Domestic violence a monster taking toll on human formation

Domestic violence a monster taking toll on human formation

By Nelson Kiva

The December 30, 2023, night reshaped the family of Naboth Kaahwa, 42 and his wife, Suzan Mukonyezi, 28, of Buhimba East Cell in Buhimba town council, Kikuube district.

It was a night that set a new order in the family and deprived their five children of the joint parenthood benefits.

This followed a domestic brawl which left both Kaahwa and Mukonyezi nursing injuries.

Kaahwa alleged that on the fateful night, Mukonyezi clobbered him with a heavy log with the intention of killing him before he fought back in retaliation.

“She had aimed at hitting my forehead where there is the brain, but God was on my side. I dodged it a bit and it landed on one side of my eye. Despite the serious wound I sustained, I am lucky the medics have told me that my eye is safe,” Kaahwa says as he struggles to open his eye and see.

According to the village political authorities, the misunderstanding between the two allegedly emanated from Kaahwa refusing his wife to remove the boundary sign that separates their plot of land from that of the neighbours.”

“When I tried to stop her, she charged towards me with a heavy stick to finish me off but lucky enough I survived. I have dragged her to LC and they have referred me to the Police. This woman has made me suffer too much,” Kaahwa told the New Vision Online in the wake of the incident.

Mukonyezi not only accused Kaahwa of having another wife, but also of neglecting the family.

“He only returns here to sell plots of land, he does not provide for the family, and he is aggressive, but now it is time to part ways,” Mukonyezi said.

However, when the New Vision Online followed the family since then, it discovered that while Mukonyezi has since returned to their family house together with the children, after they had initially been sent away, Kaahwa abandoned the home and moved to Hoima city where he seems to have moved on with yet another mistress.

“When he chased us away from home, I rented a bedsit and stayed there for a month together with children in the neighborhood. Since I couldn’t manage rent, I constructed a makeshift where we were staying with my children. However following the intervention of Compassion International, which caters for one of my children, the Kikuube probation office intervened, and we returned to the house. But my husband has since left the home and I hear that he has since married another woman in town,” Mukonyezi said.

When contacted, Kaahwa did not have much to say insisting that he is now free of the stress of a quarrelsome wife.

“Do not bother me with that anymore I have since moved on from the stress of that quarrelsome woman. I have since forgiven my children who would conspire with my wife to torment me,” he said.

According to the advocates, cases such as the one of Kaahwa and Mukonyezi, among others, are a wake-up call to both state and non-state actors if Uganda is to attain the target of ending domestic violence by 2030.

In 1993, Uganda joined the rest of the world in declaring to eliminate violence against women.

The UN General Assembly resolution recognised that violence against women was a big obstacle against development and peace and therefore all countries agreed to take concrete measures against it.

Baptist Whisky Olanyah, an anti-GBV activist in northern Uganda, implores all Ugandans to take it upon themselves as to start sensitising people to change community attitudes, norms, and behaviors around gender violence.

Reuben Muhabuzi, a chief executive officer at Men’s Forum Against Domestic Violence, fears that both men and women who ignore being helped because they are afraid of embarrassment risk their mental health and promote GBV because they accept to live in an emotionally unstable homestead.

“Those are the men and women you constantly find in bars consuming a lot of alcohol, doing drugs and are unstable because they are being tortured silently. At home, some are denied food. You are not supposed to die just because you are a man,” Muhabuzi said.

According to the new global HIV/AIDS updated report by UNAIDS released on July 27, 2024, highlights great progress in the fight against HIV/AIDS in Sub-Sahara Africa.

Despite the decrease, the report highlights that the incidence of HIV among adolescent girls and young women aged 15–24 years is extraordinarily high in parts of 

Sub-Saharan Africa

The report attributes it to the prevention programmes and efforts to reduce gender inequalities, violence against women and harmful gender norms failing to have a big impact.

According to the 2024 Uganda HIV and AIDS Fact-sheet, while domestic violence cases reduced, crimes such as defilement increased and undermined efforts to fight HIV/AIDS.

According to the state minister for gender and culture affairs, Peace Mutuuzo, over 5,766 men in 2023 reported cases to various gender-based violence shelters of the ministry compared to 3,728 in 2022.

She added that since the shelters were established, “about 46,481 survivors have sought support in the 23 GBV shelters and of which 40,714 were female and 5,766 were males and 443 were persons with disabilities”.

Mutuuzo was however certain that the number of men being violated was potentially more than that reported because they hold back on speaking out.

“Men need to report when they are violated by women so that we can get the women and put them in our facilities for counselling. The men can also take refuge in our homes if the situation is bad at home,” she added.

According to the Police, domestic violence was one of the outstanding crimes in 2023. The crime, according to Police, also overwhelmed many men into crying out for help.

Police statistics indicated that a total of 17,698 cases of domestic violence were reported to Police in 2022 compared to 17,533 cases reported in 2021. This provided a 0.94% increase in the cases reported in the period under study.