(LifeSiteNews) — The president of Uganda has issued a follow-up statement to remarks he gave earlier this month when he said Uganda will not be blackmailed into accepting loans from the West if it means embracing homosexuality.
Ugandans and, especially the Bazukulu.
Further to my message of the 9th August, 2023, I would like to reiterate that foreign aid and loans are welcome and can be of some use if designed and executed by patriots (not neo-colonial agents), but are neither decisive nor…
— Yoweri K Museveni (@KagutaMuseveni) August 17, 2023
General Yoweri Museveni has been in power of Uganda since 1986. On August 9, he affirmed that “discipline, patriotism, and combating corruption” will help Uganda “thrive” and develop “with or without loans” from “actors [who] dare to want to coerce us into abandoning our faith, culture, principles and sovereignty.”
Museveni was responding to news that the World Bank was putting a freeze on all future loans to Uganda because it recently passed an “Anti-Homosexuality” bill that combats sodomy and the LGBT lifestyle.
“Inclusion and non-discrimination sit at the heart of our work around the world,” the organization said on August 8
This is whimsical behavior by @WorldBank towards a member state. The values referred to in taking this draconian decision against Uganda are not universal, they are contested. This makes the case for reform of work methods including the board more urgent and pertinent.…
— Adonia Ayebare (@adoniaayebare) August 8, 2023
This week Thursday, August 17, Museveni published a 27-page document further detailing problems Uganda has encountered thanks to “neocolonial” and “antigrowth” loans. He also laid out his vision for the future economic success of his country without Western assistance.
“Foreign aid and loans are welcome and can be of some use if designed and executed by patriots,” he said. But they are “neither decisive nor indispensable elements for our desired social-economic transformation.”
“The recent provocation and arrogance by the World Bank Group on [the] subject of the homosexuals” reflects a “shallowness in philosophy, ideology and strategy, that interferes with the global efforts to generate consensus for the good.”
“We have been ready to forgive the past crimes against Africa by the Imperialists and their local stooges” but this latest incident is truly “insufferable.”
Museveni also explained that while the World Bank and some of Uganda’s Western partners are occasionally helpful, they put erratic conditions on their loans, and Uganda’s economy is often not improved as a result, especially because corrupt “neo-colonial mis-planners” bribe officials from the private sector.
“We should launch a merciless war on the two internal inhibitors of our own [success]: the corrupt and the neocolonial planners,” he declared. These factions “delay our forward march and… must and will be crushed.”
Anti-Western sentiments have been on the rise in central Africa for several years. As previously reported by LifeSite’s Frank Wright, both Burkina Faso and Mali have seen two military coups each in the last three years, with additional neighbors Chad and Guinea both seeing their governments replaced by military rule in 2021.
Wright has also noted that Niger experienced a military coup earlier this month when pro-Western President Mohamed Bazoum, who was serving France’s interests in the region, was ousted.
Thanks to diplomatic as well as financial investments made by the Far East, Central and West Africa is slowly re-aligning itself with the emerging BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) coalition in opposition to its long-time sovereigns NATO and the United States.
For years now, Ugandan lawmakers have expressed concerns over the recruitment of children into the LGBT lifestyle. Groups like Sexual Minorities Uganda, which was founded in 2004 but banned in 2022, reportedly targeted minors with cash payments to participate in homosexual X-rated films. Propaganda designed to groom youth into supporting (and even engaging in) homosexuality had also been discovered in schools and elsewhere.