JULIET Victor Mukasa is a lesbian and an activist for gay rights and prefers to be direct about her beliefs. 

As we the set up the time for the interview she said: “I would appreciate it if you just spoke directly about the subject.” 

Dressed in a blue shirt, beige sweater, black trousers and neat brown leather patent shoes, her hair is neat and close cropped. As she lights a cigarette calmly, and one notices her clean short nails and wrist bands. She also prefers to be called Victor, not Juliet. 

Born in Uganda in 1975, she grew up in a family of 26 children.  She is the 15th child and had a comfortable upbringing living with both her parents.  Theirs was a staunch Catholic family even though her father was polygamous. She is the first born child of her mother and has two sisters.  

Victor does not see anything unusual about her sexual orientation and as she put it: “It did not suddenly emerge in one day, not did I ‘discover’ that I am lesbian,” she says. 

“I never thought about my gender identity as I was growing up,” she explains. “I always knew what I wanted. I liked cars, guns and the games boys played. I also liked boys’ clothes; sometimes I’d wear my brothers’ clothes if my parents insisted on buying me dresses.” 

Her parents raised her as a girl but at some point her mother got used to her preference for male things. “Eventually she even started buying me shorts for my birthday and such things which she knew would make me happy,” says Victor.

Her father, however, strictly wanted her to be a woman. He would beat her up for dressing and behaving like a boy. Luckily, he did not see her much of the time as he would come home late. In her young years, she spent most of her time at boarding school and during school holidays she played football with the boys.  

Victor is proud to having been a top student at school. After secondary school she studied banking at the Uganda Institute of Bankers. “I am very proud of my performance at school,” she confides. “However, I feel sad today because I am paying for who I am due to discrimination.”  

Some of her former schoolmates are presently Members of Parliament and top executives, while she cannot hold down a job because of the social stigma surrounding her sexual orientation.    

Juliet believes that she is transgender by nature and lesbian by nature: “I didn’t take up any new life style on the spur of the moment,” she says, “I have always been like this.”  

She recalls her fear in her adolescent years when she found herself being attracted to other girls:  “I was so afraid, I even went and told my mother about it and we prayed for so long to get rid of the ‘demon’ inside of me. I really fought hard against those feelings.”  

Her mother was very supportive of her up to the time of her death. It took her four years to eventually get involved with a woman after this realisation. For Victor, this struggle within her shows that she did not simply choose to be a lesbian as many people think it happens.  

In her opinion, being gay is not a choice one makes: “No one wants rejection, no one wants to be ridiculed, and no one wants to lose a job or their houses because of who they are. If it was a choice, would we really subject ourselves to this kind of suffering?” she asks.  

She also decries the myth going round that gays and lesbians are creations of the West. She cites pre-colonial societies such as the Baganda and others in Nigeria and Tanzania which did not frown upon same sex relationships.

“Homosexuality is very African,” she avers.

Her decision to live outside the closet in Uganda was not an easy one to make. Her family, with the exception of her mother, rejected her when she told them of her sexual orientation.

“They disregarded me and lost pride in me. My family did not want to associate with me much anymore.”  

They asked her to stop using the family name as it embarrassed them. The Ugandan government opposed her activism for gay rights and the local police raided her house. She is now suing for the violation of her rights.

When she walks on the streets in Uganda, people recognise her instantly and insult her. On more than one occasion she has been evicted by her landlords on finding out that she is a lesbian. Some restaurants in Kampala have also forbidden her from patronising them.  

Wouldn’t it be easier to live a closeted life?

She shakes her head. “I can’t lie about who I am. I believe in having my own freedom and the right to be me. I’d rather die struggling for who I am than live a different life.”   

She has been unable to get a job despite her impressive credentials.

“I cannot get a job because I do not look like the average female. Employers do not understand why my name is Juliet and yet I do not look, act, or talk like a woman.”  

Other gays in her country and in East Africa have undergone the same treatment. Some gay men are beaten up to behave like men, look like men and act like men, even if they feel they are women inside.

Her friends were recently arrested by police in Kisumu and stripped naked for the policemen to ascertain their sex. She doesn’t believe she has to explain and justify why she does not fit into other people’s idea of what a woman or a man should be.

Her role models in life are Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela as they fought for other people’s freedom and she feels inspired to do the same. Victor’s partner is also a source of inspiration in her life. She is supportive of her work and together they hope to do a lot more to liberate gays in Africa.

Victor is a staunch believer in God; she confides that she has a special relationship with God even though she does not classify herself as either a Pentecostal or Catholic anymore.  

So what is the future of the gay movement in Africa? She laughs and looks straight on, her jaw set: “I see liberation. Already it is improving because previously people used to die for saying they were gay, but today people can say it with a lot more freedom. I want to die enjoying my sexuality and orientation and no one has power over me and my body.”

 In the next five years she hopes to have a family. She does not intend to give birth but wants children. She also hopes to open a home for destitute lesbians and transgender women “because they suffer the most in Africa. I have gone through a lot and I don’t want others to go through all that”.