April 26th, 2023: President Museveni of Uganda sends the Anti-Gay Bill back to the Parliament, requesting various amendments: “According to the legislative processes, legislators could pass or reject the President’s proposals. Technicality if President Museveni fails to assent to the Bill on second enactment, it will regardless gain the force of law. In the event that the Bill is signed into law with only the changes proposed by the President, persons convicted of aggravated homosexuality will face death. Elsewhere, those who engage in acts of homosexuality face up to 20 years in prison. Children found guilty of engaging in homosexuality face three years in jail, with provisions for rehabilitation, in line with the Children’s Act. A person found culpable of promoting homosexuality faces 20 years imprisonment. There are also punishments for journalists and editors, film directors, and corporate entities/organisations, whose work is interpreted to promote homosexuality.” Museveni declines to assent to anti-gay Bill | Monitor
“It’s already illegal to be queer in Uganda. In 2009, a proposed bill, which was also dubbed the “kill the gays” bill, contained a provision that would allow gay people to be hanged. The nation’s previous Anti-Homosexuality Act — which allowed for life imprisonment for some homosexual acts between consenting adults — was ultimately struck down in court shortly after its passage in 2014.
“As Human Rights Watch reports, the latest bill expands on the criminalization of homosexuality, including prohibiting, for example, touching another person “with the intention of committing the act of homosexuality.” People who are found guilty of the “offense of homosexuality” may be imprisoned for up to 10 years, while people who pursue LGBTQ+ advocacy may be imprisoned for up to 20 years. The bill also effectively declares all same-sex activity as nonconsensual, according to Human Rights Watch.
“The 2023 Anti-Homosexuality Bill also proposes the death penalty for “aggravated homosexuality,” referring to gay sex involving people who are HIV positive, minors, and other “vulnerable groups.” If the bill is passed, Uganda will become the fourth African nation in which homosexuality is punishable by death, according to a Reuters report.”
Ugandans Are Fleeing (smuginternational.org)
There is a very good reason the Ugandan LGBTQ+ community finds itself on the front line in the global battle for recognition and rights – so-called ‘Christians’ (instead of following Christ’s teachings of forgiveness) are still seeking revenge for the actions of the region’s kabaka – King – Mwanga in 1886.
“The Baganda kingdom had been one of the most sophisticated in precolonial Africa; in the 1880s, at the time of colonization, the kabaka (king) was a young man named Mwanga, addicted to “the practice of homosexuality,” according to the Christian narrative about the conquest of Uganda, and presiding over a court rotten with “abominable vices” and “shameful passions.” The kabaka was not a convert himself, but at a time when different religions were competing for souls in his kingdom, he maintained a balance of power by retaining both Catholic and Protestant courtiers. When—according to the Christian narrative—some of these men resisted his sexual advances, he executed at least thirty of them, most in one public burning, in March 1886. This led to a coalition of Christians and Muslims who gained the assistance of the British in deposing him in 1888 and, ultimately, to the colonization of Uganda. In the very act of staking out modern Christian Uganda, then, was the expulsion of the abomination of homosexuality: Mwanga’s victims, crusaders against vice, are claimed as martyrs by the church, and the site of their massacre is the country’s most hallowed pilgrimage site. And so, of all the African countries, Uganda was particularly predisposed to the wave of political Christianity that was heralded by the battle within the Anglican Church and entrenched by the burgeoning Evangelical movement.” Mark Gevisser, The Pink Line: The World’s Queer Frontiers (2020)
“The wave of homophobia and transphobia in Uganda, and the region, has nothing to do with Ugandan or African values,” Ugandan human rights activist and lawyer Nicolas Opiyo recently told the Guardian. “It is a disguised campaign by American evangelicals through their local actors… Their claim about African family values is only a ‘dog whistle,’ a hate campaign and an imposition of a narrow Christian worldview upon us all. Once again, the Ugandan gay community is a target of this misinformation, hate, and culture wars.” Ugandans Are Fleeing (smuginternational.org)
“With the industrial and scientific revolutions in full swing, the British Empire, in Victorian times, helped to spread European ideas that medicalised sexual activity and ‘invented’ whole categories of ‘sexuality’ – ascribing a name to a series of specific sexual acts and ascribing that set of acts to particular types of personality: The term ‘homosexual’ was first coined by Hungarian sexologist Kertbeny (1869). This notion was taken up by Westphal in a famous article in 1870 as, “contrary sexual sensations” – regarded by Foucault as the “date of birth” of the categorisation, ‘homosexual’ (Foucault 1990). An 1895 translation of Richard von Kraft-Ebing’s sexologists’ bible Psychopathia Sexualis (1886) saw the word’s first appearance in English. Such Victorian values of prudery gradually changed the British Christian laws against sodomy (first introduced by Henry VIII in 1533, and a capital offence until 1861) into laws against a type of person – the homosexual. As early as 1860 in India, laws against sodomy were simultaneously exported to the colonies. So in the 21st century we see “sodomy laws throughout Asia and sub-Saharan Africa have consistently been colonial impositions,” (Gupta 2008:10) and do not reflect pre-colonial cultural mores. Such laws are, as Gupta titles his treatise, an ‘Alien Legacy’. “No ‘native’ ever participated in their making. Colonizers saw indigenous cultures as sexually corrupt. A bent toward homosexuality supposedly formed part of their corruption. Where pre-colonial peoples had been permissive, sodomy laws would cure them—and defend their new, white masters against moral contagion.” (Gupta 2008:10).
The Phallus in Ancient Greece – A Long Read – Personal Blog (kreps.org)
People were not defined by their sexuality in pre-colonial Africa – and there are many examples of gender-fluidity and homosexuality in African history.
“As far back as 2400 BC tombs have been excavated in ancient Egypt with two men’s bodies Niankhkhnum and Khnumhotep embracing each other as lovers. In addition to their acceptance of same sex relationships, Ancient Egyptians, similar to other civilisations at the time not only acknowledge a third gender, but venerate it. Many deities were portrayed androgynously, and goddesses such as Mut (the goddess of Motherhood; lit. translation Mother) and Sekmeht (goddess of war) are often depicted as women with erect penises.
“This was not unique to Egypt or this time period. In the 16th century, the Imbangala people of Angola had ‘men in womens apparel, with whom they kept amongst their wives’… The Igbo and Yoruba tribes, found mostly in present day Nigeria, did not have a binary of genders and typically did not assign gender to babies at birth, and instead waited until later life. Similarly the Dagaaba people (present day Ghana) assigned gender not based on ones anatomy, but rather the energy one presents. ” African sexuality and the legacy of imported homophobia (stonewall.org.uk)
In 1906 Finnish sociologist Edward Westermarck reported examples of same sexualities and gender-fluidity around the world in his book The Origin and Development of Moral Ideas, including these African references:
“In Madagascar there are certain boys who live like women and have intercourse with men, paying those men who please them…. Men behaving like women have also been observed among the Ondonga in German Southwest Africa and the Diakite-Sarracolese in the French Soudan… Homosexual practices are common among the Banaka and Bapuku in the Cameroons…
“In North Africa they are not restricted to the inhabitants of towns; they are frequently among the peasants of Egypt and universal among the Jbala inhabiting the Northern mountains of Moroccco.”
From Kuchu resilience and resistance in Uganda: a history | Richard Lusimbo – Academia.edu: British anthropologist “Jack Driberg (1888-1946) (albeit from his Western imperialist perspective) observed that some males among a group of agriculturalists north of Lake Kwania in Uganda were called mudoko daka and ‘treated as women’ but ‘could carry as men’ (Murray and Roscoe, 1998). Although Driberg thought this was rare, Lango people informed him that the behaviour was quite common and alsopractised among other pastoralist people to the East, including the Iteso (Teso) of Eastern Uganda and Western Kenya and the Karamojan (Karamojong) of Northwestern Kenya and Northeastern Uganda (Driberg, 1923). Similarly, some among the Nkole, in what is now Southwestern Uganda told Mushanga (1973) that the Bahima of Western Uganda and Northern Rwanda also engaged in same-sex practices.”
From The Lies We Have Been Told: On (Homo) Sexuality in Africa by Thabo Msibi in Africa Today, Vol. 58, No. 1 (Fall 2011): “Uganda has a long precolonial history of same-sex relations among men and women. The Nilotico Lango, an agriculturalist community north of Lake Kwanai, had men who assumed alternative gender status, that of the mukodo dako, these men were treated as women and could marry other men (Murray and Roscoe 1998). Similarly among the Iteso, who lived in communities in northwest Kenya and Uganda, same-sex relations existed among men who felt like women and became women for all intents and purposes, including voices, manner of walking, and speech, there are reports of group masturbation among young Itoso men (Karp, Karp, and Molnos 1973). The Bahima (Mushanga 1973), the Banyo (Needham 1973), and the Baganda (Murray and Will 1998)] are other communities in Uganda where instances of same-sex engagements have been reported. It is no secret that King Mwanga II, the Baganda monarch (kabaka), engaged in sexual relations with other men: he made sexual demands upon his male servants and was enraged when they started refusing to accede to his advances on the grounds of their Christianity, his response was to order the killing of those who were converting to the new religion, and these slain servants are now called the “Uganda martyrs” (Tamale 2007). The king’s same-sex activities were falsely presented by Western colonialists to show that the Baganda were disgusted at them, this was in keeping with the West’s imposition of homophobia in Africa (Epprecht 2008). “The colonialists did not introduce homosexuality to Africa but rather intolerance of it – and systems of surveillance and regulation for suppressing it” Murray and Will 1998.xvi)”
There is actually SO MUCH queer African history once we start digging:
From ‘A Third Sex Around the World’ GALVA-108| Gay History| South Africa (amarawilhelm.wixsite.com) :
“The earliest recordings of homosexuality in Africa come to us from the ancient San rock paintings of Zimbabwe. Dated back many thousands of years, some of the images depict “egregious sexual practices” such as male-to-male copulation. In what is now southwestern Zimbabwe, Livingstone noticed “immorality” among the younger natives and asserted, in 1865, that the elderly chief’s polygamous monopolization of women was responsible for the sin. Among the Shona tribes of Zimbabwe, no words exist for genital or orgasm but there is a word for homosexual—ngochane. In northwestern Zambia, Victor Turner reported boy circumcision ceremonies in which the young initiates mimed oral copulation with older males, and in 1920, Edwin Smith and Andrew Dale documented an Ila tribesman who crossdressed, worked and slept with the women but did not have sexual relations with them. The Ila tribes called such men mwaami or “prophet.”
“In the nineteenth century, Great Britain controlled the interior regions of southern Africa and granted exclusive mining rights to British magnate Cecil Rhodes in the 1880s. The region was subsequently divided into Southern and Northern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe and Zambia), and the British South Africa Company was established. The lucrative mining industry attracted migrant workers from all over southern Africa and crowded, all-male camps fostered an increase in homosexual relationships that were modified according to various tribal customs. The British noticed the homosexual behavior at the camps and from 1892 to 1923 Southern Rhodesia tried over 250 sodomy cases. During the trials, the most common defense put forward was that sodomy had been a longstanding “custom” among African natives. Black Rhodesians were typically punished with less than a year in prison for the crime while Whites often received longer sentences. By the 1920s, however, court magistrates began dismissing all sodomy cases deemed consensual.
“In southeastern Africa, Bori cults—along with their crossdressing shamans and possession rituals—are still quite common among the Zulu. Shamans are known as inkosi ygbatfazi (“chief of the women”) while ordinary transgenders are called skesana and their masculine partners, iqgenge. Zulu warriors traditionally asserted their manhood by substituting boys for women and in the 1890s, Zulu chief Nongoloza Mathebula ordered his bandit-warriors to abstain from women and take on boy-wives instead. After his capture, Nongoloza insisted that the practice had been a longstanding custom among South Africans. Indeed, homosexual marriage was documented among the Zulu, Tsonga and Mpondo migrant workers of South Africa at least since the early nineteenth century. Boy-wives were known by various names such as inkotshane (Zulu), inkhonsthana (Tsonga), tinkonkana (Mpondo), etc. and were procured by paying a bride price to the boy’s older brother. Wedding ceremonies involved a traditional dance in which the male brides crossdressed and wore false breasts. The celebrations lasted an entire weekend with some of the boys dressed in traditional tribal garb and others in Western-style white gowns. After the weddings, the boy-wives would serve their new husbands in domestic chores, just like ordinary wives, and the male partners in turn would provide them with presents, clothes, blankets and so on. Fidelity was expected and the young inkotshane were not allowed to grow beards. In many cases, the boy-wives were known to outgrow such marital arrangements and either move on to women or marry their own inkotshane. Homosexual marriage peaked among the Zulu during the 1950s, when weddings were held every month, but the tradition had disappeared by the end of the twentieth century.
“East Africa was strongly influenced by Islam for many centuries prior to the arrival of European colonists, but homosexuality and other forms of gender diversity were nonetheless observed among most indigenous tribes in the region. In the nineteenth century, Europeans reported homosexual and transgender behavior on Africa’s East Coast from Tanzania in the south to Nubia (the Sudan) in the north. Bori cults imported from West Africa were also common in the region along with their spirit possession rituals, head priestesses and crossdressing priests.
“Arabs first settled in the Tanzanian islands of Zanzibar and Pemba in the early twelfth century A.D., bringing along with them traditional third-gender types such as the xanith. In 1860, an American consular officer stationed in Zanzibar reported that “numbers of sodomites have come from Muscat (Oman), and these degraded wretches openly walk about dressed in female attire, with veils on their faces.” In 1899, German ethnologist Michael Haberlandt studied “sexual contrariness” among Zanzibar natives. He reported homosexual men that he believed were born with “contrary” desires and which the natives described as amri ya muungu or “the will of God.” In Zanzibar, homosexuals are referred to as mke-si-mume (woman, not man) and also mzebe or hanisi (impotent). Haberlandt noticed their presence at festivals and dances wherein some dressed up as women and others as men, often with special headdresses. Most earned their livings through prostitution. Lesbians were also reported in Zanzibar that dressed as men, undertook masculine endeavors, and utilized dildos to satisfy one another. On mainland Tanzania in the 1930s, British researcher Monica Wilson reported homosexuality among young Nyakyusa males during her fieldwork near Lake Nyasa.
“In the 1920s, American anthropologist Felix Bryk noted homosexual bachelors among the Bagishu and Maragoli tribes of Tanzania and western Kenya. He claimed that such “hermaphrodites” were numerous and called inzili by the Bagishu and kiziri among the Maragoli. In 1909, British anthropologist Sir Claud Hollis observed Nandi circumcision ceremonies in Kenya wherein the boys wore female clothes for eight weeks prior to the ritual. A similar crossdressing rite was found within Maasai initiation ceremonies. The Meru tribes of Kenya have a religious leadership role known as mugawe, which involves priests wearing female clothing and hairstyles. In 1973, British ethnologist Rodney Needham noted that the mugawe were often homosexual and sometimes married to other men. Traditional Bori practices were also observed among the Mabasha tribes of Kenya.
“In 1987, anthropologist Gill Shepherd reported that homosexuality was relatively common in Kenya, even among Muslims (both male and female). Most Kenyans initially discourage transgender behavior among their children but gradually come to accept it as an inherent part of the child’s spirit (roho) or nature (umbo). Shepherd observed third-gender men, known in Swahili as shoga, who served as passive male prostitutes and wore female clothing, makeup, and flowers at social events such as weddings, where they typically mingled with the “other” women. At more serious events such as funerals and prayer meetings, the shoga would stay with the men and wear men’s attire. Other Swahili terms for homosexual men include basha (dominant male), hanithi (young male partner) and mumemke (man-woman). Lesbians are known as msagaji or msago (“grinders”). They appear as ordinary women in public but are bold with men and frequently go out of the house alone. Shepherd noted that dominant women in Kenyan lesbian relationships are typically older and wealthier.
“The Somali tribes recognized two categories of men—waranleh (warriors) and waddado (men of God). The latter were considered physically weak but mystically powerful. Among the Semitic Harari people of Ethiopia, German researchers such as Friedrich J. Bieber encountered “Uranism” (a nineteenth-century term for homosexuality and transgender identity) in the early twentieth century. Bieber noted, “Sodomy is not foreign to the Harari,” and also found it among the Galla and Somali “albeit not as commonly.”
“The Konso of southern Ethiopia have no less than four words for effeminate men, one of which is sagoda and refers to men who never marry, are weak, or who wear skirts. In the mid-1960s, Canadian anthropologist Christopher Hallpike observed one Ethiopian Konso that lived by curing skins (a female occupation) and liked to play the passive role in homosexual relations. In 1957, American anthropologist Simon Messing found male transvestites among the Amhara tribes that were known as wandarwarad (male-female). They lived alone and were considered like brothers to the tribeswomen. The husbands of the women were not at all jealous of the close friendship between their wives and the wandarwarad. Messing reported that the wandarwarad were unusually sensitive and intense in their personal likings. He also found “mannish women” among the Amhara known as wandawande.
“In 1969, Frederic Gamst reported homosexual relations among the shepherd boys of Kemant tribes in central Ethiopia and in 1975, Donald Donham observed a class of effeminate men among the Maale of southern Ethiopia known as ashtime. The ashtime “dressed like women, performed female tasks, cared for their own houses, and apparently had sexual relations with men.” Also called wobo or “crooked,” one ashtime complained to Donham of being “neither man nor woman.” Ashtime men were traditionally gathered and protected by the Maale kings. On the night preceding any royal ritual, kings were forbidden to have sexual relations with their wives but could share their beds with the ashtime. In neighboring Eritrea, Paolo Ambrogetti of Italy reported homosexual behavior between youths and older men at the turn of the twentieth century that often involved payment. The youth’s fathers didn’t seem to mind and most of the boys turned to women once they grew older.
“In the Sudan, traditional Zande culture is well known for its homosexual marriages, even into the 1970s, as reported by British anthropologist Edward Evans-Pritchard in 1971. Some Zande princes preferred men over women and could purchase a desired boy for the price of one spearhead. They would then become husbands to the young man, provide him with beautiful ornaments and address him as badiare (beloved). The boy-wife in turn would fetch water, firewood, and carry the prince’s shield. Zande princes often took their boy-wives to war but kept them behind at camp. They were strictly off limits to the other soldiers and if any man had relations with them he could be sued for adultery. If a prince died in battle, the boy-wife would be killed since he had eaten the prince’s “oil.” Unmarried boys, known as ndongo-techi-la, also accompanied the Zande men to battle and served as women to the common soldiers. By the end of the twentieth century, the Zande tradition of homosexual marriage had largely disappeared from the Sudan.
“In 1947, British anthropologist Siegfried Nadel reported masculine-type homosexuals among the Heiban tribes of Sudan and transgender types among the Otoro, Moro, Nyima and Tira. Korongo tribes called effeminate men londo whereas the Mesakin referred to them as tubele. Homosexual marriage was observed in both tribes and a man could marry a younger boy for the bride price of one goat. In 1963, Dr. Jean Buxton complained about the great amount of homosexual behavior he found among the Mandari tribes, and in 1977, Pamela Constantinides described homosexual and effeminate male priests in a healing cult known as Zaar. The Zaar cult was similar to the Bori and served as a refuge for women and effeminate men in conservative, Muslim-dominated Sudan.”
Quoted from ‘A Third Sex Around the World’ GALVA-108| Gay History| South Africa (amarawilhelm.wixsite.com)
Ugandan Queers in fact have their own term for each other – Kuchu:
“Kuchu is a word (plural: kuchus), apparently of Swahili origin, that lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex (LGBTI) Ugandans have minted to describe their identities. “We do not use the word ‘queer,'” explains Frank Mugisha, chairman of Sexual Minorities Uganda, an umbrella entity that brings together LGBTI organizations for advocacy purposes. ‘We’ve got our own word that encompasses the whole idea: kuchu.’” ‘Call Me Kuchu’ – the secret world of Uganda’s LGBT rights activists | LGBTI Network | 29 Oct 2012 | Amnesty International UK
Oloka-Onyango (2012) explains that kuchu ‘…as a political statement represents the attempt by the LGBTI community to assert its own handprint on how it wants to be viewed and characterized’ quoted from Dismantling reified African culture through localised homosexualities in Uganda | Stella Nyanzi – Academia.edu
Kuchu resilience and resistance in Uganda: a history | Richard Lusimbo – Academia.edu : “Prior to the Anti-Homosexuality Bill’s (AHB)introduction into the Ugandan Parliament in 2009, the LGBTI community was already pushing back against the anti-homosexuality movement. Although LGBTI people are persecuted by some religious groups and traditional leaders who argue that homosexuality is ‘un-African’ and immoral, a plethora of historical and anthropological evidence debunks this claim… What is actually ‘un-African’ is homophobia not homosexuality. As early as1999, in response to growing societal discrimination, Ugandan LGBTI people, locally known as kuchus, began organising formally and informally. But it was not until 2002 that Ugandan LGBTI activists started acampaign to raise awareness about their community, their experiences and the difficulties they face in daily life, following a statement by the country’s President Museveni. In March 2002, while accepting an award for Uganda’s HIV/AIDS prevention programmes, Museveni stated, ‘We don’t have homosexuals in Uganda.’
“The growing visibility of kuchus in the country seemed to anger many traditional leaders and religious groups, including US-based evangelicals fromthe Christian right such as the Family Research Council and The Family (also known as the Fellowship). Many activists believe this helped to create a moral panic in Uganda in which local leaders began openly demonising homosexuality and seeking to increase criminal penalties against it and its ‘promotion’. Perhaps the most infamous example of the influence of US-base devangelicals is Scott Lively, a pastor from Springfield, Massachusetts. Lively came to Kampala in 2009 and addressed hundreds of Ugandan religious leaders,teachers and social workers to brainstorm anti-gay efforts at a conference entitled, ‘Seminar on Exposing the Homosexual Agenda’. Afterwards, Lively was invited to private briefings with political and religious leaders, and addressed the Ugandan Parliament for four hours. His speech at the seminar conflated homophobic rhetoric and holocaust revisionism as follows:
“The gay movement is an evil institution thats [sic] goal is to defeat the marriage-based society and replace it with a culture of promiscuity. [There is] a dark and powerful homosexual presence in other historical periods: the Spanish Inquisition, the French ‘Reign of Terror’, the era of South African apartheid, and the two centuries of American slavery. This is the kind of person it takes to run a gas chamber or to do a mass murder … the Rwandan stuff probably involved these guys.”
Scott Lively
“Just a few days later, as a consequence of the Family Life Network conference,the National Anti-Gay Task Force, whose mission is to wipe out gay practices in Uganda, was formed and the Ugandan MP David Bahati unveiled his AHB (anti-Homosexuality Bill). The bill included the death penalty and other severe punishments for consensual same-sex acts. The international Western media called it the ‘Kill the Gays Bill’. Uganda’s President Museveni signed the AHB into law on 24 February 2014, when it became known as the Anti-Homosexuality Act (AHA). Although the death penalty had been removed, many other provisions remained the same as in the original bill. After the AHA came into effect, Ugandan human rights activists reported an increase in anti-gay harassment, detailing evictions, threats of violence and death, unlawful raids, arrests and ‘corrective rape’. A Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG) Report (2014) documented 162 cases of human rights abuses based on sexual orientation or gender identity during a period of just four months following the passage of the law.”
Mark Gevisser, The Pink Line: The World’s Queer Frontiers (2020):
“The United States applied sanctions against the country, and Scott Lively stood trial in his hometown in Massachusetts for ‘crimes against humanity.’ When the judge finally ruled in 2017 that he could not take the case because it was outside his jurisdiction, he nonetheless said he believed the American pastor had violated international law by having aided ‘a vicious and frightening campaign of repression against LGBTI persons in Uganda.’”
Anti-gay advocates ferociously deny the presence of same sex relationships and transgender/’thirdgender’ people in traditional African societies. This is simply wrong. The reason I have included so much evidence to demonstrate the rich variety of African queer history in this blog article (and I could have included more), is because there is so much.
LGBTQ+ people have no ‘agenda’ other than to be free to be ourselves and love whom we choose. The attacks on and scapegoating of queer people is a way long used by religious and political leaders to hide up their own abuses of power and distract from other issues (since the latter days of the Roman Empire in fact). The claims that queer people are a threat to ‘traditional family’ is a way of averting attention from the abuse that goes on in so many nuclear family structures. For the record, when we also hear claims that transgender people are ‘erasing’ women this is certainly a big distraction from the real issue of ongoing male domination and abuse of females.
Africa misses the wise voice of the great Desmond Tutu, who viewed discrimination of LGBTQ+ people to be equally evil as apartheid:
“People took some part of us and used it to discriminate against us. In our case, it was our ethnicity; it’s precisely the same thing for sexual orientation. People are killed because they’re gay. I don’t think, “What do I want to do today? I want to speak up on gay rights.” No. It’s God catching me by my neck.”
“I would not worship a God who is homophobic and that is how deeply I feel about this. I am as passionate about this campaign as I ever was about Apartheid. For me, it is at the same level.”
rainbow messenger 