Recently, a Ugandan vernacular daily newspaper, Bukedde, reported a surprising wedding involving a young man with an older woman. It must be one of the few open cross-generation relationships that have gone public. Fr Edward Albert Baharagate joined the couple, Bonny Kayondo, 24, and Margaret Nakacwa, 58, at a catholic church at Kitagobwa in Wakiso district of central Uganda. It is surprising because sugar mummies as they are commonly called, normally conceal an affair with a boy the age of their sons as it would attract public condemnation. Cross-generation sex has always generated controversy over the years, with the active participants having to contend with the long-standing preoccupied notions that are associated with older woman/young man relationship: he is after her money or other material gains, she [basing on her experience] wants to enslave him. Also many people think older women are seeking sex and they apply all tricks including sorcery to lure young energetic men to their hearts. But what is clear is that most critics of cross-generation sex portray young girls as the victims of greedy men who use mobile phone handsets, money and other gifts to lure the young girls into sexual affairs. Kayondo and Nakacwa’s marriage, however, serves to indicate that even boys are victims of older women.While exchanging their marriage vows, the groom, out of guilt, apparently denied being motivated by material wealth. “I didn’t love this woman for money but her conduct and I believe we shall produce children,” he reportedly saidBut the Christians did not hide their anger towards the bride as they reportedly kept hauling insults to the bride for luring the young man. Matters were not helped any when the presiding priest pronounced the couple husband and wife, and urged them to “go and produce and fill the earth”. Sure, it takes serious religious or scientific conviction to believe that that couple will fulfill the blessing.Normally such heated discussions about issues of morality are expected to attract the keen eye of religious leaders for them to earn universal condemnation as immoral, but for the church to grace such marriage, it thus abdicates its duty to condemn the vice. And one is left wondering whether the church is for or against cross-generation sex.I had never bothered to comment on such relationships because I regard issues of morality as personal, and am not a moralist either. For young men who fall victims with their consent, as a man I have with time come to believe that there are certain issues that any man can fail to exercise control over especially if they have to do with women. Women have ruined relationships and separated brothers as they press their husbands against the ‘wall’ to do their will. You will occasionally come across men of integrity succumb to situations least expected of them because of the power of women. My uncle in his late 50s a few years back had offered to defect from his protestant church and circumcise because his potential second wife, Madinah, had demanded so in order to win a place in her heart. Had it not been for his uncle who threatened to evoke evil spirits that would allegedly make healing difficult he would now be a Muslim. But if anybody doubted the role of the church in promoting cross-generation sex this would serve the purpose. We have heard pastors especially in the Pentecostal churches ‘compelling’ their flock [young men] to choose marriage partners from the church even when there are limited choices to be had, and many young men have ended up in marriages [with women the age of their mothers] just because they didn’t have an upper hand in decision making.And I thought this was the age most religious and government institutions were advocating against cross-generation sex! The writer is The New Times bureau chief for BugeseraContact: jtasamba@gmail.com
