Dowry now non-refundable in Uganda

Marriage and bride price go hand in hand in most African cultures. Traditionally, the groom and his family paid bride price or dowry as a form of appreciation for bringing up a good wife. In Uganda, dowry took the form of banana wine, traditional attire, animals and even vegetables.

Today, it has become a business whereby the girl’s parents usually demand money and other expensive items to cater for the investments they have made in raising their daughter.

The girl-child has become a chattel - sold at the earliest to the highest bidder. The man also suffers as dowry payment sometimes forces him into wild borrowing and the couple starts their marriage in debt and impoverishment.

Bride price has become a noose around a woman’s neck, fueling domestic violence and trapping women. Take the case of Akurut, for instance. She was repeatedly battered by her husband as he yelled in his dialect “MY COWS!” The final beating caused blood to ooze from her ears and left her with permanent damage.

She fled back to her village with her three daughters and two sons forcing her parents to struggle and refund the four cows, four goats and Sh7,000 they had been paid. By law, if a wife ran away and returned to her village, her family had to return the dowry.

In 2007, Mifumi,a local women’s rights group, launched a landmark case seeking to make dowry payments optional. They opined that dowry gave the impression that a man had purchased his wife’s labour, reproductive capacity, and perpetual obedience, which was a violation of the right to equality and non-discrimination on the basis of sex.

In March 2010, the court rejected Mifumi’s petition, saying a dowry agreement may be entered into with joy by two parties. Four of the five judges of the Constitutional Court ruled that the payment of dowry did not contravene the Constitution of Uganda - three of the five judges were women.

In the Bible, wise men came from the East – so it was in Uganda. As we continued to reel in shock, later that year in June, the eastern Ugandan district of Butaleja passed its own law making it a crime to demand bride price or a refund, or to deny a woman burial on account of non-payment of bride price.

This has seen many women become empowered, and more girls receiving an education. Finally, after a long hard fight, this month Uganda’s Supreme Court has ruled that the practice of refunding bride price on the dissolution of a customary marriage is unconstitutional, and should be banned.

The judges said it suggested that women were in a market place, and infringed on their right to divorce. Judge Katureebe who passed the ruling joked that even in business the phrase ‘Goods once sold are not returnable’ is held in such high regard that the same should apply to women and bride price.

He noted that the practice of refunding bride price suggests that women are held on loan and can be returned and money recovered. Unfortunately, the comments show that our mentality has not changed, and bride price is still a form of currency for purchasing a wife.