Ugandan female activist flees to Kenya as terror of kidnaps grips Ugandans

NAIROBI, Kenya

Ugandan female academic cum political activist, Dr. Stella Nyanzi, has fled to Nairobi, Kenya.

This was confirmed by her lawyer, Professor George Luchiri Wajackoyah, who cited political persecution by President Yoweri Museveni's government for the move. 

Grim accounts are emerging from relatives, friends and former abductees about the unexplained disappearances and many narratives point an accusing finger at security services. Many youths have been picked from their homes in the dead of the night by gun-wielding men, others have been grabbed off the streets in broad daylight while others have simply run and gone into hiding.

Born in 1974, Dr. Nyanzi is a Ugandan medical anthropologist at Makerere University, feminist, queer rights activist, and scholar of sexuality, family planning, and public healthmwho ran for Kampala Woman MP seat in last month’s general election, arrived in Nairobi by bus on Saturday.

She practices what scholars have called "radical rudeness," which is a traditional Ugandan strategy of calling the powerful to account through public insult.  It was developed during the colonial era, as "a rude, publicly celebrated strategy of insults, scandal mongering, disruption, and disorderliness that broke conventions of colonial friendship, partnership, and mutual benefit.”

The international press has called her "one of Africa's most prominent gender rights activists," “a leading scholar in the emerging field of African queer studies," and a leader in the fight against "repressive anti-queer laws" and for "freedom of speech."

Her scholarship has provided "insight into the effects of patriarchy, misogyny and homophobia in Uganda, The Gambia, and Tanzania."

Wajackoyah, in an interview, said she is seeking political asylum in Kenya.

“The abductions and detentions of political actors were getting closer to me; my children have been targets of police trailing. I just left prison in February last year and I don’t want to go back,” Nyanzi said in a telephone interview.

She crossed the Uganda-Kenya border “in disguise” to avoid detection by security agents. Her children are also “in a safe house” in Nairobi.

The Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) candidate came third in the January 14, 2021 parliamentary elections won by National Unity Platform (NUP) candidate, Shamim Malende.

President Museveni, who has been in power for 35 years, was declared winner of the bitterly contested polls.

Opposition presidential candidate Robert Kyagulanyi, popularly known as Bobi Wine, who termed the polls as fraudulent, spent 11 days under house arrest after the January 14 elections before the High Court ordered security forces to withdraw from his home. 

He has filed a petition in the country’s Supreme Court, seeking cancellation of the results.

Across the border, Tanzanian ex-MP Godbless Lema fled to Kenya with his family to escape what he termed as threats to his life, before Canada granted him asylum.

Tanzania opposition leader Tundu Lissu, who rejected the results, is also in asylum in Belgium.