The former Minister of State for Gender and Development, Jane Frances Kuka, has passed on, Daily Star has learned. Kuka passed on this morning at Nakasero Hospital.
Jane Frances Kuka was a Ugandan educator, anti-Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) activist, politician, and former Member of Parliament for Kapchorwa in Uganda’s sixth Parliament (1996–2001). She was later replaced by Gertrude Kulany.
She served as the Minister of State for Gender and Development from 1996 to 1998, and as the State Minister for Disaster Preparedness in 1999. In 2007, she was appointed Resident District Commissioner for Kapchorwa District, replacing Tezira Jamwa, and was reappointed to the same position in 2014.
She also worked as the President’s Deputy Principal Private Secretary. As Principal of Kapchorwa Teachers College in 1988, Kuka survived an attempted lynching after she opposed a resolution by the Kapchorwa District Council that sought to make Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) mandatory.
Kuka herself referred to the practice as “Female Genital Cutting,” arguing that the term “Female Genital Mutilation sounds too harsh and fosters too much defensiveness.”
She has been dubbed a “Heroine of the Female Genital Mutilation Fight” and spoke on the subject on several international platforms.
