By Charles Birungi
The election of President Donald J Trump to a stunning second non-consecutive term in the US elections of November 2024 defied logic and belief, sending earth-shattering political shock waves across both aisles of the political spectrum in the world generally.
The incumbent Biden administration had applied everything possible out of their political toolkit to eliminate Trump politically – some will even argue to eliminate his being altogether – and failed spectacularly. The American electorate, this time wide awake from years of gaslighting by the democratic party, could clearly sieve through the devious machinations directed at Trump, and came out swinging wildly to make the loudest political statement in multiple generations.
Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described Trump’s emphatic win as “history’s greatest political comeback,” a sentiment that was shared across most of the globe. Long tired and exceedingly suffocated by the Western world’s petulant wars of domination, cultural dominance efforts, and skewed global agendas, the world welcomed the outcome of the US election with a massive collective sigh of relief. Except if you lived in Ottawa, Canada, or London in the United Kingdom, or the rest of the US satellites in the North Atlantic alliance-cum-European Union.
Exhibiting unbelievable stamina for a 78-year-old, President Donald Trump campaigned with fury and without fear, articulately resonating with voter concerns on issues such as inflation, immigration, DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion), sexuality (LGBTQI), and contrarian foreign policy positions. Some of these issues centre around the relatively new and elite woke culture ideology, which the western world has sought to superimpose on most of their own people (many resent it) and on to the rest of the world.
Thus, wokeism is the social and cultural movement that has sought to promote social justice mechanisms and activism on contending subjects such as race, gender, sexuality, religion, and other forms of perceived oppression. This remains a subject of much debate around the world, but to which US citizens have pronounced themselves so unequivocally as per the aforementioned election outcome.
Enter DOGE – Department of Government Efficiency
True to his word during the winding campaign trail, and upon assuming office again on January 20th, President Trump delivered a lightening pace of government reforms through a barrage of executive actions, including the establishment of Doge led by billionaire businessman and the world’s wealthiest, Mr. Elon Musk. Doge’s mandate is to eliminate wasteful and fraudulent federal spending while maintaining government regulations to the bare minimum.
One of the earliest victims of Doge is the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), which found its hitherto clandestine global operations in Trump’s cross hairs, unmasked to the core for all to see. The USAID revelations, and the President’s one minded determination to align every Dollar to his America First policy agenda will have reverberating ramifications around the world for a long time to come.
In Uganda, it was revealed by Doge, that among other USAID programmes in the country, a whopping $5.5 million (UGX 20.1 billion) was being spent on the promotion of LGBTQI activities in the country annually. Uganda is a popularly conservative country, and has enacted laws that prohibit LGBTQI activities, providing deterrent punishment for offenders through the Anti-Homosexuality Act of 2023 (AHA).
The Ugandan constitutional court in April 2024 unanimously held that the AHA complied with the provisions of the Ugandan Constitution, thereby affirming its validity and legitimacy. The US and other western development partners responded by suspending Uganda from the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) trade deal, imposed travel sanctions on senior government officials, and applied a raft of other penalties.
As it turns out, the US government and by extension its allies did not only stop at ostracising and sanctioning Uganda for its sovereign and legitimate domestic policy on social relations, but it also sought to actively undermine it through its deceptive foreign aid agency operating in the country. Under normal international law, this is criminal and tantamount to illegal interference in another country’s lawful domestic affairs. No country in the world welcomes unwanted intrusion in its internal affairs, and most least by the same countries who seek to promote it (internal interference). This unprincipled approach to international state relations is utterly deplorable and must be condemned.
USAID, which in some cases has also funded critical health programmes around the world such as the management of the HIV/AIDS scourge, operates through a system of surrogate domestic agencies and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) to propagate its more sinister programmes. In the case of Uganda, some nascent organisations immediately come to the fore: the likes of Agora Discourse recently, Chapter Four Uganda, the Legal Aid Project, and so on.
Chapter Four Uganda for instance, which claims to be an “independent not-for profit non-partisan organization dedicated to the protection of civil liberties and promotion of human rights” is all but the lofty self-descriptions. Its top management leadership team headed by flamboyant city lawyer Nicholas Opiyo have all amassed astronomical wealth in a short time since the founding of the organisation in 2013. The organisation also routinely engages in political discourse against the ruling National Resistance Movement party government while allying itself to opposition political party causes, including extending support to mass insurrectionists thereby rendering its claims of political impartiality redundant.
Following the Doge lead in America, inside sources at Chapter Four suggest that the organisation received up to $2.5 million of USAID annual funding for LGBTQI activities in Uganda (or UGX 9.2 billion), accounting for over 45% of the total outlay. In addition, the organisation’s leaders have benefitted from lucrative academic scholarships in top western universities, received human rights accolades, and trotted around the globe as distinguished scholars and activists, further enhancing their repertoire of global prominence.
These accomplishments were somewhat made much easier under Barrack Obama and Joe Biden’s globalist agendas, but which President Trump is relishing every moment to disrupt, while resetting the global course under the refreshingly “common sense revolution” being championed by the reenergised Republican Party.
Consequently, prominent CIA and neocon agents all over the world, including well known ones in Uganda, are now smelling the coffee. They desperately scramble, to reposition themselves favourably considering the decisive change of guard in Washington. For the case of Nicholas Opiyo at Chapter Four in Uganda, the countdown is on. Last week, he decided to step down from the top-leadership of the lucrative human rights organisation he helped found more than 10 years ago. Will this move help reinvent its purpose and structure, and keep the money flowing in its bottomless coffers? Time will tell.
Secondly, Mr. Opiyo who has for the past 10 years prided himself as a He/Him in conformity with western woke policies and funders demands, now finds himself at crossroads, considering only two genders are now officially recognised in the US: Male and Female. It might be suggestive that while on one of his many sabbaticals in the US and Europe, Mr. Opiyo was routinely confused for a She/Her, thereby necessitating his constant clarification that he was in fact a He/Him.
Will the rest of the world, especially European satellites, quickly follow the US example? And what does this mean for the rest of us?
For all the AHA policies and for which Uganda and President Yoweri Museveni have been viciously condemned and sanctioned over the last decade, the new shift in Washington is sweet music and provides the much-needed vindication. After all, it is succinctly clear that the rules-based international order can be upended and varies according to who is resident at the White House in Washington DC, United States, the most powerful seat of government of our times.
The lesson for small and weak countries like ours in Africa is to continue to build strength and unity through regional integration mechanisms, strengthen loyalty and pride in our African heritage, and in effect inculcate in our people the unwavering belief in their ability to forge and cultivate their own enduring destiny.
