Month: December 2013

Is Uganda deployment in South Sudan more than just a citizen evacuation mission?

by R.Kagumire, posted in Conflict, East Africa

It started on Sunday, December 15. I woke up on Monday to the news of a ‘failed coup’ in South Sudan that now many believe never was. Next day, President Salva Kiir wore his military fatigue as if to reinforce that idea that this will be solved militarily- in a country where he has yet to bridge the political and ethnic divides. The fight that started as squabbles between members of the SPLM exposed divisions – both political and ethnic- in the worst way possible.

A week later, UN agencies put the number of dead at 500 and most of them civilians. Many graphic stories are going around about how people were hunted down in their homes and hacked and killed in some of the cruelest ways imagined, just because they belonged to a different tribe.

For many months there was consistent talk of a possible coup with Kiir dismissing an entire cabinet. This was a man in a paranoia mode. From then on nothing has been the same. Many people I know in South Sudan believe Kiir is been putting a lid on the party, the government and the army and not allowing dissenting voices or a resemblance of democracy internally. What appeared a political rift at the top of the party this this week degenerated to fight for power along ethnic lines.

Continue reading “Is Uganda deployment in South Sudan more than just a citizen evacuation mission?” →

by R.Kagumire, posted in Africa, Development

It is been tough months, the kind of tough I wouldn’t easily put down on paper! I am sure the last two weeks you read and re-read articles about life and the passing of former South African president and anti-apartheid revolutionary Nelson Mandela. I quietly read a lot too.

I wrote this small piece for Radio Netherlands Worldwide about what I thought of his life and legacy. I hope you still find it interesting.

I was barely 11 years old when Mandela was released from 27 years of inhuman incarceration. At home we didn’t have a TV and I bet that my day – that great day in history – went on like any other day of an 11 year old in rural Uganda.

Many years later, I would read of President Mandela saying: “The curious beauty about African music is that it uplifts even as it tells a sad story.” It reminded me of my childhood and how music introduced many of us to the apartheid and the evils in South Africa. The songs of Miriam Makeba and Lucky Dube would be danced to in my village, but they also sparked passionate discussions.

Continue reading →