Recently, the Anglican diocese of Mukono ordered teachers in Church of Uganda-founded schools to marry or lose their jobs. Many of these schools are government-aided. Can the Church freely terminate the teachers’ services? Bob Kisiki writes...

DISAN Mbalule (not real name), a middle-aged teacher at a renowned secondary school in Mukono district, has lived with his woman long enough to have three children with her. The Church, however, does not recognise them as marrieds.

Mbalule is, unfortunately, not ready to take his wife to church for a formal wedding, because he is not sure he wants to become her legal husband. He, however, needs the job; and therein lies his dilemma.

The policy, the Mukono Diocesan Secretary explained, touches teachers who are cohabiting and those of loose or questionable character. “Those who are dating are not part of it,” the Rev. Moses Banja said.

“There are also teachers who just cause pregnancies, but don’t have any plans to marry. The Church cannot tolerate these ones,” Banja says.

He also said if someone is done with the introduction, but is not yet thinking of the wedding, “you are made to write a commitment that you will go to church or the Mosque to formalise the relationship. Some of them tell us they do not have the money to organise a wedding. Every year, we have mass weddings to cater for them,” he says.

Banja says some teachers have sexual relationships with pupils, because they have no one to limit them.

Alice Nankya, another teacher in a church-founded school in the diocese, says people should be encouraged, not forced to marry. “Some people may not afford it; while some live with people they don’t want to wed,” Nankya says, before adding: “But they should be forced to marry the women, so that they stop playing with us.”

But a cohabiting teacher who preferred anonymity says: “Sometimes the women put you in a fix,” he says, and explains how he came to live with an unwed woman. “She came to visit one Friday. She did not leave until Monday morning. When she visited again, she was vomitting. When the children (twins) came, I couldn’t dump her,” he says. He says with time, they decided that renting two places was too costly, so she moved in. “Unfortunately, we have no money to legalise the marriage. We have two other children!”

So does the existence of such teachers on the staff bother students and their parents?

Sylvia Asaba, an S.5 student of Bishops SS Mukono, says it does not. “My aim is to study, not to mind who teaches me. I take care of myself.” This is in agreement with her teacher, Susan Anyango’s view that “it does not really make a difference, because the ring does not control a person. A loose person will be loose, wedded or not.” Anyango says as a parent, she would instead prepare her daughters at home, to stand in the face of temptation.

Rebecca Kitiibwa, however, thinks differently. A parent of two young girls, Kitiibwa says when an uncommitted man looks at a blooming girl, he is likely to get ideas. “This is dangerous. They are dangerous, but the girls can be given life skills on how to survive in the world of men,” Kitiibwa argues.

Mukono Diocese is not the first to initiate the policy. West Ankole Diocese started the same policy last year, insisting that cohabiting teachers in church-founded schools either marry or go work elsewhere. “Our approach is pastoral, not military,” the Rev. Rutaraka, the Diocesan Secretary, explains. He says marriage involves money, so they are implementing the policy gradually.

West Ankole Bishop, the Rev. Yonak Katoneene, says: “We cannot raise morally upright children with teachers whose lives are not exemplary. They keep our children for nine months in a year. That is too much influence.” He says teachers who are not responding are called individually and spoken to.

But the education ministry spokesperson, Aggrey Kibenge, is cautious in his consideration of the policy. “Stakeholders had better just encourage these people to marry, but not threaten with job loss.”

Kibenge says the cause is good, but the manner in which it is being put across “could rub the teachers the wrong way. They could seek legal redress.”

The ministry policy, Kibenge says, is contained in the teachers’ terms and conditions of service. “They are employees of districts (for primary schools) or the Education Service Commi-ssion (for secondary schools); not the founding bodies. If you’re to terminate, you must first make a case to the employing authority; and be ready to pay terminal benefits,” Kibenge cautions.

He advises that the church should instead start a campaign with the affected teachers, to iron out why they are cohabiting, “else, they are treading on dangerous ground,” he says.

The Catholic Church, too, has no place for cohabiting teachers, the Uganda Martyrs’ SS Namugongo headteacher, Dr. John Muyingo, says. “No trial and error in the Church’s schools,” Muyingo says, adding that cohabitation and promiscuity are punishable by termination of service.

“But people are given time. We don’t follow the rule to the letter, because the Church is a parent,” Muyingo says.

Hajat Aisha Lubega, the headteacher of Islam-based Nabisunsa Girls’ School, says Islam does not have such a policy yet, but the Uganda Muslim Education Association is in the process of discussing it.

The question is: who has the final word in church-founded, government-aided schools? “The schools apply to the Government to have the help. They receive capitation grants of about sh100,000 per term, and sh4,000 per child a term,” Kibenge says. The Government also provides resources for development (capital development fund); like the Schools Facilities Grant, which caters for construction of teachers’ houses and classrooms.

This, Kibenge explains, does not put either party above the other. “It is a partnership the two parties enter into; and the same spirit of partnership should prevail when dealing with termination of teachers’ services.” He says since the Government hires the teachers, it has a stake in their employment. “We also appoint the School Management Committees and Boards of Governors, where the founding bodies are represented,” Kibenge says, adding that the fora should be used to address such issues.

However, Katoneene, who is also the chairperson of the Uganda Joint Christian Council Education Committee, says although the Church and the government are in a partnership, the fact is that the Church owns the schools.

“We had a vision and a purpose when we started the schools. We want those purposes fulfilled,” Katoneene said, adding: “We are trying to assert our rightful position as owners. We are talking to the Ministry of Education and Sports.”