Ugandan Crisis: The Prohibition of the Mini Skirt

Simon Lokodo and mini skirt spoof from Dutch Ugandan radio

Before you scoff at what seems to be a traditionally female past time of fashion debate, please take some time to read about the newest bill under discussion in the Ugandan parliament.  Called the Anti-Pornography bill, it contains provisions that women wearing skirt lengths above the knee are to be arrested and can spend 10 years in jail.  One of the most outrageous statements made by Ethics Minister, Simon Lokodo, a trained catholic priest, who in criticizing the wearing of mini skirts, says "they are to blame for, among other things, the increased sexual crimes against women".  Really?  One would think the that patriarchal and dictatorial past governments back to the colonial period  were not responsible for the atrocious abuses of women!  Their own fault?  Such insanity.

Back in the Idi Amin days, Amin decreed that mini skirts were prohibited and women found wearing them were caned, publicly humiliated and ended up in jail.  This is the same warm and fuzzy Amin who while the third president of Uganda, was known for human rights abuse, political repression, ethnic persecution, extrajudicial killings, nepotism, corruption, and gross economic mismanagement.  The same Amin whose fifth wife, "Suicide Sarah", was a go-go dancer for Amin's Ugandan Army Revolutionary Suicide Mechanised Regiment Band.  Not my idea of a man capable of even imagining prim and proper. 

One intervew, with a teacher Albert, was most enlightening.  His lovely and bodeaucious fiance is required to wear the mini skirt and revealing clothes as a quasi uniform for her job at the bank.  Albert laments the attention this brings to his fiancee but he cannot say anything, lest she lose her job.  Needless to say, Albert supports the new bill.  What I can't help but wonder, what part of the bill is going to change this bank's dress requirement?  I would be willing to bet the bank leaders are all men and the use of provactively clothed females to sell wares is as old as time. 

Is this not going too far?  The Anti-Pornography bill, coming on the heels of the Anti-Homosexuality bill, is being criticized for it's far reaching verbiage into Ugandan private lives.  In this day and age, many of the teeth of the bill are much needed but like we see in this country, politicians have a tendency to attach pet projects to a needed change in law, thereby further tromping on good citizens rights.  The analysis of this bill demonstrates the need for reforms, it is just not wise or fair to penalize one sex, especially since they are normally the victim of pornographic trade. 

The op-ed piece published by the Kampala Observer may have the right of it, "indeed with all the poverty, unemployment, corruption and poor healthcare, it is ridiculous to expend public resources debating how long or short women's skirts must be. In fact, coming not long after the Anti-Homosexuality Bill, this bill shows a government that is obsessed with controlling people's private lives, which is ironical.  For a government that can't provide lunch for pupils in its schools, or decent and affordable maternal healthcare for the poor in its hospitals, to take keen interest in what citizens wear or who they sleep with and how, is a sign of lopsided priorities." 

Indeed, this author cannot help but agree...................

What I find reprehensible threaded through these articles and so many more around the continent is the idea that a woman's mode of dress is thought to license male's thoughts and deeds.  In Swaziland, where they banned mini skirts and midrif baring tops in December but still allow bare breasted women to dance for the king, they believe "women wearing revealing clothing were responsible for assaults or rapes committed against them." Where, may I ask you, does it say that permission is granted to abuse the wearer in any fashion one wants?  Until this stupidity and absurdity are removed from society and the minds of the people in Africa grow respect for one another, they will continue to have this entirely preventable problem.