Kasha Nabagesera fights for women to love women
Kasha Nabagesera has to fear for her life
When Kasha Nabagesera leaves her house, she makes sure that her neighbors do not see her. She never sets off on her own, constantly checking to see if she is followed by a suspect. Because Kasha Nabagesera loves women and fights for that other women too.
In Uganda this can be deadly. Same-sex sex is illegal there, as in 37 other African countries too, even for the attempt you can get in jail. Media and fundamentalist preachers urge lynch law against lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transsexuals (LGBT). In 2011, a fellow Nabageseras was murdered after a newspaper had called. She herself has been threatened for years.
"Of course I'm scared," she says. "But I'm stubborn too, so I'll continue."
Nabagesera prevented a law that provided for life imprisonment for homosexuals
Her courage has made the 37-year-old one of Africa's most important LGBT activists. In Uganda's capital Kampala, she opened the first lesbian bar in 2010, organized the first gay parade in 2012, and founded the first LGBT magazine in 2014. And with her NGO "Freedom and Roam in Uganda" (protests and a lawsuit in the Constitutional Court), she has prevented a law providing for life imprisonment for homosexuals. In 2015 she received the Alternative Nobel Prize.
The gay hatred in Uganda is mainly fueled by evangelical preachers
She is sitting in the lobby of a Berlin hotel at this lunchtime, a thin woman with long dreadlocks, and she is about to speak at an event about religion and hate speech. Because Kasha Nabagesera is convinced: The gay hatred in Uganda especially evangelical preachers fuel, like in liaison with high-ranking politicians.
Horror stories about gays having sex with children distract from political disaster. The arrest of oppositionists is justified.
Preachers are often assisted by evangelicals from the US and Europe, she says. The planned anti-gay law, for example, was inspired by the ideas of the anti-gay US preacher Scott Lively. She has brought him to court in the US with her friends and an American NGO. The case was rejected for formal reasons, but the judges sharply condemned the preacher's hate speech. A huge success, says Nabagesera: "We have to show the mechanisms behind the hate."
On their Kuchu Times page, LGBT people from all over Africa tell their story
It took 22 years for her to realize that this hatred also hits her. "My parents did not care that I swore for women." That she was bullied, she pushed in her slippery way. But shortly after the ban on homosexuality was extended to women, she should fly from college.
Only when her mother in the presence of the daughter begged the university management? "Kasha is incurably lesbian!" - they allowed mercy. So Nabagesera learned that her love for women was illegal. "It was clear: I have to do something."
In 2003 she founded "Freedom and Roam in Uganda". She has now given her direction to focus on the Kuchu Times Internet platform. There, LGBT people from all over Africa tell their story, and five million have visited the site.
The best contributions are designed as a magazine every year 15 000-fold secretly in bars and La? Den. "Bombastic" is the title, as the hit of popular in Uganda singer Shaggy, so they are usually fast away. "Only when as many as possible get to know our life, something will change," says Nabagesera. This is important right now: the government has begun to implement parts of the prevented anti-homosexual law into already existing laws. "We have to stay alert."
Kasha Nabagesera, 37, argues in Uganda for the rights of LGBT people. The daughter of a programmer and a banker studied accounting and human rights, their fight led them only secretly from the mother's office, because they had one of Uganda's then private private Internet access. She lives in Kampala with her partner. For fear of attacks, she is reported at her address under a false name.
