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{
    "id": 456365,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/456365/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 430,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Hon. (Ms.) Kanyua",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 981,
        "legal_name": "Priscilla Nyokabi Kanyua",
        "slug": "priscilla-nyokabi-kanyua"
    },
    "content": "together, we dance and enjoy ourselves. We want to keep that in our laws. We want to have those marriages recognised, and this Bill provides for them. The issue of codification of our marriage laws has been mentioned by many hon. Members. Again, we have had to read the Muslim marriage as provided for in the Mohamedan Act; the Christian marriage as provided for in the Christian Marriages Act. We have also had to read about seven pieces of legislation on matters of marriage. That will no longer be the case. We now have one particular law, in which all the systems of marriages are codified, right from Christian marriages through to Muslim and Hindu marriages as well as civil marriages that take place in the Attorney-General’s Chambers. The Committee has even gone into an extent of cleaning up all those processes. We now have a better marriage law. In this country, you can refer to one piece of legislation, which tells you what kind of marriages we want to see in our country. Hon. Temporary Deputy Speaker, on the question of rights and obligations, again, marriage is not just any union. Marriage is a union where parties acquire rights and obligations. It is very important that we know who is married to whom in this country. We, therefore, found it important to sort out our marriage laws through this Bill. We have had many forms of marriages, including one that in local parlance is called “come-we- stay”. It is important that we know who is married to whom because there are rights and obligations that arise in marriage issues. There is also the institution of the family. Our Constitution sets out the matters around family law, in Article 45. This House has also done well in terms of domestication, implementation and furtherance of the provisions of the Constitution relating to family members. Families in the contest of our Constitution are formed by a man and a woman or members of opposite sex. No other marriages are allowed. Hon. Temporary Deputy Speaker, allow me to celebrate polygamy. Allow me to give a story about the men that I went to class with in Law School. They always used to say that African men have much more love that one woman cannot finish. I do not know if that is true – that African men have a lot more love, and that they want to share that love across not one woman but several women. So, today I am happy for the African men that have a lot of love. The law allows them to share that love and spread it across several women, and acquire rights and obligations under marriage. You will not be a polygamous man by default. You will be a polygamous man by choice. You will marry one wife and marry another one because you want to do so and because you have a lot of love to give not only to one woman but also to a second woman and a third woman, and you will maintain those families. More importantly for us women, we will get married into polygamous unions not by default; and not by what we have had. I do not want a situation where I hold a certificate in my cupboard, happily married to a man until the day he dies but at the mortuary, I see many other people crying. Hon. Temporary Deputy Speaker, in one such case, we even thought that the person crying was a colleague and wondered why she was really getting disturbed by the demise of another woman’s husband only to later realise that she was actually a wife of the deceased person. We have, in our law of succession that allowance. All the people who are dependants of the estate of a deceased person in his life time are allowed to come out when he dies. This is because of the discordance of the laws that we have had. In his The electronic version of the Official Hansard Report is for information purposesonly. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor."
}