Dani Wadada Nabudere

Dani Wadada Nabudere (15 December 1932 – 9 November 2011) was a Ugandan academic, Pan-Africanist, lawyer, politician, author, political scientist, and development specialist.

At the time of his passing, he was a professor at the Islamic University and executive director of the Marcus Garvey Pan-Afrikan Institute, Mbale, Uganda.

His political, intellectual and community work spanned over half a century of public activism.

He was a speaker, mobilizer, and a prolific writer.

Among his issues of engagement were food security, peace, knowledge heritages, Africa's contribution to humanizing the world, lifelong learning, cross-border solidarities, international political economy, Pan-Africanism, defense of the commons, cognitive justice, community sites of knowledge, restorative governance, economy, and justice.

Dani Wadada Nabudere was born on 15 December 1932, in Budadiri, Uganda, into a family of Bumayamba village, Buyobo.

Nabudere attended school in Bugisu and then graduated from Aggrey Memorial College, Bunamwaya.

He became a postal clerk for several years, before applying to study law in the United Kingdom.

In the early 1960s he traveled to England to study law, and received a Bachelor of Laws Degree in 1963, and was admitted as a Barrister at Law, at Lincoln's Inn, London.

Nabudere stepped onto the national political scene in the 1960s.

As a student

in London in 1961, he was a member of the Executive Committee of the United Kingdom Uganda Students Association together with Yash Tandon,

Ateker Ejalu, Chango Machyo, and Edward Rugumayo, who were all later to play a significant role in the history of Uganda.

UGASA was engaged in helping to raise the political consciousness of young Ugandans studying or working in the

UK and in Europe.

One of the main activities of the organization was to lobby

British parliamentarians for Uganda's independence.

Nabudere had earlier in 1963 formed a Mbale-based activists' group called the Uganda Vietnam Solidarity

Committee to campaign against American imperialism and aggression in Vietnam.

When he returned from the UK in 1964, he quickly began to fall out of favor with the Uganda People's Congress.

The UPC was a radical nationalist party.

Its then Secretary-General, John Kakonge, had broad communist leanings, and had a strong following among the youth wing of the party, among them, Nabudere.

At the Gulu Conference of the party in 1964, the left wing was outmaneuvered by Milton Obote and the party mainstream leadership.

He was also, a Marxist socialist when the UPC government at the time was opposed to communism.

In 1965 he was expelled from the party together with Kirunda Kivejinja, Jaberi Bidandi-Ssali, and Kintu Musoke.

However, even after expulsion from the UPC, Nabudere remained an opponent of the Obote wing with

radical stances.

Around the same time, Nabudere and Raiti Omongin had just formed the first Maoist Party in Uganda.

During this period Nabudere had also played a critical role in the unification talks between Zanzibar and Tanganyika.

In September 1965, Nabudere was accused by a member of the Ugandan Parliament of organizing a "communist plot" to overthrow the government.

When Obote abolished political parties and declared a one-party state in 1969,

Nabudere fell victim to his continued party activism.

In December 1969,

following an attempt on Obote's life at a UPC congress Nabudere (among others)

was arrested and placed in detention under the Emergency Laws.

He was released

Professor Nabudere was Minister of Justice of Uganda in 1979 and Minister of Culture, Community Development, and Rehabilitation of Uganda in 1979–1980 in the UNLF Interim Government of Uganda.

He was an early President of the African Association of Political Science and Vice-President of the International Political Science Association (IPSA) from 1985 to 1988.

He was the founder and principal of the Marcus Garvey Pan-Afrikan Institute (MPAI), Mbale, Uganda.

Over the last ten years of his life, Nabudere was working on setting up grassroots organizations to assist rural communities and raise their voices over issues that concern their lives.