Ugandan Adultery Law Curbs Effects of Polygamy

Uganda's Supreme Court recently nullified a law that made adultery criminal for women, but not men. The constitutional case also strengthened women's rights on divorce and inheritance. First in a series on women and the rule of law in Africa.

KAMPALA, Uganda (WOMENSENEWS)--Here in the capital of Uganda, policemen arrested a 30-year-old woman in her home five years ago. They took her to a hospital and forced her to undergo a complete medical examination. She was then taken to jail and charged with adultery, a crime only applicable to women.

Her husband also had extra marital affairs and kept a mistress, but he was not breaking the law. Adultery for men was legal. It was only a crime for wives.

But a group of women's rights advocates, Law and Advocacy for Women in Uganda, set out to change all that.

In April, the Kampala-based group brought a separate case before the Ugandan Supreme Court, arguing that the 1995 national constitution ensures equal protection under the law. The court agreed and struck down criminal adultery, a profound victory for women's rights here. Now, husbands and wives are equal before the laws of adultery. Sort of.

While the laws now apply equally--adultery is decriminalized for both sexes--the real life consequences of adultery for women and men remain gravely different.

Across Uganda, where polygamy for men is legal, adultery committed by husbands is widely tolerated, while adultery committed by wives results in shame and stigma, says Irene Mulyagonja, a family law lawyer in Kampala.

'Almost Every Husband Commits Adultery' "There is an attitude here that men are entitled to commit adultery, it is a direct result of the legal and cultural tolerance of polygamy," she says. And while most couples opt for the monogamous or "civil" marriage over the polygamous or "customary" marriage, Mulyagonja says "almost every husband in the country commits adultery, even those in civil marriages; it is almost 100 percent."

Makerere University Faculty of Law Dean Sylvia Tamale agrees. "Most Ugandan husbands have mistresses or secret wives, even if they are in civil marriages. Monogamy doesn't fit here. It is totally alien. But women are shunned if they commit adultery."

The differing attitudes toward male and female sexual entitlements are what made the ruling so important. "The unjust adultery law was part and parcel of women's struggle for sexual autonomy," says Tamale. "And the control and regulation of our sexuality is central to our subordinate status."

Despite a countrywide bias in attitudes toward adultery, the Supreme Court unanimously declared the law to be discriminatory and unconstitutional.

Outcry Stirred The ruling stirred plenty of outcry in this largely Christian East African nation. Many church-based groups argued that it promoted immorality, promiscuity and Western decadence. The decision headlined both of the country's major newspapers and was followed for weeks with letters to the editor decrying it as the destruction of marriage and the decline of a morally upright culture.

A group of parliamentarians threatened to pass a law criminalizing adultery for both sexes. "But they knew they couldn't do that," says Tamale. "Because they would all be thrown in prison." A cartoon in the popular New Vision newspaper depicted members of parliament fleeing the chambers when the proposed criminalization was mentioned.

The ruling is particularly relevant here given cultural attitudes toward divorce. Divorces in Uganda are heavily stigmatized and difficult to obtain. Most marriages end in estrangement rather than legal divorce.

Until the adultery law was struck down, husbands estranged from their wives were permitted to have new relationships. But women would live alone for years or risk arrest if they saw other men, says Mulyagonja. Many of her clients charged with criminal adultery were estranged from their husbands and had lived apart for many years. Still, they were arrested and brought to court for their new relationships.

Divorce for Women Eased The demise of the criminal adultery law will also make divorces easier to obtain. Before the ruling, wives wishing to divorce their husbands had to prove adultery plus cruelty and desertion, while men had only to prove adultery. Now adultery is sufficient grounds for either party.

"There are implications here for HIV-AIDS," says Mulyagonja. "Before, a wife could not divorce her husband solely on the grounds of adultery. She was forced to endure whatever diseases he brought home. Now she is empowered to leave him when he sleeps around."

Embedded in the adultery ruling were a number of other decisions pertaining to inheritance. Laws that gave widowers the right to 100 percent of deceased wives' property and widows only 15 percent were also nullified, as were laws that gave a deceased husband's family full rights to a widow's children. As of yet, no new succession laws have been drafted to replace them.

While these rulings failed to generate the popular uproar faced by the adultery ruling, they all speak to a similar trend.

Despite a culture of inequity, women's rights are slowly but surely being protected by the law. "Our constitution is very good," says Mulyagonja. "It gives us a very strong base from which to advocate for our rights. That's why I have hope that in my children's lifetime, maybe, polygamy too will be outlawed."

Well, one was if your brother dies without offspring — you had to take his wife even if you were already married and raise up offspring through her too. Also, if you were married and caught with another woman (unmarried) you had to marry her too — and could never divorce her.

Just two.

Also, there was a prohibition against marrying two sisters or a mother and a daughter at the same time.

Jesus was making an illustration, just as he did in that chapter about the Ten Talents, but nevertheless it does use a polygamist analogy in a polygamist society.

I will note that the upper classes of Jerusalem were more Romanized (the Romans tended to have one wife and a few slaves boys and women) so polygamy probably wasn’t as common with the upper classes but it was common among the religious people and the laboring/farming peoples of Israel. You see the same thing in Islamic countries today.

Polygamy is not adultery.

Arguable, but the point isn't whether polygamy per se is adultery. The point is that a woman who commited adultery could face criminal penalties while a man who committed adultery could not, which was fundamentally unjust and was based on a culture that condoned polygamy (but not, of course, polyandry).

It is possible, as a matter of theory, that there could be a society that both condones polygamy and respects the equality of women, but I cannot think of one that has ever existed. Every polygamous society with which I am familiar -- including polygamous subcultures in countries like the US where it is not widely acceptable -- abuses women, including "women" whom most of us would consider girls.

Well, one was if your brother dies without offspring — you had to take his wife even if you were already married and raise up offspring through her too.

Old Testament welfare. Women could not own property, so a woman's only security if her husband died was to have a father, a brother or a son. Otherwise, she would be destitute.So if your brother dies, your duty to his widow is not just to feed her today, but to give her a future. A son.

Everywhere and in every time before at least the 19th century, big families meant security -- it meant people to work the lands, daughters who could marry well, Sons who could land a bride with a dowry. And it made sense to have as many children as possible, since many -- if not most -- were likely to die of infectious diseases in childhood. Offspring were, to be blunt but honest, a form of wealth.

The old fantasy is of being the last man on Earth, with numerous women and a duty to replenish the species. In the hard-scrabble ancient days, a lot of civilizations and tribes were never far from that kind of threat of extinction. Polygamy is not a question of principle, but of pragmatism.

Men tended to die in work and war. Women in childbirth. A fertile woman not having kids was, again blunt but pragmatic, a finite resource going to waste. Sperm was a renewable resource. Women take time to gestate, and while waiting for that child to be born, a man can be out making more.

Look at any farm -- what's the ratio of bulls to cows, studs to mares, roosters to hens? Polygamy is like that. There's a reason that the art and science of efficient animal breeding is called husbandry.

Also, if you were married and caught with another woman (unmarried) you had to marry her too — and could never divorce her.

Old Testament child support. They didn't have paternity tests in those days' the way to hold a babydaddy responsible was to make him a husband, and thus the presumptive father.

Well, one was if your brother dies without offspring — you had to take his wife even if you were already married and raise up offspring through her too.

Okay, I'll grant you that one. So polygamy is okay if your brother dies without leaving children, and you marry his widow.

Also, if you were married and caught with another woman (unmarried) you had to marry her too — and could never divorce her.

Uh no, that was adultery and the punishment for that was stoning.

Also, there was a prohibition against marrying two sisters or a mother and a daughter at the same time.

So what would you do if your brother was married to the sister of your wife and he died without having children? ;)

With the exception of the one you stated above, polygamy is not God's design for marriage. God stated his plan for marriage in Genesis 2, and Jesus reiterated it in the New Testament.

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