Busoga sub-region is on record for having the highest numbers of gender-based Violence cases in the country.
The national survey conducted by Inter Religious Council of Uganda in 2021 indicated that Busoga sub-region was in the top position in terms of gender-based violence with 62 per cent. A similar survey by the Uganda Bureau of Statistics (Ubos) in the same year indicated that 51.9 per cent of women aged between 15 and 49 in the sub-region experienced spousal violence and 22 per cent experienced sexual violence.
The commonest forms of GBV in the region is child marriage with the majority of the young girls forced out of school and married off by the age of 14. Child marriages and teenage pregnancies formed part of the recent popular plea by the people to the Queen of Busoga (Inebantu) Her Royal Highness Jovia Mutesi to start with shaping girls as a way of constructing a successful generation of mothers.
Sticky cultural norms characterized by women submissiveness and a strong patriarchal culture in a largely poor economy are the root causes of GBV. While harmful norms seem to be at the root of this vice that curtails human rights of girls and women in the sub-region, there are socio-economic structures that nurture these norms, which have remained unexplored and uninterrogated.
In an ongoing study by Center for Health, Human Rights and Development (CEHURD) in Busoga, we explored the link between social norms, GBV, unequal division of care work and women's limited civic engagement. We look at four socio-historical contexts which interacted with Busoga cultural values, religious dynamics and nurtured patterns of cultural norms whose complex intersection could possibly explain the endemic GBV!
Sugar cane sub-culture: One of the key markers of the region is sugarcane growing which has over time cultivated and nurtured a unique sub-culture that disrupts and diverts young boys of 12 to 13 years from school to paid manual child/teen labour in sugarcane cutting and loading on trucks.
The money gives them ability to get girlfriends. For young men who are married, sugarcane cutting introduces them to constrained earning and high household expenditure.
History of industrialization: Busoga sub-region hosts Jinja city as one of the traditional industrial hubs in Uganda. Industrial processing began with activities such as cotton ginning, coffee curing and sugar milling during colonial time.
Sugar milling was the largest plant at the time which later became the Sugar Corporation of Uganda Limited, established by the entrepreneur Nanji Mehta in Lugazi in 1924. The Kakira Sugar Works was established in Kakira, just east of Jinja, by the Madhvani family in 1930.
Industrial labour only afforded workers minimal wages, enough to sustain everyday life expenditure but too little for any sustainable economic investment. With the expulsion of the Asian population in the early 1970s, which was pre-eminent in the ownership and management of industries in the region, Jinja's industrial position waned. The lapse in the Jinja industrial hub further exacerbated economic poverty in the region.
Highway transactional relations: Busoga sub-region lies along a regional highway from Kenya to Uganda with most of the heavy trucks on the road having designated stop-overs.
Busoga's centrality in the East African regional transport network dates far back to the days of Uganda Railway from the coast at the Kenyan Indian Ocean port of Mombasa to the Lake Victoria port of Kisumu in 1901.
Over the past, long-distance truck drivers were identified as a significant part of transactional sexual networks that had consequences for the regions with the dominant being the spread of HIV/AIDS.
Fishing communities: Much of the Busoga sub-region sits on the shores of L. Victoria, with a significant part of its population deriving their livelihoods from fishing. As some of the research participants noted, "when a fisherman goes out to do fishing, he comes back as a big person on the village and wants to spend all he has earned."
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In effect, fishing communities have unique sub- cultures around transactional sexual activity, daily earnings and expenditure and limited investment in education. This sociological environment has equally contributed to hypersexual relations that manifest in early child marriages and multiple sexual partnerships.
Currently, there is an increase in programmes on how to shift norms that perpetuate GBV in the sub-region. It is our view that such interventions need to appreciate that Busoga sub-region is a product of a complex historical, colonial capital relations.
Unless we understand this history and unless the "below-the-surface" norms rooted in colonial capital, and patriarchal relations are identified and read within the broad context of a neoliberal exploitative economy, programme interventions will only address symptoms of gender inequality.
