{UAH} MULINDWA:PROF TAMALE HAS GOT A THIGH GAP PLEASE!

UGANDAN INTELLECTUALS SERIES III: Sylvia Rosila Tamale (1962 - to date).

Prof. Tamale is a lawyer, sociologist, activist and an academic. She studied Law at Makerere University, Law Development Centre and the Harvard Law School, and Sociology and Feminist Studies for her Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), at the University of Minnesota. She has taught at Makerere University, rising to the level of Dean of Law (the first female ever), University of Cape Town and at the University of Wisconsin among others.

She has argued for a form of African Feminism that reinforces the opportunities for women empowerment inherent in the African philosophical worldviews of communitarianism and ubuntu. She attributes the extreme oppression of African women to the patriarchal nature of a liberal and capitalist democratic system that was forced onto African societies during the colonial experience. Her work explores the power of the erotic in the understanding of oppression and empowerment. She is on record for criticising the World Health Organisation on the categorisation of labia elongation among the Baganda as Female Genital Mutilation. She writes,

"Sexuality is a site for the production of hegemonic gender discourse, presenting both constraints and opportunities for empowerment. In many African contexts, the relationship of women to their own bodies is often different from the disembodied, negative relations rooted in the legacy of colonialism."

In 2003, she was announced as the Worst Woman of the Year by New Vision, for suggesting to the then proposed Equal Opportunities Commission that the term “minorities” should cover lesbian and gay citizens of Uganda. She has since become a leading African thinker on all things African sexualities. She is credited for the enactment of an Anti-Sexual Harassment policy at Makerere University.

Editor's Note: Every day, for the next few days, I will mention one Ugandan (Dead or Alive) that I regard as a Ugandan Intellectual. People who engaged/engage in the process of theorising, people whose love with ideas have contributed to the growth of a 'genuine' Ugandan society. I will provide a brief biography. I am doing this, because it is increasingly becoming important to divorce empty mimicry of Western thinking from true intellectual activity. So much of what has been christened African Intellectualism is nothing more than the ability to imitate, good writing, professional excellence, media influence, public policy activism etc, than true intellectual activity. By intellectual activity, I mean engagement with ideas. The Ugandan Intellectuals Series provide a background to a project I am working on, about the definition and place of Intellectualism in contemporary Ugandan (African) societies.
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H.OGWAPITI
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"To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that  we are to stand by the president right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic  and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public."
---Theodore Roosevelt

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