Street children: Wa Muchomba has a point but polygamy is not the solution

Kiambu Woman Representative Gathoni wa Muchomba has a knack for controversy. Her comments last year about how she felt seriously underpaid as an MP mostly attracted ridicule. However, it is her latest advocacy for polygamy that has really churned the waters in her community – and even beyond.

As I understood her, her point was that there are too many broken or single mother families where children are growing up without a father figure. Fathers must ensure they bring up the children they bear from mpango wa kandos, even if that means marrying the mothers of these offspring. Social problems like street children, crime and drug and alcohol abuse are breeding from there.

CULTURALLY

Gathoni is being disruptive, but more in the sense of calling for self-reflection rather than nagging. In case she didn’t know, polygamy (or what wasomi call polygyny), is perfectly legal in Kenya, as long as you don’t contract it the Christian way. The Church is a big barrier, but not the only one. The economic cost of bringing up a polygamous family is overwhelming these days. But the biggest obstacle, in my opinion, is the way the culture has changed over the years. To “modern” types, there is a kind of social stench the practice carries that is unattractive, sort of like the stigma with FGM. You no longer impress anybody when you parade a harem of wives. Legal or not, polygamy is seriously losing ground culturally.

BIGGEST FOES

Gathoni’s biggest foes, ironically, are her own womenfolk. Women of my mother’s age, who believe monogamy is God-ordained, would worry she is suffering from something and would pray for her. The modern, aspirational lady is more hostile. Those happily settled in monogamous marriages find her idea dangerous. If my husband takes another wife, they like to insist, I will take a walk. Single, professional women consider her an old-fashioned throwback for believing a woman with children cannot lead a fulfilling life without the entanglement of a husband. Feminists, for their part, think of her as a pitiable nuisance. One of them once gave me a mouthful for suggesting that the West has double standards when it advocates homosexual tolerance across the world yet it outlaws polygamy. I was taken through the paces of how polygamy is an “instrument of patriarchy” meant to manipulate and oppress women.

FATHERLESS

Sometimes I like being argumentative, and I asked, just to be provocative, whether my “liberated” friend would view polygamy less harshly if society got to accept the unusual but uncommon practice of polyandry, where a woman marries two or more men. (It happens, with some Himalayan tribes). She hesitated, but for the sake of wanting to sound even-handed, answered why not? What Gathoni is speaking about is not fancy terminologies like these. She probably doesn’t understand them. She also doesn’t give a hoot how modern women organise their lives. Her concern is the children living out of wedlock, those fatherless children.

DEADBEAT

I agree with Gathoni that the primary focus of any relationship should be stability and the well-being of the children. But I don’t see how polygamy will help with the social problems that worry her and are poisoning her community. The problem she wants dealt with is that of deadbeat fathers who don’t take care of the children they have outside marriage. Yet such deadbeats are everywhere even in marriages, especially in polygamous ones. Indeed, there are deadbeat mothers, too, who neglect their own children. Gathoni wouldn’t know that children can be raised happy without their parents being married at all, whether monogamously or polygamously. I hope she is not suggesting every contact with a woman should become a marriage. That won’t work.

CONSTITUTION

Certainly, Gathoni is raising important questions about parental responsibility that require answers – and action. She should start by demanding much, much stronger enforcement of the Children’s Act (2002) and Article 53 of the Constitution (2010) which will cushion the “illegitimate” children she feels for most.

Meanwhile, Gathoni should not be too worried that the community will somehow not find a way how mpango wa kando and “come-we-stay” lifestyles can be corrected.

Warigi is a socio-political commentator, [email protected]