Women Shall No Longer Wait

Dr Stella Nyanzi is a Ugandan academician and feminist activist. She is currently jailed at Luzira maximum security prison in Kampala and faces charges of cyber harassment and offensive communication, stemming from her poems shared on Facebook which prosecutors claim “disturbed the peace, quiet or right of privacy of President Museveni.”  She is known to deploy radical rudeness to disrupt and challenge power – be it political or social.  June 16 is her birthday and today she turns 45.  With permission, we share with you this poem written, as part of a 45 Poems for Freedom collection, which she has written from her prison cell, where she has spent the last seven months. We continue to call for her release! #FreeStellaNyanzi

 

WOMEN SHALL NO LONGER WAIT 

Women shall no longer wait for absent men

To drive these poisonous snakes out of houses

We pick up your machetes rusting away

And chop the venomous snakes into many pieces

 

Women shall no longer wait for castrated men

To carry the coffins of kin killed by the state

We wear your trousers and your kanzus

And lift the caskets to the graves dug by ourselves

 

Women shall no longer wait for timid men

To fight for the liberation of Uganda

We pack missiles in our own pens and grenades in our mouths

And shoot our truths at the dictatorship

 

Women shall no longer wait for blinded men

To drive us to the beautiful promised land

We thicken the muscles of our legs

And ride ourselves to freedom on bicycles and cars

 

Women shall no longer wait for faceless men

To woo, love or pleasure us

We wear dildos dipped in oil

And inseminate ourselves with strongest sperm

– Dr Stella Nyanzi