WATCH: Uganda President Museveni suggests beating one’s wife ‘is in order’
Uganda President Yoweri Museveni has appeared to suggest that wife beating ‘is in order’.
In an undated online interview, the Head of State, 78, appeared to compare wife beating to mob justice metered out on thieves in the public and corporal punishment for children.
Museveni said these cultures are still accepted in the traditional societies.
He further shared an example where someone found committing adultery in Saudi Arabia is whipped or stoned to death.
“Now, this is because of the traditional way, in fact, there is a proverb in Luganda and all the other dialects which says, ‘A dog that steals pays with its back.’ Some of these people come with those concepts in the security forces. Either a soldier, or policeman, but beating a thief is in order. Not only a thief but also your wife traditionally. If your wife is bad you beat her.”
Nairobi News could not ascertain the context of this suggestion.
Wife beating and any other form of domestic violence is outlawed in Kenya.
The government and civil society consistently sensitizes Kenyans and especially couples to handle their differences in a diplomatic format in a bid to arrest the increase in violence-related deaths in marriages.
Corporal punishment is also banned in Kenyan schools.
Museveni has ruled Uganda for close to four decades since he shot his way into State House in 1986.
He is is at times known for issuing controversial comments and only recently suggested it is easier for a fool to survive in Uganda.
“You people from other parts of the world, you do not know Ugandans,” he pointed out.
“You see them there and you do not know how complicated they are. Some of these people are spoilt by nature, Uganda is so nice that even if you are a fool you can survive here. In other parts of the world if you are a fool you die and the matter is resolved. But here people do not work they just go and stay with their relatives eating free things, then after three months they go and see other people.”
Incidentally, Museveni’s government has in recent times come under the spotlight from the Western world and civil rights group for the brutality unleashed on opposition-leaning politicians.
For example, four-time presidential candidate Kiiza Besigye was in 2011 flown to Nairobi for treatment after a man believed to be a policeman smashed the window of his car and pepper sprayed him in the eyes in the full glare of the cameras.
Another opposition leader namely, Bobi Wine, was recently flown to the USA for treatment after being reportedly tortured while under detention.
Wine, a singer cum politician whose real name is Robert Kyagulanyi, has also claimed that President Museveni’s administration has been ‘kidnapping’ Ugandans who are opposing him.
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