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THE LIMITATION OF AFFIRMATIVE ACTION IN UGANDA
Dr. Tamale is a senior lecturere in the Faculty of Law, Makerere Unviversity, Kampala, Uganda. An expert on African gender jurisprudence and hte politics of gender in Uganda, Dr. Tamale's latest publication is a book entitled, "When Hens Begin to Crow:Gender and Parliamentary Politics in Uganda."
If a race has started between two runners, and one is shackeled, simply removing the chains and allowing the runners to continue is insufficient, because one runner has had a head start. The race must be started again, or more realistically, the previously chained runner must be moved up to an equal position. 1
A Brief History
Affirmative action is an example of one of the countervailing ways that governments have attempted to redress historical forms of discrimination. The rationale behind affirmative action is to remedy past and present discrimination against women and other "minorities." It is an agent of equitable relations. In the case of women it is a conscious attempt to offset the legacy of sexist discrimination which has perpetuated the under-representation of women in the different spheres of society. Affirmative action is a political and transitional strategy in the long process from centuries-old oppression and inequality to a future of truly equitable relations.
The principle first gained ascendance during the 1960s at the height of the civil rights and women's movement in the U.S. where the policy was mostly implemented in the spheres of employment and education. However, programs of this nature were first used in the twilight of colonialism and termed "indigenization" or "Africanization." They sought to incorporate indigenous peoples in those areas of the civil service and elsewhere from which they had been historically excluded. 2 While affirmative action policies in most Western countries are implemented in the spheres of employment and education, non-Western countries are experimenting with it mostly in the sphere of politics. Sex-quotas have been introduced in the national legislatures of a few African countries in the spirit of "good governance."
Ghana was one of the earliest African countries to introduce a quota system for women in 1960. In that year the then socialist-oriented president Kwame Nkrumah passed a law allowing for the nomination and election of 10 women to the National Assembly,...