Jailing of Stella Nyanzi not only an Affront but a Tragedy in Uganda's Political Process

Dr. Stella Nyanzi, a prolific Ugandan scholar and political activist, indeed one of Uganda’s few female public intellectuals was jailed for 18 months on flimsy charges related to weird things like misuse of social media and use of offensive language that injured the person of Kaguta Yoweri Museveni etc. Societies that jail their intellectuals have known problems. Nyanzi has used vulgarity and nudity as tools of protest against oppression; she’s a freedom fighter fighting for a more equal and better Ugandan society. She has been vocal on pertinent issues ranging from demanding for government supply of sanitary towels for girls in schools to speaking against state sanctioned murders and enforced disappearances in Uganda. So sad that Magistrate Gladys Kamasanyu who herself lives in the precarity that comes with being a woman in Uganda, agreed with her own tormentor (Museveni) and found a person (Dr. Stella) truly committed to fighting for her (Kamasanyu’s) own emancipation guilty of such dubious crimes