Akiki Nyabongo
[5] Akiki Nyabongo was son of the late Kyembambe III, Omukama (King) of the Toro Kingdom in Western Uganda.
[6] After completing his doctorate, contrary to the British colonial government's will to have him return to Uganda, he moved to live in Brooklyn, New York City, in 1940.
Nyabongo spent the rest of his career in Uganda, chairing the Ugandan government's Town and Country Planning Committee until he died in 1975.
He collaborated with prominent civil rights activists and shared the works he wrote in Uganda, the United States, and Western Europe.
[2] In 1936, while completing a thesis on Ugandan religious customs at Queen's College, Oxford, and a year after publishing his first novel The Story of an African Chief (re-titled Africa answers back), Nyabongo sent a letter to Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941), a Bengali poet.
The poem protested Benito Mussolini's invasion of Ethiopia (then Abyssinia) and critiqued the organized violence by European imperial forces on the African continent.
As a result of this correspondence, the British press The Spectator published "To Africa," the English version of the original poem translated by Tagore on May 7, 1937.
[8] Akiki Nyabongo was a significant member and contributor to the Universal Ethiopian Student's Association (UESA), formed by activist scholars from the United States, the Caribbeans, and Africa, in Harlem, New York, in 1927.
[10] This ideology directly influenced many East African states with many ethnicities, including the British Uganda Protectorate and the Toro Kingdom.
[4] This semi-autobiographical novel is set in Buganda and follows the life story of Abala Stanley Mujungu: son of a Bugandan chief who ascends the throne.
[4] The main character struggles with his identity throughout his life, trying to balance the indigenous values instilled by his parents and the influences of Christianity and western culture from the local missionaries.
In one scene, the main character, Mujungu, recently appointed chief, requests a local healer to treat a fractured man's arm after seeing the English doctor has bandaged it.
The novel is considered a "foundational text of postcolonial African literature" by critiquing the then cultural and racial stereotypes circulating academia and society.
[4] Moreover, Nyabongo's use of 'savage' throughout the novel left scholars like Mahruba T. Mowtushi questioning the negative connotations of locals in contrast to the 'civilized' society.
Yet, the anti-colonial novelist primarily sees Western education as a challenge to the survival of African norms, customs, and beliefs operating for centuries.
[13] Nyabongo also produced an unpublished manuscript, Yali the Savage, which intended to introduce the American actor, singer and activist Paul Robeson.
[6] The author's last known project published was a Rutooro-language book, Oruhenda, which described the Toro region's culture, tradition, and arcane palace language.
In this study, he disregarded his identity as a pan-African political activist but meant to suggest the mobility and interconnectedness of ancient Uganda via overlapping cultural practices.
