MaJaC Colloquium: Dr. Stella Nyanzi: Paradoxes of Deploying Public Nudity as Resistance to Rising Conservative Nationalism in Uganda

For the final MaJaC colloquium in the summer semester, we have invited Dr. Stella Nyanzi, who will give an impulse in English on ‘Paradoxes of Deploying Public Nudity as Resistance to Rising Conservative Nationalism in Uganda’.

Women’s bodies are not only owned by male kinsmen, but also controlled with several prescriptions and tight restrictions about how female bodies respectably present and circulate in public spaces, within patriarchal societies. Similar to women in other continents, African women have a long tradition of rejecting patriarchal dictates about decorum, respectability and femininity and instead deploying public nudity within resistance to ongoing systemic, structural and institutionalised forms of oppression. Women’s insurgent public nudity elicits vociferous public responses particularly in contexts of rising conservative nationalism. However, there is scanty academic research about women’s resistance enacted through public nudity in Africa broadly, and in Uganda specifically. Where this research occurs, it is mainly piecemeal, presents an etic viewpoint of outsiders, and capitalises on pre-colonial African traditionality.

In this paper, I explore contemporary enactments and social meanings of women’s nude protests in Uganda. As an insider-outsider, I seek to foreground emic meaning making, knowledge and values of local Ugandans who either undertook the nude protests, witnessed or experienced them. I compare and contrast the varied viewpoints of the nude protesters and their communities of support, with a range of state, institutional and societal attitudes towards women’s insurgent public nudity that are expressed in judicial decisions, public media (radio, television and newspapers) and social media (Facebook, Twitter/ X, Instagram and web pages).

Research methods triangulated autoethnography, examination of judicial decisions, content analysis of public media and social media, and literature review. Research material was restricted to five specific protest groups representing diverse demographic profiles drawn from Uganda in the last fifteen years.

i) In April 2012, a group of 15 women in Kampala city stripped to their bras at the Central Police Station because they were protesting against a policeman violently assaulting a leader of the Women’s League of an opposition political party, during arrest in which the policeman squeezed her breast.

ii) In June 2015, elderly women in Apaa angrily stripped naked to expose their breasts in protest against two male ministers leading government redistribution of communal ancestral land to the investors Madhvani Group for mass sugar-cane growing. Two years later in August 2017, amidst mourning women in Amuru repeated the same public nudity protest against the female Minister of Lands who led a heavily guarded team to survey the contested land.

iii) In April 2016, I publicly undressed to my panties in protest against the abuse of my employment contract and violation of my labour rights as a public servant governed by the Employment Act. Three years later, in August 2019, I stripped to my breasts during my sentencing which violated my rights to a fair trial.

iv) In September 2024, three young women stripped to their knickers, carried protest placards, and shouted slogans as they marched along Parliamentary Avenue. They were protesting against massive corruption by government officials including Members of Parliament.

Societal responses to these nude protests enacted by diverse Ugandan women over the last fifteen years reveal inherent contradictions, contestations and debates about the place of deploying women’s bodies within resistance against conservative nationalism. State responses were mainly 1) punitive including arrests by police, detention, charging or remanding to police stations, 2) pathologisation through attempts at involuntary mental examination, 3) ridicule and body shaming through public media statements. Only a few isolated state institutions sporadically supported the nude protesters, such as the Ugandan Human Rights Commission. Religious clerics and cultural leaders mainly denigrated the nude protesters for immorality and shaming womanhood. The women’s movement was largely divided in their responses, although there is a consistent shift towards silent support. Likewise, the masses of Ugandan audiences represented in public media and social media was divided.

The paradoxes and ambivalences of deploying women’s public nudity as resistance against diverse forms of oppression within a national context of rising conservatism in Uganda influence both the efficiency, efficacy and effectiveness of this traditional form of African feminist resistance. I will formulate some grounded theorisations about how to better mobilise effective power within public nudity as a form of African feminist resistance.

The English- speaking event starts at 18:15 in room EG 14 at Universitätsstraße 105. The room is wheelchair accessible. If you need assistance, please contact alina.adrian@rub.de.