Uburundi bwahimbaje imyaka 30 iheze habayeho amasezerano y'ubumwe bw'abarundi
https://youtu.be/2Z9LADCawDQ
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"Hate Cannot Drive Out Hate. Only Love Can Do That", Dr. Martin Luther King.
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New Vision starts series on 'Brides for sale at sh50,000'
Starting Thursday, New Vision will run a series about girls being sold into marriage for just sh50,000. This is not a Fool's Day story. It is happening in Uganda and has actually been happening since 2016.
Brokers go to neighbouring Rwanda and get girls ready for marriage. Once in Uganda, they look for a potential husband willing to part with a brokerage fee. That, apparently, is all a potential husband is expected to pay; no bridewealth, no transport and no wedding.
The story has gone on unreported because the sources of information were not always willing to be quoted and the Police were also unwilling to confirm or refute the details.
Hilary Bainemigisha, the senior content producer at New Vision, says such stories become sensitive and can expose the media house to the risk of prosecution. The only way they can be handled, he said, is to get to the truth using an undercover journalist.
"We had to use an undercover journalist to identify the brokers, pretend she is Rwandan and offer to be sold into marriage. In this particular case, our undercover journalist unearthed a lot of issues in the chain of the unusual process of starting a marriage," Bainemigisha said.
New Vision wanted to establish whether, in the process of bringing girls from their parents in Rwanda to a foreign country for sale into marriage, there are no human rights abuses, sexual exploitation or illicit behaviour as part of the racket.
In the exclusive four-part series, starting on July 22, the undercover journalist will reveal everything, including a church, which is deeply involved in the trafficking of girls and selling them as wives. From the church that seemed to have pioneered the project, arose so many brokers that brought the cost of getting a bride to sh50,000. The practice, which has been going on since 2016, has had its successes and failures. What added fuel to the fire is an allegation of a spying racket involving the two countries.
The story takes the undercover reporter from the districts of Kassanda, to Mubende, then Mityana and back to Kampala, before moving again to Mityana, where she was actually sold into marriage at sh50,000 around the shores of Lake Wamala. The adventure, anticipation, anxiety, risk and timely evacuation make the series an epic work of good journalism.
Bainemigisha hailed the courage of the undercover journalist.
The undercover reporter also discovered more than she had expected to.
"I discovered how different classes of people view marriage. For some, it is a partnership of love aimed are bearing and rearing of children as companions. But for many others, it is an institution a girl and her parents must give up their everything to get into regardless of the man they get. It is slavery of sorts, where the wife has no say regarding the husband's behaviour, number of children to have and friends to have. The girl and her parents are willing to give up basic freedoms and rights as long as they are referred to as the wife of someone," the reporter said.
Commerce has entered many facets of our lives. The question may not be how to undo the financial calculations of buying a wife or getting one through the known cultural processes; it may boil down to how do we do it safely, in respect of human rights and basic freedoms.
However, that is a debate of another day.
