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Written and researched by Robert Asketill When it became clear that Buganda was definitely a leading nation within Africa the country became a magnet for the world’s major religions, Catholicism, Protestantism and Islam, whose leaders were competing for ascendency. The best of the foreign educated churchmen were being “called” to recruit members in such fertile ground and unfortunately their fervour to dominate the country caused much misery as we see in the following: In October 1885 Bishop Hannington, sent out by the Anglican Church to the Kingdom of Buganda to become the first Bishop of Eastern Equatorial Africa, was murdered on his way through Busoga by a local chief, Lubwa, … Continue reading →

Collected and researched by Robert Asketill Besides, lectures by themselves can never be a substitute for actual involvement in creating consciousness. Revolutionary practice, supplemented by theory, is the only instrument that creates consciousness in a population. A revolution forces imperialism to come out and lay bare its most hideous features so that it is forced to lose the advantage of its parasitic quality—its ability to subtly and remotely suck people like a bed bug without the victims feeling the pain directly; it is forced to come out and confront the people without the use of the go-betweens so often involved in indirect-rule and neo-colonialism. To force imperialism to come out … Continue reading →

By Mahmood Mamdani “Kampala ‘mute’ as Gaddafi falls,” is how the opposition paper summed up the mood of this capital the morning after. Whether they mourn or celebrate, an unmistakable sense of trauma marks the African response to the fall of Gaddafi. Both in the longevity of his rule and in his style of governance, Gaddafi may have been extreme. But he was not exceptional. The longer they stay in power, the more African presidents seek to personalise power. Their success erodes the institutional basis of the state. The Caribbean thinker C L R James once remarked on the contrast between Nyerere and Nkrumah, analysing why the former survived until … Continue reading →

For the second day running Robert Asketill recollects an essay written by Yoweri Kaguta Museveni when he was reading politics at the University of Dar es Salaam. His thoughts clearly show the lines he followed in fighting his way to power. We have left the essay in the same manner and style that Museveni wrote it including the spelling mistakes and grammatical errors. The only thing we have edited is the spacing so that the reader can tell where a paragraph starts or ends. Read on. The sharpening of the contradictions between imperialism on the one hand and the colonised masses on the other will enable the peasants to know … Continue reading →

Whether they like it or not, the time has come for African leaders and their ‘club’ – the African Union (AU) – to accept that ‘Brother Leader’ Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s days are over. Henceforward, the AU must introspect, reform and set aside its racist approach to issues, writes Bame Piet. It is difficult to count how many times the Government of Botswana has complained about the manner in which summits of the African Union (AU) are conducted. At some point in 2009 during a press briefing he co-hosted with Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation Phandu Skelemani at the Mass Media Complex in July, [Botswana] Vice President Mompati Merafhe … Continue reading →

By Robert Asketill Today we bring to our readers a rare essay written by Yoweri Museveni whilst a student in the Department of Political Science at the University of Dar es Salam under the head of the department Dr A.H. Rweyenamu during the last half of 1969. The name Museveni gave for his essay is: ‘Fanon’s Theory On Violence: Its verification in Liberating Mozambique’. We reproduce the essay just as it was written without any editing. This is Part One. Rhodesia and the Portuguese puppet chiefs of Mozambique, are extremely hostile to the revolution. In Nangadc, there was a chief who was hostile to FRELIMO. He was saying that FRELIMO’s … Continue reading →

By Robert Asketill The United States expressed concern on Wednesday, 31 August that South Sudan might be supporting rebels who have been battling the Khartoum regime in South Kordofan. Reiterating its call for Sudan to respect its own truce in South Kordofan after reports of Sudanese warplanes bombing the area, the US State Department said it is “also concerned over allegations of support from the government of South Sudan to military forces aligned with Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North in Southern Kordofan.” The United States calls on both sides to allow unfettered humanitarian access to affected populations in Southern Kurdufan and urges the parties to resume formal negotiations to reach a … Continue reading →

By Robert Asketill The early period in which we served in the Sudan, and before the discovery of oil and its consequential tearing apart of many once peaceful countries, was around the time when the country was granted independence from the Anglo-Egyptian colonial powers on January 1st, 1956. Since then there has been little or no peace or security until very recently. In the 1960s around 120,000 Nubian people (photo) were displaced from their ancestral homelands in Sudan and Egypt for the construction of the Aswan Dam. Within Sudan the community was moved to an irrigation scheme 700 kilometres away thus blocking them from practicing traditional cultures and rites. The … Continue reading →

Today we start a series of articles researched and written by our columnist Robert Asketill on the might of the Buganda Kingdom during the early 19th Century. Part One starts with how a British colonel embarked on an ambitious scheme to give an Egyptian king access to Lake Victoria that ended in Egypt claiming three quarters of the River Nile waters to this day and Britain controlling the kingdom of Buganda. Please read on. In an earlier piece we wrote a few introductory notes about how Colonel Charles Gordon in 1876, who was then Governor of the Equatorial Province of the Sudan, embarked upon an ambitious scheme for giving the … Continue reading →