By Alice Emasu
16 December 2003
Kampala — FLORENCE Nyayuk, 42 and Solomon Oboth, 66 tell their love story with confidence and excitement. Oboth went to jail two years ago for Nyayuk, then his new catch.
Oboth, a widower with 15 children opted to wed Nyayuk, who was formerly married and divorced. But when their first wedding announcements were made in Church, Nyayuk’s former husband had Oboth arrested and jailed.
Nyayuk was customarily married. Oboth spent three nights in jail and was released on condition that he refunded a cow and two goats, which the claimant had paid to Nyayuk’s parents as bride price. Oboth and Nyayuk’s wedding was instantly stopped pending refund of the bride price.
“My arrest took me by surprise. Neither Nyayuk nor her parents had told me she had been married and that the bride price was not refunded after divorce,” says Oboth, a peasant.
“I felt so devastated, especially after the law enforcement authorities threatened to re-arrest me on failure to raise the bride price on the agreed date,” he adds.
He says he loved Nyayuk but had started thinking of dropping her for fear of being re-arrested.
Nyayuk says she felt like committing suicide due to frustration from her marriage. “I was so disappointed with my former husband. I felt like it would be better if I died.”
Nyayuk divorced after six years of suffering domestic violence. Her former husband, she says used to batter her to the extent that if she ran to her parents for help, he would beat up all of them.
She says although her parents accepted her back, they encouraged her to find another husband to refund the previous bride price since they were unable to do so.
Today however, there is cause to smile for the couple. When Mifumi, a Tororo- based Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO) in eastern Uganda heard about Oboth’s case, they intervened through lobbying and sensitising the local communities and law enforcers against the commercialisation and refund of bride price. Oboth was then set free.
Mifumi’s domestic violence health counsellor in Kirewa sub-county Mary Asili says the couple is free to proceed with their wedding arrangements.
Asili says Oboth and Nyayuk are some of the few villagers who have benefited from the Mifumi 2001 referendum campaigns launched in the district.
She says although there is still resistance from most communities, Mifumi is working with bride price stakeholders at all levels to ensure that bride price is not used to exploit poor people, particularly the women.
With financial support mainly from the Comic Relief and the German Technical Corporation, Mifumi has taken the bride price campaign up to international levels.
The organisation has won a five-year contract to campaign against the commercialisation and refund of bride price or dowry in Africa, following its bride price campaigns.
Mifumi will operate in nine African countries which include, Kenya, Ethiopia, Ghana, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, Malawi, South Africa and Zambia. The countries will sustain the campaign across the continent.
They will develop strategies for lobbying international Human rights institutions including the African Charter on human rights, African Court of Justice and the International Court of Justice.
Currently, Mifumi is organising a three-day international conference on bride price for 150 participants from Africa, to be held in Kampala in February 2004. Some participants will come from the United Kingdom, Europe and America.
Atuki Turner, the Director of Mifumi, says the conference will be the first meeting for the participants to lay strategies on how to effect reform on bride price.
“The conference will also examine issues like poverty, wife inheritance, women’s health and early marriages,” she says adding that many girls are ‘pulled’ out of school by their parents or guardians to fetch bride price.
Atuki asserts that some parents in Tororo, encourage their daughters to quit marriages they went into without bride price and marry them off to partners with the required amount.
She also sighted cases where husbands and in- laws grab property belonging to the bride’s parents, relatives or new husband.
Atuki says her organisation faces many challenges as many men continue to be jailed for failing to refund bride price. Mifumi records 300 incidents of domestic violence related to bride price annually.
Mifumi’s study on the evolution of bride price states that although originally the giving and receiving of bride price as a token for bringing up the girl was acceptable, many communities especially, in eastern Uganda make it a contract that binds partners in marriage.
It stresses that many women are forced to stick to abusive marriages because they cannot refund the bride price. Women who resist abusive marriages and return to their parents, risk having either their parents or their new lovers imprisoned.
It blames commercialisation of bride price to the weak and outdated laws governing the marriage institution. It points out that Uganda, like other African countries, has a dual system of law (customary and formal) but the formal one pre-empts customary law. It further says that the principles of the formal law inherited from colonial powers, are unknown to the majority of women whose rights are defined by local customs.
“The central feature of both laws is the subordinate status of women underscored by the tradition of bride price,” quotes the study. It alleges that bride price, “allows a man to treat a woman as he pleases, which is why although domestic violence is widespread, it has traditionally been perceived as a private problem beyond the scope of the state responsibility.”
In most parts of Uganda where bride price has been commercialised, the groom should be compensated in kind or in cash equivalent of what he paid in the event that he seeks to end the marriage.