The Independent Uganda: You get the Truth we Pay the Price
Meet ‘Uganda’s rudest woman’
| THE INDEPENDENT | Her sexually explicit protests have been likened to pornography, but Ugandan activist and writer Stella Nyanzi says sex is the most effective – and entertaining – way to shake people out of their apathy.
“I learnt very early that there are some topics in Uganda that are tired and… the only way to capture attention is to introduce some shock value,” the 47-year-old told AFP in an interview in Kampala.
And plenty of people have been shocked by Nyanzi’s methods, which range from calling President Yoweri Museveni “a pair of buttocks” to baring her breasts during a court hearing.
But the former university researcher, who holds a doctorate on sexuality in Africa and boasts nearly 300,000 followers on Facebook, is unrepentant.
“We don’t see or we pretend we don’t see what’s happening in society especially the excesses and the violations” under Museveni’s decades-long authoritarian rule, she said.
“To say to a violent, militant, brutal regime that you are violent, stop, does not (have) as much impact as to say… fuck the rapist, militant penis of the dictatorship.”
She has paid a high price for her willingness to challenge authority — imprisoned for “cyber-harassment” in 2019 after she posted a profane poem on Facebook about Museveni and suffering a miscarriage after being beaten in jail.
Although she insists that her losses are “not worth writing home about”, grief is at the heart of her quest to bring down Museveni.
After losing her parents in quick succession six years ago — unable to find life-saving medicines or get an ambulance in time – Nyanzi turned to humour, in part to escape the overwhelming sadness that engulfed her.
In her hands however, humour has also become a weapon to channel her rage against a government she blames for the deaths of her parents and thousands of Ugandans who lack access to reliable health care and other public services.
