Call Me Kuchu is a must see documentary. Kuchu is a derogatory term used for homosexual in Uganda, and in Uganda, there is de facto and de jure discrimination against homosexuals. Call Me Kuchu focuses on what it is like to be gay and what it is like to be homophobic in Uganda.
Unlike documentaries about American LGBT stories, Call Me Kuchu focuses on the stories of homosexual and lesbian activists though it primarily focuses on David Kato, one of the first openly gay Ugandans who ran a LGBT non-profit and tirelessly fought discrimination in court and legislatures. If a viewer is inclined to dismiss the eyewitness stories of harassment, rape and physical abuse from the victims as overblown fantasies of persecution without basis in objective evidence such as medical or police reports, both the ending and the homophobes’ account of their own action will soon disabuse anyone with a modicum of rational thinking of that notion.
The homophobes are proudly and gleefully recorded on camera contradicting themselves: they are not calling for violence, but gay people should be hanged. There is a newspaper called the Rolling Stone that goes undercover to drag people out of the closet. If people get physically assaulted or killed as a result of their action, it totally doesn’t bother them because they are still trotting out the old chestnut that the US is now touting for transsexuals: they’re lurking in bathrooms to rape your kids. Protect the kids! Their eagerness to go undercover and attend as many social activities with gay people as possible makes you wonder if their enthusiasm is not a mixture of repression and self-loathing.
Call Me Kuchu also reflects the complicated role that Christianity is playing in this conflict. Only one voice crying out in the wilderness tries to create a safe place for these outsiders in their homeland, but the majority of Nigerian Christians depicted in the documentary are influenced by the legacy of colonialism and the Family Life Network to see gay people as an insidious anti-Biblical threat.
After seeing Call Me Kuchu, I recalled Matthew 7: 22-23, “Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!'”