In some African cultures, when a baby was born, the parents took it to its patronal grandparents to be given a clan name.
It was never a big event even though the birth of a child has always been a cause for celebration in this part of the world. The grandfather of the newborn baby would summon his sisters to come to the naming event.
It was the duty of the sisters, the baby’s paternal aunties or Sengas in Luganda to look for body marks that confirmed that the child belonged to their family or not. They checked the ears, the fingers, the toes, any birth marks that would give any clue. They would pass on the results to their brother, the grandfather of the child.
If they doubted that the child belonged to their nephew, the grandfather would give the child a universal name that doesn’t necessarily belong to any clan. In some rare cases, grandfathers outright refused to give the child any names. But this usually caused havoc; so, many avoided it.
In many families, “paternity-doubted” children were known to exist. But divorce was rare so people carried on with their lives and kept what they thought were family secrets. The Baganda even coined a saying that you would be sure of your biological father after the death of your mother. As long as you mother lived, she could at any one time introduce you to another man as your biological father. And her word was final.
Women many times introduced adult children to other men they had had casual or secret sexual relationships with as the biological fathers. In such cases, some children changed names and acquired those of the new clans where they now belonged.
Advancements in technology led to DNA to literally ask if you are the biological parent of the child. In Uganda, the stories started largely by some local TV stations providing this as a service where two men or more claimed to be the fathers of the child.
Eventually, technology got here and labs were established in Kampala that offer DNA tests at a fraction of what was being charged by the labs in Johannesburg.
Today, many people who doubt the paternity of the children take samples so they could establish whether they are the biological parents or not. But it wasn’t just parents, also siblings in bitter quarrels of how to manage their late parents’ estates frequent these labs.
This has led to increased stories of DNA tests and some people have argued that the results will lead to breakdown of families and a dysfunctional society as children are subjected to severe psychological effects. And in a country where psychological support is almost aliens, one could understand the argument.
