Robert Kabera, a former Rwandan military officer, musician and critic of the Kigali regime, was found beheaded in Kamengo, outside Kampala. His head was missing, and the circumstances surrounding his murder remain unclear. Kabera fled Rwanda, alleging persecution by President Kagame's government.

The Arab slave trade trafficked over 20 million Africans into the Middle East. But today, there are hardly any Black populations in some of those countries. And it is not because they returned home. No. The reason is far darker than you imagine. The first thing Arabs did when they captured enslaved African men was castrate them. Their testicles were crushed between rocks. Sometimes the penis was cut as well. Thousands died from the procedure. This ensured that these men could never father children with enslaved women. It also meant they could never have children with their own women. They were stripped of their ability to reproduce, denied the chance to build families, and worked to death.

In June 1845, France committed one of the most horrifying massacres in human history — in Algeria 🇩🇿 Members of the Ouled Riah tribe had sought refuge inside caves in the Dahra Mountains with their families, hoping to escape the French military campaign. Instead of accepting their surrender, French forces under Colonel Aimable Pélissier sealed the cave entrances and deliberately set brushwood on fire, filling the caves with thick, suffocating smoke. Inside those caves were men, women, children, infants and the elderly. They were trapped underground with nowhere to run and no way to escape the smoke. Families who had sought shelter from the French military found themselves buried alive in a death chamber. They were suffocated alive. Over 1200 Algerians were killed. And this was not some isolated act of cruelty by a rogue soldier. The practice of enfumades — smoking people out of caves — formed part of the brutal methods employed during France's conquest of Algeria under Governor-General Thomas Robert Bugeaud. This is what French colonialism looked like on the ground: entire communities subjected to collective punishment, civilians trapped in caves, and families killed because they stood in the way of a foreign power determined to conquer their land.

When Lee Kuan Yew took Singapore from a struggling British colonial port to one of the world's most prosperous economies, he proved that a country's starting point does not have to determine its destiny. Singapore became independent in 1965 after separating from Malaysia. It had no natural-resource wealth to rely on, faced unemployment and housing shortages, and had to build its future as a small island nation. Lee's government pursued industrialization, attracted foreign investment, invested in education and public housing, built an efficient civil service, and positioned Singapore as a major global trade and financial hub. In just a few decades, Singapore transformed itself into a high-income economy and one of the world's most important commercial centres. His achievement was not magic. It was the result of long-term planning, disciplined institutions, strategic leadership and policies focused on national development. Singapore hanged corruption politicians. Lee's legacy also included restrictions on political opposition and civil liberties, but his economic transformation remains one of the most studied examples of rapid national development. Singapore's story is a reminder that nation-building requires more than speeches and promises. It requires vision, competence, discipline and leaders who can turn a national strategy into reality.