Prime
Amin’s grandson launches book with an intellectual sting
What you need to know:
Preamble is a protest poem which explores Uganda’s political and constitutional instability over the last six decades of post-colonial democracy. It ignites crucial conversations around the stunted development of the country.
In 2018, Lus ThePoet burst onto the scene. Well, he did not exactly burst. He strolled into Rock Bar on a Tuesday. It was comedy night. To be specific, it was Rock Comedy night. Bright Onak Tweteise Omwiitira, a comedy impresario and former stand-up comedian, was the night’s originator. He felt that poets could be curtain-raisers at a comedy show. It was a novel idea. Okay, not so much novel as a potential joke.
The night was thriving, with the venue often overflowing onto Speke Road with revellers. Before the Comedy Store became something of a cultural touchstone, the only game in town was Rock Comedy. Lus ThePoet, whose real name is Lus Aziz Ali Fadhul, stood before this audience that was in no mood for poetry, unless that poetry was a joke. Yet Lus’s poetry is no ‘laughing subject’. In a matter of minutes, he had the audience eating out of his hand.
To the surprise of everybody, a poet started headlining at a weekly and major show. And that poet was Lus ThePoet. In 2019, his deeply personal stage production “Total Woman” was a marquee poetry event at the National Theatre. It narrates how it is to be a mother’s child. Sometimes, in his telling, he would lean on Chiasmus or ‘reversible raincoats’--- an example of which is John Kennedy’s words: Let us never negotiate out of fear, but never fear to negotiate.
Other times, Lus’ cadences and varied registers followed the Anaphora -repeating the same word/phrase at the beginning of successive sentences) of Kagayi Ngobi, a poet who has also mastered epistrophic expression (repetition of the ends of two or more successive sentences/verses). Lus’ mother passed away on the November 27, 2016; exactly a month before his 18th birthday.
It’s around that time that Lus gave his life to poetry. Not as a surrogate, but as a floodgate of passions evolving from deep feeling. It was the beginning of something new. On Saturday, at the home of the exceedingly warm American couple Aaron Steinberg and Sarah Lewinger in Ntinda, Lus launched his latest offering: a poetry collection titled Lus ThePoet’s Preamble.
Again, with this work, Lus goes beyond the surface to crystalise a broad sweep of emotions and thoughts. By appealing to head and heart, Lus is staying true to the essence of his core. He is a poet whose mercurial gifts shuttle between sense and sensibility without revealing the difference between which is which. His emotional appeals stack up seamlessly with his mental summons for us to not only to feel, but to think too. In the explosive poem To Hell with Julius Nyerere, Lus takes aim at a man whose record has been irreproachable, until now. “For teaching us, that a government is for the people, for showing us, that populism is the best governance For nurturing the FRONASA idea. It is because of him, That we may never taste a servant democracy.
It was his saintly intention that inspired the gun That voted itself into power, And vowed to stay until a bigger gun takes it out,” writes Lus. Let us not lose sight of what he has to say because we are focusing on how it has been said. To begin with, Nyerere is a doyen of African politics. He was the first prime minister of independent Tanganyika (1961), first president of Tanzania (1964–85), and the major force behind the Organisation of African Unity (OAU; now African Union).
In Tanzania, Nyerere’s socialist experiment dubbed Ujamaa (which means fraternity in Swahili) was well intentioned but ultimately misconceived. In Uganda, there have been calls by president Museveni for Nyerere to be canonized as a saint. Yet Lus faults Nyerere not for his intentions but for the consequences of his intentions. The poet surveys the country around him and sees the poverty, dictatorship and corruption that such intentions wrought. Nyerere sought to remove Idi Amin and he did, but what he helped elevate to replace Amin’s rule is what has left a bad taste in Lus’s mouth. This could also be personal. During the launch of his book, Lus revealed that Amin is grandfather.
So, he might not be the most objective commentator on Ugandan politics, especially in view of the wave of revisionism whitewashing Amin as a Mother Theresa figure. However, Lus insists that the only thing he has against Museveni’s regime is the evidence of where it falls short of the towering leadership it once promised us.
To draw attention to this, Lus has raised the standard of change by writing protest poetry with an intellectual sting in its tail. “Preamble is a protest poem…the poem explores Uganda’s political and constitutional instability over the last 6 decades of post-colonial democracy. It majorly themes rejection of violence by the State towards its natives; among so many other issues that ignite crucial conversations around the stunted development of the country, the corruption and the malnourished policies that encourage the corrupt,” says Lus.
He adds, “While artists are supposed to reflect their times, Lus ThePoet’s ‘Preamble’ does not only successfully do so in a well master-pieced theatre production, but it also preaches a gospel that every Ugandan should hold themselves accountable for what is supposed to be done, in order for the long promised fundamental change to be achieved.” You can see Kagayi Ngobi’s influence written all over this collection. Kagayi’s masterful poetry collection “For My Negativity” is cited by Lus as an inspiration. Kagayi’s impassioned poetry inspired a generation of poets. Lus seems to be making a play to be heir to Kagayi.
In the poem “To The Poet Who Fears To Die For This Country”, this is all too apparent: “I would rather die in a protest today Than watch my daughter’s heart marching down the same streets Many years from now, when I’m too old and weak To put back the mosaic of her splintered body After another unsuccessful protest.” If his words are misconstrued, his passion will surely be understood for the fine poetry it engenders.
Title: The Preamble
Author: Lus Aziz Ali Fadhul
Pages: 28
Price: Shs40,000
Availability: Aristoc and other leading bookshops.
Published: 2025
