On Friday, South Africans demonstrated in Pretoria and Cape Town against a law that was recently enacted in Uganda that makes it a crime to be publicly LGBTQ.
Demonstrators urged Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni not to approve it while singing and waving banners.
According to the rights organisation Human Rights Watch, the new legislation would be the first to prohibit simply identifying as homosexual, gay, bisexual, transgender, or queer (LGBTQ), even though Uganda is one of more than 30 African nations that already forbid same-sex relationships.
About 100 protesters gathered outside the UN Information Centre in Pretoria to voice their opposition to the bill, including a photographer and activist for Queer rights from Uganda named Papa De DeLovie Kwagala. “World leaders should put pressure on Museveni to not sign the bill because it’s not only a Ugandan issue, it’s an African continent issue,” he said.
“Queer people owe no one anything, but we should be allowed to live our lives as freely as everyone else. You cannot take away all of our liberties. There is a global catastrophe here.
