UGANDA: When Power Harms - Naming Emotional Violence

About this Story

This story was first published on the World Pulse platform and is shared here through a collaboration between World Pulse and Imaara Survivor Support Foundation. As part of Imaara’s Project Tell-Tale initiative, selected stories from World Pulse are being cross-posted to amplify survivor voices and strengthen conversations around gender-based violence.

The story was submitted in response to a call for stories connected to the 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence (2025), inviting survivors, advocates, and allies to share lived experiences, reflections, and pathways toward justice and healing.

Read the original story on World Pulse!

By: J Brenda Lanyero

(The author has chosen to be identified in this publication)

For a long time,

I believed I was working under a strong leadership.

She stood calm, confident, influential

a quiet authority cloaked in promise.

Her words spoke of growth,

of opportunity,

and I wanted to believe.

But truth does not stay hidden forever.

What I experienced

was not leadership,

it was control.

Mistakes were buried,

not examined.

Conversations happened behind closed doors,

where stories were rewritten

to protect power

and paint the truth-teller as the problem.

When I spoke of being shouted at by fleet assistants,

left behind during night shifts,

made unsafe in the dark hours,

my voice was dismissed.

A colleague, too, was abandoned,

over and again

as if safety was an option,

as if our lives are expendable.

Manipulation wore the mask of mentorship.

Empathy was performed, not practiced.

Accountability vanished.

I was told the harm was “nothing,”

that speaking up was a waste of time of management.

Even when injury was visible to my eyes,

I was denied the right to be heard fully as they called it immature,

I was denied the right to call a witness (my Landlady).

Power chose silence

over protection.

Slowly, doubt took root.

I questioned my worth,

my voice,

my right to feel safe.

And I learned I was not alone,

other women in the section and my route carried the same fear,

the same exhaustion.

This was gender-based violence,

hidden in plain sight,

unnamed because it is happening in an environment that wore

the uniform of a formal/cooperate workplace.

The harm was real,

even when denied.

Emotional abuse.

Intimidation.

Control.

Violence that asks women to endure,

to survive quietly.

Silence became a shield to the

invisible and visible wounds.

Some staff are treated as disposable,

because they had no protection,

no influence no “god-fathers.”

And believe that we have nowhere to report any matters or be heard

Healing began

the moment I named the truth.

Then others spoke.

And I understood,

it was never just me.

Conversations cracked the walls.

Boundaries were questioned.

Truth loosened fear’s grip.

This experience reshaped me.

Gender-based violence is not only physical.

It lives in manipulation,

in abused authority,

in systems that punish truth

and protect harm

Today, I choose a different vision

of leadership rooted in empathy,

of communities built on accountability,

of spaces where dignity

is not negotiable.

By sharing this story,

I stand with the women

who were and are silenced,

abandoned in the nights,

left to find their way through unsafe paths, walk in the rains at dawn.

Our experiences matter.

Naming harm is resistance.

Storytelling is justice taking its first breath.

A healthier future is possible,

when leaders learn to listen,

to believe,

and to choose

to do better.