Uganda’s annual Pride festival begins in Kampala today, with organisers promising a week-long celebration for the country’s LGTB community. But rather than a triumphant parade through the city centre, in Uganda Pride will be marked at secret locations away from the public eye.

“It’s not a protest but a celebration,” says organiser Richard Lusimbo of the fourth annual Uganda Pride, which includes film screenings, a cocktail party, a (discreet) parade and a Mr and Ms Pride contest.

Because of security fears in a country where homosexuality remans illegal and homophobia is widespread, the events are by invitation only. Locations have been kept secret, with details circulated on private online networks.

Uganda Pride spokesperson Richard Lusimbo. Photograph: Richard Lusimbo

Lusimbo admits that Uganda has “a long way to come” before all sexualities are accepted, and says that as a public face of the event he does have concerns about his safety. “Sometimes I check behind my shoulders, but I can’t run for the rest of my life. I need to live it like a normal Ugandan,” he says.

Last year’s Pride coincided with the overturning of a draconian anti-gay law, which called for homosexuals to be jailed for life. But LGBT people still face lengthy sentences if convicted under colonial-era laws.

The threat of harsher measures has not disappeared. In January a group of MPs were said to be working on new legislation to curb gay rights, including proposals to punish the “promotion” of homosexuality. There are also fears that parliamentarians could bring the earlier bill that as quashed on a legal technicality.



Lusimbo says that while anecdotal reports of harassment at the hands of police have dropped, in the past few months there’s been an upswing in gay Ugandans being ostracised by their families or their communities.

“The law is only part of it,” he says. “It doesn’t mean anything if you don’t have the people on your side. The biggest challenge is to get that neighbour, that shop keeper, that person working in the salon to support you.”

Despite being one of the most visible spokespeople for the Ugandan LGBT rights movement, Lusimbo is quick to reject any idea that he is personally brave: “there are thousands of people who are brave. I am privileged to be in a position to support them,” he says.





Gay pride in exile

I broke down each time I denied my sexual orientation.​ I felt [I was] betraying myself John Abdallah Wambere

One member of the community who won’t be there is John Abdallah Wambere, who was granted asylum in the US in November 2014. He describes Uganda as “hell and doom” for anyone who is lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender – a world of curtailed freedom, seclusion, isolation and paranoia. “You can’t tell who is watching or invading your space, disguising themselves as one of you,” he says from his new home in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Wambere says people still face “rejection and discrimination” on the basis of their sexuality. People are being evicted and are unable to compete for jobs, he says, leading to an “exodus of LGBTI Ugandans… they want their freedom and they have to search for it elsewhere”.

Wambere was outed by the media in 2005. During this time, he would find himself repeatedly lying to his family and friends. “I broke down each time I denied my sexual orientation. I felt [I was] betraying myself.”

He was reunited with some of his colleagues to raise the Ugandan flag at gay Pride in New York city in June this year, including Frank Mugisha, Lusimbo and Jacqueline Kasha, founder of Bombastic, Uganda’s first LGBT paper and Pepe Julian Onziema, named Hero of the Year by Stonewall in 2014. “ I felt low because I should be carrying it high, celebrating my pride in my own country.”

Maybe in 15 years or so, the situation will be different, he adds.

Outed by the media

Wambere was not the only one to have been outed by the media. It happened to Lusimbo twice: first in 2013, after which he had to go in to hiding for a month, and then again in 2014, when a tabloid splashed his face on the front cover under the headline Top Ugandan Gays Speak Out.

“It was such a hard moment, a full blow out. [It] created great panic and fear,” he says. His relationship with his family has been tricky ever since, but he’s hopeful he’ll win them back round one day. They all have invites to Pride.

Mugisha, chair of Sexual Minorities Uganda, suffered a similar fate, being outed as one of Red Pepper’s “top 200 homosexuals” list. A few years earlier his friend and colleague David Kato had been outed by the now-defunct national weekly Rolling Stone. Weeks later he was found bludgeoned to death in his home.

Today, Mugisha, who has suffered threats of violence himself, says the most negative development over the past year has been persecution at the hands of the media: people are scared of being exposed, he says.

Hidden voices

Kapya Kaoma, a senior researcher at Political Research Associates, a think tank monitoring anti-LGBT sentiment in Africa, says he is “conflicted” about Ugandan pride. “It increases visibility, but it also perpetuates a falsehood that African sexual minorities are copies of their western counterparts.

“The LGBTQ community in Uganda is bigger than visible activists. The most vulnerable are those who have no profile and live in poor places of Uganda. Their stories and voices are not heard.” On the other hand, Uganda is one of the few places in Africa where such an event can be held, he adds. Same sex relationships are illegal in 36 of the continent’s 55 countries, and most of these have never held Pride events.