Grace Matsiko
17 May 2008
Kampala — For Christine Apolot, an otherwise beautiful thing called marriage turned truly ugly on April 20. Mr James Aurien, then the Mukono District police commander and Apolot's husband of five years, shot her dead using his pistol.
He suspected her of carrying on an adulterous affair.
He handed himself over to the police after one week on the run and confessed to the killing. About two months ago, Mr George Mugagga of Kinawataka in Mbuya Parish in Kampala, beheaded his wife Maurine Ampire, who was six months pregnant.
He accused her of infecting him with HIV/Aids. These examples, however extreme, represent some of the tough realities several couples continue to experience in marriage and other romantic relationships.
This form of violence also appears to cut across our society. Former Vice President Speciosa Kazibwe, for example, divorced partly on grounds of battery.
According to the police, cases of domestic violence are rising. Between January and June 2007, for example, 3,415 cases of domestic violence were reported to the police countrywide.
The 2006 Police Crime and Traffic Report, for example, found that incidents of rape have been rising steadily, with cases increasing from 732 in 2005 to 750 in 2006. Of this number, 447 (60 percent) of the cases occurred in rural areas while the rest took place in the urban centres.
However, 2007 saw a reduction in rape cases to 599 over the 2006 figure. Like in the previous years, most of the rape cases occurred in rural areas.
But the general trend of domestic-related violence appears to be on the upward swing. "We are seeing cases going up and up but this is mainly because we have sensitised people to report these cases and at every police station, we have a family and child protection officer who handles these cases," said Mr Asan Kasingye, the officer in charge of Community Affairs in the Uganda Police Force.
Most of the cases of domestic violence, according to the police, involve physical assault (beatings) and sexual attack like rape and defilement.
Mr Kasingye said most of the victims of this form of violence are women. Domestic violence persists partly because cases are rarely followed to the end where perpetrators get appropriately punished, said Ms Brenda Kugonza, the advocacy officer at the Centre for Domestic Violence Prevention, a local organisation that fights for women's rights.
According to the Uganda Demographic and Health Survey 2006, spousal or intimate partner violence is the most common form of violence against women between the ages of 15 and 49.
The violence is physical, sexual and emotional.
The survey reveals that at least 48 per cent of women have ever experienced physical violence at the hands of their husband or partner, 36 per cent have experienced sexual violence, and 49 per cent emotional violence.
"Overall, more than two thirds or 68 per cent of all women who have ever married have experienced physical, sexual or emotional violence by a husband or intimate partner," the survey says.
It says rates of spousal violence against men are lower than for women, with only one in five men reporting having ever suffered physical violence at the hands of their wives or partners.
The survey also found a strong relationship between marital status and domestic violence, with divorced, separated and widowed women more likely to have experienced at least one type of violence in their lifetime. "This finding suggests that experience of violence may increase the likelihood of relationships to end," the survey says.
Why the violence?
But why do people kill or harm each other in love relationships? The answer may well lie in the nature of us human beings.
"From time immemorial, there have been killings and other related domestic violence incidents in relationships," said Mr Paul Nyende, a lecturer at Makerere University's Institute of Psychology. "The difference is that nowadays, it has been brought to the limelight."
Mr Aurien's case, said Mr Nyende, is homicide. "It's mostly motivated by feelings of anger, created by issues like one partner accusing the other of wrongdoing like infecting him or her with HIV, extramarital relationships, and [other] disagreements in the home."
He said as a result of failure to manage such anger, people find themselves going overboard. "They suffer from anger-management problems," he said.
Such anger may have accumulated over a period of time.
Ms Lois Ochieng, a counselling psychologist, said most of domestic related violence is rooted in the upbringing of individuals. "Some people grow up in violent homes and when they get their own home, domestic violence is like a norm," she said.
People's personality, according to Ms Ochieng, is also crucial in how they handle a relationship. "Some people hold anger in their hands and so it becomes easy for them to find themselves hurting their partners at the slightest [provocation]," Ms Ochieng said.
She said seeking counselling from professionals in case of disagreements is the best way violence can be avoided in relationships. "Every couple will require a different kind of counselling and solution to their problems because there is no universal problem affecting every couple in marriage," she said.
Ms Jackie Asiimwe-Mwesige, who has extensive experience in women and human rights issues, said a number of women endure violence daily in their lives although most of the cases go unreported.
"That is why we have been advocating for a law on domestic violence," she said. "Some of these crimes which end up in death may perhaps not have happened if we had a law against domestic violence."
Efforts to have such a law passed have so far failed. The Domestic Relations Bill, a piece of legislation which seeks to address issues like women's rights in marriage such as access to marital property, has languished within the State bureaucracy for years.
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