President of Uganda Yoweri K.

Musevenis Remarks on Homosexuality

Comments to Parliament, Tuesday 23rd November, 1999. On the question of the homosexuals, what I said in South Africa was that we have always had some small numbers of homosexuals in certain places. In Ankole, we used to be aware that there were very few homosexuals, and we even have a name for them in our language; in our language, we call them ebitingwa. Now, those few individuals would be known and ignored, except those whose parents would spear them. Somebody would spear them - kill them - especially the parents. If the parents discovered that a child was a deviant, he could kill him. But if somebody survived and was not killed by his parents, the society would know him and they would ignore him, but he would not go out to wed another man publicly. This is what I am saying. In fact, many of them would pretend that they are normal, they would have families, have children, even if the children were produced by other people they would be called theirs. That is all I was talking about, but I was not condoning homosexuality. I was just describing how the society in some parts of Uganda treated them. I do not know about Buganda, but in Ankole, Rukungiri area, I know something about those people.
[Excerpt from Hansard record retrieved July 22, 2012 from http://www.parliament.go.ug]