Africa-Press – Uganda. President Yoweri Museveni has granted official burial for Rhoda Nsibirwa Kalema, following her passing in the early hours of August 3 at 3.30am at Nairobi Hospital, where she had been receiving treatment.
According to a statement released by Minister of Presidency Ms Milly Babalanda on Tuesday evening, Rhoda Kalema will be buried on Saturday, August 9, 2025 in Kiboga District.
“President Museveni, in line with Article 99 of the 1995 Constitution of the Republic of Uganda as amended which vests Executive Authority of Uganda in the President; has directed that the Late. Hon. Lay Canon Rhoda Nakibuuka Nsibirwa Kalema be accorded an Official Burial,” statemet reads in part.
Referred to as a trailblazer and Mother of Parliament in Uganda, Rhoda lived her life to its fullest, with little regret and nothing to agonise about. Born on May 10, 1929, to former Buganda Katikkiro Martin Luther Nsibirwa and Veronica Namuddu, Kalema was educated at Gayaza High School and King’s College Budo before pursuing social work studies in Scotland.
Born at a time when girls were nurtured for marriage and the kitchen and were not thought to need formal education, Rhoda got an education, married at 21, older than the average 18 years of marriage for a girl at the time. She grew up to become a prisoner of conscience as she opposed different political rules openly.
Regarding Official Burial preparatory arrangements, the Government of Uganda has constituted a hybrid of the National Organizing Committee Chaired by the Minister for Presidency, Ms Milly Babirye Babalanda with representatives from the family.
Early life
Rhoda Nsibirwa Kalema was born into a polygamous family in the Butikkiro, the official residence of the Katikkiro, at Mengo in Kampala, on May 10, 1929. She was the 13th of 24 children of Martin Luther Nsibirwa, the prime minister of Buganda from 1929 to 1941, and in 1945.
Her early education started at a time when girls were relegated to the kitchen, learning the basics of being a housewife. But Rhoda’s father took a different approach to girls’ education by ensuring all his children, wives and relatives received some of the formal education he never got.
Rhoda started her education at Gayaza Junior, before being moved to King’s College Budo, together with her sister, only identified by her first name, Sarah.
Both continued to excel and Rhoda later enrolled for secretarial training, and later returned to Gayaza High School as secretary and bursar until 1949. In 1950, Rhoda married Nathan William Kalema, a teacher at King’s College Budo, who later became a renowned politician and Government Minister of Commerce. Five years later, in 1955, Rhoda resumed her studies with a one-year course in Social Work and Social Administration at Newbattle Abbey, an Adult Education College in the United Kingdom. She followed this with a Diploma in Social Studies at the University of Edinburgh, UK.
It is said during her period of study, Rhoda’s interest in politics shuffled between nonchalant affiliation with the Uganda Peoples Congress (UPC) in 1961, when Grace Ibingira and Adoko Nyekon initiated her into the UPC, and in semi-retirement when Amin ousted President Milton Obote on January 25, 1971, before crystallising into a passion that would intersect her desire to help people with a seemingly star-crossed ordination as daughter of a prime minister and wife of a minister.
Rhoda not only defied the odds about girls being groomed for kitchen work, but also went on to become the woman who would shape the politics of Uganda. She was to offer unparalleled debates on the floor of the Parliament, guiding with wisdom and driving her point home.
But at only 16 years, as a teenager, Rhoda’s world was suddenly ripped apart, deprived of a father, Martin Luther Nsibirwa, the prime minister of Buganda from 1929 to 1941, and in 1945. Nsibirwa, a progressive leader, was assassinated at Namirembe Cathedral on September 5, 1945, because he supported the sale of land to enable the physical expansion of Makerere College.
Family matriarch
Decades later, Rhoda’s happy marriage also came to a sudden and devastating end on January 20, 1972, when her husband, Kalema, disappeared. He was among the first prominent Ugandans to be killed during the military regime of Gen Idi Amin.
Rhoda then took on the responsibility of a mother, father and guardian to her children at the age of 42, with her children – Elizabeth, William, Peter, Apollo, Veronica and Gladys – still of tender age at the time.
Rhoda would once again relive the experience of pain when her daughter, Elizabeth Nakalema, and two sons, Peter and Apollo, died. Rhoda became a pioneer member of the Women’s Movement in Uganda with its mission of challenging all stereotypes against women.
She is also credited for locking horns with the late Paulo Muwanga when she challenged his methods as minister of Internal Affairs and chairman of the governing Military Commission.
Shortly before and after the overthrow of Amin, Rhoda hobnobbed with the Uganda Patriotic Movement (UPM), an action that brought with it at least three documented arrests and imprisonments in Luzira on account of purported participation in activities deemed subversive to the various governments.
Amin’s dreaded intelligence agency, the State Research Bureau, arrested her on January 23, 1979. She was again arrested under the Milton Obote II regime on February 21, 1981, and then on February 4, 1983, in incidents that made.
“Are you Rhoda Kalema?” the opening line in tension-fraught episodes that usually saw her on a prison bus. Rhoda served in several positions in the post-Amin governments, including being the junior minister of Culture and Community Development in the Godfrey Binaisa’s regime, one of the two women on the interim legislative assembly, the National Consultative Council (NCC) , after Amin’s reign in 1979, deputy minister for Public Service from 1989 to 199, National Resistance Council (NRC) representative for Kiboga District, member of the Constituent Assembly, and finally labelled as “Mother of Parliament” for being part of the NCC.
Tentative burial programme:
Day
Time
Activity
Venue
Wednesday 6th August 2025
09.45 am
Body arrives at Entebbe Airport from Nairobi and is received by a few family members and close friends and the casket proceeds to the funeral Home
Entebbe Airport
Thursday 7th August 2025
09:00am
Church service at Namirembe Cathedral
Namirembe Cathedral
06.00pm
Vigil at the Late’s Home in Muyenga, Kalema Close
Muyenga
Friday Morning 8th August 2025
10:00am
Body leaves Kampala for Kiboga
Late’s Final Resting place in Kiboga
Saturday 9th August 2025
Burial ceremony beginning with Prayers at 9.00 am and final send off at 2.00pm
Final Resting place in Kiboga
“The Uganda Police Force has been directed to oversee all the Official burial ceremonies including the gun salute at the burial. Therefore, the neighborhood is encouraged to remain calm during the gun salute moment.”
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