Pastor Robert Kayanja would be hard-pressed to remember the number of times his name has been mentioned in sodomy allegations. That is simply because they are too many to count.

The sodomy allegations against the head of the Miracle Centre Church in Kampala started way back in 2009. Two prominent pastors—Martin Ssempa and Solomon Male—along with several young men were behind the allegations. 

However, in May of the same year, the police called a news conference at Kibuli and told reporters Pastor Kayanja had no case to answer.

“We have been carrying out investigations following allegations of sodomy against Pastor Robert Kayanja,” said Edward Ochom, then director of the Criminal Investigations and Intelligence Department (CIID). 

“The allegations were grave because they involved the church, but the revelations were unbelievable. Pastor Kayanja has no case because all six complainants who reported to the police have retracted their complaints.”

That should have put to rest the allegations and any lingering doubts that the Pastor had not done what he was being accused of. 

But the allegations have swirled for more than 15 years. Even after the police cleared Pastor Kayanja, Pastor Male continued to give interviews, many of which made their way to social media platforms, in which he denigrated the pastor and insisted that the sodomy allegations were true.

Last October, Pastor Kayanja, 62, appeared in Mengo Court to testify against nine young men who alleged he sodomised them. But the pastor, a married man with adult children, says the young men made the sodomy allegations after he fired them upon receiving reports of theft at a church farm in Kiryandongo where he employed them.

In cases like this one, it is hard to tell who is telling the truth. It is not inconceivable that the nine men can gang up against the pastor and tarnish his name. But Ugandans are also wondering why the pastor’s name is never far away from the sodomy headlines.

Uganda has dozens of pastors, all of whom work with young men. Some of those pastors have been linked to all kinds of wrongdoing, including financial impropriety and raping women when the pastors are infected with HIV/AIDs. 

In February 2019, for example, the New Vision carried a story of a woman who said Pastor Augustine Yiga raped and made her pregnant and infected her with HIV/AIDs. And in April 2023, Daily Monitor reported that Pastor Dennis Ssenyonga of God Holy Ministry International was facing charges of defrauding a US couple of shs500m.

So why is Pastor Kayanja’s name not mentioned in scandals such as the ones cited here but is on many people’s lips when it comes to sodomy? Why Pastor Kayanja and not Pastor Bugingo or Pastor Kyazze? It is a pertinent question to ask, and one people will always ask, although it does not mean the allegations made against the pastor are true. 

Ugandans are watching the case closely. Pastor Kayanja’s best defence is not the fact that he is a heterosexual man and is happily married. That is not entirely convincing. After all, Ted Haggard, once a leading evangelical pastor married to a woman, like Pastor Kayanja, paid a gay prostitute for sex.

What is convincing is for Pastor Kayanja to make a complete nonsense of the evidence adduced by the prosecution by demonstrating it cannot stand up to close scrutiny. If Pastor Kayanja has never touched any of the nine men sexually and merely employed them and fired them over wrongdoing, how on earth will they get incriminating evidence?