Unto she who has, more shall be given and even more demanded

What most admirers of the girl born in the glitzy priviledges of being born a Royal may not know is the pressure that came with being expected to deliver and achieve like royalty; over and above the common man, as illustrated by a princess that did not disappoint, writes Brian Magoba

Spoken with a Luganda intonation, her name translates as “they underlook”. But there is not much to underlook about Tooro kingdom’s Princess Elizabeth Nyabongo Rukidi Christobel Edith Bagaya, an icon for women looking to become generation-defining lawyers, politicians, models, or actresses. She realised many firsts in all these fields.

Many a girl would certainly envy the more glitzy details of her life: born a princess to Lieutenant Sir George David Matthew Kamurasi Rukidi III, the 11th Omukama of Tooro and Queen Kezia Byanjeru Abwooli; primary education at a girl’s school named after her grandfather King Kasagama Kyebambe the fourth; secondary at Gayaza High School and university at England’s Sherbonne School for Girls.
But where they would remark how exotic it sounds to be the only African student in a foreign school, she would relate, as she did in her autobiography “Elizabeth of Tooro: The Odyssey of an African Princess”, that “I felt that I was on trial and that my failure to excel would reflect badly on the entire black race”.

Most milestones of her life have been just as double-edged, spawning both admiration for her achievements and controversy surrounding some of the adverse circumstances she always clawed her way back from.

She was the first woman from East and Central Africa to attend Cambridge University in 1959 at Girton, a college it had established for female students in 1869. She was also only the third African in the university’s history at the time, after Nigeria’s Olu Abisogom and Sierra Leone’s Lulu Coker.

She graduated in 1962 while still a virgin, when the sexual permissive revolution was gathering momentum across Europe and America. Thus she confounded stereotype thinkers who imagined the omushaija tayangwa (a man is not refused) ideology from her culture would make her even easier prey than most university girls coming from single-sex schools.

But when she was a second-year student of law, history and political science, she also held a party for Jomo Kenyatta at the very time the British, her own country’s colonial overlords, considered his involvement in Kenya’s Mau Mau independence revolt reason enough to declare him persona non grata.

The other notable party she held was on December 20th 1965, celebrating her being apprenticed to the office of Sir Dingle Foot, Britain’s Solicitor General. With characteristic cruel timing, life cut short her euphoria.

The very next day, she learned of her father’s death, and returned to Uganda where she replicated her feat of being the first African woman admitted to the English bar by becoming Uganda’s first female lawyer after completing a six-month internship at Kazoora and Co, a law firm in Kampala.
When President Milton Obote(RIP) abolished kingdoms on September 8, 1967, she started the first leg of an exile she would experience three times. Each time she would find success in the face of adversity.

The way out came courtesy of an invitation in 1967 by Queen Elizabeth’s sister Margaret and her husband Lord Snowdon for her to guest model at a Commonwealth fashion show at London’s Marlborough House.

There she transformed from cultural opinion leader to high-fashion model, signing up with the Peter Lumley agency, the best in London at the time. But she never relaxed standards, turning down an offer from the famous Ford Modelling Agency to pose nude.

“Are you a model or are you not?” cajoled the caller, thinking the promise of more money and fame would win her over. “Yes, I am a model, but one day I will go back home,” she replied.
She eventually became the first black model to have a four-page spread in Vogue magazine in their issue of June 1969, and to grace the cover of Harper’s Bazaar in November 1969.

She showed that even without compromising their principles, one can still be successful when selling out, oftentimes seems the quickest route to the top. The modeling career ended with her catching the first flight available from Paris to Uganda when news of Idi Amin Dada’s overthrow of Obote on January 25th 1971 reached her.

Amin appointed her Uganda’s Roving Ambassador in July 1971 and so far the only female Minister of Foreign Affairs in February 1974, specifically tasking her with dispelling international skepticism about his ability to lead the country.

When Amin sacked her and publicly announced an alleged tryst with a Frenchman at Orly airport as the reason, she told him off for trying to bully her into becoming his mistress, and victimising her when his attempt met with failure.

Thus she emboldened women to not cower before powerful men, but seek redress, even if the cost was as high as exile. This time it was to Kenya in 1975, ironically or perhaps symbolically disguised as a village girl.

Again, from exile she showed the value of women keeping their dignity by collecting hefty damages from the newspapers that trumpeted Amin’s allegations. The case became a reference point for media-law relations.

She tasted exile again when Obote resumed the Presidency in 1981. But she returned to the public eye in an even bigger way, becoming Uganda’s ambassador to Germany, the Vatican and Nigeria.
She stands out as a living example of the greatness women can reach when they define their lives not by their beauty or family fame, but by applying their intelligence and starting over each time life gets them down.