They said it was just another murder. But her father refuses to let it be forgotten
- Her father’s phone rang with a question that made his heart stop: When was the last time you spoke to your daughter? Days later, her body was found on a roadside—half-naked, swollen, discarded. Winnie Mwesigwa had risen to become a school principal, a promotion some resented. Now, five months after her murder, her family is still waiting for justice in a country where too many women’s deaths go unanswered.
Kampala, Uganda — (Minority Africa) At around 1 p.m. on Thursday, September 19, 2024, Peter Mulwanyi, a retired power engineer, had just finished his lunch when his phone rang. It was Mutebi, a longtime friend of his daughter, Winnie Mwesigwa.
“They studied the same degree course together,” Mulwanyi recalls. “That friend of hers used to visit our home often. They even helped treat us and our families for various ailments.”
Mutebi asked when he had last spoken to Winnie. It had been about eight days. Sensing something was wrong, Mulwanyi pressed for details. After a brief hesitation, Mutebi revealed he had last spoken to her on Tuesday, September 17, 2024, at 8:18 p.m.
At that moment, a sudden weakness overtook Mulwanyi, his knees nearly giving way beneath him.
“That alone was enough to tell me that something was terribly wrong with my daughter.”
Mutebi vividly remembers his last conversation with Winnie. She had called from an office line, explaining that her phone was dead and she had just put it on charge. She was the principal at Kawempe Community School of Health Sciences in Lugoba, Uganda, where she also taught. She also ran a clinic that she had recently purchased.
According to Mutebi, Winnie sounded frustrated. She told him she had just come from a tense staff meeting.
“Nze bintamwe”—(I am fed up)— she said before ending the call.
“She had promised to call me later that night to tell me the whole story,” Mutebi recalls. “But at around 10:30 p.m. that Tuesday, I called her phone, and it was still off. The next day, whenI returned, I checked at her clinic, but she wasn’t there. The place was locked. I found that even her mother, whom she lived with, was also looking for her.”
Then, at dawn on September 18, early risers stumbled upon a woman’s body. She was naked. Police and local area leaders were notified. It was the body of Winnie Mwesigwa, but with no identification.
Winnie's Last Moments
Uganda has the tenth highest lifetime prevalence of domestic violence in the world. Studies suggest that domestic abuse in the country is deeply rooted in broader gender-based oppression. It reflects a systemic problem tied to the lack of gender equality and inadequate legal protections for women. In Uganda’s patriarchal society, entrenched social norms and traditional gender roles often foster attitudes that normalize and perpetuate domestic violence.
Winnie’s family and friends believe her murder was workplace-related. She had recently been promoted to principal from tutor, “but this did not sit well with some of her colleagues, who suddenly found themselves as her subordinates,” Mulwanyi notes.
Winnie’s body was taken to the mortuary. According to local reports, there were signs of sexual assault.
Mulwanyi remembers his heart pounding when he received a photo of his daughter from one police officer: “Is this your daughter?”
“I recognized her in the photo,” he says. It was around midnight. “I was so devastated.”
The silence of the night was shattered by cries and wails. Neighbors rushed over, drawn by the grief.
“She had changed beyond recognition,” he says, describing seeing his daughter’s body. Winnie’s body was swollen. This condition, called edema, is caused by the accumulation of excess fluid in the body’s tissues. It can result from various factors, including trauma, prolonged exposure to the elements, or poor circulation, especially in deceased individuals.
“But her sister and I were able to identify her by her toes.”
The forensic team showed them different photos documenting the condition of Winnie’s body, revealing the heartbreaking transformation.
Winnie’s aunt, Annet* (who asked not to be identified by her real name because of security reasons), remembers the sight vividly.
“She was unrecognisable,” she says. “We couldn’t even dress her—we just wrapped her in sheets of cloth.”
It was a cruel contrast to the little girl Annet once known—the cheerful six-year-old who had been a flower girl at her wedding, twirling in a lemon-green dress.
“That was her first time at a bridal party,” Annet recalls. “She never became a bridesmaid again.”
Winnie’s fate is heartbreakingly familiar to Safina Virani, Co-Director of Frauen Initiative Uganda. She has witnessed this pattern repeatedly—women spending their final moments subjected to violence, only to have their dignity further stripped away in death. Even after their lives are brutally taken, their bodies are denied the respect, protection, and care they deserve.
“Women’s bodies become symbols of systemic violence and the state’s failures to protect us, ” Virani says.
In Uganda, the poor treatment of victims’ bodies—especially those of women and unidentified individuals—is disturbingly common. Winnie’s tragic death exemplifies a chilling reality: the state decides whose lives matter, even in death.
Cameroonian political theorist Achille Mbembe calls this necropolitics—the power structures that dictate who is allowed to live and who can be left to die, determining whose bodies are valued and whose are disposable. In Uganda, as in many other places, necropolitics plays out most visibly in the way the state and society treat the dead.
“It’s not uncommon for onlookers to take photos of the victim’s body, sharing them widely as cautionary tales, reducing the woman to a mere lesson or a piece of evidence, stripping her of her humanity,” Virani says.
When her body was found on the roadside, swollen from exposure, it lay there for hours before the police came. One witness covered Winnie with a cloth. “She was just left there, naked, for everyone to see for many hours,” says Annet.
Virani agrees, stating that, “Instead of being treated as individuals with inherent worth, our bodies are objectified, sensationalized, and exploited—whether by the state, the media, or the public.”
Across Uganda, the treatment of unidentified or unclaimed bodies reveals a stark divide between those deemed worthy of dignity and those cast aside. Bodies of the poor, sex workers, and victims of violent crime are often ignored or poorly handled by state institutions. The morgues fill with nameless bodies, decomposing under the weight of bureaucratic indifference.
A clear example of this is the tragic incident at the Kiteezi Landfill near Kampala in August 2024, which resulted in a landslide that buried several individuals. Locals raged at the slow rescue response and the delayed retrieval of bodies. Such incidents reveal a deeper truth: in Uganda, some bodies matter more than others.
However, some believe it is the ailing health sector.
The state of Ugandan mortuaries is dire. Broken cold rooms and corrupt officials charging bribes to release bodies are common. Even Mulago Mortuary, the country’s largest, has been criticized for overcrowded freezers and hasty mass after minimal effort to locate families.
“We were so lucky,” Mulwanyi says. “We came just in time to pick her, otherwise they were taking her to bury her in a public cemetery for failure of getting people to identify and claim her body.”
On Sunday, September 22, 2024, Winnie was laid to rest in Lambala, Luuka District, Eastern Uganda. She was 32. She left behind a six-year-old son and a grieving family struggling to comprehend her violent death.
Her casket was sealed. She was unrecognisable.
“I explained to the mourners who came at different funeral services,” Mulwanyi says. “I apologised to them for not allowing them to view the body.”
“Winnie was my firstborn,” he continues, his voice heavy with emotion. “We weren’t just father and daughter—we were friends. I was so, so close to her.”
Winnie’s life had been full of promise. She was set to graduate in December 2024 with a Bachelor’s in Medical Education. “When she became principal, I used to call her ‘the girl principal,’” Mulwanyi recalls.
Now, five months later, her family is still waiting for justice. When contacted, the police officer overseeing the case redirected inquiries to the office of the Regional C.I.D Officer for KMP North, who is currently managing the case file. However, efforts to reach the C.I.D officer were unsuccessful.
Nonetheless, their wait is part of a larger, troubling pattern.
In 2020, the country reported 17,664 cases of domestic violence to the police, but only 1,359 were prosecuted, and 400 resulted in conviction—a conviction rate of only 2.2%.The failure to resolve these cases leaves families in a perpetual state of grief, forcing them to grapple not only with the loss of their loved ones but also with a justice system that seems indifferent to their pain.
“The culprits are still at large, enjoying life, while my daughter lies in the grave, leaving behind a six-year-old child as an orphan,” Mulwanyi says. His voice is firm. “But we are patiently waiting. We believe that one day, justice will be served. We are waiting.”
The lack of answers is a cruel burden.
“We are still in a state of shock, filled with emptiness and so many unanswered questions,” says Mulwanyi. “I still wonder—what did she do to them, these murderers, that they couldn’t forgive her? Why did they have to sentence her to death?”
Edited/Reviewed by: Caleb Okereke and Uzoma Ihejirika
