Muniini K. Mulera

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The Political Kingdom in Uganda: A Study in Bureaucratic Nationalism – By David E. Apter (Revised Third Edition, 1997)

By Muniini K. MuleraMy Kind of BooksJanuary 12, 20190 comments

This book is an analytical study of the internal and external politics and systems of Buganda, the central and largest kingdom in Uganda. The development of political parties and the great conflicts in post 1900 Buganda are thoroughly presented and analysed. But more than politics, ...

Fabrication of EMPIRE: The British and the Uganda Kingdoms, 1890-1902 – By D. A. Low

By Muniini K. MuleraMy Kind of BooksJanuary 11, 20190 comments

This book’s title could well have been “How Uganda came to be.”  D. A. Low, who taught at Makerere University College, Uganda, from 1951 to 1958, presents an excellent account and analysis of the formation of the post-1900 kingdoms of Ankole, Buganda, Bunyoro, Busoga and Toro. These ...

Sundiata: An Epic of Mali – By D.T. Niane (1965)

By Muniini K. MuleraMy Kind of BooksJanuary 11, 20190 comments

This is the English translation (by G.D. Pickett) of D.T. Niane’s part history/part legend of Sundiata Keita, the thirteenth century founder of the Great Empire of Mali, and great uncle of the famous Mansa Musa. It is a short but very captivating story, only 84 pages long. This ...

The Baganda: An Account of Their Native Customs and Beliefs - By Rev. John Roscoe (1911)

By Muniini K. MuleraMy Kind of BooksJanuary 11, 20190 comments

This is a classic book that has been reprinted many times since its publication in 1911. The Rev. John Roscoe (1861-1932), a civil engineer, was a member of the Church Missionary Society in Uganda from 1891 to 1909.  The book, based on notes he compiled, over an 18 year period, ...

The Great Lakes of Africa: Two Thousand Years of History – By Jean-Pierre Chretien

By Muniini K. MuleraMy Kind of BooksJanuary 11, 20190 comments

This is an English translation (by Scott Straus) of a scholarly book that successfully stitches together the complex and long story of kingdoms, chiefdoms, traditions, alliances, hatreds, settlements, movements, colonization, political independence and violence that have shaped one ...

The King’s Men: Leadership and Status in Buganda on the Eve of Independence - Edited by L.A. Fallers (1964)

By Muniini K. MuleraMy Kind of BooksJanuary 10, 20190 comments

  This is a multi-author presentation of Buganda’s progress during the century between first contact with Europeans and Independence in 1962. We learn about Buganda’s hierarchical political organization that was later exported to many parts of Uganda. The description and analysis ...

The Social Origins of Violence in Uganda, 1964-1985 – By A.B.K. Kasozi

By Muniini K. MuleraMy Kind of BooksJanuary 10, 20190 comments

This is one of the most thorough and accessible examinations of Uganda’s post-independence violence and bloodshed. Professor Kasozi presents a compelling argument that the central problem has been social inequality, economic disparities, a culture of poor to absent conflict resolution ...

Origins of Kingship Traditions and Symbolism in the Great Lakes Region of Africa – By Birgitta Farelius (2008)

By Muniini K. MuleraMy Kind of BooksJanuary 11, 20190 comments

Tradition holds that the foundation stone of the kingdoms of the Great Lakes Area was laid by the Bacwezi, a mysterious people that lived and ruled the area before disappearing “into the lake.” Central to the Bacwezi community and their descendants was the cow as an economic commodity, ...

Two Kings of Uganda, or Life by the Shores of Victoria Nyanza, Being an Account of a Residence of Six Years in Eastern Equatorial Africa - By Robert Pickering Ashe.

By Muniini K. MuleraMy Kind of BooksJanuary 10, 20190 comments

Allowing for the biased lenses of a British missionary, this is a very informative account of Buganda in the period 1883-86. Originally published in 1889, the copy I have is a Second Edition (1971) with a very good introduction by John Rowe, a historian, which is itself a concise ...

Sir Apolo Kaggwa Discovers Britain – By Ham Mukasa

By Muniini K. MuleraMy Kind of BooksJanuary 10, 20190 comments

Sir Apolo Kaggwa, the Katikkiro of Buganda from 1890 to 1926 was one of the most consequential leaders of the Twentieth Century. Ham Mukasa, his personal secretary, was one of the earliest people to receive formal education by the British. When he accompanied the Katikkiro to attend ...

King Leopold’s Ghost - By Adam Hochschild (1998)

By Muniini K. MuleraMy Kind of BooksJanuary 10, 20190 comments

This is the history of the Congo Free State from first contact with the Europeans. It is  a gripping and thorough account of how King Leopold II of Belgium turned that territory into the Heart of Darkness. Greed, human enslavement, a holocaust, extraordinary bestiality by the King’s ...

Song of Lawino and Song of Ocol - by Okot p'Bitek

By Muniini K. MuleraMy Kind of BooksJanuary 9, 20190 comments

Here on your left Are the grinding stones The big one Ashen and dusty And her daughter Sitting in her belly Are the destroyers of millet Mixed with cassava And sorghum.       The mother stone Has a hollow stomach A strange woman She never gets pregnant And ...

Heart of Darkness - By Joseph Conrad

By Muniini K. MuleraMy Kind of BooksJanuary 9, 20190 comments

At once infuriating and thrilling, this is Joseph Conrad’s most famous and controversial novel. First published in 1902, Heart of Darkness  paints an image of a tranquil Europe and a terrifying Africa, with an unmissable contrast between life on the safe River Thames and the dangerous ...

Things Fall Apart; No Longer At Ease; Arrow of God -By Chinua Achebe

By Muniini K. MuleraMy Kind of BooksJanuary 9, 20190 comments

Things Fall Apart (1959): Repeated reading has not lessened my joy of opening the first page of Chinua Achebe’s masterpiece and getting immersed in the life of Okonkwo and his people in Umuofia. No Longer At Ease (1960): Obi. Western education. Africa in transition from colonial ...

God’s Bits of Wood - by Ousmane Sembene

By Muniini K. MuleraMy Kind of BooksJanuary 9, 20190 comments

This is my top choice among the great novels from Africa. “The last rays of the sun filtered through a shredded lacework of clouds,” reads the first sentence of the novel. What follows is a brilliant telling of a story, based on the 1947-48 strike by the workers on the Dakar-Niger ...

A love of books -

By Muniini K. MuleraMy Kind of BooksJanuary 7, 20190 comments

  I grew up in houses where books were everywhere. In my early teens, my father, a bibliophile, told me to read “everything.”  I took him literally.  My passion for reading gained momentum at King's College, Budo, Uganda, where the Main Library was very well stocked with books, ...

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