UGANDA: Pretty women entrap intact men for enforced circumcision

Uganda Picks
May 1, 2012

Cultural Circumcision-Pretty Women Used to Find Bugishu Uncircumcised Men

By Sandra Birungi
Pretty women are being used to find out which men have not been circumcised. Among such victims was Shaban Kidudu who was sexually lured by a woman who later revealed that he was not circumcised despite his claims that he had been circumcised.

Kidudu from Lugazi used to tell the Bagishu community that he had been circumcised before and he did not need the cultural performance to be carried out on him. However, it was later found out that he had not been circumcised which forced [forced?] the bugishu community to use force for him to be circumcised. [So they threatened him with violence?]
 
“My husband went through the knife so when he told me we should go and find the man who was scared of it, I was more than willing to go ahead and help. I called him and told him I needed to meet him and he told me he would meet me in five minutes. Five minutes later, I called again and he said he was sloping down the hill and he would be next to me soon. [So this man put out his wife to offer sex to Kidudu, and they claim the moral high ground?] Later on, when I inspected him, I found out he was not circumcised so when we were leaving, I called the people and told them he had not been circumcised,” narrated the planted woman.

Kidudu at first rejected the woman’s claims saying he had been circumcised but later on admitted to not being circumcised. He was smeared with maize flour as culture demands it and walked around the village announcing he was going to get circumcised.

Kidudu works at a washing bay and he had previously assured the people that he had been circumcised. After realising it actually works to find the culprits ["culprits"?] , the residents promised to start using the pretty women to find those men who were not circumcised. Kidudu later confessed that he was going to go for circumcision in the hospital and the operation had been scheduled to take place sometime this week.

“If he was a muslim, we would have had no trouble letting him go because that would mean he had been circumcised but he was not,” said the woman who laid the trap for Kidudu.

In Bugishu culture, circumcision is a must for every boy. By the age of 18 years, it is believed that a boy is able to stand the knife and feel the pain like a man. In previous years, an MP was forcibly circumcised after it was found out he had not been circumcised. Being uncircumcised is looked at as a sin, you are not a man until you have withstood a knife.