How Stella Nyanzi got groove back

Who is Dr Stella Nyanzi? Her poetry work—No Roses from My Mouth—gives a sketch of her centre-left politics. Put plainly, it ruffles more feathers than a cockfight. 

Naturally, Nyanzi’s poetry hews to this idiom and thereby chimes with the words of Cesar Cruz: “Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.” In seeking to comfort the disturbed, the academic who wears many hats has made her poetry collection No Roses from My Mouth free of charge. 

“When I was writing in prison, I was under the impression it would be a free book. I was shocked to find it was selling in shops. The very first version was full of typos… my editors/ publishers had done a poor job of proofreading, and they went to press without my approval,” Nyanzi says.

“So, I proofread the sorry affair and asked the foundation that paid for the publishing to make 1,000 more copies, which we distributed for free. I also made the proofread version accessible for free. Hopefully in 2025, a second edition of the book will be published with my introductory essay.”

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Then in seeking to disturb the comfortable, Nyanzi’s poetry concerns itself more with the fury of home truths than the figurative frills by which they might be expressed. This approach is patently evident in the poem No Chairs for Prisoners. 
“Prisoners of all ranks sit on the floor. It is meant to rob them of all status, 
To break the spine from their backs, 
To unclench their fists of fury, 
To knock out their brains, 
To chop off their balls, 
To shut up their mouths, 

To break their souls like horses. On arrival at the prison gates Prisoners learn fast to hit the ground. During roll-call in the wards,.

Those with beds drop onto the floors,” she writes.

Taking no prisoners?
Prisons constrain inmates, depriving them of what we non-prisoners take for granted. However, it is in the distinction between the prohibitions of the unfree and privileges of the free that we appreciate the boundaries separating the two as figments of the imagination. 

True, on the surface, Nyanzi uses her 2020 body of work to express an inventory of physical deprivations and indignities suffered by the prisoner.

Nonetheless, she will agree, societies outside of jail have also increasingly become prisons as we are confined to and restricted by the labels imposed upon us by the communities in which we dwell. 

Where Nyanzi’s prisoner cannot get a seat, society’s norms and values deprive us of any rest as they relentlessly prescribe how we should conduct ourselves within the confines of what is acceptable and what is not. We are indeed social prisoners living a life inside a psychological prison (as opposed to a squared four-walled space), that is why although Nyanzi is describing the deprivations suffered by prisoners and what these deprivations are intended to achieve, we can relate. 

Politics of nudity
As societies outside the four walls of the prison cell, our souls are broken by crass consumerism, phoney associations and iron norms which are supposed to free society by restricting the individual. Of course, Stella being Stella means that she does not stop at merely observing such deprivations imposed on inmate populations. Instead, she hatches a plot to correct the status quo. 

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Nowhere is this plot better expressed than the poem, Let’s Hijack the President’s Convoy.
“Let’s hijack the president’s convoy! We’ll convene at 07:00AM at the Clock Tower. Our brazen naked bodies will be the decoy.

Tell your daughters, nieces, sisters, aunts and mother. Our aim is to capture not to destroy. At his siren, block the roads and undress. Our womanly bodies will capture the president’s convoy. The philandering ogre will surrender power,” she writes in the poem. 

The politics of nudity is hinged upon the rhetorical power of the unclothed body as it relates to the naked abuse of power that Nyanzi calls into question. She knows the eloquence of the disrobed body communicates volumes as those who witness it are forced to make sense of the display. 

If the said witnesses are alive to its message, they come to appreciate that the body being in a state of undress reflects how naked the Emperor has become. And by making him aware of the same, the activist exercises the highest form of self-expression. 

Indeed, the dialectic of the exposed body highlights the difference between what we do in the public sphere and who we are in our private moments and how such a dichotomy illustrates the hypocrisies underlining our politics. 

Also, it should be recalled, what our voices cannot say; our bodies freely express. 
Still, this does not stop the good doctor from using her voice to nail her colours to the mast of her political affiliations. 
In the hand-on-heart poem Sold Out to the FDC, this voice is steadfast.  

“If you cut my body With your razor-sharp bayonet You will see sky blue blood. True story! My political party is my life support. I am totally immersed in the opposition. I am sold out to the FDC. Let’s clear the air on this one. Dr Kizza Besigye is my president,” Nyanzi insists. 

FYI: Who Stella Nyanzi is away from Facebook

The beauty with Nyanzi’s poetry is its sincerity and fealty to the beliefs she holds dear. Add that to her skillful use of words and you have a poetry collection which speaks to the ages. 

Keeping us guessing
Oh, and did I mention that she has used her socials this past week to tease us about the father of her children visiting Germany where she is currently exiled? 

She posted on February 19, thus: “Wisdom from an African feminist Ninja: All single mums need a sofa-bed. When the smooth sly fox bounces back to ‘reconnect with the children’, assign him the sofa-bed in the sitting room. Instruct one of the children to make the father’s bed. This sofa-bed kept my cookie safe!”

When the father of her children left Germany, she wrote, “Every good thing eventually comes to an end! The excitement of Valentine’s Week 2024 in my home is now simmering down. My children escorted their father to the airport. He blew them flying kisses as he walked to security. He flew back to his life. School holidays end tomorrow.”

Then with the cheekiness that has seen her revered and reviled in almost equal measure, she posted on February 20, thus: “Daddy Ous left 2 pairs of boxer shorts hanging neatly on my panty-peg-holder in the bathroom, and his musk scented shower gel besides mine. On the sink, he left his disposable shaver, soap, and toothpaste. Is this inheritance for the children, or territorial marks of his turf?”

Your guess is as good as mine.

*Dr Stella Nyanzi’s No Roses From My Mouth was published in 2020. It spans 204 pages, and is available online at, wait for it, no cost.

Did you know...
Dr Stella Nyanzi is a Ugandan medical anthropologist, academic, writer, and activist. She was sentenced to 18 months imprisonment after writing and posting a poem online, in which she criticised President Yoweri Museveni and his mother. After 16 months in prison which were reduced on appeal, she spent three months living in exile in Kenya before returning to Uganda. In January 2022, she left Uganda for Germany.