The Standard Group Plc is a multi-media organization with investments in media
platforms spanning newspaper print
operations, television, radio broadcasting, digital and online services. The
Standard Group is recognized as a
leading multi-media house in Kenya with a key influence in matters of national and
international interest.
Uganda’s next revolution could be over sanitary pads. You would have thought that people would consider going to war over land, water, oil or religion. But now see what happened. Something that is supposed to remain secret to us women is threatening to tear the country apart.
In fact, even the woman seated next you should not know that you have it. The sanitary pad should take care of your periods and as you grow, you should have identified a friendly medicine to deal with your cramps. And now see where we are headed because of some packets of cotton wool!
It all started sometime at the beginning of last year, or maybe at the end of the previous year 2015. Campaigns for the general elections were on and the president, our dear president who was seeking re-election, promised to provide sanitary towels for all school going girls.
It is unacceptable, he said, for girls to miss school just because they are at that time of the month. Everybody clapped, especially the girls.
Supporters of the government echoed the president’s call, and countless articles were written, castigating previous governments for not realising the importance of providing sanitary towels to girls, but thank God the enlightened leadership has decided to do something about it.
Elections came in February and we voted appropriately, we women that is. We knew the free pads for girls were assured. The government budget was read in June and there was no mention of the pads. Maybe it was a detail in the education ministry budget. Or health.
The year wore on, we ‘ate’ Christmas – nothing. A week or so ago, some angry woman, an eminent scholar from Makerere University wrote a scathing attack on the government on social media for not fulfilling its sanitary promise to the girls of Uganda.
Dr Stella Nyanzi is no stranger to controversy. Last year, she stripped before television cameras to protest attempts by her director at the Makerere Institute of Social Research to take away her office space and allocate it to someone else. The director was world-renowned Prof Mahmood Mamdani – but that did not deter Sister Stella from baring it.
She was suspended by the University, but was recently reinstated. And last Tuesday, she was a guest of the police, who grilled her for four hours. She emerged from the interrogation room defiant and calling the government more names.
We were still wondering what next for Stella when young ladies of Uganda’s oldest political party, DP, jumped into the fray. Party President Norbert Mao had called a press conference to comment on some boring thing about their quarrels with the ruling party.
The girls jumped onto stage, took the microphone and declared war on whoever is denying their sisters sanitary pads.
They had one simple question, what kind of society can promote the issuance of free condoms yet a condom is used out of voluntary desire, and deny girls menstrual pads yet menstruation is not voluntary?
