Global trends show that more men than women kill their spouses. Spouse killers are current and past partners.
While the murders seem numerous, the actual slow deaths arising from the mental destructions are never reported. Victims are silently beaten to death and a week later, neighborhoods take note of the end result.
Domestic violence is a national and global crisis that urgently demands an immediate and rapid response from civil society and governments to completely stop this behaviour.
Domestic violence remains a silent killer that is also capable of instantly driving victims to their graves.
It is a renowned destroyer not only of the physical being but also of the most sensitive areas of the entire human being: the mental!
Once the mental is damaged or destroyed, both the physical and the spiritual lose form and the total well-being of the victims is gradually destroyed.
Makerere University, which by all accounts could have had the means to prevent domestic violence and, at earliest detection, dissolve crises from its staff, has proven inadequate.
It lacks staff welfare services and hotlines for the purpose of preventing violence and rescuing victims of pending deaths.
The trend that is now “eating” the university is “normalized” and therefore a simplistic problem for the university to handle. The questions are: what are the research and innovation units doing? And how effective are they in feeding the normative and regulatory bodies of the university?
The university has schools that can quickly use their expertise to neutralize impending challenges like domestic violence.
These, among others, include: the faculty of law, the faculty of psychology and psychiatry, the office of peace and conflict projects, and the department of social work and social administration.
For the university to be a center of human development knowledge and best practices, it must be attentive to reaching communities in trouble nationally and, if possible, globally. But if you can’t address domestic violence in your immediate community, what college is it?
As a public institution, a lot could be said about it, reflecting the moral decline of society. But where is the leadership and the university council or the senate? What are they doing?
The college community recently lost one of its brightest and youngest members to domestic violence. She is now the late Winnie Nakajjubi. This is something horrible and unacceptable, not only in the university environment but in the civilized world.
Domestic violence perpetrators have no place in this age. They should attempt to kill themselves if they feel too gratified to end their spouse’s. At some point they may realize how precious life is.
Additionally, both perpetrators and their victims must muster the courage to put the relationship to rest temporarily or permanently to avoid the unpleasant end of life that is always potent in abusive relationships.
Perpetrators must be brought to light and isolated upon early detection by neighbors or society. And society must work to deter further incidents of domestic violence. Here society replaces non-compliant institutions.
