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Former VP Kazibwe bemoans 'lost generation' of female leaders bleaching their skins

"If you are a leader out there and have cooked your body, I am telling you to go and uncook it."
Former Vice President Specioza Wandira Kazibwe
Former Vice President Specioza Wandira Kazibwe

Speaking on Thursday at the burial of revered educationist and politician, Hon Joyce Mpanga, Dr Kazibwe had no kind words for the modern-day female leaders who are not even comfortable in their own bodies.

This is a generation where we are seeing women in high leadership positions, cooking their own bodies,” she said, sending the hundreds of mourners into hearty laughter.

We never cooked ourselves in our time… We feel very bad. How can you be a leader of Africans if you are not a proud African?”

Without naming any names, the former VP drew a contrast between the current breed of female leaders and that of her time.

She gave the example of people like the late Mpanga, Mrs Rhoda Kalema, better known as the “mother of Parliament,” the late Pumla Kisosonkole, a former politician and women’s rights activist, and educationist and academic, Sarah Ntiro among others.

When you look at all those women, they handed over leadership to us and tasked us to believe in who we are as African women because we are the custodians of the culture of the African people,” Kazibwe remarked at the funeral.

None of those women I mentioned ever breached their bodies.

Pulma was a light-skinned woman in the way that God created her, and Joyce was black beauty in her own respect and whenever I was with her, our skins glowed like a young millipede.

I have served in the African Union, in peace and security….now I am all about culture. If you are out there and you have cooked your body, I will tell you directly that you need to go and uncook it,” she added. 

The late Hon Joyce Mpanga, a former Junior Education Minister who passed away last Saturday, was laid to rest at her ancestral home in Maya, in Wakiso district on Thursday.

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