Hundreds of thousands of travellers may have seen this greying man lecturing economics or preaching the word of God along Kayonza-Gatsibo highway.

“My name is Mathias Rutikanga. I was told that a few days after I was born, someone came home and asked my mother what name I would be given. Then that person said I should be named Mathias, and, my mother named me Rutikanga,” he told Taarifa.

Rutikanga lives in Ndatemwa village of Kiziguro, Kayonza district. He always walks on the streets preaching and teaching passersby and most times meets his audience at bus stops.

He also sometimes walks all the way to the capital Kigali and has been sighted in neighborhoods of Nyarutarama, Remera and Kimironko.

Rutikanga speaks fluent English and has acute understanding of economics.

Impressed by his teachings, Taarifa approached him at a bus stop in Ndatemwa and engaged him in a conversation.

What is your level of education sir?

“I just stopped in form four,” he responded swiftly before asking our reporter to identify himself.

Which school did you study from Mr. Rutikanga?

“I studied at Jinja Senior Secondary school in Jinja district in Uganda,” he explained, adding that he resided in Livingstone Hall of residence.

Why did you stop in form four?

“In September 1981 we were preparing for Mock exams then suddenly I felt some headache and it never stopped. I couldn’t write the mock exams. Since then I have a mental illness. It comes and goes,” Rutikanga explains.

What was your career target?

“I was targeting to carry on with History Economics and Geography at Advanced level and later study law at university.”

Mr Rutikanga says he reads many books from where he gets all the knowledge.

He told Taarifa that it was his wish to join the Rwanda Patriotic Army but that time he was mentally unfit. “I was always supportive of our colleagues in the rebel force that removed a bad government in Rwanda. I’m happy to be in my country,” he notes.

Do you remember any of your schoolmates or even classmates?

“Yes, I had two Rwandan friends, one was called Bugingo and another Hashim.”

About Jinja Secondary school

President Paul Kagame is also said to have studied at this school although much emphasis is heaped on Ntare School.

Jinja Secondary School was founded in Uganda’s then industrial capital, Jinja to provide education for children of the growing Indian Community in 1948.

School moto: “By reverence By questioning,By service”

After 1948 locals were allowed to join sparking bitter confrontations that were to become a test to Independent Uganda’s commitment to multi-racialism.

There was a time when strikes were so rampant at Jinja Secondary that some parents were quick to brand non-boarding schools a no-go option when choosing schools for their pupils.

But little did they know that history has everything to tell about the legacy that came to be identified with one of the oldest and biggest schools in East and Central Africa.

When Jinja SS was formed in 1948 it was formed as Government Indian School to serve the high population of Indians in Jinja and it was envisaged to be exclusively for the then emerging business class of Ugandans of Indian origin.

“However, soon after independence in 1962 government as a policy encouraged African students to join the school. It was renamed Jinja Senior Secondary School,” William Ongom Olara, an old student and now a teacher at the school explained.

This made Jinja SS a government school but the policy of allowing African students join and freely fuse in with Indian students did not go down well with the Indian Community.

“They resisted the presence of African students in the school, and a strike by African students was staged. Many Asian students and teachers were injured. An amicable agreement was reached when Madhvani family funded the establishment of Pavertben Muljibhai Madhvani Girls’ School to cater for the Indian girls as an annex of Jinja Senior Secondary School,” he explains from the school’s history.

But one of the underlying issues at this high school was that the Indian community was particularly uncomfortable with Indian girls mixing and perhaps later getting into a relationship with African boys, which was abominable in this culture.

“The Indian have abandoned the school. The school that started out as all Indian has only two Indians and two Pakistanis,” Ongom added.

The reason of the fight for purity by the Indian community has come to pass for the school which currently boasts of a student population of 4,294 students only has two Indians. The school sits on quite an expanse of land, of 12.44 hectares, school teaching staff of up to 130, 20 non-teaching staff and 43 group employees.

And up and until 2008 strikes persisted at this school but the incoming head teacher, Diana Hope Nyago was able to create channels of listening to students as a measure of deterring situations of violence that were partly rooted in poor communication between the students and school administration.

Mr.Joseph Kabila has henceforth become Doctor Joseph Kabila after successfully completing his doctorate studies from Johannesburg University in South Africa.

In July, the former DRC president Joseph defended his PhD thesis in Political Science and International Relations.

From details, the Theme of his thesis was; Reflecting on Leadership Development in a post-conflict country case of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

In 2019, Kabila handed over power to current President Felix Tshisekedi in the country’s first peaceful transfer of power since independence in 1960.

While defending his Doctorate thesis early in July, Kabila said that his greatest achievement was successfully unifying DRC after emerging from a cycle of war.

Kabila came to power in January 26, 2001 after his father Laurent-Désiré Kabila was assassinated.

Kabila born on June 4, 1971, was largely raised and educated in Tanzania. He had his early primary school education in a school organized by his father’s rebel forces, before moving to Tanzania where he completed primary and secondary.

Following high school, Kabila followed a military curriculum in Tanzania, then at Makerere University in Uganda.

Former South African President Jacob Zuma underwent surgery on August 14, 2021 at the time he was serving a 15-month prison sentence.

Zuma was in June 2021, sentenced to fifteen months in prison for contempt of justice, but this controversial former president was released on medical grounds.

According to court, Zuma should serve the remainder of his sentence in his domain of Nkandla, an expensive residence which makes up the backbone of his political and judicial battles.

The Nkandla Estate nestles in the remote hills of KwaZulu-Natal. This is where Jacob Gedleyihlekisa Zuma was born on April 12, 1942.

Once off the highway, you have to take winding lanes and pockmarked with potholes. Cattle sometimes stand in the way, as if to remind visitors that they are going to meet a man who, in his childhood, was a herd keeper.

However, the opulence of Nkandla Homestead tells a different story: that of a former president accused of bribery and embezzlement.

The whole is rustic in style, with traditional houses with round thatched roofs. There is nothing flashy about the property, seen from the outside. Yet it is at the heart of one of the biggest scandals of the Zuma presidency.

Barely elected in 2009, the new head of state began work to secure the plot. What should have been an upgrade turned into an unbridled expansion project.

The cost of the site fell from 1.5 million to 12 million euros, financed with public funds. “Comfort in complete safety”, ironically sums up an investigation conducted by the Public Defender.

Each adjustment was justified in a ministerial report favourable to President Zuma. The swimming pool is a fire-fighting basin. The amphitheater, a soil retention wall. Add to this a reception centre for visitors, a clinic (presented as essential in this medical desert) and a helipad.

Cattle ruminate inside a new enclosure, even the barnyard has been redesigned for safety reasons: poultry now nest in a hen house where they will not trigger motion detectors.

This is the place where Zuma will complete his sentence.