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 There is general laxity on security measures that have been replaced by Covid19 checks at most points of entry to public places.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

President Yoweri Museveni will be sworn-in on May 12, under the theme “Shaping Uganda’s destiny: our sole collective effort” for a sixth term until 2026 making him, and deservingly so, the longest serving democratically elected leader in Uganda, and that is making his opponents even so thin a record grow goose pimples.

Donald J Trump’s four years as US president gave much of the world, particularly ‘shithole’ countries space to run their own affairs without meddling, and generally things have been better handled. With the exception of Ethiopia’s conflict in the Tigray region there hasn’t been new wars started, and even with Covid19 pandemic African economies showed resilience.

The ongoing trade dispute between Uganda and its regional leading trade partner Kenya over sugar, maize, milk, table eggs, rice, beverages, furniture, pharmaceutical products, stationery, facial tissue and toilet paper quality is a good war because it represents real survival and prosperity issues for the two countries. At the centre are mutual suspicions and accusations that some goods are substandard or smuggled into each other’s market from non-EAC members.