Princess Bagaya is back

1967, flees to exile after abolition of kingdoms.

1971, returns to serve as ambassador, later minister.

1974: goes into exile after falling out with Amin.

1980-returns to Uganda.

1996, Bagaya leads about 50 members of Toro’s supreme governing body to a meeting meant to iron out differences within the kingdom leadership.

1996 relinquishes post of titular head of the princesses to Nsemere Komuntale, elder sister of King Oyo.

June 1996 thrown out of Babiito clan meeting, accused of trying to usurp powers of child king

1998, Bagaya camps at palace with her ailing mother lady Kezia amidst protests from kingdom royals.

Six days after Bagaya and her mother (92) then are forcefully evicted from palace.

By Arthur Baguma
PRINCESS Elizabeth Bagaya may have to slip her ambassadorial ornament on after shelving it for over three decades.
Thirty-five years after serving as Uganda’s roving ambassador, Bagaya is among the 12 new ambassadorial nominees waiting for approval by Parliament.
Now in her early 70s, the princess is a highly qualified intelligent lawyer.
A combination of beauty and brains landed her a ministerial post, 35 years ago. At a public function, former president Idi Amin Dada announced that he had appointed Bagaya foreign affairs minister. Amin’s pronouncement was not a surprise.
“Elizabeth was well educated and had an excellent background. She was qualified for the job,” Henry Kyemba who was health minister then says.
But eight months later Amin sacked her. Amin said he sacked Bagaya because of unsatisfactory behaviour during a mission.
However, in her biography, Princess Elizabeth Bagaya of Toro, Bagaya says the president’ s remarks were lies from a man whose advances to marry her met a cold reception that what displeased him most was that “I had a sexual relationship with a white man in a toilet at Orly Airport” Bagaya writes.
Described as friendly with a pleasant personality, Bagaya might go into history books as one of Uganda’s oldest serving ambassadors in the 21st century.
She is graceful and her appearance at public functions makes heads turn. Now battling old age, traces of beauty are still evident on her — especially her trademark calf eyes. She is light skinned, tall and medium sized. Bagaya loves stylish dressing and she spots long beautiful hair.
She is articulate. During her hey days, the gorgeous, cultured beauty graced the cover of Harper’s Bazaar, which was then the top American society magazine.
People still refer to her as one of the most beautiful women in Uganda.
“She was excessively beautiful and she is still very beautiful,” remarks Abu Kakyama Mayanja former minister.
Her childhood was not different from that of a typical African child then. Four times a day, Bagaya would walk two miles to and from school together with other royal children.
At school, she engaged in garden work and fetched water with other children. The princess was never given special treatment. Perhaps this explains why she became hardworking, independent and successful in life.
In 1971, Bagaya was appointed Uganda’s roving ambassador and delegate to the UN, where she made her first speech wearing a stunning golden robe.
Bagaya knows the intricacies of diplomacy. According to a former minister in the Amin government, the Ugandan embassy blocks in Rome and New York were acquired during Bagaya’s reign as roving ambassador.
Her success at UN prompted Amin to propose to her. “He seems to have felt that he was personally responsible for my achievements, and that marrying me would now be a way of increasing his stature,” Bagaya says.
When she fell out with Amin, she was dismissed and placed under house arrest for a week. Later she fled into exile and returned to Uganda in 1980.
In the same year, Bagaya met the love of her life, Wilbur Nyabongo. Nyabongo was an engineer with Asseyah a Swedish company with headquarters in Nairobi. He turned out to be her cousin, but this did not deter the lovebirds from walking down the aisle. Among the Babiito of Toro and Bunyoro it is acceptable for someone to marry a clanmate.
In 1981, the two secretly married in London at St. Margaret’s Church. Only two friends were present and it was kept a secret for some time.
Shortly after the wedding, Nyabongo enrolled at Oxford Air Training School where he qualified as a commercial pilot after a year. He later died in a plane crush.
Bagaya was born to Omukama George David Kamurasi Rukiidi III and Queen Kezia Byanjeru. The king with an imposing posture was a disciplinarian. He had five wives, but Bagaya’s mother was the official one. Her mother was a gifted musician and a poet.
Bagaya picked interest in the kingdom affairs at a tender age. “My father devoted the evenings to talking with his subjects. We (children) were allowed to join the gathering. Through this, I came to learn the history of Toro and all its traditions,” says Bagaya who has been a key figure in Toro kingdom.
Within Toro kingdom, some people describe her as a heroine: an intelligent and controversial clear-headed royal. To others, she is a villain, hardliner and selfish woman determined to do things her way at any cost. Queen Mother Best Kemigisa describes Bagaya as an elderly princess, who served well during her husband’s reign as a titular head of princesses.
Bagaya started her education at a mission school within the Kingdom. After a short stint, she was taken to Gayaza High School.
Her father personally drove the small girl and handed her to the Kabaka of Buganda.

On her first day in school, she was given a bucket and a hoe. The following morning she headed to the school farm to work. The princess was not pampered. One day, she was suspended because of insubordination. At home, her father mercilessly caned her.
At school, she excelled as a singer and an actress. She also became a prefect.
In 1959, she left Gayaza to study at Sherbone School for girls in Dorset England where she did entrance examinations to join Cambridge-Oxford.
She was admitted at Girton College, Cambridge- becoming one of the first three African women to be admitted there.
In 1962, Bagaya graduated from Cambridge with Bachelors in Law, at a function her father attended. She walked out of the Cambridge gates a virgin.
“I stoically denied myself any sexual activity or emotional involvement with any man thus leaving Cambridge a virgin,” Bagaya says in her book.
Three years after graduating, she was called to the English bar and became the first woman barrister in East Africa.
In 1967 she was invited in London to take part in a modelling competition-after the event she was overwhelmed by invitations from modelling agencies around the world.
Bagaya fled into exile three times before returning to Uganda. During the bush war, she mobilised funds from Nigeria to sustain the NRA liberation war.
At her age, some people wonder why she is taking up a job instead of retiring to her home.
But like Henry Kyemba noted the ambassadorial post is the last resort. When you are posted, you should be retiring from something, it should not be treated like a job offer.
Ends