Winnie Byanyima

Speaker 20:01

BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts.

Presenter0:05

Hello, I'm Lauren Laverne and this is the Desert Island Discs podcast. Every week I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, book and luxury they'd want to take with them if they were cast away to a desert island. And, for rights reasons, the music is shorter than the original broadcast. I hope you enjoy listening.

Presenter0:45

My castaway this week is the human rights advocate Winnie Bianima. She has spent 40 years at the forefront of the fight for social justice as a politician, a diplomat and a charity worker. She's currently the Executive Director of UN AIDS, the joint United Nations programme which was set up to eradicate AIDS as a threat to public health by 2030. She was born in southwest Uganda and grew up in a politically and socially engaged household. Her father was a teacher-turned MP and her mother set up clubs to teach skills to the women in her community who had little access to education. Her father's opposition to the brutal dictatorship of Idi Amin meant the family were under threat and she was forced to flee Uganda for her own safety. She found refuge in the UK in 1978 when she was just 19.

Presenter1:36

By the time she returned to Uganda two years later, she had qualified as the country's first female aeronautical engineer. She went on to spend a decade as an MP in the Ugandan Parliament, helping to write a new constitution for the country in 1995. She later became Executive Director of Oxfam International. She says, I'm a nomad. I've wandered into different things as a curious person who's passionate about social justice. Winnie Bieniema, welcome to Desert Island Discs. Thank you. It's an honour to be here. Winnie, authenticity is a key quality as far as you're concerned, isn't it? I know that you once said, I never hesitate to be myself. How do you manage to stay true to yourself when you're holding organisations and governments to account?

Winnie Byanyima2:25

That's a difficult one.

Winnie Byanyima2:28

But I never forget who I am.

Winnie Byanyima2:31

I always remember that I'm that little girl.

Winnie Byanyima2:35

that grew up

Winnie Byanyima2:36

in a village, in a poor country.

Winnie Byanyima2:39

And that I'm not ashamed of who I am, I'm actually proud of who I am.

Winnie Byanyima2:45

And uh in every situation I

Winnie Byanyima2:48

Just tell my truth.

Presenter2:50

But you are an outlier and I know that you've reflected on that. You know, the girls that you grew up with and around your childhood friends in your village in Uganda, they didn't achieve the level of success that you've reached. And you've talked about this powerful sense of obligation that you feel and you carry that with you and you take that into your work. I wonder what emotions come to the surface when you think about them today, the girls that you grew up with.

Winnie Byanyima3:16

Ah, like you said, a burden. A burden of actually guilt.

Winnie Byanyima3:21

One of them, Maimona, is my close friend.

Winnie Byanyima3:25

She was pulled out of school at the age of about fourteen. One day we were playing with our banana fibre dolls. The next day she was a bride. We cried, and she cried.

Winnie Byanyima3:38

And she's never overcome poverty really. This shapes my understanding of the world that um

Winnie Byanyima3:47

The people at the top aren't so rich, and the people at the bottom aren't sinking farther.

Winnie Byanyima3:54

We need to even it out.

Winnie Byanyima3:56

It's time for your first disc. What have you chosen and why? I've chosen Sanyuliange. It's a song by a Ugandan woman called Juliana Kanyomozi. It's a happy song. It's a woman who's happy to be in love. I chose it because I find love in the work that I do. Even though it's about people who suffer, there's joy in the work I do.

Speaker 14:37

I need someone to hear

Speaker 14:41

Uh

Speaker 14:42

Uh

Winnie Byanyima4:42

Yes, I know young girl, me as I love it,

Presenter4:51

My side.

Presenter4:52

Sanyuyange Juliana Kanyamozi

Presenter4:56

Winnie Bienima, you were born in the south west of Uganda then in nineteen fifty nine, and you grew up in the village of uh Rootie, you were the second of of seven children. Your parents, initially, at any rate, were were both teachers. What do you remember when you think back to those times?

Winnie Byanyima5:13

We had no running water, we didn't have electricity in our house, but my parents were teachers, and I could go home and they would light a lantern, and I could do homework, and they could supervise me. But my friends didn't have this.

Winnie Byanyima5:28

We would walk to school three kilometers to school. They had no shoes. I had shoes. So I'd actually put my shoes in my handbag, hide them there, and walk barefoot, because I couldn't bear

Winnie Byanyima5:41

to feel privileged.

Winnie Byanyima5:43

My mother organized groups of women.

Winnie Byanyima5:46

She had been lucky to go to school. So she had women's clubs and they learnt craft making. And most of the time they were talking about forced child marriage. And uh as a woman who'd been educated herself,

Winnie Byanyima6:03

She would tell them that, look, if your husband is going to arrange a marriage for your daughter and you can't stop him, let me know. Bring your daughter here at home and I will sort him out. I'll talk to him, I'll persuade him, but don't let him do it. So sometimes they would hide their girls at home.

Presenter6:23

Oh wow, yeah.

Winnie Byanyima6:23

keep the girl at home while my for mom is in negotiations with the dad about she's too young, she shouldn't be married off, she should stay in school. My generation of women in my country, we are really the products of those struggles of women insisting.

Winnie Byanyima6:42

To keep a girl in school just like a boy.

Presenter6:45

Your dad, Winnie, he had a a long and extraordinary life. As I said, he started out as a a teacher in a secondary school, but in the sixties he got in involved in politics and eventually became an MP. Tell me about him as a person. What kind of man was he?

Presenter7:02

He was um

Winnie Byanyima7:03

Yeah. An Anglican, because we're British colony, he was well educated.

Winnie Byanyima7:09

because he went to Machillary University, the first university in our country, and taught at the prestigious Boys Anglican Boys' School in our region.

Winnie Byanyima7:20

But when he it was time to marry, he married a Catholic girl.

Presenter7:25

As you will see

Winnie Byanyima7:25

That was friendly.

Presenter7:26

Yeah

Winnie Byanyima7:26

He frowned upon, and he was even threatened that he would lose his job in the Anglican school.

Winnie Byanyima7:34

He had been a church pianist and they discouraged him from playing the piano in the church. They kind of isolated him, but he told them he didn't give a damn and he refused to live in the Anglican Porsche area. It was the Porsche suburb, and bought a piece of land in the poor suburb where we grew up, which was neutral. It wasn't either Catholic or Anglican, it was a Muslim neighborhood. So he was always a maverick. He went into politics but was on the opposition against a dictatorship. And he spoke his mind, he risked his life, and he said to us, The only way to live is to stand up for truth and for justice.

Winnie Byanyima8:20

Lucy B.

Presenter8:21

But

Winnie Byanyima8:21

Yeah.

Presenter8:21

Winnie B and Ema, it's time for some more music, I think. Your second choice today. What have you gone for and why?

Winnie Byanyima8:27

I've gone for

Presenter8:28

Yeah.

Winnie Byanyima8:28

Bach

Winnie Byanyima8:30

Jesus joy of man's desiring because it makes me remember the Christian missionaries who educated me.

Winnie Byanyima8:41

And I acknowledge the role that this particularly the Irish women, they played in protecting us, in shaping us, in giving us confidence as girls that we were going to build our country, that we were equal.

Winnie Byanyima8:56

I just am so grateful to those women.

Speaker 19:26

There is no

Speaker 19:30

I am afraid of the soul.

Presenter10:03

Bach's Yezu Joy of Man's Desiring, performed by the New London Symphony Orchestra with the Norman Luboff Choir, conducted by Leopold Stukovsky. Winnie Bienima in 1971, Idyamin became President of Uganda. It was a brutal, frightening time in the country's history. How did life change for you and your family when he came to power?

Winnie Byanyima10:25

Yeah.

Presenter10:27

Yeah.

Winnie Byanyima10:27

My memories of that time

Winnie Byanyima10:29

are about seeing death, seeing violence,

Winnie Byanyima10:35

At school, when families would come to pull a girl out of class,

Winnie Byanyima10:42

And take her away?

Winnie Byanyima10:44

And then she'd come back after a week with her head shaved.

Winnie Byanyima10:49

In morning, then we would know that her father has been killed or disappeared, and we couldn't talk about it. People would bury their dead at night because you have to pretend that nobody has died. Because if you do speak about it or show it,

Presenter11:06

Then they'll come for you too?

Presenter11:08

In nineteen seventy seven you went to university in Kampala to study engineering, but not long after you'd started, your parents decided you had to leave Uganda. Why did they think it wasn't safe for you to stay?

Presenter11:21

What hub

Winnie Byanyima11:21

Pend is a story that I have never really told, but it was, yeah, very defining for me.

Winnie Byanyima11:31

A junior lecturer walked into my room one evening.

Winnie Byanyima11:35

and made a proposition that I should be his girlfriend and that that way I could be sure to pass my exams.

Winnie Byanyima11:44

I said to him right away I was quite a confident little girl, I said, I don't need any help to pass my exams. And I asked him to leave. Before he left he gave me an angry look, and he said to me I was going to regret it. So I rushed to my parents, I told them what had happened.

Winnie Byanyima12:02

And my parents said, Well, get out of there. You can't spend the next four years being blackmailed like that. It's unacceptable.

Winnie Byanyima12:11

So they had a friend who was friendly with the generals in power.

Winnie Byanyima12:17

Who promised that he would help me to get the permission I needed to leave the country to go and find a scholarship. I was aiming at going to the UK to get a scholarship and study there. So this friend of my parents came to take me to meet an official in the Ministry of Education.

Winnie Byanyima12:38

He didn't take me to the ministry.

Winnie Byanyima12:41

He first took me to his apartment. He said he'd forgotten something.

Winnie Byanyima12:45

We got into his apartment.

Winnie Byanyima12:47

He put on music.

Winnie Byanyima12:50

on his player

Winnie Byanyima12:52

The song was The First Cut Is the Deepest and he came to grab me.

Winnie Byanyima12:58

I screamed.

Winnie Byanyima13:00

He was embarrassed.

Winnie Byanyima13:01

He stopped, put me in his car, dropped me back at the University, and said I was stupid, I was childish. These things happen he called it things happen.

Winnie Byanyima13:12

I shocked?

Winnie Byanyima13:14

I was eighteen.

Winnie Byanyima13:17

I had never had a relationship with a boy.

Winnie Byanyima13:21

This was an attempted rape.

Winnie Byanyima13:23

I was frightened.

Winnie Byanyima13:25

At that time there was not even a word called sexual harassment or abuse. There was rape, but you felt ashamed to admit it. When I arrived here in England,

Winnie Byanyima13:38

At the immigration

Winnie Byanyima13:41

I said I was running away from Amin. I was asked why. I mentioned my cousin who had been killed. I said I feared for my life. But I couldn't say that there was an attempt to rape me, to abuse me sexually several times. It y it was too shameful.

Presenter14:02

Winnie, we'll find out more about what happened next in a moment. Right now, though, we need to hear your third piece of music. What have you gone for and why?

Winnie Byanyima14:11

I've chosen Le Boucheron by Franklin Boukaka, a Congolese singer. To me it reminds me so much of that period where we were suffering under Idiamin, but the whole of Africa was under the grip of powerful civilian or military dictators. So he sang, and these it was artists who were resisting, who could speak, but they would pay with their lives. And Bukaka too was killed because of those songs he sang.

Winnie Byanyima14:45

yearning for liberation.

Speaker 114:48

Afrika, Ne Afrika, Moti Panda.

Speaker 115:02

I am afraid I have frequently birthday.

Speaker 115:17

Oh got the funny pass!

Presenter15:20

Le Boucheron, Franklin Buchaker.

Presenter15:23

Winnie Bienima, so as we've heard, you came to the UK as a refugee and you got a scholarship to study aeronautical engineering at Manchester University. What are your memories of your arrival here in the UK?

Winnie Byanyima15:36

Yeah.

Presenter15:36

Yeah.

Winnie Byanyima15:36

I was on the one hand feeling a bit scared of a new country, new place, don't know anybody.

Winnie Byanyima15:45

But yet I was feeling free, really free.

Winnie Byanyima15:49

There was the independence of having girlfriends and going to a dance and having fun and going to Pizzaland and eating a pizza on a Saturday.

Winnie Byanyima16:02

Was it good, pizza? How is it? Was it your first pizza? It was my first pizza in my life, and I loved it.

Presenter16:04

Meets a

Winnie Byanyima16:09

and um going to the pub, having a pint, all these things that I had not enjoyed, and the library wow wow wow John Reynolds library with books of every kind and comfortable chairs to sit on

Winnie Byanyima16:27

Yeah.

Presenter16:27

It was freedom.

Presenter16:29

You say you arrived in Manchester as an angry teenager, which is unsurprising considering what you'd been through. How did university life help you deal with that anger?

Winnie Byanyima16:39

I just found within a few weeks or months there that at Manchester that there was something called the Uganda Human Rights Movement and that Ugandans were organizing in on campuses, in Scotland, in Wales, in London.

Winnie Byanyima16:55

organizing themselves to resist idi Amin. So I joined and I became an activist. Being part of movements helped me channel my anger and to feel that I'm with others, I think saved me, I believe saved me.

Presenter17:14

Winnie, we're getting a sense definitely that you flourish when you've got something to kick against. But you also mentioned the friends you made and the fun that you had at university. So I think we'd better hear some more music. Tell me about your fourth choice today. Uh

Winnie Byanyima17:29

heart of glass and it reminds me of those wonderful English girls I found in the Hall of Residence, Saint Gabriel's Hall at Manchester. They were Northern girls and they were so warm and nice and they received me and they really helped me to settle in a country that I didn't know.

Winnie Byanyima17:51

And in this rainy city, and to have fun, and we danced to Blondie, and I loved Blondie.

Speaker 118:02

Each mistrust loves on the heart

Speaker 118:13

And it's a desire.

Speaker 118:20

These are the real things that I was wondering why.

Speaker 118:25

Just that's come behind.

Presenter18:30

Heart of Glass by Blondie. Winnie Bianima, after you graduated in 1981, you went back home and you got a job as an engineer with Ugandan Airlines. I should say you were the first woman in your country to become an aeronautical engineer. By this time, Idi Amin had been ousted and replaced as president by Milton Abote. But opposition politicians, led by Yuri Museveni, believed the election was rigged and that prompted a guerrilla war. Unknown to your employer, you started working for the resistance.

Winnie Byanyima19:01

What are you doing?

Winnie Byanyima19:03

Sometimes it would be to pass some information on. Sometimes it would be to allow someone to hide.

Winnie Byanyima19:13

Sometimes it could be

Winnie Byanyima19:15

Our injured helping them find somewhere where they can be looked after.

Winnie Byanyima19:22

But as time went on I was found out and then had also to defect and leave my job.

Winnie Byanyima19:29

and joined the rebellion.

Presenter19:32

The bush, essentially. Yeah, we called it the bush, yeah.

Winnie Byanyima19:34

Yeah.

Presenter19:36

I mean, you knew how risky it was. Was it scary doing that work, or was your anger powering you through the fear?

Winnie Byanyima19:43

Of course there was always some fear. It was a civil war, but I was not on the front line. I was doing a lot of work in the rear. But I did sometimes could be part of a mission that is quite risky. But you didn't feel like, oh, I'm about to die or no, no, no. You're with others and you are

Winnie Byanyima20:05

In a struggle for

Winnie Byanyima20:07

A goal.

Winnie Byanyima20:08

A just country, a democratic country, a country where people are free.

Winnie Byanyima20:12

It's time for some more music, Winnie. Your fifth choice today. What are we going to hear? It has to be a song by a South African woman whom I adore, Yvonne Shakashaka. It's called Umkompoti. It's a local brew in South Africa in in in the Zulu language.

Winnie Byanyima20:31

But it sounds like um kombozi, and mkombozi in Swahili means a liberator, and it became like a liberation song that we would sing to celebrate the victory we had had and the empowering phase we were in.

Speaker 120:51

The money

Speaker 120:53

Trouble is my people with suffering and fear.

Winnie Byanyima21:00

Most of the time.

Speaker 121:01

Make sure

Speaker 121:03

My love

Speaker 121:05

To make my free

Winnie Byanyima21:07

Yeah.

Speaker 121:09

Must I shall be

Speaker 121:11

Um

Speaker 121:14

It's a freaking freedom

Presenter21:19

Umkumboti by Yvonne Chakachaka.

Presenter21:22

Winnie Bienima, Yueri Museveni became President of Uganda in nineteen eighty six. In nineteen ninety four, after working as a diplomat in Paris, you went back to Uganda hoping to be elected as an MP. How did you try to win over the voters?

Presenter21:38

Amen

Winnie Byanyima21:38

Uh

Presenter21:39

And in my car

Winnie Byanyima21:39

Don't you

Presenter21:39

Uh

Winnie Byanyima21:39

B

Winnie Byanyima21:41

hold rallies and they usually give them a platform and they stand a little above the crowd and talk down to a huge crowd. Well, I went walking. I put on my sneakers and walked door to door in slum areas, finding women cooking. They don't have kitchens. They put a stove outside their one room home.

Winnie Byanyima22:06

and cook on the veranda, and I would sit on the verandah with them, peeling their bananas and cooking, and I'd sit there, I'd carry the baby and talk to the woman and tell her why I want to run. And they'd get so excited. I won that election with a huge, huge landslide.

Presenter22:24

Big.

Presenter22:24

As an MP, you played a leading role in drawing up a new constitution for Uganda. But over the years, you became disillusioned with Moseveni's government. You and your husband Kiza, who was also a politician, began to speak out against corruption within the government. What were the consequences of doing that for both of you?

Winnie Byanyima22:42

Yeah.

Winnie Byanyima22:43

Yeah.

Presenter22:43

We were a m

Winnie Byanyima22:43

Really harassed, eh?

Winnie Byanyima22:46

I was in and out of court, facing uh arrests all the time.

Winnie Byanyima22:52

isolated, no one could step in my home, not even close family people, because it was surrounded and watched and

Winnie Byanyima23:03

People would be interrogated after visiting me so nobody could come.

Presenter23:07

It was too much. And in in two thousand four, Winnie, halfway through your second term as an MP, you resigned. I mean, what was the straw that broke the camel's back?

Presenter23:17

Yeah.

Winnie Byanyima23:17

One day I get up, I get dressed, I was going to Parliament.

Winnie Byanyima23:23

And my son says, Oh, ma'am, you're going to Court. And I said, No, I'm going to Parliament.

Winnie Byanyima23:30

And he said, But I thought you work in the court.

Presenter23:35

Because you were there so much.

Winnie Byanyima23:36

Because I'd been to court so much, he was beginning to have to think that my job is to work in a court, because I was going to court and now I realized this is it.

Winnie Byanyima23:48

My son is suddenly seeing what he shouldn't be seeing, and this is going to affect him. So I left.

Winnie Byanyima23:56

Painfully

Presenter23:57

Painfully. Winnie, let's just pause the story for a moment. Let's get your next disc from you, if you could. It's time for your sixth choice today. What have you gone for?

Winnie Byanyima24:08

The earliest memories of talking about injustice

Winnie Byanyima24:13

were those songs my father would play on his old piano. He loved this one Still Away, and he would explain to us that African Americans taken to America working as slaves on plantations, in homes, would sing these songs

Winnie Byanyima24:33

As a resistance, and they would be speaking to each other, giving each other hope and plans.

Winnie Byanyima24:40

on how to escape

Winnie Byanyima24:43

to freedom.

Winnie Byanyima24:45

So I love the African American spirituals. They speak to me powerfully about yearning for freedom, resisting oppression.

Speaker 124:55

Steal away

Speaker 125:00

Steal away

Speaker 125:04

Steal away to Jesus.

Speaker 125:12

Steal away

Speaker 125:16

Uh

Presenter25:16

Steal away.

Speaker 125:18

Behold.

Speaker 125:20

I ain't got long

Presenter25:23

Um

Presenter25:25

To stay. Steal away, Nat Kinkole. Winnie Bienema, in 2013, you were appointed Executive Director of Oxfam International, and today you're Executive Director of UN AIDS. Both organizations recently came under scrutiny following evidence of serious sexual misconduct. Now, those incidents predated your arrival and you implemented important changes. But given your own experiences that you've talked about with us today, what emotions did hearing those stories bring to the surface?

Winnie Byanyima25:58

This is the thing. I can remember what the one time I broke down during that crisis was during after an interview by a a radio interview by a Canadian journalist.

Winnie Byanyima26:11

who attacked me very hard, tell me how rotten our organization was and all this.

Winnie Byanyima26:19

I was trying not to be defensive, to say that, you know, I understand the pain of sexual abuse. I w I wasn't telling him I've seen it in my own life, but in my heart it was there. And after the interview I cried. I felt as if I was being

Winnie Byanyima26:40

How can I say? A salted

Winnie Byanyima26:43

'Cause I know the pain, or I knew it, and it all came back. I that's why I couldn't but apologize.

Winnie Byanyima26:53

I couldn't defend.

Winnie Byanyima26:56

Staff I defended the one who was.

Winnie Byanyima27:01

Abused.

Presenter27:02

Winnie, in your current role with UN AIDS, your goal is to end the AIDS epidemic by twenty thirty. Now I know that this subject is incredibly close to your heart and that in fact you lost your brother to the virus. What happened?

Winnie Byanyima27:16

Hmm.

Winnie Byanyima27:20

Bernard was first diagnosed when I lived in Paris as a diplomat.

Winnie Byanyima27:25

He was a very gentle person. He was frightened at that time.

Winnie Byanyima27:29

HIV was a death sentence. There was a treatment, but it just prolonged your life for a couple of years.

Winnie Byanyima27:37

I got him on it.

Winnie Byanyima27:39

And he was healthy.

Winnie Byanyima27:41

for several years while in France.

Winnie Byanyima27:45

When we went back home,

Winnie Byanyima27:47

He was one of the lucky ones on treatment because there was a pilot and he was able to be part of the pilot.

Winnie Byanyima27:55

When he went

Winnie Byanyima27:57

and met there some people he knew, and he'd not go back. He kept falling out of treatment because he didn't want to be known. There was strong stigma around HIV. My brother now started falling sick. He kept weakening and weakening and we lost him in

Winnie Byanyima28:16

two thousand and six we lost him. And I always say that Bernard didn't die of AIDS, Bernard died of stigma. Had he stayed on treatment, if he hadn't been scared of being shunned by people, he'd be alive to day.

Presenter28:35

Winnie Bianema, it is time to take a break for some music, your penultimate track. What have you got for us? Don't worry

Winnie Byanyima28:43

Or be happy.

Winnie Byanyima28:45

By Bobby McFerrin. This song came out right at the time when my brother was diagnosed and I'd put it on my C D player in the car as I drove him to different clinics to be tested, would be put on treatment, and we'd sing it and and I just put a smile on his face and I'd say, Banner, don't worry, be happy.

Winnie Byanyima29:09

I feel I'm honoring that promise I made to him that

Winnie Byanyima29:14

One day there would be a cure.

Presenter29:17

Here's a little song I wrote You might want to sing it note for note, don't worry

Presenter29:26

Be happy.

Speaker 129:27

Happy

Presenter29:30

In every life we have some trouble But when you worry you make it double Don't worry

Presenter29:40

B

Speaker 129:41

Happy, not very big, happy now.

Presenter29:47

Bobby McFerrin and Don't Worry, Be Happy.

Presenter29:51

Winnie, you you still take time and I think make a point of finding the joy in life, despite the challenges that the work and as an activist brings.

Winnie Byanyima30:00

Yeah.

Presenter30:02

Um, I read that you are quite a fan of the B B C television show Last of the Summer Wine. Yes. Can you confirm that so it is the case?

Winnie Byanyima30:12

The summer wine.

Presenter30:14

What do you love about it? Yeah.

Winnie Byanyima30:15

I don't know. These old men, they represent the joy of living. You know, they are weak, they know they are frail, they s they stand up for each other and then they f make fun of each other. So I love them. And I think that the most important thing in life for me is

Winnie Byanyima30:38

To make others happy?

Winnie Byanyima30:40

But

Winnie Byanyima30:41

It's because I'm happy. If I'm unhappy, I can't make others happy.

Winnie Byanyima30:46

So I'm really a happy person.

Winnie Byanyima30:49

Yeah.

Presenter30:49

Winnie, I'm about to cast you away to a desert island. You'll be all alone there. How are you in your own company? You know, you very much kind of li live a life of service and activism for others.

Presenter31:01

In fact, you've touched

Winnie Byanyima31:02

I love my own company.

Winnie Byanyima31:06

I walk alone, I go on long hikes on my own.

Winnie Byanyima31:10

I sit alone and read a book.

Winnie Byanyima31:13

I go out to a restaurant and eat a meal on my own.

Winnie Byanyima31:17

It is by

Winnie Byanyima31:19

Finding

Winnie Byanyima31:21

Peace and joy within yourself that you can actually be useful to others.

Presenter31:28

Well, Winnie, there won't be any restaurants on the island, but you'll certainly have books. We'll get to them in a moment. Before you go, one more disc from you, if you would. Your final choice to day. What are gonna

Winnie Byanyima31:37

It has to be a song by Nina Simone. I wish I knew how it would feel to be free.

Winnie Byanyima31:47

That is what drives.

Winnie Byanyima31:50

People like me are search for freedom for myself and for others, for all to be free.

Winnie Byanyima31:57

So life is about reaching out for freedom.

Winnie Byanyima32:02

I wish I knew how

Presenter32:06

Would fee.

Presenter32:07

To be free.

Presenter32:10

I wish I could pray

Speaker 132:13

Uh

Presenter32:13

Are the chains holding me?

Presenter32:18

I wish I could say all the things that I should say Say them loud, say them clear

Presenter32:29

For the whole round world here

Presenter32:34

I wish I knew how it would feel to be free. Nina Simone.

Presenter32:40

So, Winnie be an Ema, I'm going to send you away to the island now. I'm giving you the Bible, the complete works of Shakespeare. You can take one other book, too. What will that be?

Winnie Byanyima32:50

Bonne de Beauvoir's The Second Sex. That book is one of the books that woke me up.

Winnie Byanyima32:59

About

Winnie Byanyima33:01

My place in the world

Winnie Byanyima33:03

As a woman I read it when I was at university at Manchester. That's the book. I'd read it again and again to anchor myself.

Winnie Byanyima33:12

You can also

Presenter33:13

To have a luxury item for pleasure or sensory stimulation. What would you like? A weaving needle. Oh.

Winnie Byanyima33:19

A weaving needle? Yes, I would want a needle to make baskets. We used to take reeds, dry them, cut them, take out the fiber, and use it to weave baskets.

Winnie Byanyima33:34

I could weave baskets and keep weaving another basket and another basket until I'm rescued.

Presenter33:41

And finally, Winnie, which one track of the eight that you've shared with us today would you rush to save from the waves, if you had to?

Winnie Byanyima33:47

Yeah.

Presenter33:48

Yeah.

Winnie Byanyima33:48

Nina Simmons, I wish I knew how it would feel to be free.

Winnie Byanyima33:54

Winnie B and Ema, thank you

Presenter33:56

Very much for letting us hear your Desert Island discs. Thank you for having me.

Presenter34:11

I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Winnie. We'll leave her in peace, weaving baskets on the beach. We've cast away many other advocates and activists, including Malala Yousafzai and Maya Angelou. You can find their episodes in our Desert Island Discs programme archive and through BBC Sounds. The studio manager for today's programme was John Boland, the assistant producer was Christine Pavlovsky, and the producer was Paula McGinley.

Speaker 234:50

Since the war began, my inbox has been flooded. People from Ukraine, Russia and Britain are getting in touch with me. They're telling me about a very different battle, but one that's also having real consequences for the people caught up in it.

Speaker 235:04

I'm Marianna Spring, and in this new podcast for Radio 4, War on Truth, I'll be reporting on the extraordinary information war being waged over Ukraine, and hearing from the ordinary people sucked into it.

Speaker 235:17

This blatant denial of reality is being waged by trolls, state media, influencers, online and beyond.

Speaker 235:24

From BBC Radio 4 War on Truth. Subscribe now on BBC Sounds.