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Theatre creatives, don’t leave me hanging tonight!
In just a few hours (7:00 PM EAT), Lloyd Nyikadzino, Simeilia Hodge-Dallaway, and @AganzaKisaka are breaking down How Mentorship Drives the Future of Theatre; from passing on skills to building arts orgs that outlive their founders.
Takes 15 seconds to sign up. Pull up! 👇
docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F…
The direct zoom link is tebere-org.zoom.us/j/8199750…
@kasi_theatre
@kitfest @nglagostheatre @UNCC_UG @africanzoey @AfriTheatreMag @KilnTheatre
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Greetings,
Today I come to you seeking your support. Education changes lives, and right now, I need a little help to keep my dream alive
#Sponsor_a_Dream🙏
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The refreshing, forward-leaning,robust role of African civil society actors in enhancing African Solutions To African Problems ( ASTAP), with the African Union at the centre of coordinated peace making efforts.
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From the little village of Pawel, Amuru, Northern Uganda, to the world, @ahpetite’s book launches today. Get yourself a copy if you can.
If ever a village mate, sister, and friend can inspire a generation and beyond, Anena is that Pawel mate. Make our little but powerful clan proud.
@norbertmao @DanFredKidega @MosesOdokonyero (our Atiak neighbor and her literature teacher at Gulu Central High School), @Hillo_wells @Osbornoceng
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Whenever I see Africans say "the solution to censorship is to just build our own platforms", I inwardly cry at the babyfaced naivety. It's as if they think that the reason nearly all major social media platforms are American is that Americans are better at coding or something.
For those who aren't aware, social media is not profitable. Building a social media app is not particularly difficult. You can literally use AI to reverse engineer existing ones and put one together in a few minutes. There is nothing technically difficult about building or operating a social media platform. Any random Andela intern can do it.
The real problem which NOBODY is close to solving is that even if you can get everybody to sign up and use your platform, the cost of keeping its server and personnel infrastructure running is prohibitively expensive, and the cost of gaining and retaining users through platform monetisation is also extremely expensive. Twitter for example, has literally never made money. Since genesis in 2006.
That's 20 years of this site running 24/7, 365 days a year with outages happening only a few times a year for a few minutes at a time. That's 20 unbroken years of spending huge sums of money on Data centers. High latency servers. Backups and redundancy. Security. Development. Moderation. Government relations. Marketing. Who do you think pays for all this? Jack Dorsey? Elon Musk? Generous VC investors who throw money into a pit for 20 straight years with no route to profitability and keep pouring money in?
The only entity in the capitalist world that spends vast amounts of money that way is the government. Only the government invests huge sums of money in things that have immense social or political power without having any direct way to meaningfully generate profit. From the perspective of the US government, it is a super deal because instead of spending hundreds of billions annually to monitor, surveil, and collect intelligence on the rest of the world, it can instead spend tens of billions annually to be the silent backer keeping these social media platforms running, and have the rest of the world voluntarily submit vast amounts of their personal data and political intelligence that it uses for its ends.
You're not on a social media site. You're on a US government intelligence gathering and data surveillance platform. That is what Twitter is. That is what Instagram is. That is what Facebook is. That is what YouTube, Snapchat, Threads etc are. And TikTok by the way, is the Chinese version of the exact same thing, which is why it was forced to sell its US branch to Larry Ellison, a CIA contractor.
So unless you have a government behind you that is willing to spend serious money and receive no profit as you vibe-code your latest attempt at an "African social media platform", allow me to inform you that you are generously wasting your bloody time. "Social media" is not a playground and "viral user signup" or "user network effect" is not a real thing. There are thousands, maybe millions of social media apps on various app stores. The reason why you have only heard of the American and Chinese ones is that those are the 2 countries whose governments have inexhaustible sums of money to funnel into digital surveillance disguised as "social media".
So before inviting me or The Spearhead to join your umpteenth attempt at an "African social media platform", please find a government that is willing to back you first.
If you don't have a government behind you like Jack Dorsey, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Page and Sergei Brin do, please don't waste my time.
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January 1986.
Washington.
A confidential memo landed on desks with a blunt title: Uganda Under a Museveni Regime.
Yoweri Museveni had just captured Kampala.
The CIA's first assessment was clear: the south might rally to him, but the north was a powder keg of bitter, armed veterans.
Uganda, the analysts concluded, now teetered on the edge of partition.
The CIA's First Assessment of Yoweri Museveni - 1986
The analysts saw a pragmatic strongman emerging from the bush.
Museveni spoke of human rights and economic recovery, a welcome contrast to the carnage under Milton Obote.
Yet he was a puzzle of contradictions.
He appealed to Western donors while embedding leftists in his inner circle.
He promised reconciliation but flatly rejected quick elections.
His National Resistance Army was disciplined, but its ethnic composition stoked northern fears of revenge.
The memo was unequivocal: his priority was stability, democracy a distant concern.
He would not risk chaos for pluralism.
The immediate threat was geographic.
Acholi and West Nile remnants were already regrouping with their weapons.
A new civil war was not a possibility but a certainty.
If Museveni moved to confront them, the conflict could escalate, potentially drawing in Muammar Gaddafi's Libya, who had already sent a congratulatory message deriding the West as "fascist usurpers", and flooding the region with refugees.
The economic picture was equally grim.
Museveni faced a wasteland.
His rebuilding promises depended on Western aid, but too much pressure could push him toward Tripoli; too little could collapse the state.
The memo's final lines offered a stark, binary prognosis.
Museveni was Uganda's best hope in a generation, a force for precarious order.
But the forces against him, tribal hatred, economic ruin, and the drumbeat of war, were colossal.
Washington's dilemma was clear: the survival of his government would take precedence over all other considerations, making him susceptible to offers of Libyan or Soviet assistance.
The assessment closed not with a prediction of what would be, but with a warning of what hung in the balance.
What does it mean when the world's most powerful intelligence agency concludes that your best hope is a pragmatic strongman who may not deliver democracy, and that his failure could shatter a nation?
The CIA's January 1986 memo was not a celebration of Museveni's victory.
It was a sober ledger of the forces arrayed against him.
The war was over.
The wars were just beginning.
The analysts in Washington knew it before the new president had finished unpacking his bags.
#ughistory @NRMOnline @KagutaMuseveni @CIA @StateDept @USEmbassyUganda @GovUganda
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I was reading about black holes and I found something insane.
So get this.
Newton discovers basic gravity, right? Apples falls from a tree.
Why does it fall from a tree? He said objects with mass attract one another. Yeah, okay, good. But then people were like
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The conversation is underway.
Today's topic is money!
Please join in using the link below: tebere-org.zoom.us/j/8199897…
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No Sir, respectfully, we won't allow history to be written. The cold hard truth, and then build your argument. After the British, the next task-masters where Indian. Whose racist sentiments toward Ugandans were felt and seen by everyone who lived through that time. Ugandans were essentially slaves to two masters. At a point, when Indians recognized the tides were changing, and weren't sure of their dominant position post independence, they went as far as funding Obote's rise! They hoped to meddle in Ugandan politics indirectly much like is currently done now by various parties.
The idea that Indians were "robbed" of their wealth falls flat on its face when you realize Ugandans were literally barred from participating economically. Secondly, Indians would make supernormal profits and then expatriate them back to India or Britain. Thirdly, they were given a choice between renouncing their British citizenship and pledging loyalty to Uganda or moving fully to Britain. Most chose the latter.
Ugandans lived as fourth- class citizens in their own country for decades (longer) and would have had it remain that way were it not for the pesky British who finally succumbed to independence pressure. Those who lived in that time know first hand that there was no such thing as a Ugandan business, not because Ugandans weren't skilled but because they were sytematically discrimanted against at every level.
Much has been written about the atrocities of the British government during and leading up to independence. We've demanded accountability and apology. Precious little has been laid at India's feet which actively participated in keeping people down.
Times have changed but let's not forget the finer details of our history...lest we repeat it.
Indians were thrown out from Uganda in August 1972 on orders from President Idi Amin Dada. Indians had transformed Uganda into the most prosperous country in all of Africa. Awon'go Idi Amin Dada Oumee, who had come to power on 25ᵗʰ January 1971, felt that they were 'blood suckers'.
Idi Amin claimed that on the 4ᵗʰ of August he had dreamt that Indians should be expelled. On the 8ᵗʰ of August he issued the necessary orders. Indians were given 90 days to pack up and go, leaving behind all their wealth and possessions. A person was allowed to carry only one hand bag with them as they left Uganda. They were permitted to carry only £50 pound with them. Everything else was confiscated, all jewellery, all money was physically taken away. Businesses which had been set up by Indians were handed over to supporters of Idi Amin.
Before expelling Indians from Uganda, Idi Amin had had killed most of the officers of the Ugandan army belonging to the Acholi and Lango ethnic groups. He was well known for indulging in violence against anyone he disapproved of.
As a result, Indians did not wait to argue with him. They fled immediately. Those who delayed fleeing were shot, their women raped.
About 90,000 people were thrown out of Uganda. All of them had been born in Uganda.
About 38,000 Indians arrived in Britain to a life of poverty and want. Some of the local governments, such as that of Leicester, issued public notices asking Indians to not come to Leicester which already had a large Indian population.
Why did Idi Amin throw out Indians from Uganda? As mentioned earlier, Idi Amin declared that he had been given a divine message in a dream to expel Indians from Uganda. In the explanations for his actions which he gave later he called Indians 'blood suckers' who were draining the Ugandan economy. Once Indians left, the Ugandan economy was ruined. Uganda became one of the poorest countries of Africa.
Did Idi Amin face any consequences for his actions? No, Idi Amin did not face any consequences for his actions. He remained President of Uganda for five more years till on 11ᵗʰ April 1979 he was finally ousted after a mutiny by a section of the Ugandan Army resulted in a military intervention by Tanzania. During his brutal rule Idi Amin had managed to kill over 500,000 black Africans. But when he was ousted the new government thought it fit to let him flee to Saudi Arabia rather than seek revenge upon him.
What happened to the Indians who were expelled? While the British government tried its best to stop the flow of Indians into Britain, the Jews of Britain welcomed them and provided them much needed support. The displaced Indians rebuilt their lives, much in the manner of Indians when they are persecuted. One such was the father of Zohran Mamdani, the young man who was elected Mayor of New York. Priti Patel, the British politician active in Conservative Party is another. Then there is the Jatiana family who became one of the richest families in UK with a wealth estimated to be over £650 million. The Madhvani family, led by Manubhai Madhvani too needs mention.
The majority of those forcibly displaced did not make it so big. Many had to struggle to make two ends meet. A very large number had to take up low paying jobs which required hard labour. But, they all remained resilient. None of them took to a life of crime nor did they commit suicide. About 300 of them did accept the apology of President Museveni in 1997 and set up businesses once again but, this time only in Kampala.
Pic. Indians getting off the flight from Uganda at Stansted airport on 18 September 1972. Photographed by P Felix who then worked for the Daily Express.
Courtesy Indian history fb post
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🎨 Artists, freelancers, and creatives—this is your final reminder!
Pricing your work shouldn't come with a side of guilt or money shame. Join the Kampala International Theatre Festival tonight for a crucial conversation on practical pricing, contracts, and valuing your time.
🎙️ Panelists: Beverley Nsengiyunva & Christopher Hibma
🗣️ Moderator: Tayo Shonubi
⏰ Tonight, 7:00 PM – 8:00 PM (EAT)
💻 Platform: Zoom
🆔 Meeting ID: 819 9897 9702 | Passcode: 331243
Bring your questions and let's talk about building a sustainable career! 👇
Register via kampalainternationaltheatref…
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Obama and Clinton both lost their midterms and continued to govern. The two of them kept bombing the Middle East. They passed their agendas via executive order. Clinton was inpeached but remained in power.
The Democrats will waste the next two years with investigations and committees and will try to have to have tax and spend legislation passed. Trump will veto all of it.
This is what happens in American politics. Trump isn't powerless and those of us living outside of the US really need to brush up on American history and their Constitution.
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I will not delete my (posts). I will change tactics, but continue stating facts. We want to see a free Uganda.”
Uganda’s online critics allege abductions and intimidation as families search for missing relatives ⤵️ aje.news/t610u6
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Is Gen. Saleh a co-president? Yes, he is. Is Gen. Saleh a good guy? No. Nedda‼️
Despite his successful PR and the public perception it has created, Gen. Saleh is as problematic, hypocritical and militant as his brother, Yoweri Kaguta Museveni. The two are simply more subtle, sophisticated and mature in how they use their military, financial and political power than their son, the CDF, Gen. Muhoozi Kainerugaba (Museveni's by birth, Saleh's by custom).
Dear @ckaheru
You could have missed this – 25 Jan 2023. I hate to say it, but NRM and co. ought to give Gen. Saleh his flowers. Indeed, bwana M7 is lucky. His long reign needed a man with Saleh's qualities, the winds sent him not just that guy – but a brother; a blood relation.
Gen. Bashir had Hemedti from the Janjawid, but when push came to shove, Hemedti joined forces ousting Bashir. He wasn't a blood relation.
Presently, Gen. Saleh has embarked on cleaning the KB conundrum. This is a co-president. Not just a good guy.
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One lawyer deported and the other arrested. He still has audacity to explain. What died when we lived👍
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BREAKING: The Constitutional Court has declared Section 115 of the Penal Code Act, which criminalises the offence of insulting the modesty of a woman, unconstitutional on grounds that it discriminates against men, contrary to Article 21(3) of the Constitution.
#ResistLawlessness
