The practice of polygamy is today recognised under customary law. Lawyer Julius Ondika says the new Constitution allows for registration of polygamous marriages, but the man has to first seek the consent of the first wife before entering into the second marriage.
David Kato, 43, was an activist with Sexual Minorities Uganda who was pictured and named by the anti-gay tabloid Rolling Stone -- no relation to the US magazine of the same name -- in a story that called on readers to "hang" gay rights advocates.
"This happened yesterday (Wednesday) at about 13:00," said lawyer John Francis Onyango, referring to Kato's killing.
Onyango said initial reports indicate a man entered Kato's home and struck him on the head before fleeing and that police were focusing on two potential suspects.
Human Rights Watch said in a statement that Kato died on his way to a local hospital.
After being identified in the October 2010 tabloid article, which accused gay rights leaders of "recruiting" Uganda's youth into homosexuality, Kato and two others successfully sued the paper for damages and secured a high court injunction blocking all media from outing gays.
Kato was also a vocal critic of Uganda's Anti-Homosexuality Bill, which, if enacted, would massively expand the list of prosecutable offences related to being gay and usher in the death sentence for acts of "aggravated homosexuality."
Currently, the country's penal code, like that of many African countries bans "carnal knowledge of any person against the order of nature." An attempt to commit a homosexual act can be punishable by seven years in jail. A conviction for actually committing such an act can bring a life sentence.
Stosh, a 33-year-old lesbian, lived a secret life because of a Ugandan law against homosexuality until a newspaper recently identified her as gay.
That afternoon, people in a cafe started pointing at her. She left in a hurry.
"I went to a shop where I usually buy things," Stosh said. "The woman there wouldn't sell me anything. She was speaking rudely, calling me a f----t."
She hurried away again, growing more frightened as she made her way home.
The newspaper, which has published photographs of dozens of gay people and listed their names and addresses on two occasions - Monday and last month - was ordered Tuesday by the High Court in Kampala, the capital, to stop such publications at least until a hearing this month. Justice Vincent Kibuuka Musoke issued the temporary injunction, saying the publication of the names and photos amounted to an infringement of the individuals' right to privacy.
African politicians and church leaders have called homosexuality un-African and unbiblical.
Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe has described homosexuals as lower than pigs and dogs. Gays have been jailed in Malawi, Morocco and Cameroon. In South Africa, where gay marriage is legal, lesbians in black townships have been beaten to death.
Gay people in Uganda routinely endure family ostracism, taunts in the street, hate messages, ejection from bars, and firings.
Although polygamy was the norm in Kenya during Akuku's time, the article cites that this practice has died out over the years. To whatever extent that claim is true in Kenya, this practice decidedly persists in Tanzania. We have seen many, many examples of polygamous marriages during our time here. Not only does polygamy continue to happen on an informal basis, it is actually sanctioned by Tanzanian law. Upon registration, a marriage license must be filed according to one of three classifications: polygamous, potentially polygamous, or monogamous. Incidentally any declared status can be "converted" to polygamous or monogamous by joint declaration at any time. As it exists, polygamous relationships are permitted only with the consent of the first wife, in fact maintenance of the other wives becomes the first wife's duty in cases where the husband is incapacitated or otherwise unable to earn a living.
Royal incest, notes historian Joanne Carando, was "not only accepted but even encouraged" in Hawaii as an exclusive royal privilege.
In fact, while virtually every culture in recorded history has held sibling or parent-child couplings taboo, royalty have been exempted in many societies, including ancient Egypt, Inca Peru, and, at times, Central Africa, Mexico, and Thailand. And while royal families in Europe avoided sibling incest, many, including the Hohenzollerns of Prussia, the Bourbons of France, and the British royal family, often married cousins. The Spanish Habsburgs, who ruled for nearly 200 years, frequently married among close relatives.
Siblings share half their genes on average, as do parents and offspring. First cousins' genomes overlap 12.5 percent. Matings between close relatives can raise the danger that harmful recessive genes, especially if combined repeatedly through generations, will match up in the offspring, leading to elevated chances of health or developmental problems—perhaps Tut's partially cleft palate and congenitally deformed foot or Charles's small stature and impotence.
And the hazards, while real, are not absolute. Even the high rates of genetic overlap generated in the offspring of sibling unions, for instance, can create more healthy children than sick ones.
Yet affection sometimes drives these bonds. Bingham learned that even after King Kamehameha III of Hawaii accepted Christian rule, he slept for several years with his sister, Princess Nahi'ena'ena—pleasing their elders but disturbing the missionaries. They did it, says historian Carando, because they loved each other.
Experts believe that in Kenya polygyny is one of the social practices fuelling the spread of HIV/Aids.
It also perpetuates large families, frustrating campaigns to control population growth estimated at 2.3 per cent per year.
The Southern African Development Community Parliamentary Forum (SADC-PF) has described polygamous relationships as a key contributor in the spread of the deadly HIV-AIDS pandemic in southern Africa.
Meanwhile, a UN study, which was released during 2008 on the Kingdom of Swaziland, has also concluded that practices like polygamy and promiscuity are driving rampant HIV-AIDS in the tiny mountain kingdom where nearly 40 percent of adults are infected with the virus.
Swaziland's absolute monarch King Mwasti III has thirteen wives and polygamy is widely practiced in the kingdom. The impoverished mountainous kingdom has been particularly badly hit by southern Africa's AIDS pandemic. South African President Jacob Zuma is also a polygamist.
Namibia’s HIV-AIDS infection rate ranges between 19 and 22 percent.
