Child Abuse or Discipline? Moses Isegawa’s Critique of Ugandan Child-rearing Practices in Abyssinian Chronicles

Abstract

Although Moses Isegawa’s debut novel, Abyssinian Chronicles, has received popular recognition in the press, it is yet to attract commensurate critical attention in literary scholarship. No wonder the available critical analyses of this important Ugandan text focus on only its political theme. Its commentators argue that the domestic story of the depicted family uncannily corresponds to important historical moments in the Ugandan polity. This allegorical reading ignores one of the several interesting tangents of the novel – the deployment of corporal punishment as a child-rearing practice in Uganda– that I interrogate in this article. I argue that Isegawa provides profound insights into how some Ugandan families’ obsession with the idea of a “well-behaved” child paradoxically turns sites such as homes and schools associated with nurturing and securing children into arenas of child abuse. Furthermore, I argue that Isegawa’s text crafts a mask for its protagonist to effectively disclose the violation and abuse that some children are immersed in a manner that rescues abused and violated children from being perceived as mere statistical footnotes to Uganda’s postcolonial troubles. Thus, I argue that Isegawa’s text acts as a monument to some Ugandan children abused at the altar of moulding visibly and respectably obedient children.

Keywords:

• child abuse
• child-rearing practices
• child focalisation
• corporal punishment
• vulnerable childhoods
• Uganda