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Marriage and Divorce Bill calls for a national debate
KARORO OKURUT
A literary and socio-political analyst
The Marriage and Divorce Bill, due on the floor of Parliament next month has sent shock waves across the country, dividing Uganda almost equally between those for and those against.
After listening to four shows on this matter on Impact FM (98.5), I can feel the passion on either side of the divide, with many callers making interesting submissions, each credible in its own right.
Like most laws that touch on the social superstructure and affect the power relations within the family, this one was always going to cause as much mayhem as its predecessor, the Domestic Relations Bill. The Bill as it stands has several positives which inter alia include, cohabitation recognised with regard to distribution of property at separation, widow inheritance abolished, impotent men to be divorced, bride price not to be compulsory and same-sex marriage disallowed.
The spirit within which this Bill is originated is that for too long women have been oppressed by their male counterparts without any form of redress coming their way. Many women have cohabited with men for many years, sometimes stretching into decades in the hope that the man would sober up and take a step into holy matrimony only for the man to wake up one morning, get another woman, throw the first one out, usually with her children (four, five or six of them) and with no means of subsistence!
Women play a huge role in our society. They handle the very tough task of childbirth; then they handle the even more delicate one of parenting, making sure that the children grow into responsible people. It is the women who stay at home and watch the children and guide them in the right direction while the men are away at work.
But the absence of financial independence has made Uganda’s women much too vulnerable to the whims of men. So you have women and children being thrown out, wondering where to go and what to do. Meanwhile the man is happily starting a new life with a new girl.
This Bill seeks to do two things to address this. First that after five years of cohabitation the relationship is automatically upgraded to a marriage, with all the rights attendant thereto. In the same breath that would also solve the problem of couples who struggle with finances trying to get married, at a time when weddings have become so expensive that the average Ugandans cannot afford what amounts to a decent wedding.
Sections of the Christian community have come out guns blazing over this, saying that it is wrong and should be struck out of the Bill. The undeniable dilemma here is that whereas the Church has a strong point that cannot be faulted, the social reality is that we have millions of our women whose lives are being destroyed; women being held hostage because they are relying on the good graces of men, hoping they will do what is right.
History has proved that most men will do what is right only when it is to their private advantage. The second thing is that whether or not the cohabitation is upgraded into a marriage, women would be entitled to a decent piece of the pie when the cohabitation ceases.
Again this is reasonable because it would be a reversal of the sorry tale of many a woman who finds herself on the street with nothing after investing the better part of her life in a relationship she hoped would work out. The problem though is, you just could end up with some of our sharp young ladies who cohabit with Musoke with intent to get a piece of the pie in a few years, then move on to Tumuhimbise with the same outcome and then to Okiror, and then retire comfortably after creaming off a decent pile from each of them.
Then there is the bit about women trapped in marriages with impotent husbands having a right to divorce on that ground. Good idea, in as far as it helps those women who have to struggle with a very tricky situation that tempts them into adultery. They would have the liberty to divorce and move on. But when you consider the social and theological implications of this, they are quite staggering. Socially one would have to consider the effect of this on the children in cases where the impotence came in later, some distance into the marriage. How would you explain this to the children? And how about the effect on this on the man? How would he have to live with knowing that his wife has been taken by some other man or men just because he himself couldnt fulfil his marital obligations?
And from the theological viewpoint, would this not be a mockery of the vows you made to each other before God at the altar: for better for worse, in sickness and in health? Then let us consider the provision that a spouse shall be under no compulsion to provide sex to the partner and that forcing their partner into sex is an offence that carries both criminal and civil liabilities.
It is rather unusual for a woman to force a man into sex so the logical inference is that this provision is meant to cater for women who have been forced into sex even in the most unreasonable circumstances, resulting in contracting sexually transmitted diseases or complication arising from say, having sex too early after childbirth or during menstruation periods.
But one should look at the social consequences of such a provision, spouses suing each other over sex; paying fines and damages!! Then what happens to the marriage after that? Wouldn’t that marriage be over and done with?
And how do the children hear that their parents are in court over sex and that Mummy has won the case and Daddy is going to pay her sh5m or Daddy has been jailed for two years because he forced Mummy into sex? Disaster if you ask me!
All these various dilemmas show that there is a lot of work to be done before this Bill is presented to Parliament for debate. Once a law is passed, it is effectual and will only be repealed in special circumstances. That is why we must not take the serious contradictions within this Bill lightly. Everything it touches is for real and will change the direction of many a people. As a country, we ought to have an elaborate national debate on this Bill.
Let us go it slow. Let us reflect deeply on the social consequences of all these provisions so that when the Bill is passed into law, it becomes an enhancement mechanism of our social aspirations, not an inhibition.
You can also read the article online at: http://www.newvision.co.ug/detail.php?mainNewsCategoryId=8&newsCategoryId=20&newsId=699136
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