Stella Nyanzi has put Uganda between a rock and a hard place

Dr Stella Nyanzi is back in the news. This time her cantankerous missives garnished with lewd language highlighting the female and male gentilia, are the rage.

She directs these at persons she does not agree with on mainly issues of governance in Uganda. She also takes exception when she is confronted on the language she uses which people have termed vulgar and obscene.

The most prominent victims are President Yoweri Museveni and then his wife, also the Minister of Education and Sports, Janet Museveni.

For the latter, Nyanzi has spared no insult in her ubiquitous tirades stemming from her report to Parliament that the government could not afford sanitary towels to school girls as was promised by the President during the last election.

Interestingly, Nyanzi in all her criticisms of the First Family is not saying anything new or exceptional. We have heard about corruption, the breakdown of public institutions, poor service delivery especially in the sectors of health and education, abuse of human rights and brutality by security agencies, nepotisim, etc.

It is only that she has decided to say it differently; with a touch of rudeness mixed with very plain descriptive language that gives prominence to sex and sexual organs.

In so doing, Nyanzi has put Uganda between a rock and a very hard place. Do you look sensitive to the cause of the people of Uganda if you chastise Dr Nyanzi for the use of her ‘dirty language’ without appearing to ignore the issues she is putting across?

Do you appear cultured, morally upright and well-brought up if you agree with the issues Nyanzi is bringing up without seeming to turn a blind eye to the coarse language she uses as a vehicle to deliver her message?

Don’t you sound like a hypocrite if you agree with Nyanzi in her fight against bad governance whose end result humiliates Ugandans who go without the basics of life, yet her main weapon is humiliating and debasing the Ugandan leaders she thinks are responsible for Uganda’s predicament?

Also Nyanzi is not skirting around issues by blaming ‘the system.’ She puts Uganda’s rot squarely on the shoulders of the President, his wife and family. How do you disagree with her because of her language without appearing to support the President and his government, which has in many ways failed Uganda?

How do you agree with her in her attack on the President and his wife without appearing to be partisan and vindictive because you just don’t like the dominance of the NRM government?
There are some who claim that Nyanzi is mad, which brings us to the late Francis Imbuga’s famous quote, ‘When the madness of an entire nation disturbs a solitary mind, it is not enough to say that the (wo)man is mad.”

Over the years in closely following Ugandan society, I have learnt something very significant which is right in line with Nyanzi’s way of doing things.

Many times in Uganda to get what you want, you may need to exhibit some kind of ‘madness’ especially when the leaders are recalcitrant and appear insensitive to the needs of the people.
You do what will make you get your desire and it does not necessarily have to be right or acceptable. It is all about the individual over the society, the unconventional over the conventional, unacceptable over the acceptable.

That is why strikes, demonstrations and riots are quite popular. You get attended to by being selfish and unruly.
It also works on ‘the other side.’ When you want to invest your billions of shillings on land, you simply solicit court orders, however unlawful, and evict entire villages without a bother for the livelihood of the people you are displacing.

The story of corruption is similar. Take as much for yourself to secure your future. Society can take care for itself. So those women who deliver on the cold hospital floors, the children who study under mango trees, those girls who keep away from school because they lack sanitary towels etc, are none of your business as long as your projects are progressing.

What we have at the end of the day is a society full of humiliated individuals moving around with bitterness that will explode at the slightest act of provocation. Nyanzi represents many of these. Some accept her as the enemy in the neighbourhood whose basin of dirty water is very welcome to put out a raging fire.

No one deserves to be humiliated whether it is the President, First Lady, the prostitute in Katwe or the bare-footed shamba boy in Mutukula. Trouble is that we treat the humiliation of those in the higher echelons of power differently from that of the lowly hoi polloi.

It creates a country of two types of people. Those who own it and the rest who are ‘just’ being accommodated. The latter look at the privilege of the former with envy mixed with anger because they think it is a result of exploitation and unfairness. That is what you get when justice and equity are taken very lightly in a society.

Nyanzi’s support comes from many of these people who see her as one mad and fearless enough to take on the powerful and untouchable on their behalf. They make her rudeness seem like a virtue.

Whether she will achieve the change that she envisages using this method, only time will tell but be sure she is being heard.

Nicholas Sengoba is a commentator on political and social issues.

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Twitter: @nsengoba