Just days after her husband, opposition politician Dr Kizza Besigye, was thrown in jail, Winnie Byanyima, the executive director of UNAIDS, had to coordinate the launch of the World AIDS 2024 report in Geneva, Switzerland remotely. Incidentally, Geneva is the same city where the Ugandan state alleged that Dr Besigye was plotting treasonous activities.
On Nov. 27, Byanyima was in Nairobi for work-related meetings, the city where Besigye was abducted in a harrowing Uganda-Kenya security operation. That night, Byanyima made an appearance on Citizen TV's JKL show about the quest for her partner's freedom whose arrest and detention has thrust him back into the spotlight after a prolonged lull.
"I am fighting for freedom, liberty of my husband. I am defending him to have justice in a civilian court," she told the host Jeff Koinange who asked if it was not a shame for Kenya given its role in the abduction of the veteran Ugandan politician.
She added, "It is not for me to talk about the role of Kenyan security or the Kenyan government. It is sad of course that he was kidnapped from Kenya. Kenya for us has been the country where we all run. I run here fleeing Idi Amin."
"But this incident is for you Kenyans to talk about, I think it's not for me," Byanyima added a caveat, perhaps mindful of not wading so much in the politics owing to her high profile position as a UN Under Secretary General.
"He's been through this since he first declared that he would run against President Museveni and that's close to twenty five years ago," she said.
It was vintage Byanyima who is well-known as an activist and feminist and whose X bio reads "passionate about justice and human dignity."
That same day in Nairobi, she met Kenya's Prime Cabinet Secretary Musalia Mudavadi (Uganda's equivalent of Prime Minister) in a courtesy meeting ahead of the 55th UNAIDS Programme Coordinating Board Meeting scheduled for December.
Byanyima praised Kenya for its role in combating HIV. It is not clear whether she brought up the kidnap of her husband with the country's number three but the meeting of the two leaders was poignant.
The rendition of Besigye from Kenya to face charges in a Ugandan military court has sparked anger and international criticism at the two countries for their deteriorating treatment of political dissidents. It has not been publicly said whether Byanyima and Mudavadi spoke about that.
Besigye was kidnapped in Nairobi just as he was about to speak at the launch of a book by his friend Martha Karua, a human rights activist and former justice minister in Kenya.
Byanyima says Besigye was lured by a British national who was reportedly interested in supporting political parties in Africa. However, in the midst of the meeting at Riverside Apartments in the central business district of the Kenyan capital, eight men stormed the house and put Besigye under arrest.
"At that moment, the man who opened the door...the British man, had disappeared," she said. Besigye was bundled onto a pick-up vehicle and driven off; on reaching Nakuru (an estimated three hour journey from Nairobi), Besigye's captors started speaking Runyankore, Winnie added.
Besigye was driven up to the Ugandan border where Ugandan security agents then fully took charge until he was thrown in a military jail.
Besigye is facing charges of unlawful possession of firearms at the General Court Martial alongside Hajji Obeid Lutale, with whom he was arrested. As soon as Besigye went missing, Byanyima boarded a flight home where she has led a spirited fight for the freedom of the four time presidential candidate.
Byanyima has inspired generations of activists and organisers in Uganda for over thirty years. For many, her efforts were a reminder of the groundwork she laid as an activist years ago and the political mobilisation she was part of that resulted in the formation of the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC).
Besigye went on to be the first president of the FDC and Byanyima was key in the fight for her husband's nomination as a presidential candidate in November 2005 from Luzira prison while facing charges of treason, rape and unlawful possession of firearms-the latter being the same charge he is facing today. He had just returned from exile in South Africa.
Kenya has been a stomping ground for the power couple. Jommo Kenyatta International Airport is where Byanyima, with their six year old son, Anselm, met with Besigye as he was returning from exile. Nineteen years later, the circumstances are eerily similar.
Before she started work in international development, Byanyima was a straight-talking revolutionary, parliamentarian and women's rights activist who was routinely arrested by the Ugandan government for her views on corruption, dictatorship and abuse of human rights.
The 65-year-old has been pivotal in many political developments in the country in the past 40 years. She took part in the early days of the NRA guerilla war that brought Museveni to power, was a signatory to the 1985 peace agreement, served as a Constituent Assembly delegate in the 1994 constitution making process and was MP for ten years.
She is a co-founder of Forum for Women in Democracy (FOWODE), a women's rights NGO started in the 1990s when the modern day women's movement was getting on its feet.
But it was Byanyima's hard fought battle to be the Mbarara Municipality MP in 2001 that cemented her as a grassroots activist and fighter in the country's murky politics. She contested in the race with Mbarara RDC Ngoma Ngime in a nasty election fight where the state machinery was deployed against her in what mirrored the violence of the general election that year.
Her victory catapulted her into a class of independent-minded leaders that was moving away from the Movement system under the one party dispensation.
But in 2004, Byanyima's career took a different path when she was appointed Director Women, Gender and Development at the African Union Commission in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. In an interview years later, she said the AU job offered her an opportunity to step away from the intrigue and fights that came with being in parliament as an opposition legislator.
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After the AU, she served in the same capacity at the UNDP in New York. In 2013, she moved further up when was appointed Executive Director at Oxfam International where she worked for six years before being appointed to her current role at UNAIDS.
The recent incident in Nairobi harked back to the era when Byanyima was directly involved in Ugandan politics and it has put her in her element: she has been active online about the kidnap, granted multiple interviews, condemned the government of President Yoweri Museveni for its persecution of Besigye, while also adding her voices to those suffering indignity elsewhere.
In spite of her high flying roles as a senior international public servant, Byanyima has remained active on the issues dear to her heart; never failing to raise her voice in the face of injustice. In 2020, she lambasted Gen. Muhoozi Kainerugaba for his tweets in support of the rebel group TPLF during the Ethiopian civil war, saying that he was endangering the lives of Ugandans in Ethiopia.
She was vocal against the amendment to remove the presidential age limit, advocated for the respect of human rights, rule of law, LGBT rights and above all the rights of women.
