Interrogating transnational documentary film evidence on Uganda’s homophobia

Abstract

The over conspicuousness of Uganda’s homophobia in international media of the twenty-first century is highly commendable for foregrounding the severe abuse of human rights of homosexuals in Uganda. Although this medium establishes its space as an agent of human rights activism and as a record of what happened to homosexuals in Uganda, it is important to interrogate the process involved in producing it, as well as what this mediated index forecloses as it signifies the severe abuse of human rights of homosexuals in Uganda. Focusing on three filmic documentaries on Uganda’s homophobia, I argue this media hypervisibility is a global phenomenon – a transnational media collective implicated in rebranding and networking historical transnational processes, tropes and ideologies that have not only produced conditions necessary for homophobia to thrive in Uganda, but also established Uganda’s anti-homosexuality violence as the new signature of Africa’s ‘Darkness’.