In S. Africa, Barack Obama raps Kenya over gay rights, again

Former US President Barack Obama has hit out at Kenya and other African countries for belittling gay rights issue, saying those discriminating people based on sexual orientation should be “resisted”.

In his lecture to mark Mandela Day in Johannesburg, Mr Obama on Tuesday singled out Kenya as one of African countries undermining “basic human rights” on sexuality.

UHURU

“We’ve to actively resist this notion. This is important particularly in some African countries like my own…my father’s homeland (Kenya),” he said in his speech honouring the late South African leader Nelson Mandela.

“I have made this point before that we’ve to resist the notion of beating up and jailing people because of their sexual orientation.”

The US ex-president, who was in Kenya on Sunday and Monday, appeared to respond to President Uhuru Kenyatta’s consistent stand that homosexuality as a “non-issue”.

In April, Mr Kenyatta told Christian Amonpour of CNN that gay rights is not a burning issue for Kenya.

But in his speech to mark 100 years since the birth of Mr Mandela, who died in 2013 aged 95, Mr Obama indirectly told President Kenyatta not to dismiss gay rights as ‘Western ideas’.

“We’ve to be careful to say somehow that these issues don’t apply to us,” he said to a rousing applause.

This is not the first time Obama is rebuking Kenya for discriminating against gays.

MANDELA'S DREAM

When visiting his late father’s homeland for the first time as US president in July 2015, Mr Obama launched an unprecedented defence of gay rights in Africa, telling Mr Kenyatta that the state has no right to punish people because of “who they love”.

Homosexuality and homosexuality acts are illegal in Kenya and surveys show nine in 10 people find them unacceptable.

But in South Africa, Mr Obama said it was "surprising" to him that he had to reaffirm to the audience that "we are all human, our differences are all superficial and that we should treat each other with care and respect.”

"I would have thought we would have figured that out by now. I thought that basic notion was well-established, turns out in this recent drift in reactionary politics, the struggle for basic justice is never truly finished."

He added, “I believe we have no choice but to move forward, that those of us who believe in democracy and civil rights have a better story to tell.”

The son of a Kenyan father used his first high-profile speech since leaving the White House to say, “so if we were truly to continue Madiba's long walk toward freedom, we're going to have to work harder, we're going to have to be smarter. We're going to have to learn from the mistakes of the recent past.”

“I believe in Nelson Mandela's vision, I believe in a vision shared by Ghandi and King and Abraham Lincoln, I believe in a vision of equality and justice and freedom and multi-racial democracy based on a premise that all people are created equal.”