Job creation for youth, not miniskirts, should preoccupy African legislators

Is the question of what adults do in the bedroom or the length of women’s skirts really the stuff that should be keeping people awake in Africa?

The author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie placed her finger on the pulse when she argued the other day that the debate sweeping the continent about gay rights is a reflection of our being world class copycats.

We switched on CNN, she wrote, saw Americans furiously debating the issue and decided, hey, why don’t we take up the matter as well.

This situation suits African politicians just fine. I was surprised to learn the other day that Uganda has the world’s youngest population.

Sixty per cent of Ugandans are under 20. Most are unemployed. Yoweri Museveni wants to hold on to power until kingdom come.

So should the next campaign be about widespread corruption, his determination to be a president for life, or mass youth unemployment?

No, it’s much better to keep people busy by banning miniskirts and stirring the pot about gay rights.

What most people forget is that societies move to spending a lot of time debating these social issues after they have attained a level of material comfort.

I occasionally send messages to my friends in Nairobi about the frivolity that dominates the news media in London. The other day, there was an animated discussion on radio on which dieting regime is the best for your cat when it has had a problem with indigestion.

The debate went on for hours. In a way, this is a sign that a society has reached an advanced state of development.

Questions of life and death are no longer at the fore, and people have the luxury to move to other matters.

It was not always that way, of course. In the 1930s through to the 1960s, when poverty was widespread in societies across the West, presidents made a name through “New Deal” legislation aimed at tackling poverty and offering some sort of social welfare protection.

It was not until 2012 that a president like Barack Obama could declare support for same-sex marriage, triggering a huge debate in the US.

In Africa, we have decided to take a huge leap and forget about the pressing needs of society and focus on issues that dominate discussion in the West.

As the Ugandan writer Patience Akumu pointed out in an article on the African Arguments website, that situation suits African politicians perfectly. I have always felt that Kenya’s attitude to homosexuality was the right one: live and let live. This is an issue of extremely low relevance to the mwananchi.

Director of Public Prosecutions Keriako Tobiko, who has been summoned to explain inaction over colonial clauses in our laws, should tell MPs to find better things to do with their time.

*** 
Uganda is breaking world records with funny laws including the Public Order Management Bill (POMB) that columnist Muniini K. Mulera dubbed POMBE (beer) claiming the authors of the Bill, which demands that when three or four people gather in public to discuss politics they must get a permit from the police, must have been high on alcohol.

“(This law) reminds me of the drunken men who used to stagger past our home in Mparo, Kigezi, many years ago. The fellows, too inebriated to tell between illusion and reality, routinely cried out in terror as they saw dangerous enemies with menacing faces and movements.

The enemies were harmless trees with gently swaying leaves in the dark, and the occasional moonlit cloud that took the shape of a bearded man.

Even more dangerous were elongated apparitions on the road, in reality the drunken men’s own shadows created by a moon way out in the east. The things probably looked like Bacwezi fighters ready to slit the cornered victims’ throats.

Oh how they fell to their knees in terror, their cries for help invariably prompting my mother, bless her soul, to send her sons on rescue missions in the dark!

It may be one reason why I never developed a liking for alcohol. Like elite troops, armed with nothing but our sober heads and our knowledge of the truth, my brothers and I would tiptoe to the hapless men and rescue them from near execution by trees and shadows.”

The writer, an editor with the Sunday Nation, is a Chevening Scholar at the London School of Economics [email protected]