Getting their surplices in a twist (or cleft)

Feeling the fire... where the lights don't shine

Today’s tidbit is controversial – for Uganda. It’s homosexuality, everyone’s favourite bugbear. Without getting deep into the muck, I can safely say that it is the most inflammatory topic in this country. Rather more so than the removal of Presidential term limits, or the changing of the Constitution, or the destruction of pristine forests for the planting of sugarcane. So when it turns out that a group of hysterical Christian Evangelical pastors get their surplices out to condemn a fellow evangelist for having his wicked way with a group of devotees, one can be sure that all Uganda is up in arms.

So much so that I found myself attending a press conference today, organised by the Big Chief’s own Press Secretary. He wanted to set the record straight: the Big Man categorically denied government interference in this particular case. Yes, it’s a criminal case, because sodomy is a criminal offence, punishable by life imprisonment, under the Ugandan Penal Code. The First Citizen is embroiled in this case as the prime accused, a certain Pastor Kayanja of the Miracle Centre Cathedral in Kampala, happens to be a close associate of the leadership. Kayanja has also earned many friends amongst police cadre by building houses for rank-and-file, who otherwise slept two FAMILIES to a room in squalid mud and thatch huts, or in barracks dating from British colonial times. Needless to say, while higher-ranking officers have moved to far more comfortable surroundings, with the the top brass living in palatial piles in Kampala’s trendier suburbs while maintaining several other residences, our local beatboys have had to turn themselves out, smart and AK-47s at the ready, everyday, from their wretched hovels, in defence of Uganda and its people. Little wonder that morale is at all time lows and security resting on a hair-trigger.

What impact Kayanja’s do-gooding has on the police investigating him, is questionable. The motives of the accusing pastors are even more murky, especially as some of the ‘victims’ or ‘witnesses’ or ‘chaps who got paid to pretend they’d been brutally done over by a man of God’, have now retracted their earlier statements.

Did I mention that Kayanja has made tons of cash from his church? That his kids study in Kampala’s premier international school? That his brand of US (sponsored) evangelism is predicated on the ‘get rich or die trying’ mentality? That the virulent anti-witchcraft, anti-gay tone wins him friends everywhere? Or that the at least one of the Pastors out to bust him, sorry, frame him, is the dreaded, hysterically anti-gay, formerly rather racy  Martin Ssempa?

Aaah Uganda! So much fun! And pro-gay stories are the only thing you can’t write in the press here; along with anti-First Citizen articles.