She would not admit that she is scared, but basing on what happened following the September incident, it was clear to me that regardless the brave face she wore, Nana is broken and bleeding on the inside.
When I last saw her in July at the home of the former Forum for Democratic Change president, Dr Kizza Besigye, she walked with the help of a square walker. Now she has graduated to a cane but still moves with difficulty.
A natural activist
Nana described herself as a “very responsible single mother of children” – the number, she would not mention.
She instead said, Nalongos don’t count their children, before she expertly steered me away from her personal life to talk about her life as an activist. She said she has been an activist all her life and cannot afford to look on and do nothing when an injustice is being committed.
Her first act of activism happened when she was about 15.
“I travelling on a bus from a village in western Uganda and along the way a young girl boarded. The money left on her for transport was less than Shs 2,000. The conductor, driver and passengers agreed to push the young girl off the bus. It was past 11pm.”
Nana, who had been quietly following the drama wondered how this group of adults had thrown away decency and voted to have the girl thrown off the bus at that time of night in the middle of nowhere.
“I thought they were joking… then the bus stopped, the conductor started offloading her school luggage; that’s how I intervened,” Nana said.
She stood up and said the girl would only leave the bus over Nana’s dead body. “[I told them] you’re not leaving her in the wilderness; you either take her to where she’s going or return her to where you picked her from,” she recalled.
In the end, reason prevailed as some previously indifferent passengers joined her side. They won. The girl was going to Masaka. She did not say thank you but obviously must have wished Nana good fortunes. Since that incident, she has always been the one to speak up when she feels an injustice is being done.
The Protea Rant
Nana’s viral video of her throwing a tantrum at the hotel made her a star of sorts, in Uganda and internationally. Her ‘story’ featured on BBC. Nana said she usually reports early at her business (which she would not name) and as she waits for customers, she turns on the TV to keep her company.
Normally she watches the Faith channel for God to give her, her daily bread. But as fate would have it, that particular Friday the preacher was not the one she was expecting. She flipped channels, landing on NBS TV that was broadcasting a live event.
There, a man in a three-piece suit, looking well-fed, was saying Ugandans should know that it is their responsibility to look after their leaders.
“I said, did he just say that? I read in the corner of the TV screen that they were at Protea hotel discussing ways to widen the tax base. I boiled! I had bank slips for my children’s school fees amounting to a few million shillings. Then I was here looking at a leader who was saying his needs were also on my shoulders. It really killed me,” Nana said, betraying renewed anger just recalling the incident.
She was with her twin daughter in the shop.
“I asked her to help me with her shoes; she was like, ‘mummy why?’ I told her I’m going for a meeting.”
The young girl wondered which kind of meeting she was going to attend in shorts.
“Can you pass me the shoes!” now changing tone from requesting to commanding.
Nana stormed out of the shop. Driving to Protea would delay her, so “I jumped on a boda boda that took me to Protea. My instinct was to first sit and wait for the mic, but again, I didn’t know whether they would give it to me. I moved to the man who had it and I stretched out my hand and he handed it over to me reluctantly. Then I poured myself out because I was seething with anger seeing the problems we are going through and a meeting is here devising means of extracting a little more money from us.”
There was drama as she refused to return the microphone. Women activist and politician Miria Matembe was part of the meeting. She tried to calm Nana down in vain. When Nana was done venting, Matembe helped her out of the venue. The police had wanted to arrest her, seeing that she had put the life of the state minister for finance, David Bahati, ‘in danger’.
The aftermath
Social media lit up.
“Everyone in my phonebook actually called asking me whether I was ok. I also started getting scared from the way people were fearing, that maybe, I was going to be arrested.”
When she returned in the evening to pick up her daughter, many people had showed up at the shop and she had made abnormal sales. She was a bit scared but tried to carry on with her life. The next day, Saturday, September 8,, Muhammad Kirumira, the former Buyende district police commander, was shot dead as he returned to his home in Bulenga.
Nana got the news while she was in Ntinda but it felt as though the same bullet that ripped through Kirumira’s body had strayed to Ntinda and shot but not killed Nana. She froze, thinking about the meaninglessness of life. She thought about her children, about other Ugandans killed in similar manner.
Not finding answers, she went to church at Watoto the following day. She prays, but seldom. At church, the pastor preached as though nothing had happened in the country the previous day.
“I actually left that church. How can you preach about love and marriage when the country is descending into chaos? How do you ask for the tithe when your congregation is wallowing in abject poverty? You make a coin today when you spent it yesterday or the other day.”
But at least Kirumira’s grisly murder swung the spotlight off Nana’s viral video for a bit.
Losing the uterus
But then came the preventive arrest of Kyadondo East legislator Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu aka Bobi Wine after police refused him to sing during the Easter holidays. Nana wanted her feelings known that what was happening was not fair at all. On the afternoon of April 23, 2019, she drove to police headquarters Naguru to complain about the way Bobi Wine was being treated.
She was seen by an officer in the Operations office whose nametag said ‘Kalulu’.
“I explained the reasons why I had come to police. He was very nice. He said I had sound reasons and the right person to address them to was the IGP or his deputy,” Nana said.
Kalulu then advised that she comes back the following day, because the two principals had already left. The following day, she bought a bottle of mineral water and added it to her luggage that contained a mattress, two copies of the constitution – one in Runyakore and another in English – and moved to Naguru.
“The police had heavily deployed; it was amazing, considering that I was one heavily pregnant woman who was not armed. I wasn’t in any shape to resist an arrest.”
When she recounts what happened that afternoon, her voice becomes shaky as she fights to contain her tears.
“They pounced on me, stripped me naked, pepper-sprayed and tear-gassed me. They left me for dead. They broke into my car and then drove and dumped me at Naguru hospital. Oooh, I suffered a lot of shame,” Nana says.
“I’m not undisciplined like the police says. I went to Protea hotel; I could have broken glasses on the face of the minister, but I didn’t. I wonder how more than 70 police officers some of whom were wearing pips showing that they were high-ranking, could agree to humiliate a helpless woman. How do they even go to bed and sleep soundly after committing such crimes on an innocent citizen?” Nana wondered.
She singled out one female officer [name withheld] who was incensed that Nana was wearing a white panty.
“She was like, ‘you even wear white knickers? I’m going to show you’.”
She then stomped on Nana’s groin, making sure the knickers were soiled. Because she was kicked several times in the stomach, doctors decided to remove her unborn baby almost a month before he was due.
For the first few weeks after the assault, she stayed in hospital as doctors waited for the baby to acquire a few more pounds to be able to survive in an incubator. As the baby came out, so did Nana’s uterus because it was damaged so badly that the only way to save her life was to take it out.
She is still struggling with pain, five months later.
“A lot has changed with my body and with my social life. I feel empty. Even my new friend [as she consistently refers to her boyfriend] is very worried. You know in Africa, when you don’t have a uterus, you’re no longer a woman. At 42, my life was just starting.”
When Nana talked about her friend – also the father of the baby – I reminded her that she said she was a single mother.
“Yes, I’m a single mother and I have been so for a long time. I have even ever approached the law to try and help me like it’s done in the West where both parents contribute to the welfare of children but I found out that there is no law that is effective on that. I have a young baby, yeah, I knew you would ask that, but do single mothers stop conceiving or making new friends? I got a new friend although I wouldn’t want to go deeper into that…I planned on having another child.”
On top of losing her uterus, the five months she has spent in and out of hospital have taken a toll on her businesses. Many have closed under unexplained circumstances where landlords give eviction orders out of the blue. Because of the death of her businesses, she has had to shift from the house she rented for Shs 2.2m a month to one of Shs 600,000.
“I can no longer afford it.”
While she was in hospital, the taxman also called wondering why she was no longer remitting her income tax.
“I don’t remember ever being so angry. Here I was, urinating through a catheter, moving with a square walker and the system that had broken me wanted money from me. How much do I pay in tax that I need a special call from URA?” Nana said.
She has learnt that there is a price for not agreeing with the government; yet, she does not regret her actions.
“I would regret if what I was doing was wrong, but it isn’t.”
bakerbatte@observer.ug