The media in Uganda has been awash with reports of unconventional methods of protests which residents, and particularly women, have been applying to protect their land.
An elderly woman in Bukedea District stripped her clothes in May 2015 against an alleged land takeover by Chinese investors. Just a month before that, dozens of Acholi women in Apaa village stripped naked in front of two government ministers, area leaders, police officers and a multitude of other residents among them children, in protest of a possible eviction from their land in northern Uganda.
In 2013, NTV Uganda reported that 50 women stripped naked over another land row in Lakang area. Also, in 2014, a group of women were reported to have stripped their clothes and gone wild, claiming the government wanted to grab their land and give it to Soroti University for development. These are just a few cases that have seen this trend rising in various parts of Uganda over the years.
According to a report by the BBC, for the Acholi people of northern Uganda, a woman stripping in public is more powerful than fighting as it is believed that it invokes the worst of curses on the woman’s enemy.
Other than stripping, other unusual methods of protesting such issues that have been employed in Uganda include wailing and eating live rats.
The land dispute in northern Uganda has lasted nearly 10 years.
Agency