By Temitope Ogunleye (she/her)
Part 3 of 4
This series contains discussions of misogyny, police brutality, racism, and sexual violence
If song and dance allow the body to move through trauma, nudity forces it to confront, disrupt, and demand. Where movement creates rhythm, nudity creates rupture. It unsettles the gaze that presumes control. Across Africa and its diaspora, public nudity has long functioned as a final resort, a curse, a protest, a declaration of uncontainable grief or rage (Fallon & Moreau, 2016; Mathebula, 2022). When systems fail, the naked body becomes a site of memory and resistance (Mathebula, 2022).
Thus, when British administrators in southeastern Nigeria ordered a reassessment of taxes amid economic hardship, the assault of Nwanyeruwa - a woman who refused to be counted - ignited what became a mass uprising of thousands of Nigerian women (Obayan, 2016). The women protested through ‘sitting on a man:’ a form of public shaming that combined song, dance, and partial nudity, all to question the offender’s manhood. Familiar with the cultural connotations of this practice, the women wielded it to dishonor men who misused power and disrespected women (Obayan, 2016; Fallon & Moreau, 2016).
Decades later, in the Niger Delta, over 600 women occupied a ChevronTexaco oil terminal to demand basic services (Kuumba, 2006; Mapara, 2020). When their words failed, they turned to a poignant visual as a last resort, brandishing their nakedness as one would a weapon: ‘Our weapon is our nudity’, one woman said (Mapara, 2020). The cultural gravity of this gesture halted operations and led to concessions (Mapara, 2020).
In 1990, in Soweto, South Africa, women stripped as bulldozers arrived to demolish their homes (Mathebula, 2022). They cried out, mocked the police, and refused to move - until the demolition stopped. That afternoon, they appeared nude in court, wielding their nudity and defying legal decorum (Mathebula, 2022). In 1992, in Nairobi’s Uhuru Park, elderly women led by Wangari Maathai undressed to protest their sons’ detention (Mathebula, 2022). Police turned away, unable to face the maternal body (Mathebula, 2022). In the Cote d’Ivoire (Mathebula, 2022), and in Abeokuta, Nigeria in 1947 (Obayan, 2016), women exposed their bloodied menstruation cloths in protest. In Uganda, widows like Noerina Mubiru stripped to protect their homes, effectively laying what was culturally perceived as a ‘curse’ by many across Africa (Mathebula, 2022; Mapara, 2020; Fallon & Moreau, 2016). In the precolonial era of Kenya, mothers stripped naked in front of those who offended them, culturally damning offenders and severing all ties (Fallon & Moreau, 2016).
More recently, students at Rhodes and Wits universities bared their chests during protests (Mathebula, 2022). At Wits, they formed a human shield, halting police fire - not by force, but through vulnerability. Their nudity disarmed precisely because it interrupted the expected script. It asked onlookers to stop reading the body as an object and start recognising it as an instrument for change (Mathebula, 2022; Moosa, 2020).
At South Africa’s 2018 Gender-Based Violence Summit, Phindile Ncube, a gang rape survivor stood naked before the president, exposing her scars and genitals to national media (Mathebula, 2022). She did not stand there to be pitied. She stood to name what the system refused to see. Her body was the evidence.
Such acts rarely conform to Western ideals of protest. They are ceremonial and deeply affective. In many African cultures, to see a mother undress in public is more than ‘indecent’ – it’s taboo; a collapse of order, an unbearably heavy moment of shame and consequence (Mathebula, 2022; Mapara, 2020). And yet these moments are often dismissed or distorted. The media captures the image but not the intent.
What unsettles isn’t just the exposure, but the meaning behind it. These women don’t ask to be seen through the lens of shame. They assert their place in the story. Their bodies speak where the official record falls silent.
Jump to next: PART 4 - Black Women and Alternative Resistance: Writing and Voice
Read the full series:
PART 1 - Black Women and Alternative Resistance: Architects of Change
PART 2 - Black Women and Alternative Resistance: Dance
PART 3 - Black Women and Alternative Resistance: Nudity
PART 4 - Black Women and Alternative Resistance: Writing and Voice
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