Angry dads are trying to change the DNA of Uganda Immigration
DNA is inadvertently causing a social crisis, which is our lot in the less developed world, where new technologies are acquired but get directed to non-priority causes. PHOTO | SHUTTERSTOCK
If you thought your job is hard, spare a thought for the poor souls in Uganda’s Immigration Directorate. Since a couple of weeks back, they are flooded by fire-breathing men banging their tables and foaming at mouth as they demand that their children’s passports be cancelled.
The cause of the raid on the immigration offices is DNA tests. Everyone in Ugandan seems to know about DNA.
They can even pronounce it for you in full in the Luganda language that it stands for Ddala Nze Akuzaala? — Am I really your parent? Now, a few weeks back, some guy subjected his six children to DNA testing and, to his shock, none of them was his.
According to the spokesperson of the Immigration directorate, the gentleman was not sure that the Uganda government’s analytical laboratory was accurate, so he flew the samples to South Africa and Canada, to be double sure.
And he got double confirmation of the sad verdict by the national lab in Kampala. He cried foul, because, among other things, he has been educating the six children in international schools.
After the story ran in the local media, men started stealing hair from the heads and nails from the digits of their children and running to the DNA testing lab.
In a short time, the immigration officers didn’t know what hit them, as three dozen men petitioned to have their children’s passports cancelled after DNA revealed they were not the biological fathers.
Instead of concentrating on the processing of passports and work permit applications, immigration officers are now expected to counsel distressed men whose heads are bursting with anger, confusion and an unfathomable sense of betrayal.
The first hurdle for the immigration officers is telling the angry “fathers” that the very request they are demanding cannot be granted; a passport cannot be cancelled on the strength of contested fatherhood of the holder.
Yes sir, even if you are not the father, the child’s passport remains valid, they are told. The most that can be done is correct the particulars of the holder’s parentage.
Second, the angry “fathers” are advised that only the National Identification and Registration Authority can lawfully communicate the fatherhood of a person to Immigration, not angry men.
And that is all we want to know. If you ask a judicial officer about DNA, they will call it a scientific procedure that helps tie a suspect to a scene of crime. Which is the same thing — DNA analysis ties your rich neighbour or in most cases, your maid/shamba boy, to the reproductive scene of your spouse.
Or, flipping this judicial definition, it unties father from the scene where and when a child he (mis)took to be his was conceived.
But the fact that the first place to be stormed by the shocked men is Immigration shows that magnitude of the problem. These are only the jet-setting parents whose children travel the world.
Possibly, the men are trying to stem the financial outflow via fees bills by international schools in Kenya and elsewhere. But what could be happening at lower social levels where, as the classical economists said, procreation is the poor man’s recreation?
From time to time, you hear of an angry soldier who returns from mission in Somalia after a year of fighting Al Shabaab, only to find that another Shabaab has been making attacks in his bedroom. Such soldiers have killed “innocent” people.
Unlike a rich guy whose immediate reaction to shocking DNA results is withdrawing the passport of the child, a soldier fires his gun, and a peasant swings the machete.
DNA is inadvertently causing a social crisis, which is our lot in the less developed world, where new technologies are acquired but get directed to non-priority causes.
We use smartphones to share party and restaurant photos; we use drones to shoot wedding videos; we use genetic analysis to find out who slept with who.
Can someone tell us to use genetic science to improve crop resilience, especially in these days of climate change! For God’s sake, if you are raising some guy’s biological child, there are chances that some other fellow is raising yours as well.
