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Kenyatta stance: A reflection of Africa’s thinking

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THERE was nothing unusual about United States (US) President Barack Obama’s latest attempt to ratchet up pressure on Africa to embrace homosexuality, but it was his comparison of the ‘plight’ of homosexuals to the battle against slavery and segregation in America that all, but summed up his disastrous tenure as the first ‘black’ leader of the US.
Obama, America’s 44th president, has made gay rights a strong part of his second term in office after he became the first sitting US president to publicly support gay marriage in 2012, but his comparison was an attack on black people’s history. 
It could not even dawn on him that his nefarious attack on Africa’s painful history took place in Africa, in Kenya where his father was born and bred, an irony that will forever dent his image.
Yet it was Obama himself who is on the wrong side of history if his threat that ‘bad things happen’ when countries don’t accept their citizens’ right to be homosexuals is anything to go by.
Africa has been threatened with severe consequences for its stern refusal to embrace gay rights with America withholding aid to those countries and making them suffer until they give in to that demand of propping up gays.
At a press conference with Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta, Obama claimed that he was “painfully aware of the history when people are treated differently under the law.”
“That’s the path whereby freedoms begin to erode and bad things happen,” he said. “When a government gets in the habit of treating people differently, those habits can spread.”
Many African countries including Kenya, have met with disapproval efforts by Western countries to impose gay rights on the continent.
In Kenya, gay sex is punishable by up to 14 years in prison.
Despite Obama’s stance on the issue to be embraced in Kenya, Uhuru Kenyatta, stood up to America and in the process clearly put across Africa’s position with a firm ‘no’ to homosexuality.
He said that while Kenya and the US share some values – democracy, value for families, entrepreneurship – there were ‘some things that we must admit we don’t share’.
While Obama wanted to make gay rights an ‘issue’, Kenyatta duly reminded him that it was a question of African versus Western values, but it’s actually just about people’s lives.
“I repeatedly say that for Kenyans today the issue of gay rights is really a non-issue,” said President Kenyatta.
“We want to focus on other areas maybe once, like you, have overcome some of these challenges, we can begin to look at other ones, but as of now the fact remains that this issue is not really an issue that is at the foremost minds of Kenyans and that is a fact.”
This is not the first time that Obama has been sent by his handlers to impose their wishes on Africa.
It in fact is a strategy to weaken African systems.
The strategy as laid bare in 2013 by Obama at the University of Cape Town involves, but is not limited to using non-governmental organisations (NGOs) to indoctrinate youths to cast away traditional conflict resolution mechanisms and the tragedies wrought on Africa by colonialism.
Using this ‘model’ young people are also dissuaded from visiting their history and to view their culture as alien to modern ways of living which are enshrined in the ‘democracy’ mantra the West preaches vociferously about in Africa.
In November 2012, the US Embassy Public Affairs Section held a presentation where a collection of articles authored by former American Ambassador to Harare Charles Ray was translated to Shona.
Titled ‘Kwaunoenda Ndiko Kwakanyanya Kukosha Kudarika Kwaunobva,’ the collection was aimed at rubbishing the country’s war of liberation, among other issues.
Recently European Union Ambassador to Zimbabwe Phillipe Van Damme caused a stir when he said there was nothing wrong with youths embracing homosexuality in the country.
Speaking at a sexual and reproductive health workshop hosted by the Southern Africa HIV and Aids Information Dissemination Service (SAfAIDS), Van Damme shamelessly said there was need to accept homosexuality, claiming that culture was dynamic.
“We should actually conscientise people to accept these homosexuals and let them know that people have different sexualities,” said Van Damme.
And he was even more audacious in presentation.
“We should move away from our culture and learn to accept the diversity of cultures we have.
“Homosexuals are also people and they should be accepted.
“Why should they be banished?”
Africa must be wary of the intentions of those who are desperately seeking to erode its culture.
We must all stand up to America and her Western allies like what President Kenyatta did.

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