Specioza Kazibwe

Speciosa Naigaga Wandira Kazibwe (born July 1, 1954, in Iganga District) is a Ugandan politician, surgeon, and the first female vice president of Africa. She attended Mount Saint Mary's College Namagunga, an esteemed all-girls boarding school affiliated with the Catholic Church, located along the Kampala-Jinja Highway near Lugazi. In 1974, she enrolled at Makerere University School of Medicine, where she earned her Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery (MBChB) degree in 1979. She completed a Master of Medicine in General Surgery at the same institution. In 2009, Dr. Kazibwe was awarded a Doctor of Science (SD) degree by Harvard School of Public Health in the Department of Population and International Health. Dr. Kazibwe made history in 1994 when she became the sixth Vice President of Uganda, serving until 2003. She was the first woman in Africa to hold the position of vice president in a sovereign nation. In addition to her political career, she is a skilled surgeon. Known affectionately as "Nnalongo" (a term for a mother of twins), she continued her commitment to public health and advocacy. In August 2013, she was appointed by United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon as the UN Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa.

Specioza Wandira Kazibwe (cropped)

Quotes

• Enough is enough

• "I am deeply honored and excited to assume this new and challenging role at such a critical time in the fight against AIDS."

• "I see myself as a role model for other Ugandan women."
• "People often believed my life was perfect—I had a husband, a successful career, financial stability, and my children were excelling in school and university. But behind that image, I was deeply unhappy in my marriage due to the abuse. I reached a point where I could no longer live the life others expected of me. I chose to break my silence and speak out about the reality of what I was going through."

• "My hope is that others will find the courage to stand up against the violence that exists in so many of our homes, yet remains so rarely acknowledged."

• "Even male ministers and MPs have started approaching me to discuss the challenges they face in their homes."

• I’m pleased, though somewhat surprised, by how many people are thinking and talking about these issues.

• I decided to speak out about my own experience of abuse for the sake of children. "I didn’t want my daughters to grow up witnessing what men are capable of, and I didn’t want my sons to believe that it’s acceptable for men to treat women that way."

• "In the end, I felt sorry for those women," "Some even came to me for help. I didn’t feel humiliated because by then, I had stopped feeling anything for my husband."

• "I suppose it was that day that convinced me I should enter politics and speak out against the violence that was so prevalent in our society."

• "I’ve been accused of having an affair with the president, among other things. They claim I only have my job because I’m a woman. Men try to bully me the same way they bully their wives, but I won’t tolerate it. It's clear they can't imagine women serving any purpose beyond sex, but I make sure to remind them that we have brains too."
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• "Let’s move away from the pollution that’s making us sick and seek fresh air, so we can become the eyes and ears of the government in the villages. I’m grateful to see that, at this stage of my life, after retiring, the government is supporting my travel to continue my work. I thank the president, who appointed me as his Vice three times, allowing me the opportunity to serve this country." Such gestures encourage other leaders to serve the government with dedication and integrity.

• "The position is constitutional and not something that can be appointed or dismissed on a whim. I am still the Vice President, and I will be for a long time. I am still with you, and you better take note of that.
  • [3]

• I don't care whether I said people's socks stink. They said this woman talks about nothing. It is something. Cleanliness is next to godliness. The devil is in the detail. Who doesn't know that men don't like to bath? It's a fact,"
  • [4]

• "Why should I stay with a man who beats me? I told him, 'How can you beat a vice president?'"

• It is widely acknowledged that gender-based violence rates are high in Uganda. What concerns us even more is that the recognition of this issue as a problem is not very widespread.
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• The young and vibrant NRM government boasted that any girl or woman in Uganda could become anything they wanted in the world.
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• As a matter of policy, we sometimes get caught up in one thing or another and allow the government to take the lead, thinking that the smartest people are in government. The truth is, most of the smartest people don’t go into government.

• "I’m telling you this because I’ve been there, and perhaps I left because I’m one of the few smart ones. I was lacking the right company."

• There is an excessive number of Distinction Ones, and I want to point out that it's not typical in statistics for every student in a school to receive Ones or Fours. If you find a school where all the students are getting Standard One, that’s an unusual situation. It suggests that someone is manipulating the results.

• When I was Vice President, I told the president that this was impossible. So, we asked some headteachers and teachers from these 'Four schools' to take the same exams, and they failed. How could they have been teaching students who scored Four if they themselves couldn't pass?
  • [7]

External Links

Biography