State House described this week’s meeting between President Yoweri Museveni and Kabaka Ronald Muwenda Mutebi as a “courtesy call” in which they shared “pleasantries and matters of mutual interest for the development of Buganda and Uganda”. Unfortunately, the meeting came against the subdued and angry tone by Mutebi and his sidekick, Katikkiro Charles Peter Mayiga over the proposed amendment to the extortionist feudal Mailo land system. It’s sad though not strange, that Mengo leaders are opposing the proposals even before reading the contents.

It’s sixteen months and counting since Covid19 was declared a global pandemic by the World Health Organisation (WHO), and for African countries especially Uganda, we seem to be whistling in the dark concerning our levels of preparedness, capacity to test and treat, and to wholly accept the hard measures as meant for our collective good and safety. With social life, education and economy devastated the anguish, anxiety and rising resistance among the public are understandable. 

Jamil Alibaki, Nnyanzi Yafeesi Philip, Lwanga Thomas Musisi, Kityo Denis Musoke, Jjunju Abdalla-a Kenyan driver, Kalamire Patanguli- a British citizen, Julius Elius Mashairi a Tanzanian Citizen, Lumu Nicholas are different people in one. Elsewhere, he went by David Amon Musenge. This was the world of Jamil Mukulu, leader of the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) who was a fugitive on the run for two decades until his capture in Tanzania and extradition to Uganda in 2015. 

After two decades war of invasion, occupation, exploitation, and subjugation codenamed “War on Terror” with two separate operations, “Operation Enduring Freedom” fighting to defeat the Taliban, and “Operation Freedom’s Sentinel” launched in 2014 to train the new Afghan national army, the ‘mighty’ US army on July 4, 2021, America’s 245th Independence anniversary unceremoniously abandoned its main Bagram military base outside Kabul, in defeat and humiliation. 

Aggrey Siryoyi Awori, 82, who died this week by his own account, lived a full life as a flamboyant maverick across social, business, professional and political spheres both here and abroad starting from student days in King’s college Budo up to Harvard in the United States where he later returned in 1981 as Uganda’s Ambassador in Washington.

This week the Communist Party of China (CPC) marked Centenary of its founding in 1921, and doing so with immense pride in the all-round successes it has achieved especially lifting over five million of its citizens out of extreme poverty into prosperity, and overtaking Western nations that colonized, subjugated, and exploited the rest of the world including China.

The recent political shifts against the National Resistance Movement (NRM) and President Yoweri Museveni particularly in Buganda and Busoga, hitherto known strongholds, are grim pointers to what the future portends. The loss came against the backdrop when NRM first lost Kampala in 2001, and later Jinja, Masaka, Mbale, Wakiso, Kabale, and Tororo, and the conventional wisdom then was to dismiss it as an urban phenomenon mostly driven by the ungrateful elites.

Since President Yoweri Museveni announced the list of cabinet ministers there has been too much idle talk about the quality or lack thereof in certain persons particularly targeting the new Prime Minister Robbina Nabanja, the woman MP Kakumiro district. But everything else aside, Nabanja has broken Uganda’s record as the first woman to serve in that docket and probably now has to put the naysayers to big shame.

Comrade Kajabago ka Rusoke, the lanky and maverick Marxist intellectual, who died this week aged 86, was son of Samson Rusoke, the Omuhiikirwa (prime minister) of Tooro under the reign of Sir George Kamurasi Rukidi Mpuuga, grandfather to the current Omukama Oyo Nyimbwa Ibamba Iguru. Rusoke also served the first reign of Oyo’s father, Patrick Olimi Kaboyo from 1965 to 1967 when kingdoms were abolished.

It is not over until it’s all over. The assassination attempt by shooting Tuesday morning this week on Gen. Edward Katumba Wamala is a sad reminder that perhaps because of the Covid19 pandemic currently ravaging the world, we in Uganda collectively forgot that terrorism remains the main threat to national peace, security, and stability. There is general laxity on security measures that have been replaced by Covid19 checks at most points of entry to public places.