EAR TO THE GROUND: Wives, concubines and the many faces of our politics

When South Africa’s President Jacob Zuma made news recently when he took a fifth wife (and then plunged into scandal when it emerged that those five were not enough for him and he had had a child from an affair with a friend’s daughter), I didn’t quite appreciate how widespread polygamy was in Africa’s State Houses.

Then last month, soldiers in Niger overthrew the kisanja-hungry President Mamadou Tandja (Author note: For non-Ugandans and those living on Mars; Kisanja in Uganda means to amend the constitution and remove presidential term limits). It was reported that the soldiers had detained Tandja and his “two wives” in what some people call the boys’ quarters of State House.

I had not figured that Tandja is openly polygamist. Now a young Nation Media journalist has explored the African landscape and come up with a rich story of presidents who have married while in office, and those who are grandmasters of polygamy (‘The Softer Side of Africa’s Big Men’; (http://tiny.cc/78mmi).

The list of African polygamist presidents is impressive: Equatorial Guinea’s Teodoro Obiang Nguema, of course Jacob Zuma, Sudan’s Omar al Bashir, Djibouti’s Ismail Omar Guelleh and Libya’s Muammar Gadaffi are all men who are blessed with a string of wives. We are counting only elected or regular presidents, otherwise Swaziland’s young King Mswati will distort the picture with his 13 plus wives and perhaps even more mistresses. With many years to go, he is on course to beat his father’s record of more than 100 wives.

These presidents have kept up a long tradition: Togo’s late president, Gnassingbe Eyadema, who was also Africa’s longest-serving Big Man, was survived by three official wives at his death in 2005. Gabon’s Omar Bongo had a harem. Democratic Republic of Congo’s thieving autocrat, Mobutu Sese Seko, had several wives. Except, shamefully, he also considered that all his minister’s wives were also his.

Uganda had good old Idi Amin, who was a polygamist. Since then, our leaders have tried hard to pass off as good monogamists in public, although several of them have well known mistresses. It is unthinkable that today President Yoweri Museveni, or Prime Minister Apolo Nsibambi, or Vice President Gilbert Bukenya would go and take a second wife ala Zuma.

This contrasts sharply even with Kenya. Not too long ago, a Kenyan minister appeared at a public event with his four wives. You might understand that, but what took me totally by surprise was this smart upward young mobile marketing executive who was honoured by one of Kenya’s marketing societies at a plush dinner event. He turned out with his three wives! Whatever strange things happen in Kampala, there is absolutely no way a fashionable 35-year-old marketing executive would show up with his three wives to collect a prize.
The result is that Ugandan men are doomed to a life of appalling hypocrisy on the question of polygamy. They can have 10 mistresses, but not a second official wife. How did this come up? The answer is religion. I had not fully appreciated how religion has showed the nature of our morality, until three years ago when I got into a discussion with the very smart Dr Mukhisa Kituyi, then Kenya’s minister for Trade. A man who knows Uganda well, Mukhisa argued that Uganda was “lucky” that for most of its modern history, the biggest difference has been along religious lines (Catholic vs Protestant vs Muslim), and tribal differences were secondary.

In Kenya, tribal differences had been primary and religious ones secondary - in fact non-existent. Most people don’t know the religion of the top Kenyan leaders. In Uganda, we keep a close watch. The prominence of religion brought with it a public Christian revulsion of polygamy (but a high private mistress-keeping culture). In Kenya, there is relatively more public tolerance of polygamy. There a shrewd and powerful councillor in Nakuru, who has held the position as long as anyone can remember. His secret? He has over 20 wives, and over 65 children. Nearly all households in his area belong to his in-laws. He is generous and he has set up his wives in business, making for many happy in-laws.

At election time, each wife is allocated a certain number of votes that they must deliver. So when elections approach, the question is never whether he will win. It is by how much of the vote. It has never fallen below 65 per cent. He has turned the local elections into a family caucus.

This has far-reaching implications for Ugandan democracy. With the ever-rising influence of double-faced Born Again politicians on our country’s politics, the disconnect between what politicians preach and what they do, will continue to grow. Hypocrisy levels will always be high in our politics. Our leaders affect the prudence of monogamists in public, while the actions that they privately believe in are those of promiscuous politicians.

That is why there is not a single thing in our Constitution, which the politicians put there because they seriously mean it. From term limits, press freedom, a non-partisan army, to the limits on the size of Cabinet, they are not worth the paper upon which they are written.

cobbo@nation.co.ke