The State of Morality: Sexual, Reproductive and Sartorial Politics in Idi Amin's Uganda

Abstract

This dissertation uses a wide range of archival documents and interviews to investigate the controversy over women’s sexual, reproductive, and sartorial choices in Idi Amin’s Uganda. It shows how women’s agendas and aspirations collided with the (moral) agendas not just of the state, but also of husbands, church leaders, medics, birth control activists and ordinary Ugandans. Under Amin, women’s morality became a problem for Ugandans to confront collectively as members of one nation. Anxieties about women in the 1970s were formed in relation to the changing architecture of feminine decorum. Ugandans tapped into gendered discourses which dated back to the early twentieth century and which were fueled by anxieties about independent women, to mobilize against women’s use of contraception, their sexual practices, and their fashion. The Amin government empowered state agencies such as the police and mobilized medics and the Family Planning Association of Uganda who all joined hands to reform female behavior. By mobilizing against women, the Amin state joined non-state actors including ordinary Ugandans, newspaper editors and institutions like the Catholic Church, which had since the 1960s used the print media to reform women’s sexual practices. The anti-immorality campaign generated new ways for the government to engage with citizens, and for citizens to exercise their agency. Ordinary Ugandans used the debates about women’s bodies to work out all kinds of anxieties, to make claims on women, hold the government accountable and articulate their vision of the kind of society they wanted. Thus, the dissertation highlights agency, change and continuities in gendered discourses and moral panic in Uganda. It provides insights into how women and girls managed their sexual and reproductive lives at a time when the public thought themselves empowered to dictate to them on how to manage their lives.