Nyanzi bashes MUK for punishing student over nudity

Former Makerere University don Dr. Stella Nyanzi says her former employers cannot count themselves among the top academic institutions if they are still "policing adult women" on what they choose to wear.

The development will add to a raging debate on whether the university was right to take disciplinary action this week on one of their female students for donning revealing attire while at the university premises.

The student - Rebbeca Naddamba [bachelor of Education III] — was issued with punitive summons on May 30 after her picture went viral on internet this week.

Her attire — a threaded hot-pink skirt matching an equally scanty top — appears to reveal much of her lower body.

 "It is alleged that the picture last Friday (May 27) in the social media in red and red robe-like skirt, but cut into many strips that exposed part of nakedness, was your picture…. The purpose of this letter is therefore to request you to show cause why you should not be presented to the University Student Union disciplinary committee for breach of regulation," the letter addressed to Naddamba read.      

The university said that Naddamba contravened the University regulations. "University regulation 8 (a) states that every student shall respect him/herself and behave in a manner that will not bring his/her name and that of the university into disrepute," the notice read.

Now Nyanzi, a former research fellow at Makerere University Institute of Social Research, says Makerere‘s move is unacceptable in the 21^st century.

"Policing and punishing adult women for what they choose to do with their bodies in 2017 is appalling archaic misogyny! When are patriarchs going to let women be?" she said in her a Facebook post.

"If you feel so proper, manly, moral and respectable, please sew all women long opaque sacks to wear in public and save your loins from erecting in response to our exposed raw red-hot bodies."

The former Makerere University don went ahead to claim the university was forced to act because of external pressure.

"This (summon to Naddamba) followed an inquiry launched by the police station on the university campus. Simon Lokodo's ambiguous Anti-Pornography Act is spreading its poison into free society," she said, before calling upon women to stand up for their rights.

"Women in Uganda need deliverance from the ugly chains of these controlling misogynists! …. Why shame and punish an adult for how she chooses to dress at a party?"