In my country they don’t give me gratitude, they give me prison term. In my country people don’t say good things about my work. For my poetry I am given prison. For my poetry I am given mental illness. I was not prepared for gratitude. Those were the words of decorated five-star feminist intellectual Dr. Stella Nyanzi when she sat down with Nanjala Nyabola yesterday evening at Cheche bookshop.
In rapt silence, I glided over the glossy shiny floor to the front seat a few minutes before six o’clock. Shortly after that, the fairly small space was packed with creatives from different parts of Nairobi. The day had a lazy lining cold that usually welcomes Friday nights in Nairobi.
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When she took her seat in front of the audience, with a spasm of awe, I recalled a scene worthy of a great creative. Here was an ordinary woman – fairly privileged, by virtue that she can write – who has defied patriarchal limits and expectations to challenge one of the most brutal dictatorships in Africa in the way only she believes is fit.
I dwelled deep in my elected consciousness – a consciousness informed by my own understanding of generational injustices and how they can be confronted – as I tried to picture her seated on the floor of her cell at Luzira prison where she was held for 16 months, her back against the wall.
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When I asked her about her thoughts on Pan-Africanism and whether she believed it is the right ideology for Africa’s true liberation, she said: “although Pan-Africanism is an inspirational idea, I don’t believe in it, it is exclusive.”
Dr. Nyanzi is a medical anthropologist, a public health advocate, a radical feminist intellectual and a tree-shaker. She was awarded the 2020 Oxfam Novib/PEN International award for freedom of expression while in prison. The Oxfam Novib/PEN International award for freedom of expression is given to writers who “continue to work for freedom of expression in the face of persecution.
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This is the famous poem that sent her to prison, written a day after President Museveni’s birthday.
Yoweri, they say it was your birthday yesterday.
How bitterly sad a day!
I wish the smelly and itchy cream-colored candida festering in Esiteri’s cunt had suffocated you to death during birth.
Suffocated you just like you are suffocating us with oppression, suppression, and repression!
Yoweri, they say it was your birthday yesterday.
How painfully ugly a day!
I wish the lice-filled bush of dirty pubic hair overgrown all over Esiteri’s unwashed chuchu had strangled you at birth.
Strangled you just like the long tentacles of corruption you sowed and watered into our bleeding economy.
Yoweri, they say it was your birthday yesterday.
How nauseatingly disgusting a day!
I wish the acidic pus flooding Esiteri’s cursed vaginal canal had burnt up your unborn fetus.
Burnt you up as badly as you have corroded all morality and professionalism out of our public institutions in Uganda.
Yoweri, they say it was your birthday yesterday.
How horrifically cancerous a day!
I wish the infectious dirty-brown discharge flooding Esiteri’s loose pussy had drowned you to death.
Drowned you as vilely as you have sunk and murdered the dreams and aspirations of millions of youths who languish in the deep sea of massive unemployment and under-employment in Uganda.
Yoweri, they say it was your birthday yesterday.
How traumatically wasted a day!
I wish the poisoned uterus sitting just above Esiteri’s dry clitoris had prematurely miscarried a thing to be cast upon a manure pit.
Prematurely miscarried just like you prematurely aborted any semblance of democracy, good governance, and rule of law.
Yoweri, they say it was your birthday yesterday!
How morbidly grave a day!
I wish that Esiteri’s cursed genitals had pushed out a monstrously greenish-bluish still-birth.
You should have died at birth, you dirty delinquent dictator…
You should have died in birth, Yoweri Kaguta Museveni.
