‘Flame and Song:’ A family’s struggle building a nation
Philippa Namutebi Kabali-Kagwa has written The VIP Room, a poem about the death of her father. PHOTO| FILE
Educated East Africans of a certain age will recall a time when the poem Building the Nation by Ugandan poet Henry Muwanga Barlow was essential reading in school, in the same league as writing by the leading lights in African literature.
This six-stanza poem exposed the false hopes of the Uganda Independence project. The elite who succeeded the colonisers took after their predecessors’ opulent lifestyle as well, abandoning the egalitarian promises of nation building.
