You now can’t have your cows back. What next?

For Florence Musubika from Tororo District, the ruling has been long overdue.The Supreme Court judgment also clarified that whatever a man gives his fiancé’s parents should be termed as a ‘gift’ not payment.
The need to be addressedEvelyn Schiller, director of information and communication, MIFUMI, a women’s rights organisation and the lead petitioner in the case, says in rural areas, where women are trapped in abusive marriages, this ruling is important.
Practices deeply ingrained into the cultural fabric are not easy to change.
The petition challenging the constitutionality of refunding bride price first appeared in the Constitutional Court in 2007. In 2010, they lost the petition.
The Marriage and Divorce Bill 2009 seeks to remove an unfair balance of power in marriages.
“With this ruling, and the sensitisation that will follow, we are drawing nearer to the passing of this Bill into law.”
A man beats up a woman. Because most rural women were unable to return the bride price, they endured bad, usually violent, marriages. File photo.
“After 12 years in marriage and three children, I left my husband because he wanted to sell off a piece of land we had acquired for the children. I refused to give him the documents for the land,” she narrates.
After court ruled in her favour, Musubika’s husband refused to accept the ruling because according to him, a woman he had paid three cows and two goats for had no right to his property.
“One morning, as I was lighting the charcoal stove, a man-made grenade embedded in the charcoal exploded. I was hospitalised for six months and the police suspected my husband.”
Although he was arrested, Musubika’s husband was released for lack of evidence. She later applied for and was granted divorce in 2005.
In some cultures, bride price acts as a deposit, which a man can collect after the marriage breaks down. Now that it is illegal to collect deposit, who will want to pay it in the first place?
“Previously, these women had no money to refund the bride price, so they could not walk out of the marriage. They remained trapped in a cycle of violent abuse.”
A woman who escapes to her father’s house is forced to return to her husband’s home because the cows that were her bride price no longer exist. They may have been used to pay the price for her brothers’ wives’. “So, despite the severe beating she suffered from her husband, this woman would remain in the marriage to protect herather,” says Schiller.
MIFUMI lists six cases in Tororo of such women who have committed suicide.
“These women, rather than return to abusive marriages, hanged or threw themselves before moving cars.”
Anticipated challenges
The Justices of the Court ruled four to one against MIFUMI maintaining that there were varied causes of spousal abuse and that bride price alone cannot be singled out as the cause of domestic violence. The Justices, however, agreed that bride price refund undermines the dignity of a woman and does not recognise her contribution to the marriage.
In the same year, the petitioners appealed to the Supreme Court seeking that the court declares bride price unconstitutional on grounds that it reduces women to property, making them susceptible to domestic violence.
According to Schiller, changes in attitude need committed people to educate and create awareness about the need for change.
“Men still beat women because it is an issue of power and control. Those who own power will definitely resist it being taken away from them, which explains why the Marriage and Divorce Bill, 2009, has been shelved, yet it is meant to protect the majority of the population.” 

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