How to save the Marriage and Divorce Bill

By Oscar Okech Kanyangareng                                                                                 

The Marriage and Divorce Bill, 2009 has received a barrage of bashing from various sections of the public, to being disowned by the Government, let alone being denied by the former Justice Minister Proff. Khidu Makubuya, who signed it.

From the foregoing, this Bill is now hanging by a thread and is doomed unless it gets emergency rescue. Now that Parliament has postponed debating it for three months to allow for more consultations, that gives breathing space to revisit and redeem the Bill.

Some errors along the way have damaged its image, content and acceptability.

The consultation methodology

Foremost, given  the controversial history of similar bills that were never passed, up to its predecessor, the Domestic Relations Bill 2005, a lot of ground work should have been done exhaustively sensitise the public and various leaders about this new version.

Instead, the cart was put before the horse and when the Bill failed to gain consensus in Parliament, it was thrown to the community for consultations, purportedly to build consensus. Instead, it backfired because people’s minds had already been prejudiced by earlier media reports that focused only on the news worthy clauses of the Bill. During Easter, the clergy just nailed it on the cross.

The contents of the Bill aside, one of the reasons for its hostile reception in the communities was because of the methodology used. These were general public meetings and the dominant voices were those of the men. As such, the voices of women were stifled. Yet women will not speak freely in front of men, let alone their husbands, on controversial gender issues.

Best practice requires that in such situations, one way is for participants to be divided into small discussion groups-even women only groups. Then each group will present one joint position that would be debated with other groups in a general meeting. This should have been done by community development officers and NGOs, with the MPs consultations being only to crown it up.

The face of the Bill

Some critics of the Bill say its proponents are women with unstable marriages. To counter that, I think the women activists fronted former Ethics minister Miria Matembe, a woman with a stable marriage, to speak for the Bill and she emerged as the most vocal face of Bill. Problem is, given her fundamentalist feminist stand, her messages didn’t appeal to most men. They just took her messages for granted.   

Lead champions of the Bill should be people who are not only of integrity, and respected but also have their messages easily acceptable to the target audience. Besides Matembe, women activists should have made other married women with the above qualities, like the First Lady Janet Museveni, to champion the Bill in order for it to gain acceptability.

After that, get equally respected male figures and convince them to promote the Bill among men. Like Dr. Martin Aliker, Proff. Edward Rugumayo, Proff. Apollo Nsimbambi etc.

Then bring the media on board. Sensitise them so that they not only understand the Bill to avoid sensational reporting, but also cover the events involving the above people, more positively.

Attacking the President and MPs.

The other blunder the women activists made was to start bashing the President and Parliament.

Nabusayi (New Vision of April 4) says the controversial clauses in the Bill that had been removed from its predecessor, the DRB have been brought back. But we know the Bill was drafted by Ministry of Justice, with input from women activists and brought to MPs. Therefore, blaming MPs for changing the Bill falls flat on its face and instead, you alienate MPs from the Bill.

Then by Sheila Kawamara in one of the dailies asked why President Museveni disowned the Bill yet it was approved by cabinet. And says Museveni has admitted sharing some of his property with his wife and daughters yet can’t support the Bill, saying ‘The President should be called to order’. This is a harmless threat that waters down your arguments and will be ignored with all the other good things you had said.

Whats your constituency?

A common question civil society activists always face from the government is ‘who appointed you to speak for the poor, women, etc? We are elected. We have the people’s mandate etc’. Instead of the women activists attacking the President and MPs, they should use persuasive evidence-based arguments. Then make the non-passing of the Bill a politically risky venture for the leaders by gaining support among the masses.

Currently, the Bill’s image has been made to look like it is for a handful of urbanised elite working women activists who write nice English in newspapers. Go to the voters. Bring, the rural women on board with demos, petitions, rallies, personal testimonies etc. Demonstrate your support base and mandate.

Trade offs.

The Bill is generally good apart from the controversial four out of 178 clauses. Its proponents should, therefore, amend these clauses on bride price, marital rape, cohabitation and property sharing to accommodate dissenting views, so that we don’t throw away the baby with the bath water. Ensuring we still adhere to internationally accepted human rights standards, but tailored to our context.
 
Then hopefully, we shall have the Bill passed. And this is the time, since 1964.

The writer is the Executive Director-Pastoralism & Poverty Frontiers & a former member of the  Domestic Relations Bill (DRB)-2005 Coalition, a CSO working group.