Samantha Mwesigye’s agony: Has Uganda’s #MeToo moment arrived?

In 2017, a movement aiming at naming, shaming and punishing men who pester women with overt and unwelcome sexual remarks and gestures erupted in the US. Unsurprisingly, it all unfolded in Hollywood. The first allegations of sexual assaults were levelled against Harvey Weinstein.
Weinstein is an award-winning film producer and a Hollywood power broker of no mean accomplishments. But all his power could not stem the tide of negative public opinion unleashed by the accusations. By the end of October 2017, more than 80 women had come out to accuse Weinstein of sexual abuse.

The prevalence of those charges created a spark for the #MeToo social media rage which spiralled into a worldwide campaign. Suddenly, women around the world started coming out boldly with allegations against powerful men. Many of the accused persons were dismissed or forced to resign. Indeed on May 25, 2018, Weinstein was arrested in New York, and charged with rape and other offences.

In his book The Laws of Human Nature, Robert Greene writes about character types that “tend to see every relationship as potentially sexual. Sex becomes a means of self-validation... But as they grow older, any long periods without this validation can lead... (them to) become more desperate. If they occupy positions of leadership, they will use their power to get what they want, all under the guise of being natural and unrepressed”.

Greene writes that when such people get older, these compulsive behaviours become more frightening and pathetic. Greene believes that the way out for a victim is not to pretend that these kind of people can be helped by the victim. Greene advises that “you save yourself from entanglement with them on any level”. Avoid them like the plague!
Let me just state it plainly. The pivot of sexual harassment is not sex. It is power. The power relations determine who compels the other to do his or her bidding.

In a well-publicised case, Samantha Mwesigye, a Senior State Attorney in the ministry of Justice “came out” so to speak, giving an account of her ordeal at the hands of her superior in the same workplace.
She named her alleged tormentor as Christopher Gashirabake, a Deputy Solicitor General who is also on the shortlist of those to be interviewed for the position of Justice of the Court of Appeal.
Mwesigye laments the indifference of various high-level government officials to her pleas for help against a man she accuses of subjecting her to sexual harassment since 2005!

She knows that our society treats sexual harassment like a taboo subject and implies that it is the indifference of those she has cried for help to which has made her go public. She takes time explaining misunderstandings about her ordeal. She has suffered tremendous trauma. This trauma has compelled her to call out other victims who are suffering silently to break their silence. She denounces the impunity and the tendency to put victims in the dock. In a call to arms, she writes “...the scourge of sexual harassment... has wrecked careers, destroyed hard-earned reputations and left its victims scarred for life. It must be confronted.”

In Mwesigye’s case and similar cases, a boss gets obsessed with the myth of the so-called hard to get woman. He believes that she is just playing hard to get and will eventually give in. Obviously his value system does not see her disposition, a committed relationship or even marital status as an impediment to his advances. He cannot believe that a woman doesn’t have to give a reason for refusing a man’s advances.

He approaches a woman the way medieval warriors raid fortresses believing that a fortress which doesn’t fall when stormed forcefully will eventually yield after a long siege. And so he lays siege and continues to apply all sorts of pressure on his victim.
In Mwesigye’s case, the victim has now sent out a distress signal crying out for help. Will the hunter now become the hunted? Or will the band play on?