She Strips, She Swears, She Goes To Jail ... For The Good Of Her Country

Editor's note: This post contains some strong language.

Stella Nyanzi walks into court with a broad smile. She is familiar with this place, so she is the first in the door and casually takes a seat on a wooden bench right in front of the judge.

It was almost a year ago that Nyanzi was released from prison. She served a month in May 2017 for insulting Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, calling him "a pair of buttocks" and talking about the size of the first lady's vagina. She stumbled out of a pickup truck too weak to walk. She was held up by two female police officers, a bandage on her left wrist, grimacing in pain.

Nyanzi, 43, is a university researcher, a feminist and a writer of erotic nonfiction who has emerged as one of Museveni's most serious — and profane — adversaries. But at the time, she looked wounded and dejected, as if that stint in prison had drained all the indignation and resistance she came to represent in Uganda.

At court this March, she looks at ease again. The government, which has charged her with insulting the president, argues that she is crazy and should submit to a medical evaluation. What is unspoken is that