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 There is general laxity on security measures that have been replaced by Covid19 checks at most points of entry to public places.

In Macbeth, William Shakespeare writes about the Thane of Cawdor, where loyalty, fate, ambition, greed, chaos, disorder and fall of man conspire to breed an obsession with power that goes unchecked by moral constraints. Sadly when one has visited the shrines and believes that witches can tell how bright their future is, they never listen to reason, except the daggers in their hand.

Palestine has been burning for close to two weeks now under disproportionate use of force by Israel military tanks, artillery fire, ground troops and air power.  The latest episode was triggered by Israel police squad who matched into Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem to remove loudspeakers used during prayers, an act of deliberate provocation and contrary to basic common sense. So far 217 Palestinians in Gaza had been killed by mid this week.

The presidential inauguration held on Wednesday this week at the Kololo Independence Grounds, passed off well, and hugely a success with eleven Presidents, Heads of State, and twelve delegations from across the world attending in personally, defying the Covid19 pandemic. Locally, close to five thousand Ugandans mostly leaders from districts, parliament and Cabinet, all tested for Covid19 three days earlier and found to be negative also in attended in person.

 and NRM’s Enduring Mission