Category Archives: Controversy
Nov 13
2009
11:08 AM
Along with partner in all things Pulitzer Center, Jina Moore, I’ve got a story up on the Foreign Policy website about the “copyrighted” law in Liberia. It’s just as crazy as it sounds:
[Philip] Banks [the former Minister of Justice and current head of Law Reform] led a team of lawyers, a group called the Liberia Law Experts, to codify the country’s newest laws. The project, which picked up where an earlier pro bono effort by late Cornell University professor Milton Konvitz had left off, won just over $400,000 in funding from the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ), according to e-mail exchanges between Banks and key legal players, obtained by Foreign Policy. Konvitz had codified laws up to 1978, just before Liberia plunged into 20 years of sporadic conflict. Those volumes list the copyright as belonging to the government of Liberia.
Defending himself in an interview with FP on Oct.27, Banks says he numbered, bound, and indexed the newer laws — intellectual work that he claims as his original property. Without his efforts, he claims, Liberia’s laws would exist only in loose-leaf pamphlets and would likely be lost. Banks says the DoJ funding wasn’t enough to cover his costs. So when DoJ declined to give him more, he asserted a claim of copyright on the work, according to an explanation of the issue he sent by e-mail to a justice sector consultant in 2006. It’s a claim he has appeared willing to relinquish several times for sums between $150,000 and $360,000, according to the e-mail exchanges, which were obtained by FP.
But Banks sees the copyright as an altogether different tool. “These are resources that you’ve had to expend in putting all of this together, and the question is, should you be compensated? I hold the view that you should,” he asserted in his interview with FP. “And for folks that have said, no you shouldn’t, I’ve said to them, go and get your loose-leaf.” DoJ, meanwhile, couldn’t find records of its agreement with Banks, but a spokesperson says it would be “highly unusual” for the department to have agreed to let Banks retain the copyright.
Read the whole thing here.
When I first started working as a journalist, I really hoped my stories would change something. After being disappointed again and again when things didn’t change, I simply stopped hoping for that as a result and instead focused on the importance of reporting – regardless of any kind of outcome.
And now I find myself, several years later, hoping that a story might change something. Fingers crossed that sometime next year, Liberian lawyers might actually argue, you know, law.
Oct 21
2008
12:17 AM
Until this morning, after a tip off from the power-house team at Wronging Rights, I didn’t know who Rankin was. Now, I do. The celebrity photographer had dirtied his leather loafers in the muck of Congo’s refugee camps. He isn’t the first, and he won’t be the last. But I thought I’d take this opportunity to stand on my lion-shaped soap box and ramble a bit about the topic.
“It is crazy that we hear nothing about the Democratic Republic of Congo. The level of suffering there is horrendous, but it hardly makes the news. I heard awful stories of young girls being raped and people fleeing attacks on their villages. Despite the suffering that they have been through the people of Congo are just like us and need our help. I hope the exhibition will wake people up to what is going on.”
The thing is that Ensler and Rankin and the like all say Congo doesn’t get media coverage. While Laurent Nkunda has yet to make his Us Weekly appearance, I would conjecture that he’s one of the most photographed rebel leaders around. Dude is media savvy. And Congo is in the news – if you look for it. Just like if you look for news about Uganda, or anything that isn’t the Beijing Olympics or the US Presidential race. It’s all there if you look past Us Weekly.
All of this brings me in a round-about sort of way to and dude named Renzo Martens. This bit here of Marten’s thoughts on photography in Congo is taken from A Prior:
The NGOs, for example, get barrels of money thanks to the images that photographers generate of mortally sick or malnourished children, money that they use, among other things, to expand their projects… If I ask a local African what he would really like to do professionally, I often get the answer that they want to work for an NGO, because in their country, NGO workers live a rich life in comfortable houses.”
“In fact,” continued Martens, “I find it a very hypocritical situation. Not because journalists and photographers would be just a gang of profiteers exploiting others’ poverty by turning it into attractive or impressive images and making piles of money, but because none of the profits that these images generate return to the people that deliver the raw material: the poor allowing themselves to be filmed. This makes the exploitation of filmed and photographed poverty a perfect double (analogy) for rubber, coltan or slave labour. The economical value of these phenomena is denied to the local population, and consequently, they get hardly anything in return. The poor are never involved in getting anything back from the exploitation of their poverty, they have no ownership over it, they are mostly not even aware of the fact that their willingness to be photographed brings in huge amounts of money for the NGO’s.”
Ehem. Glad you brought to my attention, Renzo, that my work and other photography is similar to having people mine rubber. Most definitely when I take photos like this one I’m actually taking the photo as a precursor to having those cute little kiddies find me a huge chunk of coltan.
And also, to clarify, neither I nor most photographers I know make piles of money.
Recently, I spoke with a guy who was going to do some photography in the Kireka quarry. He wanted advice in general, and specifically he was worried that he’d make the people feel like they were in a zoo and just having their photo taken for sport. I asked him if he thought he was taking their photos for sport. He said, no, of course not. I told him if he didn’t feel like that people wouldn’t see him as that. I told him that if he sat next to people in the dirt, or climbed with them to the edge of the ridge, or looked them in the eye and asked their names, people wouldn’t feel like that.
I’ve never thought much of Renzo Martens other than that he’s a ridiculous provocateur. But today I thought about him. Who is Rankin taking photos for? Himself, or the Congolese people in his images? And ultimately, does it matter?
Rankin will go back to London and tell stories about Oxfam containers and refugees and rape and poverty. He’ll throw in the standard I-was-energized-by-their-hope-and-humility bit. Maybe he’ll get some more people to donate money or learn about Congo who normally wouldn’t. And maybe this will change some things for some people.
But change isn’t about a two week trip and then a press conference. Change is about long term, sustained interest and committment. The photographers at VII have been doing work in Congo for ages. They are looking people in the eye and asking their names. They are coming, leaving, but always coming back. They will outlast Rankin or Martens. They will take images people don’t want to see and provide news some people think doesn’t exist.
I’m glad Rankin has informed a few people. But for how long? And so what? If the people who read about Rankin didn’t previously know Congo was in the news, they’ll forget as soon as Rankin leaves.
I took this photo when I covered Congolese refugees in Uganda in 2007. Just yesterday, I wrote an update for IRIN about the current influx of Congolese refugees in Uganda.
Aug 07
2008
3:12 AM
Lots of people bring shoes/books/toys from America or Europe to Africa. Westerners no doubt have these things in so much plenty that they become disposable. But, that doesn’t mean they should dispose of them in Africa.
From the BBC, an article about old computers sent to Ghana, with this funny photo and anecdote buried in the middle of the story:
To gain an idea of how people in the rich countries sometimes provide inappropriate gifts, you only need to take a look at Ibrahim’s footwear which he found abandoned on the same rubbish heap.
He is wearing a pair of red moon boots that once graced European ski resorts.
No, it has not started snowing in steamy Ghana. But this seemingly out-of-place attire provides good protection as Ibrahim trudges through the toxic sludge, smashing screens in search of scrap.
If you’re coming to Africa and want to give people material items, skip the overweight luggage fees, get here, ask people what they might want or need, and buy it locally to support the economy and the individual.
Jul 30
2008
12:56 AM
Northern Uganda is in the news these days. There is a whole series in the Washington Post about former LRA abductees returning home. And then there’s a PBS series on the same topic.
While I think it’s great that people around the world will learn more about former LRA soldiers in Northern Uganda, what about everyone else in the region?
According to research from the Survey of War Affected Youth (SWAY), at least 66,000 youth between the ages of 14 and 30 were at one point abducted. That’s a lot. But there’s a lot of people in Northern Uganda – about two million – and that means about 3 percent of people were abducted.
Former abductees certainly should have their stories told, but I personally think part of what makes it hardest for them to return is the fact that NGOs and journalists are primary interested in these stories when really, everyone in the region suffered.
This BBC special feature from 2007 shows how in one Internally Displaced Persons camp, every person, in every hut, whether or not they were abducted, was affected directly through the death of a relative or neighbor and through the harsh conditions of camp living.
Most articles like this Washington Post story seem to focus on the difficult of re-integration of abductees, but here are some direct quotes from a SWAY report:
• Relatively few (3 percent of males and 7 percent of females) report any current problems of acceptance by their families. Communities appear to have come to accept the majority of former abductees. Less than 10 percent of males and females report still having some problem with neighbors or community members.
• Such acceptance was not immediate, however. For instance, 39 percent of females reported that they were called names by their community when they returned, 35 percent said they felt the community was afraid of them, and 5 percent report that they own family was physically aggressive with them. Current reports by females of such experiences were dramatically lower, however—7 percent for insults, 1 percent for community fear, and 0.4 percent reporting family aggression.
• Women and girls who returned from the LRA with children were most likely to report problems with their families and communities upon return, although the vast majority now say they are accepted into their families. An important minority of these young women do seem to have more persistent problems with family and community members than other female returnees, however. For instance, 14 percent of these females report that their families sometimes say hurtful things to them—far more than that reported by other long-term abductees. The reasons for such challenges seem to vary from case to case, however, suggesting that targeted conflict resolution or mediation may be the most appropriate intervention.
I’ve done a lot of reporting about Northern Uganda, and more recently did photos for one magazine feature about a former abductee which will be published in a women’s magazine next month. I have concerns generally about women’s magazines, but an assignment is an assignment and I accepted it.
Too often, editors on the other side of the world decide what should be reported here and my options are to accept the assignment or not accept it – not to dictate the kind of content published. And if I don’t accept the assignment, someone else will.
While working on this story, I found everyone in the community treated the woman and her daughter very well. Until, that is, I started taking loads and loads of photos of the two of them alone. When I was taking photos of everyone in the community, no problem, when it was just the woman and her daughter, the taunts began.
People in the community thought that maybe the other journalist and I had given this woman and her daughter presents, money, or help with school fees. And I think it was this attention, and this suspicion, that led to the biggest problems for this woman and her daughter.
So, I took pictures of all the kids playing together as much as I could, and then did what I needed to do for the magazine feature. Here’s a photo that won’t be published in the magazine, but one I really like, of a bunch of the kids in the area playing together.
Can you tell which child here is the daughter of an LRA commander and former abductee? I hope not. I’d love to see mainstream media stories about how communities are accepting former abductees back into the fold. Or how a lot of the problems former abductees have are exacerbated by attention to individual stories when everyone has suffered.
But, I’m not going to hold my breath.
Jul 22
2008
4:23 AM
Copyright Glenna Gordon. The walls at the Jinja Road Roundabout were painted with political empowerment slogans and murals just weeks before Chogm in November 2007.I posted a few days ago, asking, where have all the Ugandan political bloggers gone?
First off, my post elicited a directly political post from Ugandan Insomniac, which includes a bunch of newspaper covers (something most people out of Uganda don’t get to see even if they check the Vision and Monitor websites every day) and had some much needed commentary on Andrew Mwenda’s new enterprise – which may be losing its edge, as more than one person has said to me. (Which makes me think back to my original comment on self censorship, but that’s another can of worms for a another post.)
Next, a great commnet from Antipop on why there might not be more political bloggers:
To be honest with you most of us come to blogger to escape from it all. The fires, the term limits, the land wrangles, GAVI funds, presidential jet, potholes, fuel prices, press freedom, FDC, NRM,…it is everywhere you turn. the papers, the radio, tv, in the bar, even the woman that sells cassava roots in the market will have something to say about how the soaring prices have everything to do with a MUNYANKOLE president. the last thing you wnat to do is come to blogger and find it. I guess we are just tired. There is only so much whinning we can do.
And while I am particularly fond of whinning, of both the political and nonpolitical types, Jackfruity blogs to point out that Citizen Media doesn’t have to be about politics:
One of the most important things to come of out last month’s
Global Voices Summit is that the political voices aren’t the only ones that need to be amplified. Cultural and social voices are equally important to an understanding of other places, and several recent posts attempt to present readers with a more nuanced view of countries that are only discussed internationally when a crisis brings them to our attention.
Meanwhile, another expat in Uganda laments the difficulties of trying to get more Citizen Media started. She asks, Can Citizen Media Change Uganda?
In short, no. During Elizabeth Kameo’s training on writing and gathering news, it became apparent that some of the participants were not convinced of the changes citizen journalism can incur. Most in the crowd did not believe that writing a blog post would motivate the Ugandan government into action. They’re probably right. Chances are the Ugandan government will pay little attention to a scattering of blogs – many left stagnant for long periods of time. There is a slim probability that someone posting about Kampala’s man-holes – pot holes that can engulf a man, more often a small child, that are found on sidewalks and other obscure places – will be filled once an MP reads about it. Chances are the government will not pass the domestic relations bill into an act. Or will they train policemen to respect recently passed legislation on rape, domestic abuse and circumcision.
Though people aren’t blogging much about the things listed above here, perhpas that’s because the need is less urgent than for people in other countries who do write more political blogs. (This is a statement with no empircal evidence, just a conjecture I’d be happy to abandon in the face of any such evidence.) An Associated Press article here showed how Zimbabweans are using blogs and text messages as a source of information. The article implies that people are using these means because there aren’t other means avaliable.
Maybe all of us living in Uganda should be glad that blogs have not yet had to serve this kind of function and that leisure and a relatively stable situtation in this country allows for putting up photos of kittens (which, by the way, ARE SO CUTE) and bashing Facebook groups.
After all, I love kittens and bashing Facebook almost as much as whining, of both the political and nonpolitical kind.
Jul 17
2008
1:36 AM
A widely read blog based in New York called Jezebel linked to my post on African Woman magazine yesterday. The Jezebel post, as of now, has 113 comments and 7,034 views. That’s a lot.
They range from a lack of understanding of fistula, to a desire to help, to a desire to blame George Bush, all the way to making fun of magazine editors for their insistence on inopportune alliteration. Someone finally googled Sylvia Owori, the magazine’s founder, and found an article about her on the MS Uganda site.
It’s really too bad that AW doesn’t have any sort of web presence, because almost no one who read the post on Jezebel has probably ever seen the magazine. I wish these 7000+ readers (and counting) had this kind of context. Readers on my site may have heard of, seen, read, or even own issues of AW, but when the readership changes from people-interested-in-Africa to people-interested-in-celebrity-gossip, the difference is palpable. The discussion changes from what a magazine for African women should look like to the dangers of a society without Planned Parenthood.
I’m glad that 113 commenters, and 7,034 viewers now might be a little more aware of Lovinsa, but I’m not sure that being aware of the flaws of a Ugandan glossy are the same as really being aware of fistula. Maybe some awareness is better than none, but maybe that’s the same kind of logic that leads one to say giving a fistula survivor a makeover is better than giving her nothing.
Jul 16
2008
10:49 AM
The Ugandan blogosphere is vibrant – lots of blogs, lots of ideas, lots of contributors, lots of words, lots of posts, lots of comments.
But where have all the political blogs gone? There’s this one, but that’s also a newspaper column, or this one, not updated frequently, or this one that’s not by a Ugandan, and some others that are more general to Africa and not specific to Uganda.
Or were polticial blogs never there in the first place? There’s plenty of thoughts on boda bodas, Big Brother Africa, the bad weather Kampala’s been having lately, being broke, and other aspects of life in Uganda that certainly aren’t apolitical, but they aren’t exactly government budgets and school fires either.
Here’s an email I got from a reader recently:
I’m wondering if you could suggest a site for me. I’ve been searching for a while for an online forum re: Uganda news and politics. It’s been tough finding more than news sites or sites that compile various news sources. I’m really looking for critical discussion on current events in UG and/or E Africa. For example, where are people posting about and discussing term limits, failed/successful development projects, UG economics, etc? NV and Monitor perspectives are so narrow and the discussion is lost after a day.
Where do you go for these sorts of discussions? Where might you suggest one goes for this?
And this one came to a list on I’m for Global Voices from a popular expat blogger, Jackfruity:
How about a cross-Africa post on the ICC’s charges? Uganda has a couple of contributions (hopefully we’ll have more soon, but not a lot of people are blogging about it right now). What do you think? I’d be happy to put it together if people want to send me links.
I never really saw much from the Ugandan blogosphere about the ICC charges, though I’d be happy if I was wrong and there’s something I wasn’t reading. Omar al-Bashir’s indictement could have some serious repercussions on what’s going on with Joseph Kony, who is wanted by the ICC, and therefore what’s going on with an entire region of this country – millions of people.
But maybe they aren’t the people with blogspot addresses?
I’m technically an author for Global Voices, though I’ve done about four posts in the past year. Though I love the window into people’s lives (I’m thinking of you, and you, and you and everyone else) it’s not the kind of citizen media stuff that I find exciting – the kind that fills the gap between what the newspapers are saying and what people are really thinking.
Or maybe I’m looking in all the wrong places? I’d love to hear what readers think about this and basically just about anything else as well.
I want to know what people think about the structures that affect their lives, but I’m wondering if maybe the internet in Uganda is not the space to express them? Though there’s not a very heavy hand of government involved in internet censorship, maybe self censorship is so strong the government doesn’t have to be heavy handed?
Jul 15
2008
8:53 AM
Women’s magazines in the west tell you to suck in your stomach, buy some new heels, and you too will have the job/man/apartment of your dreams.
What happens when you take Cosmo and publish it in Africa without altering the formula?
From Fistula to Fab!
Basically, a staffer at AW went to Mulago and found a woman who was recovering from a fistula. They dressed her up in clothes with a sum total price tag of about half a million shillings ($300). Considering that this woman couldn’t previously afford transport from Wakiso to Kampala (UGX 2000 or $1.50), those are some pretty pricey clothes.
There isn’t much in the way of quoting this woman, or discussing what she might want for her future or her children, just how she likes having her hair done and how nice she looks when she smiles.
The makeover genre is popular in the likes of Cosmo and Marie Claire, but usually the subject is a quiet secretary or former band geek or some other social pariah ready to join a stiletto-ed consumer army. Taking this trope, and applying it to a woman recovering from a fistula repair surgery seems callous. Though the African Woman article focuses on obstetric fistula (those caused by problems during childbirth), a lot of fistula cases are caused by gang rape, violent rape, or foreign objects used during sexual violation.
It seems to me like someone who has had a fistula probably needs more than a makeover. Sure, someone might argue, providing more information and humanizing fistula is important, but I can’t help but wonder how this woman felt during the process. And moreover, how did she feel afterward, when the journalists, stylists, and photographers made a rapid exit for the next story, probably taking the fancy clothes with them?
Instead of a headline like, From Flabby to Fab! or from Yellow Teeth to Sparkling White! or some other you might find within the glossy pages of a Hearst Publication, From Fistula to Fab! trivializes a very serious problem without offering meaningful commentary or insight into things like medical advances, or people who are working to stop discrimination or incidence, or the voices of survivors themselves.
It would be great if African women had a magazine they could call their own. But they don’t. African Woman is just a transplant of the Western version, all the more problematic for ignoring the difference between yellow teeth and fistula.
1:53 AM
Women’s magazines in the west tell you to suck in your stomach, buy some new heels, and you too will have the job/man/apartment of your dreams.
What happens when you take Cosmo and publish it in Africa without altering the formula?
From Fistula to Fab!
Basically, a staffer at AW went to Mulago and found a woman who was recovering from a fistula. They dressed her up in clothes with a sum total price tag of about half a million shillings ($300). Considering that this woman couldn’t previously afford transport from Wakiso to Kampala (UGX 2000 or $1.50), those are some pretty pricey clothes.
There isn’t much in the way of quoting this woman, or discussing what she might want for her future or her children, just how she likes having her hair done and how nice she looks when she smiles.
The makeover genre is popular in the likes of Cosmo and Marie Claire, but usually the subject is a quiet secretary or former band geek or some other social pariah ready to join a stiletto-ed consumer army. Taking this trope, and applying it to a woman recovering from a fistula repair surgery seems callous. Though the African Woman article focuses on obstetric fistula (those caused by problems during childbirth), a lot of fistula cases are caused by gang rape, violent rape, or foreign objects used during sexual violation.
It seems to me like someone who has had a fistula probably needs more than a makeover. Sure, someone might argue, providing more information and humanizing fistula is important, but I can’t help but wonder how this woman felt during the process. And moreover, how did she feel afterward, when the journalists, stylists, and photographers made a rapid exit for the next story, probably taking the fancy clothes with them?
Instead of a headline like, From Flabby to Fab! or from Yellow Teeth to Sparkling White! or some other you might find within the glossy pages of a Hearst Publication, From Fistula to Fab! trivializes a very serious problem without offering meaningful commentary or insight into things like medical advances, or people who are working to stop discrimination or incidence, or the voices of survivors themselves.
It would be great if African women had a magazine they could call their own. But they don’t. African Woman is just a transplant of the Western version, all the more problematic for ignoring the difference between yellow teeth and fistula.
Jun 29
2008
9:31 AM
Kevin Carter was a South African photographer who originally made his name covering the violence in Johannesburg townships during the drawn-out ending to apartheid. He and three other male South African photographers pounded the pavement every day for years.
Only two of the four survived.
It was during a brief lull during the ongoing violence in South Africa that Carter took a trip to Sudan. At that phase of the conflict, few images existed to show the magnitude of suffering and misery.
When his photo was eventually published in the New York Times, there was a public out pour: what happened to this little girl? So close to the feeding center, did she make it? Carter sat back down under the tree and the little girl, with a burst of energy, crawled to the feeding center.
The NYT called him to ask what happened – they needed to address their readers’ questions. Carter admitted that he hadn’t helped the girl, but insisted he was sure she had made it to the center. Eventually, for some reason explained by neither the book The Bang Bang Club nor the magazine article in Time, the NYT editorial said that it was unknown whether the girl made it to the center. People were outraged at Carter’s callousness.
Fourteen months after he took the now famous photo, Carter won the Pulitzer. Two months after that, he was dead – suicide, when he was only 33 years old.
Carter didn’t kill himself because of strangers’ judgment. He had plenty of his own problems. But feeling the appraisal of strangers, when it’s all you can manage to get out of bed and face things again the next day, is overwhelming. It takes a psychological toll to be out there, every day, doing this. I haven’t done war photography or conflict photography, but I don’t know that the kind of structural violence inflicted by poverty and famine, which I have covered, is so distant from the frontlines.
Carter’s suicide note was a garbled list of money problems and nightmares of violence.
The lingering memories of what I have witnessed, often incomprehensible to others, keep me up at night. I’m not going to do anything drastic, but Carter’s dilemmas remind me of Stephen at quarry just outside Kampala. In the quarry, Stephen and hundreds of others, mainly urban refugees who at one point fled the violence in Northern Uganda, pound away at piles of rocks for pennies a day with almost no opportunities for education, health care or advancement. At the quarry, it seems as if people have crushed rocks there for an eternity, and will crush rocks for another eternity.
Ultimately, whether or not I get my photos and stories from Karamoja published, it probably won’t matter that much. After all, Carter’s photo was seen all around the world, and little has changed between when he took the photo in 1993 and now, 15 full years later.
In other related news, an American couple emailed me recently to tell me that they adopted Stephen’s little sister.
Stephen, however, despite photos, despite many inquires, remains in the quarry.
And the famine continues in Karamoja.
And the violence continues in Sudan.
Tomorrow morning, I will wake up, take more pictures, and write more stories, despite all evidence pointing to the futility of such work.
After all, it’s more futile not to try.
Jun 27
2008
5:43 PM
Jun 04
2008
12:36 AM
I’m attending the HIV Implementers Conference this week. It’s a whole bunch of PEPFAR officials in town for a few days.
A few facts about the conference, compared to facts about ARVs:
1,500 people attending the conference
$22 for lunch
$33,000 for lunch. In Kampala, you can get a nice local lunch for about Ush 3,000 ($1.50). The conference goes from Wednesday to Saturday, so that’s 4 lunch sessions, for a total of $132,000.
$15 Generic ARVs for one month
Therefore, if all these delegates forgo their pricey lunch, 8,800 people could be on ARVs for a month, or 733 people for a year.
Dec 04
2007
1:50 AM
Citizen Uganda does a review of GayUgandan Blogger:
In the blogosphere though, Uganda’s government is not able to enforce its censorship policies. This leaves GayUganda free to tell his story to those who will listen. No doubt Information Minister Nsaba Buturo is unhappy, but unless he can get Google’s CEO on the phone, at least one gay Ugandan is not going to be denied his right to free speech.
New blog Kampala.ver discusses city planning and architecture in Kampala:
In order to accommodate this population growth, one of the issues to be addressed in the near future is public transport. The highly inefficient Matatu system has to be replaced by public buses running on defined routes and schedules. Fortunately, this seems to be under way with KCC claiming to bring 200 buses into the country ’soon’.
Chris Blattman blogs bout how Gulu has changed:
You know it’s no longer a war zone when…. …when the American high school students show up in busloads.
Busloads and busloads. Ever since the violence subsided there has been a huge influx of foreign youth coming ot “help the children of the north” in a two week stay. This plus the never-ending stream of white NGO Land Rovers. Property prices and rent are now higher than in the capital.
This week alone there was a group of Tennessee revivalists. My favorite, though, were the crochet kids. I understand they came to help former child soldiers knit beanies, tried to form an NGO by forging letters to the government, and were chased out of town. Not sure if it’s true, but it sounds about right. Gulu is truly a circus these days.
Africa Unchained blogs about greed in Africa:
In many ways, Africa’s economic situation seems hopeless. While $625 billion in foreign aid has poured in since 1960, there has been no rise in the region’s per capita gross domestic product, notes William R. Easterly, economics professor at New York University. What’s more, from 1976 to 2000, Africa’s share of global trade dropped to 1%, from an already negligible 3%. The U.N.’s scale of human development, which considers health, education, and economic well-being, ranks 34 African nations among the world’s 40 lowest. Thus far, foreign aid hasn’t made a dent.
Greed, however, might.
Oct 15
2007
8:09 AM
See the essay here. Not gonna quote on this blog.
Oct 12
2007
1:06 PM
Uganda: Of Cons, Cars And Losing a Job Because Of a Blog
This week, Ugandan Insomniac poses an always pressing question that sets the tone for much discourse:
Why are millions of Ugandans still living in abject poverty when an increasing
number of people in the country can afford a brand new set of wheels and
personalized number plates every year?
Meanwhile, Daniel Kalinaki has a different opinion: that everyone’s trying to con everyone else, and especially him:
Why is it next-to-impossible to find honest contractors in Uganda? Of course
we know that government wastes a lot of our taxes on all sorts of schemes,
school children are thrown out of their schools, buildings are razed and the
ground is let to fallow, awaiting some hotelier to make up his mind. We know
that people displaced by war are given rotten seeds when they finally get to
return to their homes, complete with flexi-pangas to help them till the land and
start new lives. We know all that, and more.What irks me the most are the
smaller things; the micro-corruption, the cutting corners that we are subjected
to daily…
And Ivan is tired of other things Ugandan:
I’ve gotten tired of saying we are not ready for CHOGM. I can only go on and
about a topic for so long. What do you take me for? The Red Pepper? Harry
Sagara? I will say this, the visitors are obliged to say they are crazy about
our country no matter what. Sure we have people on the job, guys who started
planting trees last week. Not to worry, the Ugandan variety of tree is the quick
growing kind. We should see some sort of progress some time next year. While the
visitors are here, we shall be encouraged to refer to them as “baby trees”. It
will be politically incorrect to refer to them as “little”.
But the person who really has a right to complain is GayUgandan, who lost his job (almost) because of his blog:
As a good suspicious employee, I will suspect that something is happening.
I have worked too long for my dear employer to be summarily dismissed. But, that
can be done in increments. And I may decide to resign to prevent further
embarassment. Not being needed, but you hang on desperately.
Pathetic?Maybe, and maybe not. Ok, I was outed by the
Red rug. That was last month. I thought that I had done something to create
a soft landing for myself. I talked to my immediate boss. I talked to my
ultimate boss. And things seemed to be cool.A few days to the end of the month,
I get the ‘bad’ news. Lots of apologies, lots of sorries, but it all adds up to
me losing part of my income. And being left with this suspicious feeling that it
is because of my damned sexuality. Or the sudden suspicion of it that my
colleagues at work
have!
6:22 AM
According to Human Rights Watch,
Previously, Pastor Martin Ssempa, a prominent campaigner against both condom
usage and homosexuality, had listed Ugandan LGBT rights activists by name on
a
website (http://kobsrugby.com/demo/),
posting pictures and contact information and calling them “homosexual
promoters.” Ssempa was the key organizer of an August 21 rally in Kampala,
at
which hundreds of demonstrators demanded government actions to punish
LGBT
people, calling homosexual conduct “a criminal act against the laws of
nature.”
According to the US State Department, Ssempa’s Makerere Community
Church received US funding as a 2004 sub-partner of the President’s
Emergency
Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). This $15 billion program, heavily
promoted by the
Bush administration, earmarks one-third of spending on
prevention of sexual
transmission of HIV for “abstinence and fidelity
programs,” some of which are
based on so-called abstinence-only curricula
developed in the United States. In
a March 2005 report, Human Rights Watch
documented how abstinence-only programs in Uganda suppress lifesaving
information about condoms and safer sex, and convey that LGBT people’s
sexualities are immoral and that there is no “safer”
way for them to have
sex (http://hrw.org/reports/2005/uganda0305/).
The US Congress Committee on International Relations, chaired at the time
by Congressman Henry
J. Hyde, brought Ssempa to testify in 2005 as an expert
in the fight against
HIV/AIDS in Africa, and as a Special Representative to
the First Lady of
Uganda’s Task Force on AIDS. Ssempa has also acted as
representative and adviser
of the office of First Lady Janet Museveni,
another PEPFAR grantee.
“US politicians and pocketbooks underwrite hatred in Uganda,” Long
said. “The US has no business lending an aura of respectability to policies that
undermine human
rights and public health.”
Addtionally, according to International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission,
The International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC) has uncovered evidence that the U.S. government has funded groups in Uganda that actively promote discrimination against lesbians and gay men. In a letter to U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator Mark Dybul, IGLHRC has criticized funding the groups and has asked for assurances that U.S. government funds are not being used to support homophobic organizations anywhere in the world.IGLHRC’s investigation followed a series of distressing events in Uganda. At an August 16 press conference, Sexual Minorities of Uganda (SMUG), a coalition of LGBT groups, launched Let us Live in Peace Campaign, calling for understanding and respect of sexual minorities. SMUG’s campaign was met with an increase in hate speech by religious groups. The primary instigator of the backlash was Pastor Martin Ssempa, leader of the Makerere University Community Church and spokesman for the Interfaith Family Culture Coalition Against Homosexuality in Uganda. Ssempa organized an August 21 rally in Kampala, the country’s largest city, at which more than one hundred demonstrators, including several government officials, demanded official action against LGBT people. Ssempa has called homosexual conduct, “a criminal act against the laws of nature,” and has said that, “there should be no rights granted to homosexuals in this country.” According to the U.S. Embassy in Uganda’s website, Makerere University Community Church received a grant under a program designed to provide funds for AIDS prevention, treatment and care programs in Africa. Mr. Ssempa and his coalition, which includes Roman Catholics, Anglicans, Baptists, Seventh Day Adventists, and Evangelicals, have threatened the safety of Ugandan LGBT rights activists by posting their names, photos and addresses on a website (http://kobsrugby.com/demo/). With support from conservative organizations such as Family Watch International in the United States, Ssempa has launched attacks not only on homosexuals but on Uganda’s women’s rights and HIV activists as well. “The U.S. government’s funding is meant to alleviate suffering and support effective AIDS initiatives in Africa, not to further blame and stigmatize already marginalized groups,” said IGLHRC Executive Director Paula Ettelbrick. IGLHRC provided Ambassador Dybul with evidence of grants made by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to the Makerere University Community Church.Furthermore, IGLHRC found that the Uganda Muslim Tabliqh Women’s Desk has also received a grant under the President’s Emergency Fund for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) to implement HIV programs in Masaka District. Recently, Muslim Tabliqh youth announced a plan to form an ‘Anti-Gay Squad’ to fight homosexuality in Uganda. On 28 August 2007, Sheikh Multah Bukenya, a senior cleric in the Tabliqh Organization, was quoted during prayers at Noor Mosque in Kampala as saying that his followers are “ready to act swiftly and form this squad that will wipe out all abnormal practices like homosexuality in our society.” PEPFAR is a $15 billion Bush administration fund to fight AIDS in Africa. According to IGLHRC’s 2007 report, “Off the Map: How HIV/AIDS Programming is Failing Same-Sex Practicing People in Africa,” less than U.S. $1 million targets HIV programs for men who have sex with men in Africa, despite strong evidence that HIV has a disproportionate impact on LGBT communities throughout the continent. According to IGLHRC, the complicated PEPFAR sub-granting process lacks transparency and makes it difficult to track the funding. “What we do know, is that few PEPFAR dollars are being used to fight HIV among gay men in Africa,” said Cary Alan Johnson, IGLHRC Senior Specialist for Africa. “Not only have African men who have sex with men been largely ignored with regard to HIV prevention services, but avowedly homophobic organizations are receiving funding for programs that will only further stigmatize homosexuality. This has to stop.”IGLHRC has called for increased transparency in the distribution of U.S. government HIV/AIDS funding internationally and a commitment by U.S. administrators that organizations espousing hate speech will not be fundedHomosexuality is illegal in Uganda and is punishable by between 14 years and life imprisonment. Last year, the Ugandan Parliament passed a constitutional amendment making same-sex marriages illegal.
(sorry for the spacing on this post… I’m at a internet cafe)
6:06 AM
Uganda: Of Cons, Cars And Losing a Job Because Of a Blog
This week, Ugandan Insomniac poses an always pressing question that sets the tone for much discourse:
Why are millions of Ugandans still living in abject poverty when an increasing
number of people in the country can afford a brand new set of wheels and
personalized number plates every year?
Meanwhile, Daniel Kalinaki has a different opinion: that everyone’s trying to con everyone else, and especially him:
Why is it next-to-impossible to find honest contractors in Uganda? Of course
we know that government wastes a lot of our taxes on all sorts of schemes,
school children are thrown out of their schools, buildings are razed and the
ground is let to fallow, awaiting some hotelier to make up his mind. We know
that people displaced by war are given rotten seeds when they finally get to
return to their homes, complete with flexi-pangas to help them till the land and
start new lives. We know all that, and more.What irks me the most are the
smaller things; the micro-corruption, the cutting corners that we are subjected
to daily…
And Ivan is tired of other things Ugandan:
I’ve gotten tired of saying we are not ready for CHOGM. I can only go on and
about a topic for so long. What do you take me for? The Red Pepper? Harry
Sagara? I will say this, the visitors are obliged to say they are crazy about
our country no matter what. Sure we have people on the job, guys who started
planting trees last week. Not to worry, the Ugandan variety of tree is the quick
growing kind. We should see some sort of progress some time next year. While the
visitors are here, we shall be encouraged to refer to them as “baby trees”. It
will be politically incorrect to refer to them as “little”.
But the person who really has a right to complain is GayUgandan, who lost his job (almost) because of his blog:
As a good suspicious employee, I will suspect that something is happening.
I have worked too long for my dear employer to be summarily dismissed. But, that
can be done in increments. And I may decide to resign to prevent further
embarassment. Not being needed, but you hang on desperately.
Pathetic?Maybe, and maybe not. Ok, I was outed by the
Red rug. That was last month. I thought that I had done something to create
a soft landing for myself. I talked to my immediate boss. I talked to my
ultimate boss. And things seemed to be cool.A few days to the end of the month,
I get the ‘bad’ news. Lots of apologies, lots of sorries, but it all adds up to
me losing part of my income. And being left with this suspicious feeling that it
is because of my damned sexuality. Or the sudden suspicion of it that my
colleagues at work
have!
Sep 03
2007
6:56 AM
Most Logical comment goes to:
Kenyanchick said…
At issue here is freedom of the press, pure and simple. But, as 27th has so ably demonstrated, this has been conflated with the issues of race and nationality, and the fact that Katherine Roubos was singled out for vilification (and not her darker, sub-Saharan colleagues who covered the same press conference)shows that the demonstrators/rent-a-crowd were trying to make that tedious and tired connection between homosexuality and whiteness/foreignness.
Most illogical comment goes to:
The 27th Comrade said…
I wish we could export some foreign culture over to the West … something like suicide bombings and polygamy and women honour-killings. The Americans would protest against it, and we would stop giving them money when they do.
Most interesting accusation:
princess sylvia said…
By the way why are you supporting Roubos are you………….??????
Most likely to pray for the 27th Comrade:
semakeddie said…
you are a sinner who is bound to face a holy God when you lose that breath not later than 100years from now….
all it takes is a whisper to him…even on that keyboard..simply admitting you ahave offended him
and thats the life we live …you can live it too.dont let pride stop you from that critical decision.feel free to call +256 7923020
am praying for you comrade
Blessings
in christ alone
Most like a conspiracy theory:
Iryn said…
I believe she is been sent to recruit homos and the sort in Uganda
Most interesting perspective:
Val Kalende said…
there is nothing western about homosexuality. Internet was invented by an American. So do not even use it coz its unAfrican!….
What is moral for you does not have to be moral for me.
If you hate homosexuals, dont even waste your time discussing them.
Most absolutely positively ridiculous comment:
Mwesigye Gumisiriza said…
American faggotess lost in the African wild
Most off topic comment:
Mwesigye Gumisiriza said…
To prove my point, when I responded to her Makerere story, I tricked her when I pointed out that her alma mater was not even among top universities in the US on webometrics ranking she had referred to. If she had checked, she would have found out that University of California Berkeley was actually at No. 4.
Finally, I will end with another Mwesigye quote since he seems to be my best friend these days…
“Let me remind you that the Internet is a free space and totally democratic. That is why the blog has a section for comments/opinions from the readers. Then, why should you moderate it just because the views expressed are not in tandem with yours.”
Yes, the Internet is a free and democratic space. There’s plenty of it. But a BLOG is a PERSONAL space, not a space thatto be completely democratic. This is my blog, and I get to do what I’d like with it. That’s the beauty of a blog. If you want a completely free speech blog dedicated to hate speech against homosexuals, please use all of that free and democratic space on the internet to start one, MG.
I’ve decided not to switch to moderated comments, not because of you, Mwesigye, but because it would slow down the conversation on my blog just because I don’t always check my email as often as people comment. However, if I get technologically adept enough to block one person’s comments, believe you me, Mwesigye Gumisiriza will NOT be commenting on my blog anymore.
Aug 28
2007
3:02 AM
And can we please stop calling them homos??
Here’s what Cheri had to say:
I think we should give these homos the freedom they so need.
Unfortunately, like many Ugandans, she fears that all the “homos” are going to try to convert her:
They will form pressure groups and try to “convert” us the right sided fellows. They shall form umbrella organisations uniting all gay groups. They already have 1 or 2 bars so chances are that we shall see more gay bars and clubs pop out of the wood work. And then soon after that, they will take over the world and we straighties will become the persecuted one advocating for freedom to do who we want to do. Don’t u see?
She (sort of) redeems herself when she says:
I think they are humans, just like u and I. They have a right to live and not to be stoned by Sempa and Buturo. They have every right to demonstrate. They have a right to life and to a particular way of life. Only if it doesn’t physically of mental harm others. And they don’t harm me in anyway, so they are not entirely a waste of human space. They just like one thng and we like the other. Like moslems don’t eat pork and Christians eat it. It’s okay. I think they should be left alone.
But then the redeeming stops when she follows up this comment with:
They should also keep those masks on so we can identify them easily and run for dear life when we see them. And they should be quarantined….or taken to Kampiringisa…or somewhere far away from our children!
Obviously, I’m anti homosexuality. But I’m not anti homosexuals.
Big difference. That’s why I can be in the same room with one.
Why quarantine them if they can be in the same room as you? Homosexuality is not contagious! The number of misconceptions about homosexuality here do not fail to amaze me. I wish there could be some kind of rap session where Ugandans could be paired with gay people so they could realize they aren’t all that scary. They don’t eat children or cause outbreaks of marburg virus, nor will they cause the end of the human race’s ability to reproduce.
Take Cheri’s advice and try being in the same room with one. It’s not that bad.
Chances are, in fact, you’ve ALREADY been in the same room with one and you just don’t know.
Aug 22
2007
12:36 AM
Since my blog hasn’t had enough controversy lately, let me speak out in defense of Katherine Roubos, whose story is all over the net, here on Forbes.com, here on the Gaurdian, here on MSNBC, and about million other places if you google it.
KAMPALA, Uganda (AP) – Hundreds of people held an anti-gay protest in Uganda’s capital Tuesday, denouncing what they called an “immoral” lifestyle and demanding the deportation of an American journalist writing about gay rights in the deeply conservative country.
…
The protesters gathered at a Kampala sports ground holding banners with anti-gay messages and posters demanding the deportation of 22-year-old Katherine Roubos.
Roubos, from Minnetonka, Minn., was assigned to cover gay issues in Uganda as part of a three-month internship with the Daily Monitor newspaper, which is owned by the Aga Khan, the spiritual leader of 20 million Ismaili Muslims. The Ismailis are a part of the Shiite community.
I wonder what will come of all this. A lot of hot air? Perhaps nothing? Perhaps serious consequences? We’ll see. (I keep telling her that if she actually gets deported than she’ll get a book deal out of it, easy.)
But the bigger question here is whether she was catalyzing something already in the air or casing something to start that wasn’t there. My guess is that she wasn’t starting from nothing, so it had to be there already. LGBTI people want to talk about what they’re experiencing, want to speak out, and they were just waiting for someone to speak to.
