MP Kabanda demands to know the security personnel who stripped her almost naked

Kampala, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT | The outspoken Butambala Woman Member of Parliament has demanded to know the security personnel who stripped her almost naked during the fracas in the chamber of parliament.

Hajat Aisha Nalule Kabanda told the House that she was victim of the unknown security personnel who stormed the chambers and forcefully ejected sections of opposition MPS. Rising on matter of privilege, Aisha Kabanda told the House presided over by the Speaker of Parliament, Anita Among that she was carried out of the chamber of the house in a very brutal way.

“My dress was torn, I was actually stripped,” Kabanda narrated as she went to demand that Anita Among orders a probe into the events leading to her stripping on 6th November 2024 during the debate on the then controversial coffee amendment Bill.

On the fateful day, the Speaker of Parliament had suspended 12 Member of Parliament alleging that they were disrupting the proceedings in the Parliament. Men and women in plan-clothes stormed the House as the Speaker exited from the chambers.

Some of the female MPS like Kampala Woman MP, Shamim Malende was captured on the camera as she was being lifted shoulder high by the men out of the chambers of parliament.

Aisha Kabanda went to Parliament with a torn dress which attempted to table before parliament as part of her demand for the probe. Her submission was repeatedly interfered with by the Busia Municipality MP. Geoffrey Macho, an NRM leading Independent.

“My dress was completely torn. Rt Hon Speaker when I was thrown out of that house, the door behind you I was actually carried what they described to be jerk by the jerk,” she said.

Kabanda, one of the few women Parliamentarians who abides by the Islamic dressing code even while in the Parliament nearly shed tears as she pleaded to know her tormentors.

“It was not only me who was taken out of this House without your directive. Even Hon Charles from Busiro who had not been suspended from this House was also carried out” she said.

“This dress was also torn from the lower part up to this point. All the thighs were spared out. Rt Hon Speaker why I want to lay this on table is for you to direct an investigation on who are the people that lad hands on me in a way that was so dehumanizing” she pleaded with Annete Anita Among who watched on from her newly designed speaker’s chair.

The speaker said as a woman, she was feeling the humiliation that her legislator went though. Neither Parliament not the executive have come out explain who stormed the House. At one moment the Parliament’s publicist, Chris Obore hinted of the possibility that they were members from the police division based at parliament

The Speaker did not allow the Butambala legislator to lay her torn dress on the table for investigation. Anita Among explained that while she ordered for the suspension of some members of Parliament, she did not order for their arrest.

“I left the chambers and came back I did not know what happened” explained Anita Among.

The humiliation of women Parliamentarians in Uganda is being highlighted as part of the of 16 days of activism concluding on the day that commemorates International Human Rights Day.

Aisha Kabanda is not the first woman Parliamentarian to suffer forceful eviction and humiliation under the watch or approval of the authorities at in Parliament.

To date, Mukono Municipality MP, Betty Nambooze continues to nurse injuries resulting from the 27 September 2017 in Parliament.

She was beaten by a group of security operatives while she was in parliament. The house was on that day debating the Constitution Amendment Bill No. 2 of 2017 when a group of state security operatives attacked Nambooze.

Nambooz said one of the strangers in the chambers applied a lot of pressure on her back using his knee. She was then arrested and transferred to the headquarters of the Special Investigations Unit of the Uganda police force located in Kireka, where she remained for seven hours.

Male MPS like Allan Ssewanyana, Ibrahim Ssemujju Nganda and Francis Zaake have   have suffered similar humiliation.  For the female legislators, such incidents of violence can affect their participation in political discourses.

The Governing Council of the Inter-Parliamentary Union in the case of Nambooze and other cases  in Uganda expressed concerns about the  lack of respect for the physical integrity of members of the opposition and the lack of accountability whenever they are subject to ill-treatment or torture

A study by the Inter-Parliamentary Union and the African Parliamentary Union recently found that acts of sexism, harassment, and violence against women are common in African parliaments.

The study, which was based on confidential interviews with 224 female lawmakers and parliamentary staffers in 50 African countries — along with one subregional parliamentary assembly — found that 80% of the female parliamentarians interviewed had “experienced psychological violence” on the job and 67% had been “subject to sexist behaviour or remarks” from the public, people online, or fellow lawmakers.

The inaugural “Women’s Political Participation: Africa Barometer” report found that women account for just 24% of Africa’s parliamentarians, compared with 32% in the Americas and 30% in Europe.  According to the UN Women data, “an estimated 736 million women—almost one in three—have been subjected to physical and/or sexual intimate partner violence, non-partner sexual violence, or both at least once in their life.

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