Of wife battering and MP’s foot-in-mouth disease

What you need to know:

  • Own goal. For an own goal Twinamasiko’s ill-conceived remarks can only be comparable to the one minister Ronald Kibuule once made saying women who wear miniskirts and revealing dresses invite rape upon themselves.

Independent Bugangaizi East MP Onesimus Twinamasiko, who will turn 31 in July, shocked the nation with his antiquated remarks that a man can resort to wife beating in order to discipline and bring his wife to order. He made this statement while responding to Museveni’s strongly worded criticism of wife beaters during his speech on Women’s Day.
A few minutes after his statement aired on NTV, Twinamasiko realised that he had invaded a hornets’ nest. Pummelled from all sides by men and women alike, he was finally forced to apologise before Parliament and wholly retract his statements. With his tail between his legs he ate his words and literally swallowed his tongue. Many would rather eat a cattle keeper’s gumboots than be subjected to such humiliation in front of one’s peers.

For an own goal Twinamasiko’s ill-conceived remarks can only be comparable to the one minister Ronald Kibuule once made saying women who wear miniskirts and revealing dresses invite rape upon themselves and should therefore not complain at all. Like Kibuule, Twinamasiko immediately became a notorious pariah. If he was seeking notoriety he has now got it. For at least one week he has become the most widely and unfavourably talked about MP in Uganda.
The statement was shocking for a number of reasons. First, looking at his profile one would assume that the MP’s academic credentials would have given him better exposure and tamed his primitive instincts to assert his manhood through violence aimed at women.

Secondly, he is a journalist, having completed a degree in Mass Communications from Makerere University in 2009 and a Master of Arts degree in 2014 from Uganda Pentecostal University. Thirdly, he has worked in the media before. One would expect that he would not be so prone to putting his foot in his mouth. Before becoming MP, he was a presenter with UBC for five years (2010 - 2015). He was also concurrently finance secretary for the National Youth Council, lecturer at Uganda Pentecostal University and programme manager at UBC.

In the parliamentary directory, Twinamasiko lists evangelism among his hobbies. Presumably, he is someone who has internalised the Bible and can share his knowledge with a degree of depth. With his barbaric and outrageous (not to say politically incorrect) outburst in defence of wife battering, people will now wonder what sort of evangelism he is involved him.

If Twinamasiko were an older man born in the colonial days, one would think the environment in which he grew up may have influenced his views. For a young man like him to champion wife battering is worrying.
Twinamasiko has now apologised. But did he do it in order to comply with the rules of political correctness demanded by the times or did he express his real convictions? What if he only paid lip service to the idea of non-violence in the domestic sphere? In other words did he really mean what he said on the floor of Parliament?

Twinamasiko voted for the lifting of the age limit. He is therefore not one to contradict his party chairman. He must have uttered something from the depths of his heart. Something he believes in. Why then would he publicly contradict him on a matter that the President seems to take personally. Remember that on Women’s Day, the President said anyone looking for trouble should dare touch his wife Janet.

No one doubts Museveni’s is seriousness on this matter. And this is not the first time he has said this. If you have any doubt about the amount of trouble you can get into by straying into the well-guarded territory called Janet, ask Stella Nyanzi. She could refer to the President as a pair of anything but the day she wandered into writing about the First Lady’s unmentionables is the day her journey to Luzira began.