The overall relevance of the postcolonial theory to the study.

The Postcolonial theory offers an opportunity to explore the role of AAEs in Uganda who represented Western expertise on Christian sexual morality and homosexuality. The study explores the extent to which the AAEs influenced the legislation of the 2014 AHL in Uganda. In line with the postcolonial theory, the AAEs encounter with the Ugandan society is viewed as the same encounter that the empire has with the targeted colony. The discourse on homosexuality is seen as the field that animates this encounter. In this regard, the disposition of the AAEs in the Ugandan context, the language, the theologies and the means of communication employed by the AAEs in disseminating their agenda are critically explored as tools of influence. The theory offers the possibility to explore how the AAE located themselves within the Ugandan context [which may have been perceived as naïve as far as homosexuality was concerned, and therefore needed urgent liberation,]. It also provides tools to analyze how the Ugandan public responded after the encounter with the AAEs. Through a postcolonial interpretivist approach the study explores whether the 2014 AHL in Uganda was either a response to views of the AAEs on homosexuality or a result of contextual contentions on the discourse of homosexuality in Uganda.

While postcolonial theory can be used to interrogate various aspects of colonial encounters and contemporary governance systems, the study employs the theory to find answers on critical questions such as: What colonial power extension did the AAEs demonstrate in Uganda, through their preaching, teaching, and disposition? What effects could such power have on a

sovereign State such as Uganda in informing local discourses and government policy on homosexuality? What role did the Ugandan context play?

Drawing from the subject matter that concerns the postcolonial theory, this study situates its inquiry along positions that argue that the effects of colonialism are still felt in postcolonial societies (Gikandi 1996; Hall 1999:230; Ashcroft et al 1989). The study agrees with positions that challenge the speaking of postcolonialism as if were a totally new phenomenon exclusive to the influences of past experiences of colonialism. Therefore, in this study, postcolonialism would be treated as an open-ended phenomenon that tends to read the contemporary experiences of people through the lens of imperial control.

To argue that postcolonialism ought to be explained in terms which recognize the changing experiences of colonialism; and that, past experiences of colonial domination influence contemporary experiences, is to assert that postcolonialism is not something of the past. In Uganda for instance, such an assertion is affirmed by some signs that point to foreign influences on institutions such as: education, religious based organizations, and politics, among others (Kaoma 2014a; Sadgrove 2012; Tamale 2014a). Examining the influence of AAEs through the postcolonial theory is an opportunity to explore how colonial knowledge, attitudes and power, still manifest itself in the Ugandan context.

Colonialism in Africa has been greatly critiqued to have had diverse influence not only on the political organization of African societies but also on matters of sexuality, religion and morality (and among others). Through its power of influence, colonialism attempted to deny the complexity of social, cultural, religious and political organization of African societies. This could have been achieved by describing them in homogenous terms such as barbaric and primitive, thus validating standardized approaches of civilizing them. Descriptions such as ‘normal sexuality’ in contrast to ‘abnormal sexual behavior’, ‘true religion’ in contrast to ‘idolatry’ gradually became references of difference. Such categories became key in explaining how people from African societies differed from those in European societies. For instance, with regard to African sexuality, Vaughan in her work, Curing Their Ills: Colonial Power and African Illness, mentions:

There were two variations on this theme of African sexuality…For some, including many missionaries, African sexuality was, and always had been, ‘primitive’, uncontrolled and excessive, and as such it represented the darkness and dangers of the continent. For others, the supposed ‘primitiveness’ of pre-colonial African sexuality was reassuringly ‘innocent’; the danger lay rather in the degeneration of this sexuality which was seen to have come about through the social and economic changes of

colonialism (Vaughan 1991:129)

Vaughan’s sentiments are rightly confirmed by the assertions of Lambkin, a British colonial administrator during the colonial period in Uganda. Lambkin was greatly convinced that female Ugandan sexuality was different from that of their counterparts which were of European descent. He described it as full of “strong passions…unrestricted” and a danger to society since, according to him, it contributed to the spread of syphilis during that period. (Vaughan 1991:133).

It is therefore imperative to note that as colonialism found its way into Africa, it attracted African elites such as chiefs. Additionally, it became easy for universalized moral behaviors and sexual standards to take root through the assistance of African elites. As a consequence, indigenous people eventually started questioning the legality, authenticity and progressivity of their pre-colonial systems. Local systems of attaining education for instance got new descriptions such as traditional or informal systems of education. Individuals who could not read and write were categorized as illiterate. However those who quickly grasped the foreign skills of reading, writing, and speaking English belonged to the literate class. Similarly, sexual reproductive health which used to be conducted especially during initiation events got discouraged from religio-cultural grounds.

Colonial administrators also saw it necessary to reorganize African societies administratively by giving them new written forms of regulations, and by instituting local chiefs as colonial administrative assistants. Local chiefs would in turn help to effect colonial rules and regulations. To some extent the current debates on the issue of homosexuality in Uganda depict the far rooted complexities related to how sexuality was understood prior to colonialism, and how it was sought to be transformed during and after colonialism. This further expose the impressions which colonialists as foreign visitors, had on local societies and how local communities perceived the foreigners. The debates further assert the legitimacy of contextual knowledge over that which is driven under the influence of neo- liberalism, globalization and transnationalism. Such debates could be engaged even more deeply through a postcolonial theoretical framework.

Relationship between the methodology and the Postcolonial theory

The relationship between the postcolonial theory and the paradigm used in this study can be demonstrated from both an ontological and epistemological perspective. Postcolonialism

critiques colonial assumptions; this is to say, that the colonized societies were hegemonic with primitive knowledge of reality. Knowledge developed through a colonial lens for the colonized society claimed universal principles (Ashcroft, et al. 2006). The AAEs are analyzed as representatives of a power who seek to civilize, educate and offer knowledge of protection from homosexuality to the Ugandan society. The Ugandan society on the other hand is seen as the recipient of the AAEs’ knowledge. As one of its analytical concerns the study explores how the actions of the AAEs differed or resembled that of colonialists, Western ethnographers, or early Christian missionaries. A postcolonial critique to the universalization of knowledge which contributed to legitimizing colonialism questions the agenda of actors such as colonial ethnographers, colonialists, early Christian missionaries, who have all participated in constructing, communicating, tolerating or denying certain knowledge from the local context. Postcolonial theory proposes Said’s concept of Orientalism which aims to explore, unravel and understand how Western scholars such as historians, geographers, linguists, writers and artists constructed knowledge of the “Orient” (Jack and Westwood 2006:488).

The notion of the “Orient” is highly disputed by Said as it was intended to represent an existing reality. In fact, for Said, the “Orient” is a mere cultural construction of the Western scholars which is detached from the object it attempts to represent. From both critical and interpretivist approaches, the failure to recognize the role of the context, in the generation of knowledge leads to suspicion of what is called “knowledge.” This is also true from a postcolonial perspective. From a postcolonial perspective failing to recognize the role of the local context in generating knowledge, would expose an exercise of power and control by which the Orient is dominated and governed.

From this perspective, an interpretivist approach like the critical approach (as used in qualitative research methods) questions the authenticity of any kind of knowledge and its acquisition criteria insofar as it claims universalism and fails to consider contextual experiences of the people (Cilliers 2014). It could be viewed in this sense that colonial institutions which claimed to transform the colonized into colonizers ways of thinking and understanding the world, are scrutinized and viewed with skepticism.

2.6.4. Conclusion.

This chapter has presented the methodology and theoretical framework upon which the entire study has been done. The chapter has demonstrated why qualitative non-empirical research

methodology and postcolonial theory were chosen to guide the study. In discussing the theory, particular concepts of postcolonial theory have been specially selected in accordance with their relevance in guiding the study. The chapter has recognized the diverse implications and complications surrounding the meaning and construction of the term postcolonialism as it may be applied in a formerly colonized society such as Uganda. The chapter has highlighted the need to not only explore the AAEs but also the local context given that all can produce hegemony power that can influence the legislation of the Law. This approach avoids taking for granted contextual factors. In the chapter that follows, the study explores critically how homosexuality as a discourse and practice has been framed in Uganda according to historical and contemporary perspectives.