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Stella Nyanzi Quotes
born 1974 Uganda
Stella Nyanzi (born 16 June 1974) is a Ugandan human rights advocate, poet, medical anthropologist, feminist, queer rights advocate, and scholar of sexuality, family planning, and public health. She was arrested in 2017 for insulting the Ugandan president.
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26 quotes
I fled to get my voice back. I fled to get my mind back. I fled to get my freedom back.
I have been a victim of bad legislation and I want to change it. I want to make legislation that's for the people.
My multiple identities empower me to fashion my writing into an effective weapon fighting against injustices meted out by holders of abusive power onto underprivileged groups in society.
Good girls and respectable women are trained to avoid taboo topics and “bad words” particularly in their public articulations.
I learnt that politics is a dish I love to eat… No one is going to make the world what I want to make it to be, unless I do it myself.
In a way, motherhood keeps me very grounded.
Motherhood is important for me because everything I do is about creating a better legacy for my children.
I also get a lot of motivation from my children because if I didn't have children, I would not need to change the world.
I am aching for the world I live in to become a better place for my children.
In my experience, there is much greater currency and power in my deployment of irreverent idioms of satire, mockery, and ridicule of oppressive power.
I don't get inspired by high and mighty women, it's everyday women. It's grandmothers, stepmothers, second wives, all swearing at their men.
I think if I weren’t a mother, I probably wouldn’t do at least ¾ of the activism I’ve done.
In fact, as expressed in one of my poems written in prison, I wear my prison sentence for poetry as a badge of honor.
Double standards demand that feminine respectability bars women from articulating, writing, or deploying words, concepts, and ideas deemed to be taboo subjects.
When I put my nipples on the frontline, I learnt they fight harder than any bazookas. Men don't know how to deal with that.
Custody and punishment for writing freed me of the fear I previously held of being imprisoned. Physical and emotional torture during my two terms in prison radicalized me in unexpected ways.
These women are working, no matter where they are placed within politics. They entered political participation with the heart of the masses, the heart of the people, with the will to work against oppression.
But do women have agency to enter politics on their own? Or must we be beholden forever to male patriarchs, and misogynistic dictators, to whom we are answerable for our political participation?
I wear lipstick, I speak like an academic, I take off my bra… and this is usually not what politicians look like.
When I die, I hope my children will be proud of me as a woman who at least tried to change things, instead of just waiting for the dictator to die.
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