Anti-graft nude protests: Can you shame the shameless?

On Monday, Ugandan social media was abuzz with talk and pictures of three young activists – Norah Kobusingye, Praise Aloikin and Kemitooma Kyanzibo – being bundled by police officers onto waiting police pick-up trucks and off to Central Police Station for detention and then a 10-day remand in Luzira Prison via Buganda Road Court.

Their crime: organising a nude protest, which police called “common nuisance”. Covered only by their underwear and some creative paintwork, they marched to Parliament decrying wanton corruption in Uganda.

The arrest of these three nude protesters drew mixed reactions from a public deeply divided along political lines; with the pro-government commenters calling it needless nudity while the anti-government side coalesced in support of the ladies’ right to freely demonstrate as is guaranteed in the Constitution.

Some lurid comments have also been thrown around. Most surprising to many onlookers was the rare response from the chairperson of Uganda Human Rights Commission, Ms Mariam Wangadya, who, while speaking to Daily Monitor condemned the arrests as “an unjustifiable violation of their fundamental rights”. Hell froze.

As the dust settles down and a new scandal about the alleged shooting of NUP boss Robert Kyagulanyi hogs the news cycle, it is important that we ask ourselves as to the effectiveness of nude protests in a country that has progressively lost shame.

Nude protests are not new in the African context. They’re rooted in the most helpless form of defiance dating back hundreds of years in patriarchal systems where females at their wit’s end had little option but to bare their all in a cry of final desperation at what they perceived as oppressive male behaviour.

From a political context, nude protests on our continent have always been looked at as dramas of desperation; a last swing of defiance by a people subjugated by powerful forces. Different than modern times Western societies where nakedness oftentimes is sure to highlight freedom and celebrate the human body, our society treats this “naked agency” with solemn regard.

It has found application from the Cape to the Coast, East to West. In 1929 British Nigeria, Igbo women undressed in an anti-colonial protest dubbed “the Women’s War”.

In 1990 South Africa saw the disrobing of women to protest the destruction of their homes by the apartheid government.

In next-door neighbour Kenya, Wangari Maathai and the six defiant mothers staged an 11-month strike starting February 28, 1992, protesting then President Daniel arap Moi’s government’s abuse of power spring to mind. Then Stella Nyanzi! Who can forget her?

In all these, the matriarchy, riding on the sacredness of an elderly female body, sought to upset the applecart of societal power dynamics, with a mixed bag of results.

How effective are nude protests today?

Many commenters have argued that in contemporary Ugandan discourse, a young lady showing her nakedness isn’t such a shocker. It’s what happens on every random day. 

At best, it does cause occasional bursts of rage, laughter, and conversation drawn along morality lines and then people move on to the next big thing.

As a weapon of last resort, nudity, especially of young females might not carry the same shock value as elderly women in Amuru would elicit if given the same coverage as the Kampala social media savvy protesters.

There are societal dynamics at play that might, ironically, hurt the modern progressive Kampala female protester. They’re not known for veiling or covering up their bodies in ways that ultra-conservative societies push some women to.

A historical weapon of last resort has been attenuated by a society drunk on nudity, drugs, alcohol and sex. It’s not a good thing.

Mr Anthony Natif is a team head, Public Square, @TonyNatif