For weeks now, Makerere University researcher Dr Stella Nyanzi has used very graphic language on social media to say some unsavoury things about President Museveni, his wife Janet and government officials.

This prompted Ms Museveni, the education minister, to say in a television interview that she didn’t know why Nyanzi was attacking her, although she claimed to have forgiven the fiery researcher.

Days before Makerere’s appointments board recommended her second suspension, Nyanzi shared with Baker Batte Lule what motivates her to lob missiles at the first family.

Makerere lifted your suspension [the interview was held before the latest suspension]; have you resumed work?

I was transferred to the School of Law from Makerere Institute of Social Research (Misr). I understand it was an executive order given through the visitation committee and it was the most bogus decision because I am not qualified in law. Traditions of knowledge in social sciences and traditions of law are very different.

Anyone who has an eighth of a brain would know that you can’t send an engineer to teach baking. Whoever did it [transfer] is very stupid, very foolish. The transfer is totally meaningless. The person whose retention is being protected by my transfer [Misr director Mahmood Mamdani], as you know, is way beyond retirement age.

So it is very similar to the model obtaining in Uganda. You know ekyenyanja kitandika okududa okuva ku mutwe [fish starts rotting from the head]. Museveni yaduda [is rotten] and that trickles down to institutions like Makerere.

So, that’s why they are protecting a man who is over 70 years. I was transferred to the Human Rights and Peace Center without consultation with the director, without consultation with the school of law.

The woman who heads it [Dr Zaharah Namuli] took me around. They don’t have space for me. I’m a researcher, I’m not a teacher. She asked me what I am going to teach. She said they don’t have research positions. I was employed as a research fellow and I was transferred to Human Rights and Peace Center as a research fellow.

So, what next?

I have taken Makerere University to the staff tribunal. Hopefully they will resolve my issue quickly or I will go to court to sue the university. However, I still get my salary. But because I have no place to sit, I don’t report.

Some people like the First Lady find your words repugnant, vulgar and unacceptable. Why do you choose to use them?

Look, I’m a lyricist, I play with words. I’m a wordsmith. I’m a writer. I’m a poet. I’m a singer. I’m a musician; anybody who knows me knows that my skills are not in football or anything else. I work with words and words are really very powerful.

The Bible says that the tongue is a very small body part but it is the most vicious, most dangerous. I don’t think that God was foolish when he said that. So, I believe in the power of the word and I think what I do is very much within the Ugandan context. I know how to play with words and I have done so, so beautifully that people have begun to struggle to make meaning out of them.

What is surprising is that I get a bigger audience when I use the words that I use as opposed to when I use the decent words. I have a larger following when I say particular body parts. I don’t have bullets; I don’t have anything; so, I use the words. I know how to use rhetoric to persuade people. I did Communication Studies and Literature as my first degree.

So, I will use words as effectively as I can. I love editing; one small word can change the entire book. From six to sex; one letter can change the entire discipline. You say ‘I studied six parts,’ as opposed to ‘I studied sex parts,’ I really don’t care how people perceive what I write as long as they take the message. What is surprising is that the words that we pretend to be running away from are actually words that draw them in so much.

Anyone who knows my timeline on Facebook knows that when I write in the so-called clean language, my likes and shares are very small. When I write using graphic language, which I have no problem with because I never created these words; I get hundreds of likes, comments and shares. A language like Luganda is over 1,000 years old and the English language is even older; so, I didn’t create these words but I found them; let’s use them.

When I call Museveni or his wife the names I call them, I’m not the first critic to say what I’m saying. People started criticizing him in 1986 or even earlier like [the late President Milton] Obote but the day I called him matako [bum], I got 7,000 likes.

But what do these words mean? They are symbols. The Facebook post I was interrogated about was the matako one, f*ck you Museveni. I will dance Museveni and his stick [laughter]. But what is obscenity? A lot of these things are very relative.

You have consistently referred to yourself as Nalongo; is there more meaning to it than just being a mother of twins? 

Nalongos in Buganda have got prerogatives and many people don’t know that. When Nalongo and Salongo are initiating their twins, they sing songs which people call vulgar.

I didn’t compose those songs. I did research in 2003/4 [and] 1997/8/9 among twin parents in Masaka and I collected all these songs. I used to fear to sing them but as a nalongo, I have that prerogative.

But not every nalongo says what you’re saying.

The best literary writers are the people who write words and all of us get a different meaning and interpretation. It doesn’t mean that the person who prefers a different interpretation is wrong. It is just that the writing is deep; having metaphors and similes. My PhD is in human sexualities. I specialized in sexual and reproductive health rights.

A question I normally ask people is why they don’t question the lawyers when they start speaking. Why doesn’t anybody complain about Erias Lukwago [Kampala lord mayor] for saying in flagrante delicto? I studied sexuality; I like my discipline and I excel at it. I have written and published a lot in my discipline and no one has complained.

In my discipline we write things like f*ck the government; people teach from it and no one has complained. In everyday pedestrian language when we begin engaging in that language, people are like phee, let them go and complain to the Ford Foundation, which paid for my scholarship in the UK, let them complain to the government of Uganda that paid my tuition while I studied Mass Communication and Literature at Makerere.

I’m a queer by specialization; I do things queer, I study queer communities in Uganda; that is the language we speak. Also, I’m a ghetto woman; I’m an everyday street woman; the language that I speak is spoken everyday by people on the street. When my friends want to have an abortion, they don’t speak the language that you guys speak in your offices.

When my gay and lesbian friends want to talk about something in your presence, that is the language they are going to use. I don’t think that my language is necessarily obscene or pathetic. Very many people understand what I’m doing; very many critics that want to attack the government better copy what I’m doing.

How do your children and people close to you take your message and the language used to deliver it?

I have three children; twins who are nine and a daughter who is 12. Their father is not a Ugandan; so, a lot of the taboos don’t apply to them. My children were raised by my mother who was a very Christian woman.

She rested because the government couldn’t bring an ambulance to take her to hospital from where she fell.  She raised my children and they believe in decency. I have taught my children values of love, compassion, kindness, truthtelling; particular virtues that I was trained in as a child. My children go to particular private schools and are activists in their schools.

A teacher will not beat a child and my children remain silent. My children speak up for the rights of other children. They have met a lot of the lowly masses because my mother was an activist.

My mother worked with sex workers, street children; she worked with the church and prisoners for a long time. So, we were raised knowing that mummy was a freedom fighter. I remember people labeling my mother in a very specific way. The labels that my mother carried have been put on me. I don’t remember ever thinking that my mother was a careless lunatic who was vulgar. I always knew that mummy fights for the rights of those who don’t have.

So, even my children say to me ‘keep going, Mama.’ I have said to them I don’t want to hear them speak bad words. They know what bad words are. My children know when I swear and I mean business and they say sorry, Mama.

So, in terms of symbolism and language when my children hear the words that I speak, I know I’m teaching them to fight in ways similar or even greater than me because I use words and  I’m not bothered.

Two of my children are writers and one is an artist; I don’t censor them. I was censored and I grew up knowing that some of these words are bad. It took a lot of growing and emancipating of my mind to realize that these words are not bad at all. So, I don’t want to gag my children. However, I have instilled in them very specific values following from my mother’s upbringing.

People known to you wonder whether you are the humble and quiet girl they knew. At what point did you shed that character of a quiet Stella?

I speak when I have to speak. I will either speak the truth or remain silent. I’m like my mother; she was never a hypocrite. People who knew her from Masaka know that she gave it to you as it was; deal with it. Yes I’m a very quiet person. I love to watch and observe. But I don’t observe forever.

First, I complain in writing, then speak; I don’t tell lies eeeeh; I don’t sugarcoat; if it’s quinine mukuwa live [I deliver]; bwekaba kambe nkukomola olaba; okiraba? [If it is circumcision, I do it as you watch; you see?] So, we were given mouths and eyes to know when we should watch and listen.

Like I said, I’m a researcher, I love observing to see the change. I’m happiest when I’m watching and writing. People take you for granted when you keep silent but I think people who are potentially dangerous, potentially lethal, are those who sit and observe; they are absorbing it.

So, do I speak, yes; I’m silent, yes. People have said I have personality disorder; I don’t care, at least the quiet me has observed for a long time many things that the loud me is speaking about. Many people have said this is a form of psychosis but the country I’m in has made me [get] psychosis.

If I was observing nice things; good Uganda, your kindness, I would write praises. But I can’t write that poetry in the moment of anger. Is it madness; I don’t care because some time it takes mentally-ill people to clean up the system.

Are you married?

Oyagala kunkwana? Bwoba oyagala kunkwana mbeerayo ewange bwomu. Naye bwoba toyagla kunkwana tombuuza ebyo. [Do you want to proposition me? If you do, then I live alone at home; but if you don’t, then don’t ask me that].

Do you have political ambitions?

As a mother I’m very political; if politics is about power, I’m totally political. But if politics is restricted to the ballot and the president and these foolish Mpigs then no, I’m not a politician. However, I believe in giving power to the powerless.

I believe that the government should be confronted especially if it’s a bullshit government like the one we have here; a government that cares for very few stomachs and totally neglects the majority of the masses. I believe it is my duty to be political. Talk about Mpigs; they are too small.

If you are talking about the presidency; what am I going to do in State House? So, as a middle-class Muganda woman, I use my privilege to advocate for equity for the disadvantaged.

bakerbatte@observer.ug