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Stella Nyanzi Biography
Stella Nyanzi (Nnalongo Owenene, Nnalongo) a Ugandan academician, medical anthropologist, queer rights activist, feminist, as well as a scholar of sexuality, public health, and family planning. She is well known for her 2017 arrest after insulting the Ugandan president Yoweri Kaguta Museveni.
Stella Nyanzi Age
Dr. Stella was born in Masaka District in Uganda in 1974.
Stella Nyanzi Makerere University
As from 1997, Dr. Nyanzi served as a Social Science Research Associate at the Medical Research Council (UK) Programme in Uganda. She worked until September 2002. She then had her next job that lasted for a year as a Local Anthropologist at the Medical Research Council Laboratories, The Gambia. She moved to London to pursue her Ph.D. studies.
In 2005, she did a research on youth sexuality in Uganda, and also in The Gambia. She began working at Makerere University in 2009 as a Researcher at the Law, Gender & Sexuality Research Project. She was a member of the Faculty of Law until December 2013.
In 2014, she started working as a Research Fellow at the Makerere Institute of Social Research until 2016. She then got a request to lecture a new Ph.D. programme, the Mamdani Ph.D. Project, but refused. Her office was closed in the process and Nyanzi shared a nude protest against her boss.
She later got suspended from Makerere University in 2017 following her arrest. In her classic style, she made an appeal and the university’s tribunal gave a direction for her to be reinstated, and be promoted to be a research fellow with immediate effect as well as be paid back wages.
The university though violated the decision and she had filed a lawsuit against the university requesting reinstatement and back wages. Makerere University responded by dismissing her and 45 fellow academics, citing contract expiring.
Stella Nyanzi Education
Dr. Nyanzi started enrolled for her higher studies at Makerere University in 1993. She studied Bachelor of Arts in Mass Communication and Literature and graduated in 1996. As from 1999 to 2000, she enrolled for her Masters programme in Medical Anthropology at the University College London.
She then enrolled for her Ph.D. in Anthropology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine having studied as of 2003 to 2008. She as well studied social anthropology, sexuality, and youth and health policy from the same institution.
Stella Nyanzi Family
Stella was raised up along wiht her younger sister Sheila Nyanzi. Her father passed on in 2014 as a result of lack of the right medicine in the hospitals near his home. He served as a doctor.
Her mother, Harriet Nyanzi, passed on in 2015 after an ambulance lacked fuel to take her to the hospital. Her motheras well the sister to Suzan Ssali, the mother of popular Ugandan Musician Moses Ssali famously known as Bebe Cool. This makes Stella and Bebe Cool, cousins.
Stella Nyanzi Husband
Stella was once married to a Gambian. The duo first met in London, in the United Kingdom and started their relationship. They relocated to her husband’s country and Stella worked as an anthropologist as of 2002 and 2003.
She deiverd in 2004, her daughter Baraka was born. The family relocated back to London in 2005. Shortly afterward, she discovered that she was pregnant again, this time with twins.
Her husband asked her to relocate to Uganda and he would join her. She then moved back to her native country but her husband did not join his family. He had a secret he had kept for long and it was while Stella was trying to inquire what the problem was that he revealed that he was gay.
Her husband explained that due to the fact that his native country had passed a law to kill all gays, he could not return to Africa, hence, he sought asylum in the United Kingdom.
She delivered two boys and has raised her children by herself over since. She shared on her birthday , “At 42, I have no job, no political party, and no lover! And yet I am fulfilled….”
Stella Nyanzi Arrest
Nyanzi on April 7, 2017 was arrested for terming to the country’s president as “a pair of buttocks” in March 2017. She got held at Kiira Police Station and was charged with cyber harassment and offensive communication.
She was then taken to court after three days on 10th and charged with the misuse of a computer, cyber harassment, and abusing the President under section 24, and 25 of the Computer Misuse Act of 2011.
She gotremanded to Luzira Prison. The next day, a psychiatric assessment examination was conducted on to check for insanity. She resisted the examination and requested that her personal doctor and at least one family member be present.
She was released on a non-cash bail of 10 million Ugandan shillings (US$2924) on 10th May 2017. In October 2018, she got remanded and decided not to request bail as she felt she was safer in jail. She also cited another reason for wanting to carry on her work in education with fellow women in prison. In January of 2019, she made a request to delay her date in court as she was ill and had suffered a miscarriage in prison.
On 1st August 2019, a Ugandan court got her guilty of the charges of cyber harassment which is an offense under Uganda’s computer-misuse law. She got sentenced to 18 months in prison on 2nd August 2019. Having been in prison for nine months prior to the sentence, Nyanzi has nine more months of jail time.