Young, strong, sharp, reality’s electric in your present tense—this is who you are before the phone rings:

“Dead? Murdered, who was?”

David Kato, 46, gay rights activist, Ugandan, bludgeoned with a hammer to the skull in his own home and now a group of organizers in New York City want a vigil in his honor followed by peaceful protest outside Uganda House would you like to come? Poof, just like that, from the time you answered the phone then put it back down, you’re older, weaker, matured in the face of sudden death.

Two days later it’s Thursday and two hundred-plus people gather outside Dag Hammarskojld Plaza on 48^th street and 1^st Avenue, yourself included. There are larger than life photographs of David Kato in black and white. Posters stamped with his profile held high above cardboard placards written in Kiswahili, east Africa’s lingua franca, the common language that binds a people who share similar customs, tribal traditions, and legislative bigotry against same-sex partnerships.

Marching single column three-person thick, moments later we arrive at the Ugandan Mission to the United Nations. Men, women, leaders at the podium tell us why Kato’s death is so important to this day and age. And so speech after speech adds power to our peaceful protest but the war of words, no matter how poetic or epic, can’t quiet the pain of losing a gay brother to state-sanctioned bigotry, fear, hatred, ignorance, denial, silence.

The speeches die, the drumming stops, the chanting begins:

“What do you want?”

“Justice!”

“When do you want it?”

“Now!”

“Can’t hear you. What do you want?!”

“JUSTICE! JUSTICE! NOW! N—“

Meanwhile Ugandan diplomats, safely snug inside their cozy mission, peep through blinders at the spectacle below. We’re a strong, diverse, fist-pumping crowd directing our anger at nobody in particular.

My first thought? Where is the rage?

My next thought? Why is activism so inactive?

My final thought? Since when is activity action? By which I mean, let’s throw rocks at the window the next time a diplomat dares look down at us, shatter any false sense of safety by breaking glass or spilling blood. Kick down a door or two, set off an alarm maybe, set fire to a tall pile of paper trash. Do something, anything so they feel what it’s like when hatred erupts at any given moment for no reason then goes unpunished and unexplained. Not that revenge can snuff the fire burning in our hearts by bringing David Kato back to life in a world remade without terror, a world filled with social justice. But unexplained hatred directed at someone for no reason is a feeling queers know all too well and Ugandan diplomats don’t know enough of, so maybe they should experience it just once before drafting legislation against homosexuals.

It’s late. Protestors interviewed by TV crews are gone. Those carrying posters with slogans in Kiswahili are gone too. So are the diplomats.

One group takes their candles, places them on a mound of snow covering slush. The candles are in a circle surrounding with flowers in the middle. They glow like embers, like stars in the nighttime sky.

Before leaving, the wind blows so I turn, take one long, last look at circle of candles to keep their flame burning in my memory forever. Dead, the wind blew them out. But there is one that stands alone, free, and still burns bright to this day.

David Kato.

by: Nick Hadikwa Mwaluko   

David Kato, a prominent Ugandan gay rights activist, was bludgeoned to death with a hammer in broad daylight at his home in Uganda, dying on his way to hospital. News of Kato’s death reverberated throughout the world as friends, leaders, activists and human rights organizations paid tribute to a man whose lifelong legacy championed human dignity in the face of man’s inhumanity to man.

Kato, a teacher who eventually quit his job to focus all his attention on Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG), a non-governmental organization based in Uganda’s capital Kampala that advocates for the protection of Uganda’s gays, lesbians, bisexual and transgender people. David Kato was SMUG’s advocacy officer and, some would argue, the founding father of gay activism in Uganda.

He came out to family members before leaving for South Africa. In transitional South Africa where vestiges of apartheid and anti-sodomy laws were still in place, he saw them dismantled through activism, witnessing firsthand the power of individual conviction grouped by a common cause for the creation of a greater good. Struggle against apartheid gave birth to a multiracial democracy; social justice based on activism lead to the growth of South Africa’s LGBTQA movement. By the time Kato returned to his native Uganda in 1998, he was equipped with a cause, schooled in commitment, armored with an agenda, focused on its execution. He spent a week in police custody for activism the very year he returned. Once released, he plunged head and heart into Uganda’s underground LGBTQA movement.

In 2009, American evangelical Dr. Scott Lively led an anti-gay conference in Kampala, Uganda. Days after the conference, an Anti-Homosexuality Bill was introduced to Uganda’s parliament. The Bill proposed the death penalty for some homosexuals. The Bill came under intense pressure from human rights activists and governments around the world; its ratification is pending, shelved. But homophobic sentiment, national bigotry and hatred was fueled and justified along religious grounds from then on.

Case in point: a short while after the 2009 anti-gay conference, Kato’s picture was placed on the front page of Uganda’s tabloid magazine Rolling Stone where the headline written in bold capital letters read as follows: “100 PICTURES OF UGANDA’S TOP HOMOS LEAKED”. Above the front page photo of Kato was an urging by the paper: “Hang them”. Death by execution, the paper suggested, would rid Uganda of gays like Kato so kill him. His photo was plastered on the front page for the country and world to see; his name listed among one hundred others to be targeted. Kato sued the paper on grounds of violation of privacy and won, but often spoke of violence and death threats thereafter, making police allegations that his murder was actually a robbery gone awry, not a hate crime spurred by fearless advocacy for freedom of sexual expression and orientation, somewhat suspect.

There are many who argue the recent influence by white American evangelicals in Uganda is what led to Kato’s death. Their terror tactics awakened something in Ugandans that was never there to begin with. After all, gays have been in Uganda since the beginning of time. What American evangelicals did was manipulate Ugandans because of their devotion to the Christian faith, manipulated the Bible, adopted terror tactics through religious-speak where hatred targeted an easy scapegoat—homosexuals. Kato’s colleagues say to rid Uganda of foreign intervention is to free their country for the better.

There are others who argue Africans tolerate homosexuality in much the same way they tolerate extramarital affairs or polygamy. Desire is tolerated, understood, even accepted; but a homosexual lifestyle, abandoning the duty of marrying someone of the opposite sex for a lifelong commitment to someone of the same sex, is what African social norms find moral reprehensible. Why? Because the desire is human but the lifestyle is foreign. Why? Because infant mortality is so high in Africa so children need to be born and, traditional African families do not adopt outside the family structure. So, an African family may raise children from a deceased cousin or sister, but they won’t take a child off the street into their home and adopt: this is very rare, and even forbidden in the Koran. A homosexual lifestyle without adoption threatens the family structure; homosexual desire, if married with children, does not. The conflict between homosexual desire as acceptable but a homosexual lifestyle as intolerable is at the heart of the African debate. In other words, the lifestyle makes someone gay, not the desire, some Africans argue, so tolerate same-sex desire so long as it does not lead to same-sex partnership, commitment, a lifestyle like David Kato’s.

At age 46, Kato left a powerful legacy that speaks to all but perhaps most loudly to queer Africans of non-conforming genders on the continent and in the Diaspora. It accents our fundamental mission here on earth: which is what? To learn about each other and, in so doing, learn more about ourselves. We are not all the same, though the professional, adult world asks us to be. But we are different, all of us, and different people relate differently to this world, which is what makes the world better and life richer. No one person, no one sexuality, no gender expression, no one gender, no one creative form of being is more important than another. And killing does not rid the world of difference. One less Kato in Uganda does not make Uganda any less gay, believe me. One living Kato alive and breathing in Uganda does not make Uganda any more gay. Just as one more woman does not add to sexism or one more person of color adds to racism. We only assume it does or would because our investment in making the world as we want it, denies the world from being what it truly is: diverse, complex, unscripted, multifaceted, nontraditional, untamed, unrehearsed, unpackaged because it is human human human.

David Kato is not dead. He soars to our Maker, the One who birthed him gay, radiant, warrior, lover, eternal. And his sword remains in the arena, sharpened for struggle, alive among the smoldering ash heaps that make up its ruins. And so he survives, warrior eternal.

If man’s inhumanity to man truly gives us reason to pause, then pause. Stand still, take a deep, sobering breath then maybe light a candle in the name of David Kato, a man who devoted his energy, intellectual power and physical body to a spiritual cause that is radical by its very definition—love. If the sobering power of a solitary vigil does not speak as loudly as communion with like-minded folk celebrating David Kato’s monumental contribution to the human family as a queer African, come take part in the New York City vigil in remembrance of David Kato on Thursday, February 3, 2011 at the Dag Hammarskojld Plaza on 48^th street and 1^st avenue at 4pm. This queer African of a non-conforming gender will be there to greet you.

Nick Mwaluko was born in Tanzania, raised mostly in Kenya and other east African countries. Nick came to New York, transitioned from anatomically female to male, and writes plays.  S/He, the story of a man in a woman’s body, has its second run in southern Florida on February 27, 2011. Waafrika, a lesbian love affair set in a rural Kenyan village in 1992 immediately following Kenya’s first multi-party elections, will have a showcase run in October 2011 following a reading March 30, 2011. Other of Nick’s plays include Blueprint for a Lesbian Universe, Asymmetrical We, Brotherly Love, Trailer Park Tundra, Are Women Human?, and others. Nick@noneonrecord.com

Who I Am, Who I’m Not
by: Yvonne Fly Onakeme Etaghene

To brave New York’s temperamental winter, I was clad in my calve-length winter coat, a brightly-colored scarf, sweaters beneath my coat and dark turquoise gloves.  Shortly after entering work but before I had the chance to finish defrosting from the winter chill, I heard a passionate and unexpected:

“My Nigerian sister!  I’ve been waiting to meet you!”
“What a beautiful greeting,” I said smiling, my head turning towards the stranger’s voice.  
When we were closer in proximity to each other, she asked, “Are you Yoruba?”
“No,” I responded to this incredibly familiar and annoying question.
“You Igbo?”
“No.”
“What are you?”  
“I’m Urhobo and Ijaw.”  
“Oh, I’ll hug you anyway,” she said, opening her arms to me.  More than a little taken aback, I look at her stunned, thinking, did that really just come out of her mouth?  
“Wow,” I said pulling away from her, “that was really imperialist of you to say.”
“I’m just kidding—”
“Wow.”
Joking and trying to regain the familiarity of a few seconds ago, she remorsefully said, “That was messed up.  Let’s start over…”

Every time people who aren’t Nigerian find out I’m Nigerian, without fail, the first question out of their mouth is one of two: “Are you Yoruba?” or “When did you move here?”  In order for me to be Nigerian, I must have been born in Nigeria right?  When I say, “No I was born in the states,” then I usually receive, “Oh, so you’re American?” to which I respond, “No, I’m a Nigerian who was born in America.”  When you find out someone is Jewish, do you ask them when they moved here from Israel?  Or since the first Jews were from Africa, does one ask them if they’re from Egypt, Ethiopia, Morocco, Algeria, Libya or Tunisia?

She and I started over; we hugged and chatted briefly before she headed into a meeting.  That encounter stayed with me.  Those words came out of the mouth of a young, Igbo woman, a queer Igbo woman meeting me in the states.  I cherish the community of queer African friends I have and I especially nurture my relationships with queer Nigerians—I automatically treat them with a certain reverence because we share a homeland.  In my opinion, we don’t have time to quarrel over ethnicities when we are so far away from home.  Even when we are on our own red soil, eating eba and egusi soup, under our hot Nigerian sun, fetching water to bathe, to cook, to drink, even then when our Nigerian identity is in the majority, even then we don’t have time to quarrel over ethnic rivalries.  Our ethnic and religious differences have been causing conflict that causes our red soil to glow with a different shade of red and this breaks my heart.  So many of us left our homelands, or are children of those who left their homelands, to go to the U.S. or Europe in search of education and work to support ourselves and our families.  Many of us long for home but haven’t been home in years due to how much it costs to visit—the cost of trips home include more than an expensive plane ticket but also the gifts everyone expects, the bills many will expect you to pay for them, the “loans” asked of you that will never be re-paid, this person’s school fees, that person’s rent and so on and so on.  Everyone thinks we are rich in Europe and Ah-meh-re-kah.  Many of us long for home and have not returned in many years because we know we can’t be out about our sexuality and/or gender identification to our families, villages, cities, country.  Given these realities of LGBTQ Africans abroad, why are we wasting our time with this ethnic rivalry bullshit?  No, it’s not a joke to disparage or belittle an ethnicity just because we’re in the numerical minority.  It’s sad that we allow the ethnic groups in the numerical majority of our country to define what our country is.

We simplify our African identity for westerners.  People who aren’t Nigerian usually haven’t heard of the Niger Delta, of Port Hartcourt, of Warri, of Sapele, of Edo.  What they have heard of are the Yoruba, the orishas, Shango, Obatala and maybe they’ve heard of Fela.  Even as they mispronounce his name, but yes, they’ve heard of him.  The same people with the oil from my Niger Delta land in their gas tanks haven’t heard of the land that oil hails from.  Nneka, a Deltan Nigerian singer/emcee articulates this ironic interconnectedness perfectly, “Accept the fact that…we are your pillars that make your ceilings stand.”

This is the point at which I feel the conflict and tension between identifying as a Black person in the states (because I’ve spent most of my life here and feel so connected to American Black culture) and being African, specifically Nigerian.  I would much prefer people didn’t try to create some kind of intimacy with me by throwing the only ethnicity they know about Nigeria at me or telling me that they named their first child after the first president of Nigeria, Nnamdi Azikiwe (true story) or telling me they have Nigerian friends.  I don’t care and I think it’s completely irrelevant to our relationship how many Nigerians’ phone numbers you have in your cell phone.

For a long time, I’ve simplified my identity for the people I encounter who are not Nigerian.  I simply identify as Nigerian.  It’s only when I speak with Nigerians that we talk about what ethnicity I am and they are with the understanding that there are many ethnicities; we talk about what parts of the country we’re from, our foods, our clothing and so forth.  I’ve recently become more specific when I speak about my culture, not because I feel obligated to tell everyone I meet my life story, but because I am no longer interested in my silence about the specificity of my ethnicity and culture being assumed to mean I belong to a Nigerian ethnic majority.  On a continent with the population of a little over a billion, Nigeria has 155 million inhabitants.  This means that approximately one in every six Africans is Nigerian.  Nigeria is the most populated African country and the eighth most populated country in the world.  Criteria for what “ethnicity” means includes, but is not limited to, a group of people who share language, customs, traditions, religious/spiritual beliefs and/or land.  Nigeria is a complicated place and depending on who’s doing the counting and defining of what “ethnicity” means there are between 250 and 619 different ethnic groups in Nigeria.  Despite this, too often what is Hausa, Yoruba and Igbo is presumed to be all that Nigeria is.  And it is not.

I was annoyed and hurt by what this young, queer Nigerian woman said because I just expected more of her.  I didn’t expect her to break my heart that Friday morning.  I wanted to feel some solidarity and sisterhood, not have a reason to roll my eyes and suck my teeth muttering “Na wa o” as my beautiful Igbo people are known to say.

As a very proud Ijaw and Urhobo woman, who hails from the Delta region of Nigeria, I have no interest in allowing anyone to place their ignorance of or assumptions about my culture upon me.  Furthermore, and much more importantly, I intend to publicly raise up the name of where I am from, right down to the villages, because we are precious and unique.  I have so much love for all the ethnicities in my country, I just think we should all get a little more air time.

Yvonne Fly Onakeme Etaghene is a Nigerian dyke performance activist, poet, dancer, essayist, playwright and actress who uses her poetry to address issues of race, class, gender, sexuality, imperialism, love, self esteem and family.  Yvonne has self-published three collections of poetry, toured nationally and performed in over 25 u.s. cities.  Her one woman show, Volcano’s Birthright{s}, debuted in May 2009 in New York City.  For more information about her work & future performances of her one woman show, please visit www.myloveisaverb.com.  Video blog: www.youtube.com/AfrocrownDiva

Contact her at: myloveisaverb@gmail.com