To pass a law that allows people to be killed is insane, according to South African musician Thandiswa Mazwai.
This after Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni signed the Anti-LGBTQ Bill into law on Monday, which imposes a death sentence for the crime of “aggravated homosexuality”.
The new law also stipulates that a child found guilty of homosexuality will spend three years in jail, while anyone convicted of promoting homosexuality will be locked away for 20 years.
The law has set tongues wagging all over social media platforms.
Mazwai, the Zabalaza hitmaker, took to her social media accounts to express shock, saying these kinds of acts will not just stop with controlling gays and lesbians.
Mazwai wrote: “When love is illegal. When love will get you killed. When politics enter your bedroom. Remember the [apartheid] Immorality Act that said black and white [people] could not fall in love?
“It won’t stop with the gays. They will decide to control something you hold dear next time. Freedom is our birth right, and so is the right to pursue happiness.”
Uganda’s parliament passed the legislation outlawing same-sex relations in March, making it a criminal offence to even identify as LGBTQ.
Recently, Deputy President Paul Mashatile said the government does not agree with Uganda’s anti-LGBTQ attitude, noting that it will advise Museveni’s administration to back down from the new legislation.
Mashatile was joining a growing number of Western countries and the UN who also pleaded with Museveni not to sign the bill into law.
In April, EFF leader Julius Malema said Museveni sought to use the anti-homosexuality bill against his political opponents.
Speaking to EFF supporters at the party’s march against the bill, Malema called for other countries on the continent to stand in solidarity for human rights.
“One day, with this law, Museveni can wake up and say that Bobi Wine [Ugandan opposition leader and musician] is gay. Not because he’s gay, but because he disagrees with him politically,” said Malema.
“He just says he’s gay, and according to the law, he must be killed. He’s going to use this law to kill his political opponents and he must be stopped.”
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