The arresting saga of Betty Nambooze

Of all the examples of the sorry state of the relationship between the government of Uganda and the independent media and public intellectuals, one that stands out for sheer relentless vindictiveness is the case of author, journalist and Buganda activist Betty Nambooze.

She is currently facing arrest for the fourth or fifth time in the past six years.

What will make it different this time is that the order has come directly from President Museveni, who often refers to her personally in his speeches, and has publicly held her responsible for “inciting” the violence seen during last month’s Buganda-wide disturbances.

In terms of how things have been with the media since early September, this much has come to be expected.

The only thing standing in the way is a doctor’s recommendation of complete rest following a month-long bout of severe illness that culminated in two surgical operations.

Betty Nambooze has not been herself since late 2007 when she was arrested for organising a rally in protest against the large-scale eviction of residents by an aide to President Museveni’s brother, in her native Mukono district.

“I was arrested and police injected deadly substances in my body,” she says of the time.

She was to be violently arrested (more akin to a kidnap) and kept incommunicado, a year later, at various locations during a government round-up of the more outspoken members of the Buganda kingdom government, in August 2008.

Initially charged with terrorism, the case mutated into one of sedition when she was brought before court.

It is widely believed that her work as the chair of the Buganda government Central Civic Education Committee (to which she was personally appointed by the Kabaka, and which was set up to explain its concerns about the proposed amendments to the Land Act) that really landed her in trouble.

In all, the period of detention lasted one week, with Nambooze being kept away from her nursing baby for 72 hours.

As a result of her activism, she has acquired the distinction of having been in jail with three of her biological children while they were still babies.

Nambooze now stands as something of a conundrum for the English-speaking, post-modernist intelligentsia, in a way similar to Gakaru Wanjau, perhaps Kenya’s least known but widest read post-war writer, with whom she shares a passion for promoting native language use.

She was born into a family of modest means, and acquired an education while supporting herself with a series of odd jobs.

She began her professional life as a journalist, working for several now defunct Luganda language publications, and on a state-owned Luganda language radio station.