Princess Bagaya on Amin's Offer of Marriage

Bagaaya on fashion, acting and why she left university a virgin
It is helpful to have royal blood, eye-popping beauty, and lots of brains to make you the first woman in east and central Africa to study at Cambridge University. Even then you will still laugh, cry, love, serve your country, strive to understand your heritage – just like the rest of us. But if you are Elizabeth Bagaaya or Elizabeth Nyabongo or simply Elizabeth of Toro, well, you also get to act in the movies and to model at the highest levels.

We know all that about Ms Bagaaya through her competently written autobiography, Elizabeth of Toro: The Odyssey of an African Princess, published 20 years ago as the revised edition of African Princess, issued in 1983. Reading the book again, 15 years after I first devoured it, I still find it full of life. It must be down to those arresting descriptions of the ways and cherished rituals of the Toro royal household; the author facing down Idi Amin and then going underground and fleeing to Kenya; or maybe the day she met much, much younger Wilbur Nyabongo and eloped with him only to hear about his death in a plane crash upon arrival at Entebbe Airport to attend her brother Patrick Kaboyo Olimi VII’s wedding. How about that chance encounter with a “young man” named Yoweri Museveni? We, however, leave the politics for next week and focus on the softer aspects today.

Omukama George Kamurasi Rukidi III of Toro had a plan for his daughter, and the future batebe understood and embraced it. On entering Girton College, Cambridge, in 1959, she reflects: “My studies of law, history, and political science were all directed to one end – to mold the power and influence I would wield as the princess royal of Toro.” The parallels with the Pakistanis Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and daughter Benazir, whom he would send to Harvard and Oxford in preparation for her to take over his political party as recounted in her autobiography Daughter of the East, are striking.

At Cambridge, Ms Bagaaya studied under heavy hitters such as E.M. Forster and F.R. Leavis. Classmates included the future feminist scholar Germaine Greer and David Frost, yes, he of “Frost Over the World” on Al-Jazeera English whom the 2008 movie Frost/Nixon celebrates for his 1977 series of interviews with the disgraced Richard Nixon.

When not studying hard, Ms Bagaaya, not unlike the typical undergraduate, was partying hard because, she says, she was “in great demand”. Amongst the many smitten by our princess was Prince William of Gloucester, nephew of King George VI, who roamed about in a private jet. Like most royals, Ms Bagaaya serves up some cockiness. Before the prince, she dated a “tall, handsome, wealthy, sophisticated, and amusing Scot” who “entertained lavishly the rich and the beautiful. I was not rich.”

Hallelujah to that. But even as Ms Bagaaya went from party to party adorned in the “model gowns of the great houses of Paris”, she was conflicted about going all the way. She chose not to in order to protect her image and what it represented: the best of her not-permissive culture in which a public role awaited. “So I stoically denied myself any sexual activity or emotional involvement with any man, leaving Cambridge a virgin...” she writes.

Ms Bagaaya left Cambridge in 1962 and was called to the English Bar in November 1965. A pupilage followed in the chambers of Sir Dingle Foot – the UK solicitor-general and the man who would successfully represent Abu Mayanja, another Cambridge-trained lawyer, in Kampala in the famous sedition case of 1969. To celebrate her achievement, the princess hosted a gala party in London on December 20, 1965 “dressed in a pink silk Guy Larouche gown that contrasted with my dark skin and eyes...” In the morning, news came of her father’s death. Time for her to ascend the batebeship had come. She did and it lasted a short while because the Obote government abolished monarchies just months after the crowning of Patrick Kaboyo Olimi VII to whom she was the batebe.

When she mildly criticised the government for its actions, the “tyrant” Obote’s “fascist” agents made life difficult. So she jumped at an invitation in 1967 by Queen Elizabeth’s sister Margaret to appear as a guest model at a Commonwealth fashion show in London. She stole the show. A star was born. She ditched law – while in Uganda she had been called to the bar, another first for a local woman – and chose fashion as a more visible way to keep a light on her heritage that was under attack. With mostly English aristocrats offering support, Ms Bagaaya would be photographed for British Vogue and American Vogue.

When Jacqueline Kennedy (the Jacqueline Kennedy) and others introduced her on the American scene, our princess hit the top flight. Her accidental hairstyle became the rage in black America as “the Elizabeth of Toro hairstyle” and soon she found herself the first black model to grace the cover of a top fashion magazine, Harper’s Bazaar. Juicier offers followed. She was asked to pose nude for really big money. “I will not do a nude.” A princess is a princess.

In the first part of our review last week of Princess Elizabeth Bagaaya’s autobiography Elizabeth of Toro: The Odyssey of an African Princess to mark its 20th anniversary, we focused on her education and modelling career. We now turn to her work in government. The Idi Amin coup found Ms Bagaaya in Paris. So excited was she that she flew to Kampala without returning to her New York apartment or her modelling engagements. The Uganda Argus splashed her picture on the front page “mini-skirted, with shimmery tights and gold-coloured shoes”.

Amin had invited hereditary rulers back and the prospects of restoring kingdoms looked good. But not quite. The former model was named roving ambassador in July 1971, and later foreign minister, to go counter scepticism in international capitals about Amin, whom she found “unsophisticated” upon their first meeting at a State House luncheon. Over time she found Amin had a gift for languages but was bad at procedures of government; was well intentioned but a little in over his head.

Then the big man started acting funny, asking repeatedly that she, the only woman in Cabinet, joins the boys at the swimming pool. He also made comments like: “Many people ... have come to me to tell me about rumours concerning you and me. I said to them, am I not a man, and is Bagaaya not a woman, what is wrong with it?” When that failed, he got direct. He sent an emissary named Roy Innis who said to the foreign minister: “If Amin asks you, will you marry him?” Out of the question, came the answer.

In a few weeks, the woman who had months earlier dazzled the UN General Assembly and was being swooned over in world capitals for her ability and beauty was fired. She was thrown into a police cell in the night for allegedly having had sex with a white man at a French airport while on official tour. Immediate international furore had Amin blink. He placed her under house arrest the next day for a week. On being freed, she appeared before the dictator at Makindye State Lodge. She had had enough. She fired back at Amin protesting his bullying. She demanded to know why she was being fined Shs15,000. Amin went ballistic.

Information Minister Juma Oris broke into tears. All assembled knew the princess was kalas, dead meat. She swiftly went underground in Kampala as escape plans were crafted. Offers were made, including one from Mr Yoweri Museveni: my men will smuggle you out provided you join and work for my Front for National Salvation (Fronasa). That did not fly. On the night of February 8, 1975, Princess Bagaaya lay on the back seat of a car and was spirited away to Jinja. The next afternoon, accompanied by three men and disguised as a “simple village girl”, she made for the Kenyan border and walked four miles through bush and across a river to the other side.


She returned in April 1979 and quickly fell madly in love with a much younger but “breathtakingly handsome” man named Wilbur Nyabongo, her second cousin once removed. After Obote attacked her and her brother Patrick Olimi, who was running in the 1980 elections on the Museveni-led UPM ticket, she left for Nairobi. She had Wilbur over and they eloped to London to marry secretly in April 1981. Our princess was happy. “I brushed his hair daily, washed his feet with warm water, and massaged his body,” she writes. When he said he would give anything to fly, the princess summoned her vast network of highly connected friends and had him learning to fly in no time. When Ms Bagaaya was being considered for a role in the film Sheena and Wilbur said he wanted the pilot’s bit, she made sure. And together they would rally support for the NRM in Africa and Europe. Then in December 1986 30-year-old Wilbur, a co-pilot, died in a plane crash in Casablanca. A gutted Bagaaya told Mr Museveni she could not continue as ambassador to the United States. She did.

The ambassadorship was the culmination of a chance meeting at a State House reception on the day Ms Bagaaya returned in 1979. As she chatted at the edge of the party, “a young man whom I didn’t recognise slowly walked toward me. He held an African ceremonial stick in his left hand. ‘Hello, Elizabeth. I am Yoweri Museveni.’” They met several times after and when the Bush War started, the princess lent support. Mr Museveni returned the favour, repeatedly appointing her to ambassadorships, the last to Germany a few years ago.

Before her return to public life – she has again slipped out of view – Princess Bagaaya spent time in the United States after her two-year stint as ambassador there ended in 1988, having declined a move to Europe and thus resigned. This captivating book ends on that note of departure. It is the way it begins: with the young princess being packed off for Gayaza High School in Buganda from Kyebambe in Toro. In-between, a lot that is fascinating and is chronologically recounted happens. Fountain Publishers could do well to buy rights of this autobiography, now out of print, from Simon & Schuster/Touchstone to publish it for the broader Ugandan audience. The author would also have the chance to update it and correct a few errors, such as stating the exact year (1924 or 1929) her father was crowned Omukama of Toro.

Original Story by Bernard Tabaire