My Life is But a Weaving: An Autobiography by Rhoda Kalema. Nairobi: Moran (E.A) Publishers, 2021. 

At 92 years of age, Rhoda Nakibuuka Kalema has a story to tell. She successfully uses her 268-page autobiography to summarize a journey that has been mostly in the public space from the day she was born. That space has been a source of joy and pain, an opportunity to serve and to face life-threatening risks, with personal tragedies that would have probably broken the spirits of most people. 

Born at Mengo Hospital on May 10, 1929, to Veronica Namuddu and Martin Luther Nsibirwa, Rhoda is the fourteenth child of a polygamous father that had become the Katikkiro (Prime Minister) of Buganda a month earlier. She grows up in a very comfortable home, the Butikkiro (prime minister’s residence) in the precincts of the Kabaka’s Palace at Mmengo. 

The account of her life in this home, where Nsibirwa and his five wives and their children enjoy close-knit communal living, reveals the remarkable success of the Katikkiro in leading his own family and maintaining harmony in a potentially difficult arrangement.

All five wives and their children, along with extended family members, live in the Butikkiro homestead. “All the children worked, played and did everything together during the day,” she writes. “Wherever mealtimes found us, there we would sit and have the meal with ‘our mother’ – it did not matter which one.”  

Nsibirwa, a strict disciplinarian who expects behavioural and academic excellence from his children, is a very present father who spends time with them together and individually. This is a remarkable achievement for a man that fathers a total of 27 children.

Rhoda’s mother is a loving, friendly, kind, and generous parent whose amicable personality contributes greatly to the harmony that defines the large family. Like her husband, Namuddu instils discipline in her children and pushes them along on their academic journey.  She teaches Rhoda practical, down-to-earth living and “how to run a home and relate to people” around her. 

These lessons become ingrained in her DNA, for Rhoda is one of the most organised people I know. Her high station and place in Uganda’s history have not altered the lessons of humility imbibed from her mother during childhood.

Rhoda’s formal education at Lubiri, Gayaza High School and King’s College, Budo, where she is one of only thirty girls, is the beginning of her long journey of breaking gender barriers.  “Being at Budo meant growing up and learning alongside boys and young men, a thing that was, hitherto, almost taboo. It would mean all the rough bits – competing, arguing, and fighting – as we learnt to live together in mutual respect. It would stretch my capacity to match the standards set for all. At Budo, I was to be groomed to take on the world of men.” 

One of Rhoda’s schoolmates at Budo is Prince Edward Mutesa. She is also a close friend of Damali Kisosonkole, the future Nabagereka (Queen) of Buganda. Rhoda narrates an incident involving the future Kabaka of Buganda that affirms her report that “at Budo, one’s social status was completely irrelevant; it did not matter who you were.”  

Her joyful time at Budo is shattered by the sudden death of her older sister, Sara Nabwami Nsibirwa, on October 10, 1939. Sara, also a student at Budo, is a day shy of her eleventh birthday. One feels Rhoda’s pain rising from the pages of her book.

The year 1939 is significant for another reason. With the death of Kabaka Daudi Chwa II on November 22, 1939, Nsibirwa, as Katikkiro, becomes the kingmaker – literally.  

In her excellent paper in the International Journal of African Historical Studies titled "Scandal and Mass Politics: Buganda's 1941 Nnamasole Crisis," Carol Summers writes: “Chwa died in the early morning. That afternoon, Nsibirwa met with the country’s chiefs and leaders in the Great Lukiiko (Council or Parliament) and proposed Edward Mutesa, the young son of Chwa’s Christian wife Irene Namaganda, as the next Kabaka. The Lukiiko’s members then selected Mutesa by acclaim and each signed his name to a resolution declaring Mutesa as their choice.”

Irene Druscilla Namaganda, Kabaka Mutesa’s 43-year-old mother, widowed at that young age, soon falls in love with Simon Peter Kigozi, a commoner, about twenty years her junior.  A pregnancy follows and, with the support of Katikkiro Nsibirwa and powerful chiefs like Ham Mukasa, the county chief of Kyaggwe, the couple solemnises their marriage with a low-key private wedding. 

Summers writes: “The crisis culminated in the forced resignation of Katikkiro Martin Luther Nsibirwa, who the Lukiiko held responsible for facilitating the marriage and thus sponsoring the degeneracy of the kingdom.”  He had been in power for 12 years. 

However, four years later, Buganda is in crisis again. The major issue of contention is proposed land acquisition by the central government to expand Makerere College into the University of East Africa. The young Kabaka Mutesa II re-appoints a reluctant Nsibirwa to his old job as Katikkiro. It is a fateful decision by both men. Nsibirwa is sworn in as Katikkiro on July 7, 1945.  

Two months later, Nsibirwa is shot to death at the entrance of Saint Paul’s Cathedral, Namirembe.  The details of the assassination, the politics behind it, and the effect it has on Rhoda and her family is chilling. However, the account reveals a man of great courage and foresight who had understood the risks and paid with blood. 

Rhoda is a 16-year-old teenager when her father is assassinated. Her world has suddenly been ripped apart by parochial people. Happily, her large family retains cohesion. Through sacrifice and mutual support, the children continue with their education.

Rhoda graduates from Budo in 1947 and embarks on a working career that will include secretary/bursar at Gayaza High School, community development and probation officer, a member of post-Idi Amin Uganda’s National Consultative Council, then the National Resistance Council, the Constituent Assembly, cabinet minister in the immediate post-Amin government and in the government of Yoweri Museveni, and a farmer.  

One of the early African members of the Uganda Council of Women, which she joins in 1958, Rhoda is a very active participant, leader, and mentor in the long and hard struggle for women’s rights and social justice in the country. Motherhood, public service commitments, and her multiple tragedies do not dent her presence in that struggle. At the end of the 1980s, she rekindles her involvement in the women’s movement. She is delighted to be “a bridge between the old and the new organizations” and salutes “the common determination, mission and vision that links all women across the decades.”

It is a mark of Rhoda’s humility and commitment to the women’s movement that she honours and brings to life women whose stories have been swallowed by the mist of time, buried by a society that records very little of its history. 

She paints beautiful portraits of Eseza Mulira Makumbi, Rebecca Mulira and Dorothy Barbara Saben, three pioneers of the women’s movement in Uganda who deserve to be better known than they are at present. 

Rhoda is a living witness to Britain’s formal transfer of leadership of the Uganda Protectorate to her generation. She is a member of the organizing committee for Buganda’s independence from Britain on October 8, 1962, a day before Uganda’s independence. 

Her excellent photo album shows a confident, smiling Rhoda walking with the Duke and Duchess of Kent, the British Queen’s representatives, on a visit to the Lubiri (Kabaka’s Palace). She is in the entourage of the Duchess of Kent when the latter unveils a plaque at the New Mulago Hospital. Rhoda is with Britain’s Princess Margaret when the latter visits Tororo Girls’ School and other parts of Uganda in 1965.  

She witnesses the critical events that shape post-independent Uganda’s rapid descent towards state collapse, starting with the political crisis in 1966 that culminates in the military attack on the Kabaka’s Palace and ends with the military coup in 1971. Whereas her husband is a serving minister in Milton Obote’s government, Rhoda does something that affirms her courage, her independent mind, her loyalty to friends, and her Christian character. 

Following the attack on the Mmengo Palace, Lady Damali Kisosonkole and Lady Sarah Kisosonkole, the Kabaka’s wives, are imprisoned in Luzira. “They were treated appallingly,” Rhoda writes. “The two sisters and royal wives were victims of circumstances.” Rhoda boldly offers them help. 

However, it is in her role as a wife and mother that Rhoda excels under the most difficult circumstances. She is a solid and loving partner of William Wilberforce Kalema, a teacher at Budo, whom she marries on February 11, 1950.  She is a very supportive partner to her husband who becomes a minister in the central government. She successfully juggles her responsibilities to create a comfortable home for him and their children.

The happy marriage, blessed with six children, comes to a sudden and devastating end on January 20, 1972, when Mr. Kalema “disappears.”  The detailed account of her husband’s kidnapping is heart wrenching. He is among the first prominent Ugandans to be killed during the regime of Gen. Idi Amin Dada. He is only 45 years old. His body is never found. 

To be a widow at 42, in a terrifyingly hostile environment, requires an extraordinary strength of character to endure the pain of loss and the challenges of single motherhood. Her children – Elizabeth, William, Peter, Apollo, Veronica and Gladys – are still young and at school. With the help of family and friends, Rhoda presses ahead and sees the children through a very difficult period. 

Death and disappearances of relatives, friends and her husband’s political colleagues keep the wounds of loss very fresh throughout the 1970s. 

The economic hardships, military turmoil and “liberation” wars disrupt whatever stability she has managed to fashion under the circumstances. She is arrested and incarcerated on three occasions – 1979, 1981 and 1983 – because of her presumed political disagreement with the rulers of the day.  Rhoda Kalema, who has devoted her life to the service of her country, is considered an “enemy of the State.” Her prison experiences are an indictment of a paranoid political class that ruthlessly attempts to retain power by denying freedom to others. 

There is a bright moment in this dark story of a land of mad politics and military repression. We read an account of how her house in Nakasero, Kampala, escapes the looting that follows the overthrow of Field Marshall Idi Amin Dada in April 1979.  Her housekeeper, who is in charge while Rhoda is in exile in Kenya, protects her property from the armed looters. When Rhoda returns, she finds all her household possessions in place. His job is done. He goes “back to his home in Kabale in 1979.” Rhoda does not hear from him again. 

This man’s action is a beautiful welcome-back for Rhoda. It is a reminder about the light that always shines in the dark of night. During anarchy, decency. In the madness of power, obuntu (humanness).  In frenzied thievery, honesty. 

Having been widowed by Uganda’s politics, one expects Rhoda to stay clear of the madness. However, with Amin gone, Rhoda joins the fray. Why? “I wished to see if I could make a difference by contributing to peace and sane governance in a country where my children and grandchildren would grow up,” she writes.

She becomes a founder member of the Uganda Patriotic Movement, which puts her on a collision course with President Milton Obote, in whose first government her martyred husband had served. Rhoda is arrested and, once again, imprisoned for seven weeks at Luzira. There is a hilariously disturbing account of her release from prison, by Obote himself.  Mr. Obote offers Rhoda “three rolls of women’s fabric from the State House store.”  

That the president of Uganda knows what is kept in the State House store is an amusing revelation about the mundane things that occupy the minds of mighty rulers of our land. What does Rhoda do with Obote’s token reparation? She tells us in the book.  

Rhoda, who rightly considers Uganda’s politics to be “haphazard and chaotic,” does not give up. She finds her stride in the post Obote II period, becoming a very active and effective representative, mobilizer, and leader of her husband’s people in Kiboga for many years. The account of that period is a good template for young parliamentarians and other leaders who want to have a lasting impact on their communities.

The worst pain that Rhoda endures after her husband’s premature death is the loss of her daughter Elizabeth Nakalema at age 36, and two sons – Peter Martin Kayondo at 39, and Apollo Katerega at 28. Other shattering deaths include her mother, granddaughter, her mother-in-law, and most of her siblings. Rhoda, the fourteenth child of her father, is the oldest one living in 2021. Several of her younger siblings have also died.  

One is struck by Rhoda’s courage and honesty in discussing a taboo subject in Africa – indeed most of the world – namely, mental depression that affected her son and her granddaughter. It is another pointer to her freedom because she is an educated woman, to her frankness because of her honesty. This should inspire a national conversation about mental health, a fitting legacy to this great lady who has already bravely pushed many doors open. 

It is a mark of her deep faith in God and great strength of character, that Rhoda has triumphed over these immense losses and challenges, and forged ahead to live a life of honour, service, and great dignity. Through it all, her anchor has been Jesus Christ, to whom she gave her life in 1949 and through whom she has been saved since.  The story of her conversion, her walk with Christ and her engagement in Christian ministry is a beautiful testimony of her close relationship with the Lord who has sustained her through multiple challenges and tragedies. 

I read the draft and then a copy of the final book that will be formally published today. I have found it to be an engrossing journey through the life of one of Uganda’s pioneer educated women. It is as much a portrait of one who has faced multiple personal tragedies as it is a synopsis of the colonial and post-colonial history of Buganda and Uganda, in which she and her husband played major leadership roles. It is an excellent first-hand account by one who has witnessed her country’s hopes consumed by chaos, gloom, and bloodshed. It is also a moving testimony of her personal triumph because of her deep Christian faith. Rhoda Kalema has made a superb contribution to Uganda’s written history.