Anselm Will Eventually Be Good For Uganda

I have watched with amazement the criticism that has been showered towards Besigye’s son, Anselm Besigye, after his interview with the NUP leader at Columbian university. He was putting on a cardigan that looked unisex to me but it couldn't stop some people from accusing him of using women clothes.

Anselm sometimes cross-dresses, but this doesn’t mean that he’s gay. His androgynous fashion choices include wearing items like dreadlocks, tank tops, and shorts that some observers have labelled as feminine.

Androgynous individuals are not inherently gay. Androgynous mean you are in the middle of masculine/feminine spectrum, you can be both look like a male or female at the same time – its more of a fashion choice rather than sexual orientation. Someone who is androgynous may be gay, straight, bisexual, or asexual. While they often fall under the LGBTQ+ umbrella, the class can be adopted by anyone

Anselm Besigye seemingly has a girlfriend named Liz who often appears in family photos shared by his mother, Winnie Byanyima, on social media.

Anselm’s dreadlocks is something most of our musicians, including Bobi Wine and Bebe Cool, have adopted.

For the record, cross dressing is something not acceptable in my religion, and it's also a new concept in our African culture. I'm not judgy anymore about such stuff probably because I have interacted with a few of such people in Europe. So many celebrities in Europe are like that, but nobody in Africa wins votes when you're androgynous. People even judge your parents as " bad parents " when you're like that.

I have never met Anselm or his parents, but I think they’ve raised an intelligent man. His interview with Kyagulanyi aka Bobi Wine at Columbian University is something that probably exposed him intellectually to some people for the first time, and he sounded like he knows his stuff. The interview actually exposed Bobi as someone who isn’t knowledgeable enough.

Anselm rightly stated that good governance is a recent concept that propped up in the 1990s.

Bobi counteracted this by saying that good governance had always existed, which isn’t true. The term was mainly popularized by the World Bank (in their 1992 report) and the IMF.

Bobi went on a rampage unnecessarily explaining human rights and corruption, but good governance and human rights are two different things, but they are reliant on each other. Good governance provides rights, and peoples efforts and work provide the government the resources to do so.

Good governance provides people with the capability to follow their strengths, desires and needs as freely as possible, without hurting other people(something NUP supporters need to learn). I won’t claim the Chinese philosopher Lao-tzu had exactly this opinion, but he seems to have tried to advise emperors to go easy on the people, and interfere little. The idea of “individual rights” equating to “individual sovereignty” at that time in China may not have been well known if at al.

Overall, I thought the interaction was good for both Anselm and Bobi. It exposed the latter to intellectual debates and , hopefully, he will improve with time. I think he needs to stay in the USA a bit longer.

It also helped Ugandans to know that Anselm isn't carrying an empty head. He's definitely going to contribute to the intellectual discourse of our country if given a chance. His voice was audible enough and he seemed confident speaking in public, exactly like his parents. The apple never falls far from a tree, as they say.

Abbey .K. Semuwemba
"Men in authority will always think that criticism of their policies is dangerous. They will always equate their policies with patriotism, and find criticism subversive." - Henry Steele Commager 1902-98

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