Mr Nicholas Sengoba
There is a cliché description of Uganda as a highly religious and God-fearing country. This is despite its reputation as a very corrupt society, with high rates of bribery, human rights abuses by State organs, domestic violence, run-away defilement and teenage pregnancy rates.
Yet in the Ugandan mind, one of the lowest forms of immorality is in regard to matters sexual, which is a taboo subject in most of our cultures. It is rarely about corruption and abuse of power or violence, unless the violence is of a sexual nature. Every so often there are proposals to draft laws to fight immorality and maintain the moral standards of this country whose motto is “For God and My Country.”
The focus is usually on matters sexual. Such a move is bound to attract good attention. Ms Anna Adeke Ebaju, the pulchritudinous Woman MP for Soroti District, is sponsoring a private member’s Bill, The Sexual Offences Bill, 2024. The Bill, among others, is intended to “enact a specific law on sexual offences for the effectual prevention of sexual violence and enhance punishment of sexual offenders”.
There are many well-meaning clauses and punishments for rape, intentional spread of HIV/Aids, sexual exploitation, defilement, child prostitution, incest, unauthorised exposure of another’s material of sexual nature like nudes, etc. The most enduringly controversial one is on prostitution. If enacted, there will be a two-year jail sentence for prostitution and procuring prostitution. Prostitution is one of the oldest trades in human history. From a November 30 Saturday Monitor story, ‘Let’s Talk about Sex,’ the Adeke Bill defines prostitution as “the practice of engaging in sexual acts or sexual gratification for monetary or other gain.
”For most of us the mental picture of prostitutes or sex workers is of shameless, especially women of the night. They stand on the street or hang around red lights districts in skimpy and revealing dresses. They boldly make cat calls to catch the attention of those who want to partake of their bodies for sexual pleasure and most importantly in exchange for a cash payment. That is their mode of survival. Such offenders are easy to isolate. It is tricky to catch them in the act of providing sexual pleasure and getting paid, for most of their trade is carried out in discrete locations. Things only get out of hand if one party, usually an errant man, refuses to keep their side of the bargain. This leaves the sex worker to shout for help. It once happened in my neighbourhood!
The problem with this view of prostitution is that it is discriminative and myopic and leaves many out of the bracket. It concentrates on the lowest and weakest in the pecking order.
In Uganda today sex is one of the hottest ‘selling items’ on which a considerable number of people survive directly and indirectly. One cheeky fellow; a lawyer said that if URA embarked on taxing the incomes earned from providing sex, they would easily hit their targets. In fact, most, if not all, relationships outside of marriage are based on the consideration of sexual pleasure for money. Many say those things of free love are (sic) for long ago! The ‘liberated’ women see nothing wrong with monetising sexual pleasure because they decide what to do with their bodies – including ‘selling’ them.
Many, especially young girls, will show off their photos in smart outfits, with nice hairdos and well-manicured nails and say “Men are dogs. Imagine someone wants to enjoy all this without spending a coin.”
In other words if they paid for it they may have a right of way. There are many subtle acts of prostitution by both men and women. These include both acts heterosexual and homosexual. It is even boldly advertised on social media. You see coded messages like ‘I am 077XYZ123 miles away from boredom, anyone to save me?’ That is usually a pass with negotiations to be completed in-box. I
n the media (It was common in the Redpepper tabloid) where someone would come out and say they are seeking a sugar mummy or daddy to pay their school fees and take care of them. These sugar parents enter a business deal to invest their money for sexual pleasure. Some people have completed school on this ticket. Others are surviving purely on the liberality of such arrangements where the rent or hostel fees, salon, hot meals are covered by a ‘sponsor,’ Papa, Mama or ‘investor.’
The ‘side chick’ or ‘side nigger’ is not just clowning around. They are looking for money in exchange for providing sexual pleasure.
Social media is awash with pretty pictures of especially unemployed young people travelling the world, dinning and shopping in high end destinations both locally and globally. Some of them having failed to find gainful employment that can take care of the bills, resort to providing escort services to the moneyed to whom they provide ‘sexual healing.’ For many the first passport and plane ride was courtesy of a trip to provide such services.
Back home there is a popular service where young people of both sexes rent high-end serviced apartments. Here they discreetly provide massage and top it up with sex for pay as their occupation. Then there are also people who work as pimps.
They have assignments to hook up especially university students of both sexes for men to engage in sex for pay at well-guarded locations. All these leave out the perennial menace of young people providing sex for marks or employment and other favours like the young man who saved his mother’s house from a bank auction by getting romantically ensconced with a manager.
For the Bill to be taken seriously on the issue of prostitution, it must define and reorganize all sex service providers and punish them equitably. Otherwise, on the account of prostitution, it will be as redundant as current legislation that in effect only targets the street sex worker – who has generally eluded prosecution.
Mr Sengoba is a commentator on political
and social issues
X : @nsengoba
