The Evidence of Our Stories: How Journalism Can Dismantle Colonial Laws
The conversation began with a story of a Danish artist who, in 2006, offered Ugandan villagers a piglet in exchange for changing their legal names to his. The government, rightly calling the project "demeaning," shut it down in months. Dr. Moses Mulumba, opening the Afya na Haki(Ahaki) Litigation Baraza 2025, posed a sharp question to the room of lawyers, judges, and activists: Why does this same government tolerate the "present-day Hornsleth"—the colonial-era penal code that continues to strip women of their dignity and autonomy every single day?
His words set the stage for three days of intense dialogue. This was not just a conference; it was a "community deliberation," as Mulumba called it, designed to move the fight for reproductive justice from formal courtrooms into a space of radical rethinking. Professor Ben Twinomugisha immediately framed the central challenge: "How do we decolonize legal frameworks imposed upon us?" The question hung in the air, defining the Baraza's mission: to find an African-led answer to a colonial problem.
The Human Cost of Colonial Law
The abstract challenge of decolonization was made brutally real through testimony. Winnie Byanyima, the Executive Director of UNAIDS, recounted her time in a prison cell, shared with three other women. Hadija, a housewife, was beaten daily by police who wanted information about her husband. Margaret, a market vendor, was imprisoned for "burgling" her own home after her husband left her. Sophie, a teenager who spoke no common language, was arrested for being "idle and disorderly" after fleeing a home where she was sexually abused.
"Those were poor women," Byanyima told the silent room. "That was their difference with me." Her stories served as Exhibit A in the case against the current system, illustrating precisely how colonial laws, which ignore African concepts of community and restorative justice, continue to punish the continent's most vulnerable. The consequences are measured in lives and dollars. In Rwanda, restrictive abortion laws led to 24,000 unsafe procedures annually, costing the government $1.7 million. In Uganda, the state spends $13.9 million a year treating complications from unsafe abortions. This is the direct cost of maintaining a legal architecture that was never our own.
A New Roadmap for Justice
The Baraza was not a space for despair. It was a workshop for building a counter-strategy. Hope came from a powerful exchange with advocates from Brazil, Argentina, and Peru, who shared how they are winning legal battles by meticulously documenting patterns of injustice, a form of investigative journalism in itself. Their work provides a clear roadmap for turning the lived experiences of women into evidence that courts can no longer ignore.
The urgency of this work was heightened by a closed-door analysis of the global political landscape, which detailed the reinstatement of the Global Gag Rule and the rise of well-funded, coordinated anti-rights movements across Africa. Yet, the most tangible outcome of the Baraza came from Uganda's Minister of Justice, Norbert Mao. After listening intently for hours, he acknowledged the case presented. "The boundaries are squeezing you," he admitted, before making a concrete commitment to bring the Baraza's arguments before the Cabinet Standing Committee on Human Rights. It was a powerful demonstration of the event's core theory: that a well-told story, backed by data and presented to those in power, can shift the ground of what is politically possible.
This is where the work of journalism becomes inseparable from the work of justice. The legal battles being mapped out in rooms like the Baraza are complex. The human stories at their center, like those of Hadija, Margaret, and Sophie, are what make the abstract legal principles urgent and undeniable. The fight to decolonize Africa's laws will be won in courtrooms and parliaments. But it will be fueled by the stories that journalists have the courage to find and the skill to tell.
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