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by Xavier Ogena (Author)
The first Prime Minister (1962-1966) and the second and seventh President (1966-1971, 1980-1985) of independent Uganda, Apollo Milton Obote, is perhaps the Ugandan politician who has been the subject of the greatest distortion of the facts or deliberate misunderstandings by their enemies and detractors-and themself. It has not helped matters that Obote has been poorly served by his biographers: few have been well-informed about him; even fewer have been sufficiently fair and objective in their assessment of him and his post-independence regimes, not to mention his earlier involvement in the anti-colonial struggle. It has further not helped matters that the last substantial biography of Obote appeared in 1994, despite its predating the closing decade or so of his life, which saw the start of a gradual revival in his reputation; despite there having been, since his demise in 2005, numerous books or articles by, and newspaper interviews with, his friends, former Ministers and aides, and opponents, containing considerable new material on him; and despite his bête noire and successor-but-one, Yoweri Kaguta Museveni, who has been in power since 1986, having been confronted with the self-same problems and temptations which he was confronted with while in power, making it possible, even imperative for his leadership of Uganda to be reevaluated in a wider political perspective. This volume is a long-overdue effort to remedy the foregoing shortcomings in the historiography of Obote. It will be of considerable interest to anyone who is interested in the political history of colonial and post-colonial Uganda, even Africa.
