David Kato
| David Kato Kisule | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
c. 1964 Nakawala, Mukono, Uganda |
| Died |
26 January 2011 (aged 46) Bukusa, Mukono, Uganda |
| Known for | LGBT rights activist |
David Kato Kisule (c. 1964 – 26 January 2011) was a Ugandan teacher and LGBT rights activist, considered a father of Uganda's gay rights movement and described as "Uganda's first openly gay man". He served as advocacy officer for Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG). Kato was murdered in 2011 allegedly by a male sex worker, shortly after winning a lawsuit against a magazine which had published his name and photograph identifying him as gay and calling for him to be executed.
Born to the Kisule clan in its ancestral village of Nakawala, Namataba Town Council, Mukono District, he received the name "Kato" because he was the younger of twins. He was educated at King's College Budo and Kyambogo University and taught at various schools including the Nile Vocational Institute in Njeru near Jinja; it was here that he became aware of his sexual orientation and was subsequently dismissed without any benefits in 1991. Later, he came out to his twin brother John Malumba Wasswa, before he left to teach for a few years in Johannesburg, South Africa during its transition from apartheid to multiracial democracy, becoming influenced by the end of the apartheid-era ban on sodomy and the growth of LGBT rights in the country. Coming back to Uganda in 1998, he decided to come out in public through a press conference; he was arrested and held in police custody for a week due to this action. He continued to maintain contact with pro-LGBT activists outside the country, with LGEP executive director Phumzile S. Mtetwa later citing an encounter with Kato at the 1999 ILGA World Conference.
When St Herman Nkoni Boys Primary School was founded in 2002 in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Masaka (Masaka District), Kato joined the faculty.
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