33 days after being incarcerated for calling President Yoweri Museveni a pair of buttocks on Facebook, Makerere University researcher Dr. Stella Nyanzi was granted bail this Wednesday and she has gone ahead to describe the ghastly conditions of her detention in Luzira prison.
Nyanzi took to her most trusted communication medium Facebook and described the harrowing life behind bars.
“What a delight to be out of the ugly belly of the state’s brutality,” she posted on her Facebook page, getting close to 10,000 reactions in under two hours.
She might have staged a naked protest when she undressed before press cameras, protesting injustice of being locked out of her office at Makerere Institute of Social Research by her boss Prof. Mahmood Mamdani last year, but Nyanzi has shown in her latest post that she values the dignity of her body.
She described undressing for body searches and exposing her genitals to “the prying eyes of warders” as a nightmare only rivalled by “shitting in a flooding pit latrine.”
“33 days of wearing the sickening yellow uniform, sleeping on a thin mattress spread on the cement floor – alongside sixty other in-mates in my ward, squatting in mock respect of underpaid prison warders,” she narrated her ordeal.
“I am glad to be home with family and friends who love me. I am loved. I am grateful to be loved. All the days I was locked up in Uganda’s beastly prison, I was upheld by love from near and far. I thank you all for the love. Freedom smells lovely when among loved ones,” she posted.
“My lawyers and legal team kept my winning spirit up. My sureties restored my hope in humanity. All my visitors in prison inspired me not to give up. The public press media and the social media fraternities kept the fire burning. Human rights activists, feminists, queers, journalists, cartoonists, comedians, musicians, artists, scholars, researchers, foreign missions, and all my allies who stood tall and proud in solidarity with me, I thank you,” Nyanzi expressed her gratitude.