Reading across artistic, political, and legal expressions of LGBT activism in and from Uganda reveals an aesthetics of silence. These moments of silence serve as a strategy of deferral that enables Ugandans on both sides of the Anti-Homosexuality Bill controversy to refuse humanitarian savior narratives, affirm the legitimacy of the postcolonial state, and point the way toward an East African grammar of justice.

In Tanzania, a tension exists between the persistence of the “primi-tive” and “erotic” stereotype of African performance and the emergent means of representing culture and gender on the dance stage. This tension leads to a complex process of inventing, counterinventing, and reinventing tradition.