She said it plainly, without flinching, and without waiting to see how the crowd would react. Mariam Bukenya, the former Ebonies actress widely known by her stage name Ketra, has publicly declared that she will not raise children born to her co-wives, a statement that has reignited one of Uganda’s most charged domestic debates in recent weeks.
The remarks came in the wake of a podcast discussion hosted by celebrated singer Sheebah Karungi, whose guest for the episode was veteran musician and cultural icon Joanita Kawalya. During that conversation, Kawalya took a firm stance of her own, stating that she could not bring herself to care for children who belong to a co-wife. Ketra, clearly watching and listening, stepped forward to lend her voice to that same position.
“Every Mother Should Own Her Responsibility”
Ketra’s argument is not built on bitterness or competition. It is built on principle. Her view is straightforward: a woman who carries a pregnancy, labours through childbirth, and brings a child into the world bears the primary responsibility for raising that child. Expecting another woman in the household to absorb that duty, she argues, is both unreasonable and unfair.
She made no attempt to soften the message for comfort. “I can’t allow or raise children belonging to my co-wife in my home,” she said, adding that public disapproval holds little weight for her. It is a rare kind of candour in a social climate where women often feel pressure to perform selflessness, even at the cost of their own emotional limits.
Why This Debate Has Uganda Talking
Polygamy is legally recognised in Uganda and remains a lived reality for many families across the country. That reality creates a complex web of relationships, expectations, and domestic arrangements that rarely get examined with the kind of honesty Ketra and Kawalya are bringing to the table.
In many polygamous homes, co-wives and their children share the same compound, sometimes the same roof. The question of who mothers whom is not always a philosophical exercise. It is a daily practical tension. Children from different mothers may be left in one another’s care. Older wives sometimes find themselves responsible for children born to younger ones. The expectation that a woman should love and nurture all the children in a household equally, regardless of biological connection, is one that society often imposes without asking whether it is realistic or fair.
Ketra is not the first woman to push back against that expectation, but she may be one of the most visible to do so in recent Ugandan public discourse.
The Podcast Moment That Sparked a National Conversation
Sheebah Karungi’s podcast has developed a reputation for hosting candid conversations about womanhood, relationships, and identity in Uganda. The episode featuring Joanita Kawalya clearly struck a nerve, with the co-wife parenting question becoming the moment that resonated most widely online and in public conversation.
Kawalya herself is a figure whose opinion carries cultural weight. As a prominent voice in Ugandan music and arts, her willingness to speak plainly about the limits of her domestic generosity gave other women permission to say what many had been thinking privately.
What This Means Beyond the Headlines
It would be easy to reduce this story to celebrity gossip. It is anything but. The conversation Ketra and Kawalya have stepped into touches on how Ugandan society distributes emotional labour, how it defines a “good woman,” and whether polygamous structures account for the psychological weight placed on the women within them.
The question of childcare in polygamous households is not simply about who feeds or bathes a child. It is about attachment, identity, fairness, and the invisible work that women perform every single day without acknowledgment or compensation. When Ketra says she sees no reason for a woman to carry the parenting load of another woman’s child, she is pointing at something larger than one household rule.
A Position That Cuts Through Sentiment
There will be those who call her selfish. There will be those who argue that in a polygamous home, boundaries between co-wives’ children are artificial and harmful to the children themselves. Those are legitimate counterpoints worth engaging with seriously.
But Ketra’s position does not close that conversation. It opens it. She is not telling anyone how to run their home. She is telling people how she runs hers, and more importantly, she is refusing to pretend that raising another woman’s child is a burden every woman should simply accept without question.
That kind of honesty, delivered without performance or apology, is exactly what these conversations need more of.
The Broader Question Uganda Must Answer
Polygamy in Uganda is governed by law, but the emotional architecture of polygamous life is largely left to the individuals inside it. Women are expected to adapt, to cooperate, and in many cases, to extend maternal love across biological lines. Whether that expectation is reasonable, and who benefits from it most, is a question that deserves far more public scrutiny than it typically receives.
Ketra’s refusal to perform a particular kind of domestic sacrifice is not a radical act. It is a boundary. And the fact that it feels radical to some people says a great deal about what Uganda expects from its women.
So here is the question worth sitting with: in a polygamous household, who truly decides how childcare responsibilities are distributed, and does anyone ever actually ask the women involved what they want?
