Diana Atuhaire

The wives of Museveni and Muhoozi must be new curriculum! By Gawaya Tegulle The Bible has women no one ever talks about, because we’re too busy focusing on their husbands. Moses is as big a name as they come; the man who, with lots of miracles, led Israel out of Egyptian captivity and authored the first five books of the Bible. But nobody mentions Zipporah, his wife. Had she not been wise and decisive, Moses would have been killed by the Lord for disobedience, because he delayed - or refused - to circumcise his children. Now there’s a wife! We know Haman, the man who, between 474–473 BC, tried to instigate a genocide against the Jews in Babylon, simply because he hated Mordecai, the one man who refused to bow down to him. And we know how that story ended – with Haman hanging on the very gallows he had built to have Mordecai hanged on. Nobody talks about his wife, Zeresh, a woman who had both beauty (the foremost qualification for the wife of a noble) and brains (optional, really, because you were supposed to do nothing more than look lovely and be available - when needed). Zeresh warned Haman: if Mordecai is a Jew, don’t fight him any further, because when you fight Jews, there can only be one winner. Now there’s a wife! Haman didn’t listen. He died. We know Pontius Pilate, yes. But we skim over his wife, Claudia Procula (Procla). In the heat of the moment, when huge crowds wanted Jesus killed, she stood up to her husband like a real wife: “Have thou nothing to do with that just man: for I have suffered many things this day in a dream because of him.” Now there’s a wife! Pilate chose the cowardly, populist route - and history has never forgiven him. When the Lord said He’d make a “help meet for Adam”, it was not because he was short on vocabulary. He didn’t say a woman or a wife; or, cuter still (pun, yo!), a chick or a babe. Nope. He used the word ‘help’. Throughout the Bible we see that God has a unique sense of word economy – He doesn’t waste words. That’s why He says that just like neither raindrops nor snowflakes ever return to the heavenlies where they came from, so shall His Word be that goeth forth out of His mouth – it shall not return to Him empty, but it shall accomplish that which He pleaseth and prosper in the thing whereto He sent it. A ‘help meet’ will love, like, believe in, and support her husband when nobody else will. But, more crucially, will also correct him when he is wrong, point out gaps, plug loopholes, and tell him what nobody else might have the guts to. Women – the fairer sex – the other gender – the weaker vessels – have one advantage over men: they were created from refined material. Men came from raw earth. Women came from men already created. So they’re by nature soft and tender-hearted. And, from my experience, much wiser – forget the emotional outbursts and the sulking and pouting. Men have up to a sixth sense. Women have a seventh, which warns you of trouble ahead! A wife of President Museveni should not be at peace if the jails are full of people who spend years in deplorable conditions, wasting away, without trial, their families falling apart, just for being opposition. That should haunt her and prick her tender conscience. She should be disturbed that Museveni first locks up his opponents and their supporters, kills others, scares the rest, then purports to campaign - and that he has to rig the vote and, without shame, claim victory. A wife of the President should be the first to call him to order when he is manifestly ruining a country, doing things even Idi Amin wouldn’t think of doing. A wife of President Museveni should be the first to condemn him for the way he has treated Dr. Kizza Besigye, hounding and haunting a harmless, unarmed man whose only fault is aspiring to be President. There is another fault, of course, which we all know and can discuss. Not here, not now. That one needs a coffee at Cafe Javas, and a muffin or two.