A clever man’s guide to escaping love treaties with women

By PETER WANYONYI

The International Criminal Court is all over the news, for obvious reasons. All news organisations in the land seem to have abandoned their common sense and decamped to cold, faraway Europe to cover trials at The Hague. This is a shame, because there is so much more to cover right here at home. For one, there is the Kenya Marriage Bill, a draconian piece of legislation and a danger for every man anywhere within the borders of this lovely republic. It seeks to replace the Marriage Act of 2008, which was not a bad law, all considered.

The Marriage Bill begins quite innocently, by expressly allowing polygamy and stating that all a man needs to do is give the consent of his existing spouse(s) before being allowed to marry another. But things are not that simple.

Patriarch

Which Kenyan wife will happily and willingly give her consent to share her man? The drafters of this bill must have been high on busaa when they thought it up. And who says only men should be allowed to marry many wives?

The day after the bill becomes law, women will go to court and sue for being discriminated against — because they, too, would love to have the option of having multiple partners. And why not?

Since time immemorial, men have used the ‘marriage’ word to help smooth relations with the opposite sex. Old man Abraham, the Biblical Patriarch, is reported — perhaps apocryphally, none of us knows for we were not there — to have strategically dangled ‘marriage’ before the Egyptian hand-maiden Hagar. She happily gave him a son, Ishmael. Of course, when he realised the ‘marriage’ word had gone to the poor lass’ head, he had his wife Sarah chase her away. The bill makes this criminal.

If it becomes law, it is a crime — punishable by a prison term of five years and a fine of a million shillings — to even utter the word ‘marriage’ to a woman and then not marry her!

Men, like all humans, are given to a little lying here, a bit of misrepresentation there. Too bad. Text messages sent by mobile phone are now court evidence — if an enemy wants to sink a man, all they have to do is grab the man’s phone and send ‘Marry me?’ to some lady somewhere.

It helps — but doesn’t really matter — if the lady in question is single and looking. But the bill goes even further — it criminalises any celebration of a marriage without the required number of witnesses.

Surely? How many men have picked a lady out of a bar one beer-drenched night, celebrated in all sorts of ways with her but without witnesses, and decided she is the one, mara hiyo hiyo? Granted, ‘celebrating’ here probably means some legal stuff involving vows and all.

But given that the bill envisions marriage as any interaction between a man and a woman pretty much, who is to say what is not a marriage?