Night Kulabako’s love was made for UPC

Night Kulabako’s love was made for UPC

In perhaps, the last media interview she gave to a newspaper, Night Kulabako revealed how she developed the love and loyalty to a party many in Buganda detest.

Kulabako, passed away at Mengo Hospital in Kampala today March 19.  Below are details of the article our reporter wrote from the interaction she had with her in 2018.

………………..

To many people, Night Jenefer Kulabako, 70, is an example of political fanaticism. She is always seen wearing red, the representative color of the Uganda People’s Congress (UPC), a political party she has supported since 1980. But to herself, Kulabako is the symbol of undying love for someone or something.

“I am UPC. UPC flows in my blood,” she says. The atmosphere in our interview room on the 6th floor, Uganda House, the UPC party headquarters, is a mixture of conversations as a press conference has just ended. Among the issues discussed were Armored Security cars for the Members of Parliament (MPs), the ban on airtime scratch cards and illicit alcohol consumption as a threat to the youth.

Seated comfortably on a round chair, in an all red outfit, Kulabako cuts a figure of a confident believer, a strong character, a woman of authority.

Everyone in the house seems to be desirous to talk to here. Most address her as “mama.”

“We call her mama UPC,” a man tells me. He surely has noticed that I am new to their environment. Even amidst our interview people keep walking up to her, to seek her opinion on this or that. And she seems to savor this attention.

“So many things still keep me constantly devoted to UPC. Most of which are memories. I joined this party as a young woman in support of my husband and ever since I have been glued to it,” Kulabako tells me.

Currently working as a Party Mobilizer, a job she takes on without any sort of payment, Kulabako talks about her party with lots of love.

“The love President Apollo Milton Obote showed me is one of the reasons I am still here,” she says. “Who am I that was loved so much by the president?”

She heaps praises on Obote, describing him as a man who loved Uganda and its diverse people from the bottom of his heart.

“Obote loved his people as a whole. For example he set up a good education system that offered scholarships up to the university level. He created means through which people could fight poverty by setting up cooperative societies like Mengo Growers, Wamala Cooperative Society, Bugisu and many others. You don’t see that kind of effort in the current government,” Kulabako says.

Kulabako worked as Gombolola Chief during Obote’s regime, a post that carried a lot of weight then.

“When you are a politician your brains are sharp and you don’t die like a dog. I am known all over the country and it is all because of UPC,” she says.

Her bid to become the LC1 Chairperson in Katabi zone, along Entebbe Road, in the recently concluded elections was not successful but she has no regrets.

“When you are a politician your brains are sharp and you don’t die like a dog. I am known all over the country and it is all because of UPC,” she says.

The UPC spokesperson, Michael Orach Osinde says he respects and loves Kulabako because even after she was imprisoned by the NRM government, she remained a UPC diehard. “And she is one of the reasons UPC is still surviving,” he adds.

Born in March 1948, Kulabako grew up in Entebbe Abayita Ababiri, Kabale village. She went to Namate primary school for her P1 and thereafter Nkumba Primary School where she studied from P2 to P6. She then joined Nkumba Junior School where she studied up to Junior 3. Kulabako didn’t go further with her education apparently because it was not necessary for a girl child then. Her mother though secured her local midwifery lessons in the village and there, she gaining skills she would later use to help some of her fellow inmates give birth during the time she was imprisoned in Luzira.

Now 70, Kulabako believes that her beloved party, the UPC, will someday take back power. And she hopes she will be around to witness that.

Comments

comments