{UAH} Out of the way, old man: Love, land and murder in modern Uganda - Comment - www.theeastafrican.co.ke
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Out of the way, old man: Love, land and murder in modern Uganda - Comment
At one of the smaller Kampala radio stations, Mama FM, a sad looking middle-aged man wobbles to the reception desk. His is a long story and the journalist assigned to him takes two hours to extract it all.
It transpires that the man gets a daily beating from his wife and he is now an emotional wreck with numberless bruises on his body as well.
His case is no longer unique. The gender-advocating Mama FM now receives many such men who have been encouraged to talk about the misery they are subjected to by the women of their lives.
At first most want to conceal their identities and disguise their voices, but after counselling they start to accept that it is "okay" to open up, though not okay to be beaten up by your woman.
A few hundred metres away at the police station, an older man cautiously turns up and after outlining his problem to the reception desk, he is taken to the Community Liaison Officer. The CLO is a lady and at first the old man regards her suspiciously.
After she puts him at ease, he explains that he is convinced his wife is plotting to kill him. The wife with their eldest son has been pestering him to sell his land so they can invest it in quick money yielding ventures.
The son wants to buy a motorbike to go into the boda boda business while the old woman wants to open a retail shop. But the old man says he cannot sell the land because that is where his father, uncles and grandfather are buried.
In recent days, the pestering has subsided but at the same time, a plot to kill him has been leaked by a friend who overheard his wife bargaining with the local bar owner to put poison in the old man's drink.
Again the old man's predicament is not unique. Uganda police are quietly monitoring an increasing number of elderly men who are at risk of being murdered by their wives who see them as no longer useful and want to convert the family land into cash and start a new life without their greying partners.
The women work with their impatient sons who want quick cash to buy boda bodasand escape the drudgery of their village life.
It is now dawning on men in Uganda that women are no longer necessarily the weaker sex. While among the elite, women are bagging more big jobs everyday, their sisters.
This is not to say the men are innocent. In many cases they provoke the hostility of the women. A woman gets denied ownership or control of the land that she tills from morning to evening to produce food for the family and cash for the men, which they spend on drink and possibly other women.
The woman is not allowed to use the land to make money for herself. And in our society, she can neither own land from the family she is born into nor the family she marries into.
If a son who has the right sell it on the father's death is willing to co-operate to hasten the obstinate man's demise and share the proceeds of the sale, well, why not…?
Joachim Buwembo is a Knight International Fellow for development journalism. E-mail: buwembo@gmail.com
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