Jonah Francis Nalima Kulubya, Kampala, Uganda
Let the Permit Live
In a hushed room of polished mahogany and humming fluorescents, a British officer’s fingers hovered over a fragile, yellowed permit—a lifeline in a world built on stolen power.
Uganda Protectorate Driving Permit (Section 83) – No: 9091 – Issued: 1940 – Magistrate Jonah Francis Nalima Kulubya
A paper pass that could define a man—granting movement or branding him suspect. This was a government document that determined not only where he could go, but how he was seen in a city built on oppression.
I wonder how long he stood at that counter—hands steady, eyes fixed—as the British official skimmed his application. The fluorescent light hummed above, its glare dancing off polished mahogany. The pages whispered as they turned—a slow, deliberate cadence. He waited. A pause. The official’s fingers hovered over the paper. Another pause. A glance up. A glance down. The typewriters clacked—a rhythmic reminder of countless fates being sealed.
A missing document. A wrong surname. Each denial had its own choreography—a practiced routine. My grandfather had seen it before. The Europeans had their permits stamped without a second thought; the Asians—descendants of the laborers who built the railways—navigated a middle ground and were granted access. For Africans, the process was slower, the scrutiny sharper. Background checks. Extra paperwork. An unspoken demand to prove his right to move through a city built on stolen power.
He did not shift his stance. To move would be to betray uncertainty. He knew this was never just about a permit—it was about presence. It was about permission.
The official shifted in his chair. Another pause. My grandfather held his breath. The papers lay stacked on the desk, waiting. In the silence—broken only by the soft creak of leather as the officer adjusted his position—a final glance was cast at the document. A breath. Then, finally—the scrape of the pen against paper.
Against all odds, the ink did not falter. The permit was his—a quiet triumph signed in unwavering strokes.
The Yellow Car: A Moving Monument
YELLOW—unignorable.
Not for blending.
Not for silence.
It’s a declaration.
A color of defiance.
The colonial record read only: Magistrate Jonah Francis Nalima Kulubya. Yet the streets knew him differently—in the vibrant roar of a yellow sunburst Toyota Cressida (Mark II), surging over Kampala’s red soil. The car carved through layers of dust from the circuit courts of Namirembe to the working-class neighborhood of Nakulabye.
First, the sound: a low growl from its smooth 2.0L inline-six—elegant, unbothered. Like a bassline creeping in before the drop. Like something that claimed its space before the road even agreed.
Then, the color: yellow—blinding, impossible, loud. The Toyota Cressida cut through Kampala’s streets like an exclamation mark—a refusal.
Everywhere that car traveled, people turned. They stared. They whispered. In a city where most cars blended into dust, his gleamed defiantly—a signal flare slicing through the monotony, announcing its presence at every turn. It was the car that made you murmur “Muzungu” under your breath when you saw it coming.
But the yellow car was more than a spectacle. It was a sanctuary and a throne—a shield against the outside world, a seat of power from within.
Some build empires.
Some drive them.
The moment someone saw the car, they began to construct a story about the man inside it. Wealthy? Dangerous? Untouchable? It didn’t matter. The car spoke first. It dictated perception before a word was exchanged.
My grandfather was singular—like the Yellow Toyota Cressida he drove. A car no one else had, a color no one else dared. A Japanese import via Britain, now in the hands of a Ugandan magistrate. Ferried from the very empire his father refused to kneel to.
The car was a contradiction. An insistence. A declaration:
They ruled once, but he drove now.
That car wasn’t supposed to be there. Not by British design. Not by their rules. Yet there it was—a contradiction, a yellow refusal, a Black man’s right to move challenged in his own country by men who stole the land and then dared to write laws as if they owned it.
The Courts Collapsed, But His Stories Held Power
Justice was silenced in the courts.
But in our house, words still held power.
Every night, the BBC beeps signaled something we could trust.
BEEP. BEEP. BEEP.—beep—beep—BEEEEEEP.
⎯•⎯•⎯•⎯•⎯•⎯•⎯––––––––
The sound split through the house, even from the back room—a pulse, steady and unfailing. I can still hear it now.
Like clockwork. Like a heartbeat. The Greenwich Time Signal (GTS) cut through the night like an EKG, steady and reassuring.
For some, it was just the start of the BBC World Service.
For us, it was the moment the night truly began.
He lay in bed, his six-foot frame stretched out, one hand propped behind his head. We sat at his feet—cross-legged, leaning against the wall—waiting. The BBC was on, but he was the broadcast we tuned into.
By day, he moved through the world with authority.
By night, he let the world move through him.
The room smelled of old newspapers, their edges curling, pages soft from countless turns. He didn’t just read them—he interpreted them.
The BBC reported.
He made sense of it.
The world once arrived in beeps, in steady voices, in things you could trust.
Now, news shatters on screens into a million fragmented takes before you’ve even had time to think.
My grandfather didn’t just listen—he translated. I wonder what he would say today, in a time when everyone is talking but no one is making sense.
And now, decades later, I still hear those beeps.
The rhythm. The tether.
The quiet certainty that all was right with the world for those last waking moments.
Once, the world arrived in beeps, in voices we trusted.
Now, it comes in noise.
Yet, I still hear my grandfather’s voice—cutting through it all.
The Legacy: A Story That Refuses to Fade
On February 13th, 2002, at 73 years young, my grandfather walked off the page—but never out of the story.
I hold his driving permit in my hands, staring at a younger version of him. The paper is worn at the edges, softened by time and touch. I run my fingers over his signature—ink faded yet deliberate.
This was his. He held it. Drove with it. Lived with it.
And now, all these years later, it’s in my hands—a tangible proof that he was here, that he moved through this world before I did.
History doesn’t vanish—it waits, echoing for us to speak.
Share your story. Let’s ensure our truths aren’t lost.
If we don’t tell our stories, someone else will—wrongly.
Jonah Batambuze is a Ugandan-American interdisciplinary artist, cultural architect, and community builder remixing diaspora and identity into radical narratives of connection. As the founder and leader of two global communities—BlindianProject and South Asians for Black Lives, Batambuze creates spaces where shared histories turn into dialogues and action. His work cracks open the intersections of Black and Brown cultures, taking sonic memory, moving images, culinary traditions, and words and flipping them into tools for liberation
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