Rape justifying minister must resign

RAPE JUSTIFIED

The reports that the State Minister for Youth, Hon Ronald Kibuule did say that no arrest should be made when an indecently dressed woman is raped, should be condemned. Hon Kibuule is definitely in a breed of diffident humans who lack respect for women and children, many of whom are brutally raped, daily, in the country. These men do not have the full capacity to understand the devastating impact of rape on our society. It is a pity that such populist utterances should come from a minister in charge of Youths. This guy must just resign from leadership!

Not long ago, the Ugandan chapter of the African Network for Prevention and Protection against Child Abuse and Neglect (ANPPCAN) released a report which indicated that over 600 children are raped daily in Uganda. A quick check of a small place like Wandegeya Police records showed that about 742 cases of rape have been reported so far in 2013. Wandegeya Police recorded 22,614 cases of rape between 2009 and 2011. We agree that there are many other neighborhoods with worse rape records than this. The Daily Monitor of February 28, 2013 indicated that countrywide, the Police recorded 7,690 cases of rape in 2011 with an estimate that about 21 girls are raped each day. Rape cases are on the surge, recent reports shows that Busoga is awash with rampant rape cases.

With a grim and stark statistics like this, it becomes inevitable to show outrage to some of these lousy leaders who justify rape. One wonders how an indifferent person of Hon. Kibuule’s stature becomes a minister and whether his views are popularly reflective of rape as a morale ideal.

It is very important to understand the dimensions of this statement from a practical perspective. This is not merely structuring the culture of impunity into our social fabrics, but condoning and encouraging the act of rape. It also attests to the perpetuation of sexual violence against women by state agency. Socially, the Hon. Minister is imposing a moral restraint on the women to curtail their inherent rights to self expression and the enjoyment of freedoms associated with their womahood. This must not go without attracting the necessary condemnation in this epoch of our civilization.

To blame the victim for their predicament has always been a projection of self righteousness for those who are, by any measure of morality, deficient. These are men whose pre-occupation with sexual thoughts even compromises their deliberation in Parliament. The Minister himself, a Christian by names of Ronald – is consorting with two wives. Doesn't that tell us enough about his condescending attitude towards women, girls and children who are targets of perversion? It wouldn't be a surprise to find that the minster is espoused by way of arranged marriage, itself a form of domestic violence. But if the minister has daughters, he should have thought deeply about his attitude before verbalizing it. To parents, such offensive statement can be taken for a national policy under his portfolio and that is scary.

The tone of this article is rather sad because we have just buried a young and innocent girl – Nambi “Nisha” Hanisha of Kanyanya who was deprived of life at tender age due to rape. To say that before arrests are made in such cases, the police must first ascertain the degree of decency of that little girl means that the rapists have a justification for their horrendous underclass crime.

Unmistakably, rape, in the Minister’s mind, is a tool for reinforcing decency – for establishing decent dress codes. I have never known a minimum expectation of “decent dressing” or a legislation that succinctly describes what descent dressing is. Perhaps we need one such legislation after the Public Order Management Bill, 2011. This would showcase a clearer national policy on decency, violation of which should be punishable by rape.

I am challenging Hon. Kibuule to take the moral high ground to apologise to the women and the many victims of rape and to resign. I implore his appointing authority to remove this thoughtless man from our youth docket because he is a bad influence. If the message that his ministry is passing to the youth is that rape is justified as long as you can determine the degree of decency of the potential victim, then we are raising a society of horny rapists. I am not sure which parent is not outraged at this numb-skull inclined at corrupting the minds of our youths.

By any means, the imprint that rape or attempted rape leaves on the mind of the victim is profound. But rape truly undermines the very temple of our being; it diminishes our humanity and to the woman, it steals from her, the very sacredness of her womanhood. Uganda is a country where intimate partner violence is rampant. Women remain very vulnerable due to historically and socially structured gender inequalities. Already, majority of married women endure marital rape and yet the government does not seem to care enough. The trauma associated with being a woman alone is debilitating but the trauma associated with inability to attain justice after rape, is worse and rampant. This is amplified when the very women for whom we prescribe sexual violence, are also held paradoxically as the gatekeeper of morality. There is no way any person, leave alone a person in high authority like a minister, can endorse rape.

There is urgent need to amplify the role of men in averting rape and other forms of sexual violence from an early onset. Our children and youth ought to be nurtured that women are as equal as men, deserving respect; women are endowed with innate abilities to develop themselves – physically and intellectually – like men, to full capacity without unnecessary prohibitions.

It is these basic and yet core understanding of the need for co-existence in equal modern society with women as an inevitable partner which has eluded self righteous leaders like Hon. Kibuule. Definitely, this breed of mankind has no place in our contemporary society.

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