Kampala welcomes UK premier who thinks lowly of Uganda

Kampala. Uganda’s State Minister for Foreign Affairs in charge of international relations, has welcomed the election of Boris Johnson as next United Kingdom prime minister.
“We welcome Boris Johnson as the new leader of the Conservative Party and the prime minister of UK. We have met him before, he has ever come to Uganda when he was the foreign secretary. So his election is good for us,” Mr Oryem told Daily Monitor yesterday.
“Certainly, it will strengthen our relations and I hope after addressing the Brexit issue, he will turn focus on Uganda and East African region to intensify the good relations we have enjoyed with UK over years, especially in trade, peace and security,” he added.
Mr Johnson was elected on Tuesday after beating Mr Jeremy Hunt with 92,153 votes against his rival’s 46,656.

There was Vicky Scott of Unicef, and there was your correspondent, addressed repeatedly by the pleasing title of ‘Mr Honourable Johnson’. And as we sat in our armchairs, as though at some durbar, the choir formed in a semi-circle before us: dozens of tiny children in lacy, embroidered dresses. Their parents were almost all dead, and on some of the children you could see the twin tendons already standing out at the back of the neck — a symptom that the disease is moving to its close.

At a signal from their teacher, they began to chant to the tune of ‘She’ll be coming round the mountain’: We are happy to receive you, wel-o-come; we are happy to receive you, wel-o-come; we are happy to receive you, happy to receive you, happy to receive you, wel-o-comer Then they danced, magically, even the ones who were ill. Listen to Isabel Hardman, Fraser Nelson, James Forsyth and Colleen Graffy discuss the PM’s new appointments: Believe me, you blush, you fat, white chiefs, at that kind of reception.

And it is absurd, finally, to say that we have turned our backs on Africa. Donor countries provide 52 per cent of Uganda’s public spending, and Europeans and Americans supply a new imperial class of aidworkers, vigorous and exuberantly politically correct. They build latrines, fine concrete structures which will soon be used for habitation, since they are sounder than the huts; they distribute condoms, to the hooting derision of the Karamojong cattle rustlers.
It is not only the Mace and the despatch boxes that we have exported to the Ugandan parliament. With five seats reserved for the disabled, five for ‘youth’ and 54 for women, it is the most politically correct assembly in the world. I will never forget the expression on the faces of the tribal elders who came to meet us by some jacaranda tree.

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Kampala welcomes UK premier who thinks lowly of Uganda

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