Stella Nyanzi: I have Given Up on Sanitary Pads Campaign, I Don’t Care Anymore

Controversial Makerere University researcher and activist Dr Stella Nyanzi has spoken out on her recent silence.

Dr Stella Nyanzi, who spent 33 days at Luzira Prison over offensive communication and cyber harassment charges, said she stopped caring.

Dr Nyanzi first made headlines when she stripped naked in protest of her ‘unfair dismissal’ from the Makerere Institute of Social Research (Misr).

She would later take on Uganda’s three-decade ruler Yoweri Museveni and the first family in a series of stinging social media jabs.

In one of her posts, she referred to Museveni as ‘a pair of buttocks’.

She would later be arrested after delivering a keynote address on menstrual hygiene, organised by Rotary Club of Kampala.

Dr Nyanzi had become a girl child education activist of all sorts, leading a campaign to collect sanitary towels for school girls after Museveni and his wife, education minister Janet, reneged on their promise to provide towels as they had promised in the 2015-16 presidential campaigns.

But Nyanzi has now scoffed at those who want to enjoy their comfort and expect her to fight for them. She says people are still demanding pads from her.

“People can be strange. They ask me what happened to the sanitary pads campaign. They ask me whether the government bought my silence and inaction. Some head teachers of schools from rural districts call my phone number to ask me when I will be taking sanitary pads to the schoolgirls in their schools. People ask this and that…” she wrote on Facebook at the weekend

The activist also adds that she can provide pads for her daughter – and she therefore stopped caring.

“Often, I tell them that I took a break from the sanitary pads campaign, after spending thirty-three days in jail. Sometimes I tell them that I gave birth to only one daughter who has never missed a day of school because she lacked menstrual hygiene materials. Sometimes I am too shocked at their rude intrusion to respond in any meaningful way to their queries. You see, I stopped giving a fuck!”

Marion Ayebazibwe