Category: News

KAMPALA – The Minister for the Presidency, Hon. Babirye Milly Babalanda, has briefed Parliament on the Government’s comprehensive Whole-of-Government approach to accord a colourful, befitting and nationally representative official send-off to the late King of Tooro, His Royal Highness Rukirabasaija Omukama Oyo Nyimba Kabamba Iguru Rukidi IV.

The young Monarch, described as iconic, promising and people-oriented, passed away on Friday 28th August 2026 in Dallas, United States, at the age of 34 while receiving treatment.

Presenting a statement on behalf of Government, Minister Babalanda informed Parliament that President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni has taken lead of the national mourning period.She told the House that on Monday 31st August 2026, Cabinet sitting at State House Entebbe and chaired by H.E the President extended long and earnest eulogies to the fallen Monarch and directed that an official burial be organized.”Under the wise guidance of H.E the President, the Head of State directed the Rt. Hon. Prime Minister to coordinate a Whole-of-Government Approach bringing together the Public Sector and other critical stakeholders,” Babalanda told Parliament.

She also relayed President Museveni’s tribute of Saturday 29th August in which the President said: “How unfair life can be! He was orphaned while still young and he has died young,” and confirmed Government had supported the King’s treatment in Germany and later the US.

Minister Babalanda informed Parliament that on Tuesday 1st September 2026, the House had earlier received a Statement from the Prime Minister and Leader of Government Business and held a special sitting to debate and eulogize the immense contribution of the late Monarch towards the socio-economic transformation of Tooro.

She further briefed that on the same day, acting on Cabinet directive, the Rt. Hon. Prime Minister convened and chaired an Inter-Ministerial National Organising Committee (N.O.C) meeting together with Representatives of the Royal Family of Tooro.

According to Babalanda, the N.O.C meeting was attended by a cross-section of Ministers responsible for Gender and Culture, Presidency, Agriculture, Tourism, Wildlife and Antiquities, Public Service, Foreign Affairs and Internal Affairs among others.

In her briefing to Parliament, the Minister outlined that Cabinet had received a Paper from the Ministry of Gender, Labour & Social Development on preparatory arrangements agreed upon with the Royal Family, and that the Kingdom working with authorities in Dallas had tentatively set Thursday 3rd September for the arrival of the remains.

She confirmed to Parliament that the repatriated remains of the late King are now expected to be received at Entebbe International Airport tomorrow, Friday 4th September 2026 at 10:00am, with Government working through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Kenyan authorities to ensure smooth transit.

Minister Babalanda told Parliament that as was the case in previous burials of Royal Dignitaries such as the late Emorimori of the Iteso people, all Government actions will be handled in a unified manner.

She tabled before Parliament the eight major requirements for the decent send-off as outlined by the N.O.C:
a) Events Management at five venues – Entebbe Airport, Karuzika Royal Palace, Buziga Royal Residency, Karambi Royal Tombs and St. John’s Cathedral, with Government providing tents, chairs, mobile toilets and PA systems.

b) Feeding of Mourners for 09 days, being handled by the Office of the CDF under Ministry of Defence at Buziga and Karuzika.

c) Funeral Management contracted to A-Plus Funeral Home including airport reception, executive vehicles from Nairobi, portraits, condolence books, wreaths, order of service, marble grave and Royal Mausoleum, all costs covered by Government.

d) Security and Protocol including UPDF and UPF bands, pall bearers, gun salute and crowd control.

e) Palace Upgrades at Karuzika being handled by UPDF Engineers Brigade.

f) Dignitaries – protocol for expected delegations from Royal families within Uganda and Africa.

g) Repatriation – Government has met all medical bills and repatriation costs from Dallas to Nairobi to Entebbe, paid by the President through State House.

h) Health Camp supervised by Ministry of Health for mourners in Tooro.

Minister Babalanda assured Parliament that security agencies have taken charge of security of mourners and that the official nine-day mourning period will begin only after the body arrives at Karuzika Palace.

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Petua Bakwesegha-Summersby has spent her career asking one question that keeps reshaping how she sees people: what is this behaviour trying to tell us?

The Ugandan-born Behaviour Support Practitioner, international speaker and disability inclusion advocate, now based in Darwin, Australia, has built a career around that single idea, that behaviour is communication. As the Founder of Heartward House, an NDIS-registered organisation delivering trauma-informed Positive Behaviour Support and employment services to children, adolescents and adults with complex support needs, she has taken that philosophy into schools, homes and the forensic support space, and increasingly, onto international stages.

Her work recently earned her a place on Titanium Magazine’s “Top 50 Global Inspirational Women to Look Out For 2027,” an honour recognised in Marrakech, Morocco. But long before the accolades, the foundation for that work was laid in a childhood spent across continents, shaped by discipline, faith and a quiet, early ache to be truly seen.

A childhood between three worlds

Born in Kenya to two diplomats and raised across Ethiopia and later the United States before settling in Uganda, Bakwesegha-Summersby describes a household where standards were never negotiable.

“Ours was a very disciplined household, where there was always an awareness that we represented not only our family, but also the values and principles that came with my parents’ work,” she says. Her father, she recalls, would occasionally arrive unannounced at her school simply to check that she was upholding the values instilled at home. Her mother’s faith gave the family its spiritual anchor.

That structure produced a child who thrived in leadership, from Patrol Leader at Wicoff School in New Jersey to Head Girl at Taibah Junior School and Deputy Head Girl at Kabojja in Uganda. But Bakwesegha-Summersby is candid that the confident exterior did not tell the whole story.

“My teachers seemed to see something in me that I could not always see in myself,” she says. “They saw the fears I carried, the moments when I was uncertain of myself, and perhaps some of the things I was navigating outside the classroom.”

The loneliness that became a calling

It is this tension, between what a person presents and what they are actually carrying, that would eventually define her professional purpose. Bakwesegha-Summersby says her earliest understanding of advocacy came from her own experience of not always feeling seen.

“I experienced periods growing up where I felt incredibly lonely, uncertain and unseen,” she explains. “For a long time, I carried a deep sense of loneliness and uncertainty. On the outside, I could function, achieve, lead and appear confident, while internally there were parts of me that simply wanted to be noticed, understood and cared for.”

Rather than harden her, she says those years became “one of the greatest sources of empathy in my life,” sharpening her instinct for people who are overlooked or reduced to their behaviour rather than understood for what lies beneath it. Studying behaviour and disability later gave her a framework, attachment theory, to make sense of what she had lived through.

“Secure attachment is not simply about being physically present for someone,” she says. “It is about being seen from the inside out. It is about feeling held, understood, comforted and safe enough to rest, to play, to explore and ultimately to grow.”

That understanding now sits at the centre of her mission. “I feel compelled to stand up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for those who feel left behind, unseen, unheard or unaccounted for,” she says. “Because they do matter.”

Lessons from home, carried into a global career

Bakwesegha-Summersby traces her drive for excellence to her father, whose unconventional advice has stayed with her. “He used to say to me, ‘If you are good at something, be the best at it, even if you are the best chicken eater,’” she recalls. “And then he would remind me that the world should remember you for that.”

That philosophy pushed her from a Communications degree at UCSI University in Malaysia toward a Master’s in Criminology and Criminal Justice at Griffith University in Australia, a decision her parents backed even when cost was a concern. When she offered to settle for a university in the United Kingdom instead, her father’s answer was immediate. “No. We will do everything we can to get you to Australia,” she remembers him saying. “And they did.”

It was in Australia that her early fascination with human behaviour deepened into the career she leads today, one that has taken her across Uganda, Malaysia, Vietnam, Indonesia, South Africa, China, Australia and India, and has included a career highlight most professionals only dream of: interviewing Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

Belonging is not enough. Support has to come too

Speaking at the World Inclusion Conference in India, Bakwesegha-Summersby noticed a word surfacing again and again in conversations among delegates from vastly different countries: belonging.

“It was fascinating to see how many people are genuinely fighting for inclusion, particularly in schools, and trying to make sure that children with disabilities have a place where they feel accepted and valued,” she says. But the conference also handed her what she calls an “aha” moment.

“We talk so much about making sure the child belongs. But what about the people who are responsible for creating that belonging? What about the teachers? The support staff? The parents?” she asks. “If the person doing the work of inclusion isn’t supported, how can we expect them to consistently create a safe and inclusive environment for somebody else?”

Her takeaway was blunt: inclusion cannot rest on the shoulders of one person, and the field has moved well past the need for more conversation. “We know what inclusion should look like. We have conferences talking about it, policies talking about it, passionate people advocating for it,” she says. “So I think the next challenge is implementation. Now we have to do it.”

Sometimes, listening is the intervention

Ask Bakwesegha-Summersby why she does this work, and she returns to the moments when a client finally feels safe enough to speak. “Nobody listens to me. I don’t feel seen. I don’t feel heard,” is a sentence she has heard more times than she can count, often from young people who have never said it to anyone else.

She recalls one client explaining a pattern of self-harm by saying she did not feel she mattered. For Bakwesegha-Summersby, the moment reframed her entire approach to the work. “You realise that you’re not simply sitting across from a person who has a behaviour that needs to be reduced,” she says. “You’re sitting across from a human being who is telling you, ‘I don’t believe I matter.’”

That conviction, that people are communicating even when their behaviour looks like defiance, withdrawal or distress, has become the throughline of her practice. “When we truly listen to someone, we’re communicating something to them: you matter, your experience matters, I’m interested in your world,” she says. “Before we can change a behaviour, sometimes we need to change the experience the person is having.”

It is a philosophy she carries from the therapy room to the international stage and back again, one built not on managing people, but on seeing them. “I’m not here simply to write a report or reduce a behaviour,” she says. “I’m here to see the person.”

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Rachel Magoola has a simple rule when it comes to raising her children: her achievements should not become their shortcut to fame.

The musician-turned-politician says she deliberately keeps her children away from the spotlight because she wants them to build their own identities instead of growing up expecting recognition because of their mother.

Speaking during an interview on Daily Soup, Magoola questioned why parents should constantly put their children in front of cameras and introduce them to a world of attention they have not worked for.

For her, the bigger concern is what happens when children become accustomed to receiving respect, titles and privileges before they have done anything to deserve them.

Why should I put my children in front of cameras and have them claim titles and respect simply because of what I have achieved? They need to earn their own respect and recognition. If you give a child privileges and titles before they have worked for them, you take away the reason for them to work hard.

Magoola wants parents to take a different approach by allowing their children to experience the process of building themselves from the ground up.

She argues that children need to understand the effort behind success, rather than simply enjoying the rewards of what their parents have already achieved.

That means learning how to work, make money and pursue their own ambitions without using their family name as a ticket to recognition.

Parents should let their children find their own way and build something for themselves instead of depending on what their parents have already achieved. Let them begin at the bottom and work their way up, because that is how they learn what it takes to earn money, build a career, and achieve fame.

Magoola’s approach means her children may not receive the public attention that often comes with having a famous parent, but she wants them to earn their own place when their time comes.