The Independent Uganda: You get the Truth we Pay the Price
In the spirit of 1964, Africa must turn indignation into agency and sovereignty into strategy
COMMENT | ANDREW PI BESI | I returned from my annual pilgrimage to Rujumbura, undertaken in observance of Christmas, only to be confronted by reports that the United States had, under cover of night, undertaken military action against Venezuela and kidnapped its president, Nicolás Maduro.
What unsettles is not merely the gravity of the act but its familiarity. The choreography is well rehearsed: urgency draped in moral certainty, secrecy justified as necessity, and force explained as benevolence. It is an old script, periodically revived—new theatres, same logic. What evolves, regrettably, is not the action itself, but the world’s growing tolerance for it—the same tolerance that once enabled Belgium’s Leopold II and Europe’s Partition of Africa in 1884–85.
This episode—condemned by many and celebrated by some who profit from proximity to imperial power—summoned two moments: one from history and another from my own family, illuminating Africa’s enduring ideals and unresolved contradictions.
On December 11, 1964, Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara addressed the United Nations General Assembly. He congratulated Malawi, Malta, and Zambia on joining the international community and commended Alex Quaison-Sackey of Ghana upon his elevation as the first black president of the Assembly. Africa, at the time, was in the midst of a political awakening. Flags were raised, anthems composed, and constitutions drafted with urgency and hope. Guevara called it a “historic stage of resounding triumphs for the peoples of Africa,” recently liberated from colonial domination.
Yet Guevara’s words endure not merely because they celebrated independence. They warned that sovereignty alone could not defeat imperialism. He called for the peaceful coexistence of different political and economic systems while denouncing those who proclaimed liberty yet undermined others’ sovereignty. His appeal was ethical and personal: “If you tremble with indignation at every injustice, then you are a comrade of mine.”
A second, more intimate moment arrived on December 26, 1990, when my uncle, a senior officer of the National Resistance Army, welcomed his firstborn son. In that era of revolutionary optimism, my uncle briefly considered naming the boy after Panama’s Manuel Noriega, then held by the United States – an impulse shaped more by the romance of resistance than by the discipline of reflection. Ultimately, he chose the name Rodney, in honour of Dr Walter Rodney—scholar, revolutionary, and one of Africa’s clearest thinkers on power and exploitation. Rodney taught that African underdevelopment was neither accidental nor cultural, but structural—a predictable outcome of extraction and domination. He warned that imperialism does not retreat; it adapts.
And adapt it has. Modern imperialism is not in pith helmets and gunboats but in tailored suits, loans, consultancy reports, and “partnerships”. It speaks of democracy while undermining elections, of sovereignty while dictating policy, and of peace while sustaining militarised politics. The satire is that Africa is lectured on governance by those who violate international law with procedural elegance, on human rights by those who practise selective outrage, and on economic discipline by those who thrive on debt and unequal exchange. Leaders are removed for the good of their people; sovereignty is sacred—until inconvenient. Some nod along, fluent in the language of dependency.
Yet history, in its irony, has opened a narrow but consequential window. Neo-colonial chaos in Venezuela and Ukraine exposes the limits of Western power and the volatility of its exercise. United States foreign policy—seemingly erratic as an adolescent—has unsettled assumptions about global order. In doing so, it has inadvertently created strategic space for other actors.
Russia, long dismissed as diminished, has moved decisively to consolidate influence across former Soviet states and reassert itself globally. China pursues a quieter but equally consequential strategy, expanding its economic, technological, and diplomatic footprint across Africa.
For Africa, multipolarity presents both risk and opportunity. The monopoly of former imperial powers is weakened, and competition replaces prescription. But multipolarity is not morality—China and Russia pursue interests, not charity. The opportunity lies in leveraging this space to reclaim agency, diversify partnerships, and expand strategic options.
The more pressing question lies closer to home: how might Uganda and Rwanda leverage this shifting balance to address long-standing instability in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo—a conflict draining the region’s human, economic, and moral capital? Too often, violence has been sustained not by irreconcilable local grievances, but by proxy dynamics, illicit networks, and external powers whose priorities shift with distant crises.
In a world of assertive Russia, superpower China, and a fragmented West, new diplomatic possibilities emerge. Reduced coherence among traditional Western actors creates space for African-led initiatives less constrained by external vetoes or simplified narratives. Russia and China’s engagement may broaden international support for African solutions, not as a substitute for regional leadership, but as leverage.
The challenge—and opportunity—for Uganda, Rwanda, and Africa is to transform global rebalancing into a durable regional settlement, prioritising sovereignty, credible security guarantees, and meaningful economic integration over proxy confrontation. This requires restraint, trust-building, and decisive commitment to regional mechanisms, with external actors engaged on clearly defined, subordinate terms.
Africa stands, as it has before, at a familiar crossroads: resource-rich yet policy-constrained, demographically young yet politically encumbered, courted by many yet directed by few. The greatest threat is not invasion alone, but habituation—the slow acceptance that our affairs will be managed elsewhere, that our crises require foreign guardianship, and that our future must be negotiated in distant capitals.
Che Guevara’s indignation, Walter Rodney’s scholarship, and the convictions animating past liberation movements remind us that history does not forgive amnesia. Forms of domination may change, but their logic remains stubbornly familiar.
If Africa is to survive the age of New Imperialism, it must recover its sovereignty, moral clarity, and strategic confidence. Without the capacity to tremble—calmly, rationally, and persistently—at injustice, we risk becoming spectators to our own subjugation, applauding politely as the old play is restaged, now with better lighting and less agreeable language.
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By Andrew “Pi” Besi | On X: @BesiAndrew
Quite quixotic