Here is how you raise a speaker of Parliament

If you have been a mother, you probably appreciate that it is not a given that your best efforts will pay off, especially in the form of such powerful and inspirational women as the Speaker of Parliament, Rebecca Kadaga. At the same time, it does not take any miracles short of your best, as the woman Hon. Kadaga calls mother revealed to John K. Abimanyi when he sought her out at her humble dwelling in Bulambuti village, a 10-minute drive from Kamuli town.

At the entrance, there was no security checkpoint. Heck, there was even no real entrance in the modern-day form of towering 12ft metallic gates, supported by concrete walls on either side, high voltage electric-wires on top, manned by gun-toting, mean-looking, and none-smiling legionnaires. So, just like that, one walks into the Kadaga homestead, as if they were simply walking into any other countryside homes.

And it is in the compound, just out there on the open green, lowly cut paspalum grass, that we found a clergyman’s daughter, a clerk’s wife and mother of the number three citizen in the land, Speaker of Parliament Rebecca Kadaga. She sat there, simply, legs stretched out on a mat, minding her time and conversing away with friends, devoid of any airs of importance whatsoever. In the compound, middle-aged children darted back and forth, visibly engrossed in some form of house chore or other like fetching water.

And right then, even before I asked a single question about how to raise a future Speaker of parliament, one answer was staring at me in the face, screaming for my attention. And that answer was modesty.

There was so much modesty you felt it wrap itself around you and settle you down into a household of heart-warming simplicity. This was not a palace I had come to, where meals are prepared by chefs and maidservants attend to the children. The recently widowed Eve Kagoya Kadaga runs a household of sheer simplicity.

Unassuming
This simplicity is grounded around some of the most basics of life: Staying true to the norms of honesty, hard work and maintaining a healthy relationship with God. It is what helped her raise her children, Kadaga says, and it is this that has taken her daughter to where she now is, she adds.

Even at her advanced age, Kadaga does not restrain herself to a rocking chair. She is a hands-on person, and until the death of her husband in December last year – an event that has taken a bit of energy out of her – she was a regular in the maize and sweet potato plantations she runs.
Today, she limits herself to the animals nearby. “When I wake up,” she says, “I start by checking on the cows. I check to see if they spent the night okay, and how much milk has been got before the milkman goes to sell it.”

“After that, I go check on the Honourable’s goats,” she adds. That is probably the only time in the interview that she refers to her daughter, the Speaker of Parliament, as “honourable”. On other instances, she refers to her simply as “Rebecca”. It is after the early morning inspection rounds, usually at 9.30a.m, that Kadaga settles down for a cup of tea. It is a sign of how she still drives herself to do some work, even at her age. And as you can only imagine, she did indeed push her daughter to work hard too, starting in school. “I encouraged her to study hard,” she says. “Study hard so that you can also grow up to do big things,” I used to tell her.

Hard work
Kadaga does not exactly remember Rebecca’s first day at school. But at least, she recalls some events in the first week. “That child really liked to study, all the way from childhood. She was very keen on school. She never wanted to get to school late. She gave her father the difficult task of having to drop them at school early in the morning, before going to work. Her foundation was very good,” she recounts.

Rebecca started school at Shimoni Demonstration School, by that time, a predominantly Indian school. Kadaga worked to direct their children towards their careers early on. “Whenever they returned from school,” she says, “We sat down with them and asked them what they wanted to be. They all spoke their minds; they all said what they wanted to be. Rebecca had always wanted to be a lawyer.”

Discipline
Rebecca’s mother tells how she worked hard to create a sound moral background for her children. “We sat together with our children and talked to them, to instil good behaviour in them,” she says. She says that of her children, Rebecca was the best behaved. “Her behaviour was exemplary. She never fought with anybody, unlike some of her siblings. She played the role of the reporter, telling me who had done what. She would say, “I told them not to fight, but he has beaten his colleague.” She always took the middle ground, like the judge when her colleagues conflicted.

“Not all were at Rebecca’s level; even if you are born into the same family, everyone has their distinct habits.” That though does not mean that Hon. Kadaga never strayed. Stray she did, and although her mother takes a pause before giving the answer, she confesses that occasionally, she had to discipline the Honourable. “Hmm…okay, you would beat her a few times when she did wrong. But that was rare,” she says.

It is a known danger zone for any parent and their child – the difficult times of puberty. But Kadaga insists she maintained a strict house at that time. “Mine never went to local video halls and discothèques,” she says. “But where would you be going, in the first place? What time would you return? Who would give you food? Who would open the door for you? Those things were never in my house. If anything, they (children) only started that while they had matured. If it had been that way, I would have made a loss.”

Blessed
Kadaga’s father was a parson in the Anglican Church. She says she has walked in this faith, and worked to lead her children through it as well. “That gospel is what raised our children. If someone knows God, they are saved from so many things. They hear the Lord telling them that what they are doing is wrong.”

Kadaga chooses not to comment about the subject of the possibility of her daughter standing for president. For now, she stands as a contented happy mother, feeling blessed to see the achievements that her offspring have attained. She is especially proud of her daughter’s accomplishments in politics. “I have been seeing her doing great work. She has been truthful. And that honesty, she got it straight from home; because even her dad worked in many organisations but he has no blemish, especially when it comes to financial issues, like the way things are today.” And she taught her children to be truthful and honest too, starting from school.

Asked how it feels to be the mother of the number three citizen, Kadaga says, “I just feel blessed. I just thank God that he has allowed me to live long enough to see my daughter reach those heights.” She seems to anchor most of her answers in God. Because even when asked how she took the fact that the Speaker had no family of her own, Kadaga says, “I left that to God. It is like death. If you have fallen sick and go to hospital, he may decide to heal you, or take you. That is how I take it. It is God who gives.”

It is a sign of her nature as a very unassuming woman, careful not to gloat in the pride of mothering the country’s first female speaker of Parliament, and simply calling herself lucky to have done so. She is probably a reminder that great things can, and do, indeed come from simple people.

Eve Kadaga on parenting today

“Hmm... In my perception, what can be called children are those at your (reporter’s) level, 25 years and older. The rest are not children, because they are badly behaved. We raised you people well, but those you have raised, there is no child among them. There are those who do not want to study; some are bayaye (hooligans). That, which I have said, that we don’t have children anymore, is it.

The reasons are many. There are TVs, and these things that they do in town like discos, have spoilt our children, young or old, which we did not have. I think that has hurt our country.
TV and local video shacks have

brought trouble. And if the government could help us and put restrictions on their use, it would help the young children and maybe, there would be some children among them, after all. But we are doing badly.

The problem today is that if in the past, if I found a friend’s child behaving inappropriately, I would correct them. But today, if you found a child misbehaving, say you found them in a discotheque, and went to the parent and told them, the parent would reply, “leave my child alone. It’s not your child.” You see such things. Now, even if you would have given them advice, you keep it to yourself.