Stella Nyanzi to be arrested on Minister’s order

Ugandan professor Dr. Stella Nyanzi, has created uproar, rage and support in equal measure after she decided to strip naked in protest after her boss locked her office.

Nyanzi claimed her boss was forcing her to teach at the university while she was only contracted to do research work and not teaching.

“I have thrown my clothes outside Prof. Mamdani’s office. I am naked as I cry out for my office,” she posted on her Facebook page.

Her Facebook page was taken down for a few hours before being restored again after she had posted the video.

Nyanzi also chained herself at the University in protest before the university gave in her demands and let her back to the office.

Nyanzi also accused her boss Mamhood Mamdani of giving his wife three offices spaces at the university including a toilet while locking her out.

Makerere Institute of Social Research (MISR) director Mamhood Mamdani issued a statement on Saturday, April 16 explaining the background to the decision to remove Nyanzi from her office at MISR  after she had refused to teach in the MPhil/PhD program.

“In her application for the post of Research Fellow at MISR, she assured senior staff that she intended to teach in the PhD programme in line with resolutions passed by the University Senate in November 2011 and accredited by the National Council for Higher Education in July 2012,” Mamdani in the statement indicated.

But in a letter dated August 5, 2014, Nyanzi denied her she signed a contract that stipulated she teaches at the university.

“My contract with Makerere University does NOT include any teaching duties. In our verbal discussions, I have constantly refused to teach on the MISR PhD which was started after I was appointed into my current position. I have never indicated that I will teach on the PhD next year. The advertisement for my position did not include any teaching job responsibilities because MISR was not a teaching institute at the time. As far as I am concerned, my terms of employment have never officially changed,” Nyanzi wrote in her letter.

Nyanzi’s stripping outside the office of Mamdani and her posting the video online, brought her into trouble with the government as now she could be charged for indecency and pornography.

Uganda’s  Ethics and Integrity State Minister Simon Lokodo has ordered police to arrest the Makerere University professor.

“Even if she was offended by anybody, she behaved indecently. I condemn it in the strongest words possible and I have directed police to arrest her. She must be brought to book,” the minister told New Vision on Monday, April 18.

According to Lokodo,  Nyanzi will now be charged under the Anti-Pornography Act, if she is found guilty under Clause 3 of the Act, she will get a two-year jail sentence or a fine of 500 currency points or both.


Apart from her undying love and support for Ugandan opposition leader Kizza Besigye, Nyanzi is regarded as a woman who is not afraid to use sex and sexual organs in describing day to day events or opinions.

Nyanzi is a medical anthropologist with a PhD from the University of London based on ethnographic fieldwork of youth sexualities, sexual and reproductive health in The Gambia.

She has fifteen years of social science research experience in rural southwestern and urban central Uganda, in the broad areas of heterosexual behaviour in the time of HIV/AIDS, adolescent sexual behaviour, female control of sexuality, transforming masculinities during the AIDS epidemic, the gender differentiation of reproductive health, alternative healing.

Her research, specifically dealt with Balokole Pentecostal healing of HIV/AIDS and transforming performances of death, disposal and widowhood.

Her current research at MISR comprises ethnographic inquiry into the politicisation of homosexualities in contemporary Uganda – with a focus particularly on unpacking mainstream religious framing of and contestations about sexual citizenship.