This Friday March 8th, the world will be in unison over
International Women’s Day (IWD) which, is all about celebrating
the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women. The day
also marks a call to action for accelerating gender parity.
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| 2019 Theme: #BalanceforBetter |
Many organizations declare an
annual IWD theme that supports their specific agenda or cause, and some of
these are adopted more widely with relevance than others. International Women's
Day is a collective day of global celebration and a call for gender parity.
It’s also about unity, reflection,
advocacy and action - whatever that looks like globally and at a local level.
But one thing is for sure, International Women's Day has been occurring for
well over a century - and continues to grow from strength to strength.
Now let’s dispense with the
well-known women who always get featured as the top women achievers in the
newspaper pull outs and deliberate for a while on Carol Natkunda and a never
heard of - Joy Lydia, whose works often goes unnoticed but yet, has a positive
impression on society. When Carol joined Vision Group for a while, she didn’t
really make an impact. Then she found her footing, bloomed and if I recall, she
constantly beat her story count and has been commended on numerous occasions as
receiving a number of awards for the stories that she’s written.
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| Carol Natkunda - A woman Full Of Talent |
Joy on the other hand, is in her
20s and this, I found out by accident. Every Sunday morning, she hauls herself
out of bed and does some volunteering work at her local church in helping out
with the neighbourhood children – playing and reading to them when most are
still in bed sleeping off the excesses of the previous night out on the town.
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| Joy Lydia - Into Charity Work At Her Local Church |
That said, there is one man in
Uganda who a couple of weeks ago, sought to undermine and tarnish the positive
impact that Carol, Joy and other women have had on society. That man, is
Godfrey Kiwanda who happens to be the state minister for tourism.
As tourism minister, part of his
job brief at the ministry is to “develop and promote the tourism,
wildlife and heritage resources for enhancement of Uganda as a competitive and
preferred tourist destination, with accelerated sector contribution to the
national economy.”
That, in layman’s talk
is getting tourist into the country to marvel at our natural resources and by
natural resources, we all know what the means. Our national parks and cultural
heritage center. Except, Kiwanda didn’t read his job description properly.
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| Minister Kiwanda - Uganda's Curvey Women Are A Tourist Attraction |
According to him, our
natural resources are women whom he described at a press conference as:
“…naturally endowed nice looking women that are amazing to look at. Why don’t
we use these people as a strategy to promote our tourism industry?” He even had
the audacity to bring a sample of the natural resources to press conference. Had
he been in Europe, that comment would had seen him resign, ended his political
career and the feminists dicing him up with panga’s.
Women have no words
for Kiwanda. Tell a lie, they think he is nothing but a perv - “a person whose sexual practices or interests are considered
abnormal or deviant.” So rather than focus on doing government work, he spends
his time gawping at booty and wants tourists to come and join him. By the way
Kiwanda, European tourists don’t go in for endowed women but, the skinny types
– just ask Bad Black.
But what
disappointed most was the reaction from State House and M7. In the news clip
that I saw, M7 found the whole saga rather funny. Never did he use the two
words that would have pacified women – ‘totally unacceptable’.
If anything, women
should unite, rise up and bar Kiwanda from attending any Women’s Day function
this Friday. What say you women..?
PHOTO CREDITS: awarenessdays.com, New Vision, Joy Lydia, Galaxy FM, Daily Monitor
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