A statement issued this week by a coalition of East African women leaders, helmed by its spokesperson, Kenyan politician and democracy activist Martha Karua, appears at first to be a routine protest. Yet it quickly reveals something far darker: a record of deliberate cruelty from what could be a new kind of conflict.
Released on February 8, 2026, simultaneously in Nairobi, Addis Ababa and Geneva, the open letter details what the signatories describe as a systematic campaign of sexualised victimisation and humiliation of women by Ugandan security forces following the January 15, 2026, elections.
The accounts are harrowing not for their drama, but for their intimate violation. Barbara Itungo Kyagulanyi, wife of opposition figure Robert Kyagulanyi, the main challenger to President Yoweri Museveni in the election who is now on the run, was reportedly stripped naked in front of dozens of soldiers during a night raid on her home.
Dr Zahara Nampewo, Deputy Principal of Makerere University School of Law and a leading human rights scholar, was allegedly questioned in her bedroom while wearing only nightwear. Doreen Kaija, Principal of the National Unity Platform (NUP) School of Leadership, was reportedly assaulted naked in her shower before being abducted.
Sarah Bireete, Executive Director of the Centre for Constitutional Governance and easily Uganda's most prominent civil society voice, was confronted while asleep in her bedroom, interrogated, and only then allowed to dress.
Across Africa, rape as a weapon of war has become tragically familiar. It has been standard fare in the forests of the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo for over two decades. In more recent times, it has spread to ravaged communities in South Sudan, Sudan, and Ethiopia's Tigray region. In those conflicts, sexual violence drives terror, ethnic cleansing and displacement. Uganda's current pattern shares that history but displays a more precise, modern form of brutality.
When a woman is pulled from her shower or interrogated in her pyjamas, the goal is not just physical injury. This is a form of vicarious rape: domination meant to destroy dignity and telegraph a broader threat. It humiliates the individual while also shaming the community she embodies, proving that no private space, not even a woman's bedroom or shower, lies beyond state power.
The key question is why the Ugandan state, which has a radical history that once labelled such actions as "counter-revolutionary and primitive," has adopted this specific violence at this moment.
Part of the explanation lies in the evolving role of women in African public life. A second generation has matured, is educated, is professionally independent, and is politically confident. These women rely neither on husbands, sugar daddies, or boyfriends for economic security nor on male elders for political guidance.
For a strongly patriarchal system, such autonomy is deeply threatening. When traditional controls weaken, in times of heightened political contestation, power falls back on its most basic impulse: in this case, the violation of the female body, and, in the case of Barbara Kyagulanyi, the breaking of her husband's resistance.
It is telling that targets include women leading political and pro-democracy efforts, such as Dr Lina Zedriga and Jolly Jackline Tukamushaba, highlighting how these abuses threaten the broader struggle for democracy and women's rights in Uganda.
The choice of Nairobi for the launch, and the fact that it couldn't be done in Uganda, the country it focuses on, is significant. It reflects, as I have previously argued, the return of a longstanding regional habit. When repression tightens in Kampala, Dar es Salaam, Juba, Khartoum, and DRC, the path to Kenya becomes heavily travelled.
Despite its flaws and risks, Kenya has long served as a symbol of resilience and openness, where voices can be raised safely, inspiring hope and solidarity among the audience.
This pattern reaches back nearly sixty years. In the late 1960s, Congolese musicians like Baba Gaston sought creative refuge in Nairobi, escaping stifling restrictions at home as their art entered a socially conscious stage, veering into political commentary and upsetting the Mobutu e Seko regime. Ugandan exiles followed after the 1966 crisis, a movement that has continued.
More recently, figures such as Ugandan journalist and academic Stella Nyanzi made a pitstop in Nairobi en route to exile, alongside South Sudanese politicians seeking temporary haven after their country fell back into hell in December 2013. It is true, after all, as the expression goes; Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose ("The more things change, the more they stay the same").
Six decades later, Kenya remains a refuge for victims, illustrating a persistent pattern of repression and exile that should alert the audience to the ongoing regional challenges.
The statement from these women leaders serves as a reminder of a new, daunting reality. If women's bodies become long-term battlegrounds, the lanes to Nairobi will only multiply. That’s unfortunate. East Africa has erected taller buildings and broader roads, but its core politics remains caught in a repetitive cycle of repression, exile and return.
The author is a journalist, writer and curator of the Wall of Great Africans. X@cobbo3
