems the adverse response to such laws is only aimed at Africans for some unfortunate reasons. Africans have a culture. Right or wrong if that culture rejects homosexual practices and tendencies, the rest of the world must respect our world-view and come to terms with it.
The African culture, far and wide has always rejected the practice of homosexuality as a serious human disorder and this remains to be Africa’s point of view and this is where the continent stands in terms of world-view.
Recently, the Secretary General of the United Nations lectured African leaders on the matter of homosexuality when invited to speak at the African Union summit in Addis Ababa in Ethiopia. Because of the worldview of Africans, his speech was found to be irrelevant and out of touch with the realities in the continent. The same Ban Kin-moon will not dare lecture his Asian counterparts on the same topic when given the chance to address an Asian parliament.
We need to realise that this is not the first time we see an African country being clamped down for making public declarations that they are anti-homosexual. It started with Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe after declaring that homosexuals were worse that pigs and dogs. Before travel sanctions to Europe on him and many of his countrymen, he was violently attacked in European cities during his official travels. He later ran a land grab programme in his country that I did not agree with and this was the greatest moment of opportunity to deal with an anti-homosexuality African president. The worldview from which he was coming from mattered very little if any. By the way, Robert Mugabe has gone public to support the Ugandans on their new law and promises to do the same in his own country.
For as long as Africa remains poor, the rest of the world will continue to despise us and even want to influence our legislative bodies in the manner they are to conduct business.
It is for us Africans to take stock of ourselves and work hard at improving our economic strength and viability in order to reduce our vulnerability. Most African economies remain in their undesirable state because of two reasons. First it is the political leadership that has failed the continent and the Western financial institutions have capitalised on this point of weakness to finish us off with unreasonable economic structural reforms.
In as much as I think the sentences on these offences are rather too steep in the case of Uganda, I sustain that dialogue and not heavy handedness by the West should prevail. The Western nations should appreciate that Africans have a culture and a way of life that has little room for such acts at the moment and that should be respected. And if there is any better statement to sum this argument, it is that of Robert Mugabe that; “homosexuality is un-African”. And this true from our worldview, the window with which we view the world.
*Rev. Richard Moleofe is a Pastor with Assemblies of God