Kakwenza, Nyanzi vow to vocalise criticisms

Government functionaries this past week found themselves in a defensive crouch after Stella Nyanzi and Kakwenza Rukirabashaija repeated claims of experiencing torture at the hand of state actors.

Both satirical writers—who are on a writers-in-exile programme run by PEN Germany—spoke candidly from their Munich abode about torture in Uganda to Al Jazeera’s The Stream. 

They shared fears in forecasting that the future for President Museveni’s critics is more precarious than ever.
“Yoweri Museveni has created a facade of freedom of expression for those who will toe the line of respectability and diplomacy and will hail his regime,” Nyanzi, 47, said.

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She added: “ Those of us who undress him with our words and speeches, those of us who show the limits he has put Ugandans to, those of us who highlight the plight that Ugandans have to endure are silenced…penalised, criminalised and pathologised.”

President Museveni was also roundly condemned by Mr Rukirabashaija who said in no uncertain terms that state capture ensured he wouldn’t get a fair shake in Ugandan courts.

“I fled the country because I wanted to live,” Mr Rukirabashaija said.

The incivility of Mr Rukirabashaija and Nyanzi has on varying occasions seen them have a brush with the law in Uganda. 

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Nyanzi was jailed in 2017 after calling Mr Museveni “a pair of buttocks” and in 2018 for writing poetically about the president being strangled by his mother’s vagina. 

On his part, Mr Rukirabashaija called Mr Museveni’s son, Lt Gen Muhoozi Kainerugaba, “obese.” Both offered no apologies on The Stream.

“We must learn how to use English words,” Mr Rukirabashaija said. “If someone is a fool, we must tell them they are a fool…why should we be gagged in the name of vulgarities?”

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Nyanzi said the roots of episodes of torture in Uganda can be traced back to the “order from above” euphemism.

She concluded: You can be sure that—upon investigation—every order from above in the security services…even among paramilitary pseudo security outfits in Uganda originates from either Yoweri Museveni, his wife Janet Kataha or his son Muhoozi.”

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President Museveni recently told Voice of America that while “it’s true that some of the people have been tortured” the acts of terror from security forces “still being built” could be unintended consequences from “traditional ideas or imported ideas from the former colonialists.”