This has been a good year for Dr. Stella Nyanzi, she has been announced the 2021 Brittle Paper Activist , Stella is known to me,I met her through a brother and comrade in brains, Andrew Karamagi.Stella was incarcerated for eight months and wrote a Book,”No Roses from my mouth”. Stella miscarried while at Luzira prison over “computer misuse”over writings she made on Facebook that were not rosy. Stella is an activist for democracy and good governance . That is the price one pays for activism in our country.
Karamagi introduced me to activism,in my first year at Lawschool, we were in the struggle for the Oil Production Sharing Agreements (PSA’s) to be made public in line with Accountability and Transparency, We were with the late Barbara Alimadi.
Karamagi as well as Stella write,they sting with their words, they’ve paid heavily. Recently, I was joking with Andrew about the economic sanctions since he has had his accounts frozen as a result of his political activism. Activism has a price for which one has to pay in our country and many other African countries. Andrew recently co-authored a paper critical of the MTN Uganda listing it’s stock through the Initial Public Offer(IPO) and it is the finest paper on the Sweet Nothings and the arrogance of Foreign Capital that I have read now that there’s activism through writing.
Moving forward, I should continue with Sociopolitical commentary or try flirting with the expressive writing since I do write about my journey with stroke but that’s up to the readership because I don’t believe in self nomination, for now.
To the male bloggers,we gotta write and improve lest we shall onlymake nomination by a quota system if and when Afrobloggers says that for each category,a male blogger has to appear, hardwork is the way to go. Ours should be a generation that amplifies society’s needs as we leave footsteps on the continent. This is where I congratulate all the 2021 Winners and to the nominees,in a few weeks, is another year. Keep writing,Keep winning.
When I was nominated, being the usual self critic, I asked myself,”Mwene, are you doing activism or or you are playing, to what area do you center your activism on?”.I realized that I do Writivism as a consequence of my Sociopolitical commentary,I write about social ills and how we can address them,I don’t believe in mere rants without a solution. The reason political commentary is rare is simple, most folks are afraid of their home governments which brings about self censoring and this in turn feters the content. Centered activism on children,women, Sexual Reproductive Rights is the safer way . Government will not have any issues with you. The reason I employ satire is to speak to the unruly powers that things are not going the way they should go. I’m inspired by Wahome Mutahi a Kenyan writer of the ‘whispers’ fame. It is said that his tormentors would laugh at his writings because the guy was a humorist.
As an Afroblogger, my aim should be growth and it should be simultaneous, I grow as Afrobloggers grows. We should aim at organizing writing labs, book projects as we push each other to the summit. Let’s keep writing as we grow.
Mwene 