By Ndawula Ronald
Africans celebrate independence annually in style and pomp, giving merry speeches signalling emancipation or freedom from colonialists who governed them on their respective territories.
Zimbabwe is one such country which was a British colony from the late 19th century.
Zimbabwe was initially called Rhodesia and zambia called Southern Rhodesia after the British imperialist, politician and business man Cecil Rhodes.
He expanded the British Empire by making concession agreements with local traditional chiefs who sold him large swathes of land from south Africa to Zimbabwe and Zambia.
This mining magnate and politician was so shrewd and cunning and became the Prime minister of the Cape province at the close of the 18th century.
All land ended up being sold to Cecil Rhodes and he ended up owning the copper and diamond mines in southern Africa under the DE BEERS DIAMOND COMPANY which up to today controls the global diamond trade.
Cecil Rhodes died in 1902 and donated much of his money to the Cecil Rhodes educational scholarship to enable students in British colonies to go and study in Oxford University where he was also a major donor.
Cecil Rhodes body is buried in Matobo national park in Zimbabwe.
Using the Kimberly diamond mines, Cecil Rhodes dream was to build a British empire stretching from Cape town to Cairo in Egypt because he saw the African chiefs who used not to care about giving concessions in utter disregard of their people.
Even now, the freed people of Rhodesia (zimbabwe) think one day Cecil Rhodes will resurrect from Matobo national park and claim what he truly bought from the African chiefs and usually threaten to remove his grave so that they forget him forever.
When I saw that government of Uganda has signed a concession coffee agreement with Vinci coffee company, giving them a tax holiday for 10 years and a monopoly over coffee trade in Uganda I realised that old habits die hard!
What’s the difference between the actions of the old African traditional chiefs who sold their country to Cecil Rhodes, sold their people as slaves and the present day learned politicians, and leaders?
The difference now is the legal jargons in english which didn’t exist then?
What’s the difference between Ministers of finance and sir Appolo Kaggwa and Zakalia Kisingiri who gave away the whole of Buganda to be declared a protectorate because for them, individually were getting 34square miles each of land?
How will Ugandans look at your children when they realise you sold their coffee to a private company for ten years at a price dictated by Vinci coffee company.
Is this securing our future as promised?
I want to believe that President Museveni is not aware like in the Umeme deal or will feign ignorance? but if he knows, no one will ever excuse you if you do this to Ugandans.
Is this the reason why we got out of the international coffee agreements and ICO?
Maybe , also there’s a deal brewing about the used cars? Who’s trying to block ordinary people who were trying to earn a living in importing used cars a trade they have developed over decades?
It seems history is repeating itself here and sooner than you know, Uganda will be a Protectorate if our chiefs are busy signing concessions and selling our rights.
As a reminder, as you labour to own all the money in Uganda for yourselves, you will live it all like Cecil Rhodes left it behind when he went to meet his creator and the true owners of the land in zimbabwe are now in possession.
Ndawula Ronald, the author is the former chairperson of Luwero district
