Worry as marriage turns into torture, despair for women

Statistics from the police and non-governmental organisations show that families are riddled with misery and suffering. Many marriage breakups are being registered and this disorder is said to largely engineered by husbands. Sitting on a veranda of a rented semi-permanent structure built with mud in Lugazi, Kakoba Division, Mbarara District, Ms Annah Kamazima, 36, touches her left cheek thoughtfully in an obvious uncomfortable state.

She narrates that she was constantly battered and later abandoned by her husband in 2003. This happened when she was pregnant, a thing she says was why she bore a physically-impaired baby.

Beaten over disability
“My husband was always beating me. When I gave birth to a physically impaired child, he mistreated me, claiming that the cause for the disability of the child was to do with my parents,” Ms Kamazima, who now stays on her own with the nine-year-old boy, says. “He said I had to leave; he mistreated me in all ways, including assaulting me and my child. He was not providing for us and worst of all, he married another wife.”

After being forced out of the home she moved up and down in hospitals and churches but the child’s condition never changed. She didn’t have parents and in 2009, she relocated from Isingiro District to Mbarara Town where she is currently vending maize and doing odd jobs to make ends meet.

Mr Emmanuel Ochieng, the legal officer with MIFUMI (a women’s rights organisation), says domestic violence has become rampant. Mr Ochieng says it is manifested through domestic assault, quarrelling and fighting for property, failure to provide for the family, defilement, rape and child neglect and chasing away wives with children.

Ms Annet Kansiime, 46, was chased from her matrimonial home and denied property which she had acquired jointly with her husband. She reported the case to police but it was never handled until March when MIFUMI intervened. “We jointly purchased land with my husband. In 2006, he said he was going to sell the land and I refused because it belonged to both of us. He insisted and even threatened to harm me so I had to run away,” Ms Kansiime, who was born in Isingiro District but now lives in Rwampara, Mbarara, says.

Police fails to handle
“I reported to police but could not go back before the issue was not solved. So I kept staying in different places sometimes including at my relatives place.” “I had been in this state since 2006 until MIFUMI intervened. They had a chat with my husband and other people in the community. We agreed to share the remaining small land since he had divided it into small bits and sold the biggest percentage already,” she says.

Mr Ochieng notes that domestic violence is increasing in western Uganda mainly because of infidelity. “These people usually come with problems such as child neglect, property-related violence but after you have interacted with them, you find that infidelity is the root cause. The man is selling land to chase away his wife because he has got another one,” says Mr Ochieng.

MIFUMI, in collaboration with Mbarara District authorities, put up temporary shelter near the district headquarters where some of the victims are hosted until their problems are handled and they are ready to get back to their families, if possible.

It has beds and victims are provided with food, beddings, soap and water. “We put up this place to provide shelter for those who are homeless until we resettle them. For example, there is a lady who, since 2006, has been homeless because the husband chased her from a home that they developed together and had nowhere to stay,” Mr Ochieng says.

“Domestic violence is increasing and years to come, it will be worse because people today don’t get married out of love, but with intentions of aquiring property and riches. They know after sometime, they ask for divorce and share property,” says Mr Henry Mushabe, the community development officer and acting probation officer Mbarara Municipal Council.

Ms Jolly Mugisha, the coordinator Mbarara Women Development Association, notes that there is high level of intolerance among families.
She says increase in domestic violence is also partly due to women activism that has challenged the traditional male dominance of all activities.
“With activism, women have come to know their rights yet some men still believe women should be submissive to them,” she says.

Ms Mugisha notes that five to 10 cases of domestic violence are registered at her NGO every month, most of them involving wife battering in relation to drunkardness and extramarital relationships.

“They are several players in fighting or addressing issues related to domestic violence like police and civil society organisations now if we only receive five to 10 cases a month what if other players brought in their data, yet in most of the cases are unreported,” she says.

She adds some of the cases are very horrible. “Imagine someone gets a machete, heats it on fire and burns private parts of a woman, it’s horrible,” says Ms Mugisha.

Since domestic violence is not a new phenomenon and is yet to end, Ms Mugisha advocates for tougher laws against it. She says communities should be sensitised that domestic violence is criminal and punishable.

“In developed countries, you cannot beat your child when neighbours are watching. In no minute, police are at your door step and you are arrested. There, communities are concerned and this should be the case with our communities here,” she says.

Appeal to government
She further calls on the government to empower law enforcement officers and agencies with adequate logistics and finance to fight the vice. “Imagine someone is battered, has nowhere to sleep and reports to police, who tell him or her that they have no fuel to go and arrest the perpetrator,” she notes.

Ms Polly Namaye, the Rwizi region police spokesperson, says sometimes domestic violence gets to grievous harm and assault or rape making it a capital offence.

“Domestic violence sometimes goes as far as bodily harm or even rape which makes it a capital offence. The good thing is people these days are enlightened; they come and report to us, mostly the women,” says Ms Namaye. She calls upon victims of such circumstances to always report at their small police posts where the mother station picks up the cases.

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