Activists say wife-swapping is rape

Legal experts and gender activists have come out with guns blazing against DTA vice-president Kazeongere Tjeundo and his defence of the age-old custom of wife-swapping among the Ovahimba and Ovazemba tribes. Tjeundo told international news agency AFP in an article published in Namibian Sun last week that he will propose a wife-swapping law after the upcoming general election towards the end of this year. ‘Okujepisa omukazendu’ or ‘offering a wife to a guest’ - and any proposed law associated with it - has been roundly slammed by gender activists and legal experts who shared their view with Namibian Sun. Gender Links Namibia national director Sarry Xoagus Eises described the practice as “free rape” and said that culture shouldn’t violate human rights. “Women aren’t sex objects. So these men must not sit under a tree and decide how to violate women. Culture is dynamic and I respect culture, but it should never violate women.” Eises said the country s already battling HIV and the custom is likely to increase infections. “This rape and democracy will never embrace such a law. The choice of women will be violated under such a law. Culture should not be used as an excuse to violate women. The deputy dean of the University of Namibia’s Law Faculty, Yvonne Dausab, said such a law would be a violation of sexual autonomy and has no place in a constitutional democracy. She said such a law would be advocating for discrimination on the basis on sex. Responding to the fact that the under the tribal custom a woman cannot object to sleeping with a man chosen by her husband, Dausab said that such a practice will be rape. Dausab said women are not commodities that can be given away as gifts. Women’s Action for Development (WAD) executive director Veronica de Klerk said the organisation “deplores, rejects and condemns in the strongest terms, the shocking intention of the DTA to introduce a law after the upcoming general elections... that will allow wife-swapping”. “To say the least, this attests to the shocking ignorance of some lawmakers regarding the contents of their own gender-related laws which they passed some years ago.” De Klerk said wife-swapping can lead to very serious consequences, such, including the spread of the HIV/Aids and other sexually transmitted diseases. “Wife-swapping has very serious emotional and psychological consequences on women and it is in conflict with their human rights. Moreover, it touches on women’s dignity, and if a wife is forced against her will to engage in wife-swapping, she is forced into marital rape which is illegal in terms of our gender-related laws” De Klerk added that if a woman is forced into wife-swapping, it can lead to gender-based violence - a destroyer of family homes and the escalation of divorce cases. “Most importantly, wife-swapping is in conflict with our constitution, the Combating of the Rape Act, the Combating of the Gender-Based Violence Act and the Married Persons Equality Act, which forbids marital rape.” The Ovahimba and Ovazemba communities are mainly found in north-western Kunene Region near the Angolan border. The tribes are largely isolated from the rest of the country. WINDHOEK GORDON JOSEPH