Imagine having stories to tell, but having limited free speech options because you are an LGBTQ+ person. So, voicing your experience, you rely on the only available option – social media because no mainstream media in Uganda will have you on any of their programs so you can publicly share your truth and that of your community. Then wake up one morning in October 2022 to learn that one of your worst nightmares is a reality, your country’s president enacted into law the Computer Misuse Act. And now you would have to censor and edit your posts because you are driven by fear of being arrested for years for expressing yourself.
But you don’t dismiss the Computer Misuse Act. No, you are not a lazy consumer of information. So you indulge yourself in understanding the law. You are curious to find out what it entails. You read it. You find out that The Computer Misuse Act, section 24 criminalizes cyber harassment, defined as a person using a computer ‘to make any request, suggestion or proposal which may be treated as obscene and indecent by the recipient of the message”.
Hahaha! You find this a little laughable? How about if you were trying to court someone and express your intentions?
And then there is section 25 of the same Act which criminalizes offensive communication, defined as “intentionally and repeatedly using electronic communication to disturb or attempt to disturb the peace, quiet or right of privacy of any person without a purpose of legitimate communication”. An Act human rights activists interpret as dangerous to you and your community. Two cases of LGBT+ people are soon identified and charged under section 25 for sending text messages and posting photos on Facebook that are labeled as an attempt to disturb the peace.
This development makes you clinch. You know that Uganda’s internet penetration rate is about 30%, lower than Kenya’s which stands at about 52%. Yet despite the relatively high price of internet access, you never quiver away from searching for a connection, so Facebook becomes that search tool. You can connect with a whole village of keens that give you the social support you need. Physical space. On Facebook is a village of your own, a village you could claim as your own, and a village the Act threatens to dismantle, to colonize, and morally regulate. Despite the law and lack of access to mainstream media, digital media is uniquely positioned to provide the asylum you and the LGBT+ people of Uganda deserve and therefore a need to have the Act contested in the courts and hopefully repealed.
You know an even bigger storm is coming. More laws, targeting your kind might be shelved, but will soon come to the parliamentary floor for debate. You brace yourself. All you need is resilience and faith to survive and thrive. You are human. You are Ugandan. You work. You sweat. You are brilliant. You pay taxes. You are God-fearing. You are beautiful, and you damn well deserve the right to be heard just like the rest.
For God and Your Country.