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Uganda
“Government officials harass their secretaries
and touch ladies' vaginas in lifts. So what sort of fear of the vagina do they have?”
-Maria Kityo, 42
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“ Expunge the offending parts”, was the message from
Uganda's Media Council (or censorship board) to the producers
of The Vagina Monologues, a play by American feminist Eve Ensler
that has been performed in 76 countries since 1996. Its exploration
of female sexuality and empowerment was of less interest to the
board than its “glorification of unnatural sex” and 100 uses of the
word “vagina.” The day before curtain–up, the show was banned.
The real controversy, though, may have been a sketch about rape
and abuses on women by the Lord's Resistance Army and
Ugandan troops, fighting an ongoing war in the north. Luckily,
only 20 people asked for their money back, and UGS 20,563,562
(US$11,827) was raised. “It's made us more determined to fight for
women,” says Maria Kityo, one of the play's promoters. And what
did writer Eve Ensler think? “She just wondered what sort of
backward people we are.”
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Left: Princess Elizabeth Bagaaya
Nyabongo of Toro was Uganda's first woman barrister, a Vogue model and
filmstar. She was also the country's United Nations ambassador and
(briefly) foreign minister under Idi Amin's dictatorship
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