By Richard Olwenyi
Early morning television viewers on April 18, 2016 woke up in surprise and shock upon seeing a highly profile senior lecturer at Makerere university Dr. Stella Nyanzi protesting against change of her work schedule and being thrown out of her office.
Dr. Stella Nyanzi attached to Makerere institute of social research (MISR) was shifted from being a researcher at the institute to become a lecturer of PHD student contrary to the contract she signed with the university administration. Decline to take on the new prompted the administration of school of research to evicted her from the office space something she protest by striping herself naked.
Dr. Stella shouted as she brought down her dress: “am protecting myself with the nudity, I have been suffering under Mamdan’s administration, police did not help me neither did the media help. I will go on and remain naked no one will stop me”.
The noise from on lookers attracted, the attention of other students who were passing by making Makerere Institutes of Social Research that fateful morning become a centre of attraction. In fact some fun hungry students headed their there to witness nude protest by the university done, some students pulled out their smart phones and took a “selfie” with their striking don.
Dr. Stella said she opted to pull down her dress to protest what she described as an infringement on her rights and being undermine persons above her at the school of social research.
She locked herself at the veranda walk way and by 10am most media lenses was all focused on her as she sought to use nudity to pass out a strong communication of her oppression by the administration of MISR.
Dr. Stella Nyanzi who is also a twin mother, her nudity is aimed at cursing one she only identified as Prof. Mamdan and the university administration.
According to the Buganda culture, when a twin mother intentionally and due anger undresses, it’s a curse to those she dedicates it to, and this case in question it was Mamdan.
But what motivates such a high profile person of her magnitude to react in that way?
Psychologists attribute it to when a power less individual is caught between lines with no any other solution; such wired behavioral act turns to be the last resort.
Julius Kikooma the Dean of school of psychology Makerere University in his analysis rules out possibility of mental disorder, he said when human beings are humiliated reactions by unusual behaviors like that are prone to happen.
This is not the first time that a woman is involved in a nude protest, Amuru women a year ago brought down their clothes to protest land grabbing in the area by Uganda government.
This is her missive:
Those that say I am a disgrace to African womanhood because of my bold craziness and explicit uses of sexual modes of expression are silly, myopic and dishonest.
They should come see me throwing open my legs wide and apart as I kwawuza to enthusiastically cheering crowds watching me dance the Nankasa- Muwogola of my descendants. They should come watch me winding and wringing, and winding and wringing my waist, buttocks and loins as I dance the Kizumba or indeed do a full kwasa-kwasa number. They should have been there to see my exposed forward-thrusting nipples as I attended the Reed Dance for the first time.
They should come and listen to my people speaking liberally about sexual acts and organs, during the kuzina balongo rituals all Baganda do. I am a proud African woman with jiggly buttocks that witnessed my wide vagina pushing two sons out of my womb that delivered a girl two years before. I patiently lock my pubic hair into twenty thick locks. If I am patient enough to diligently indulge in this trivia, what else will I patiently bid my time about?
I have been patient with Mahmood Mamdani’s bullying for six slow sickening years. This time, he yanked my titties too hard to be forgiven. My titties feed my children and my lovers. My office is my titties where my mammary glands manufacture milk to feed my dependants. Mamdani must be stopped from yanking my titties because the painful patriarchal phallic posturing is unwelcome. Makerere University is not doing me a favour by giving me an office in which to do my work. I am a public servant with equipment, materials, books and tools for my academic research. It is laughable that he thinks I will drag my computers, printer, transcriber, recorders, fan, books and radio into the institutional library as my daily work space. Use your head, boy!
The leadership of the responsible College of Humanities and Social Sciences have sat passively on my human resources file for years. In that file are numerous appeals for help, numerous unanswered pleadings and beggings and prayers from me. Go read that file. The silence of the leadership of CHUSS makes the members complicit incompetent impotent collaborators with Mamdani. I refuse to join this institutional drudgery and people’s worship of a purported guru who has brutally murdered research at Makerere Institute of Social Research. Mamdani is not my demi-god; he shits and farts, probably wanks and cums too – like all humans do.
The Directorate of Human Resources at Makerere University has sat passively on my file full of my cries for intervention for too long…. too fucking painfully long. Ayii, woooowe Maama, the thought of the inertia and inactivity towards ending my oppression and abuse at work makes me and mine weep. Go read my file in the DHR before accusing me of failing to follow protocol, procedure, or processes put in place to seek redress and respite.
The communal mailing lists at MISR, and at the broader levels of Makerere’s academic staff, and all staff, have variously received my questions, appeals for help, and cries against the routine abuse of my labour rights. With a few exceptions, nobody deems me worthy enough to help. Ayii, wooowe nyabo, I could drop dead under the burden of my pain inflicted by the politics of my job at MISR, and nobody would care enough to pick up my rotting dead body.
This most recent time, I appealed to the Deputy Vice Chancellor in charge Finance and Administration because he is responsible for space allocation at MISR. My people, allow me to publicly laud Prof. Barnabas Nawangwe for giving me audience, and acting immediately by giving me a letter staying my eviction until a solution was obtained. Prof. Nawangwe is my redeemer after all these years of oppression. For the first time in my life at Makerere University, an office bearer dealt with my appeal for help in a timely, just and professional manner.
Mahmood Mamdani dismissed and disregarded the letter of stay. He locked me out of the corridor that leads to my office. This is bullshit, Mahmood Mamdani. Total bull crap!
I am going to expose everything I have bottled up for six years working under Mahmood Mamdani’s directorship at MISR. I was silent out of respect. He lost the last morsel of respect I had for him. With the loss of respect for Mamdani, I lost all pretentions of womanly respectability and feminine propriety. I am going to expose the fine details about Mamdani’s nepotism, fraud, violence, intimidation of faculty and students, suppression of challenge… the works!
I have been labelled insane because of my earlier productions posted on my timeline. You have seen nothing yet! If you want insane, I am going to give you insanity.
I will do everything in my power to protect my office space. If I lose my office, it will not be because I never put up a fight. If I die fighting, I die. My sisters have updated copies of my will in which I bequeath all my property to my three children.
Fuck it!