John Ruganda was Uganda's

Uganda

Uganda , officially the Republic of Uganda, is a landlocked country in East Africa. Uganda is also known as the "Pearl of Africa". It is bordered on the east by Kenya, on the north by South Sudan, on the west by the Democratic Republic of the Congo, on the southwest by Rwanda, and on the south by...

 best known playwright

Playwright

A playwright, also called a dramatist, is a person who writes plays.The term is not a variant spelling of "playwrite", but something quite distinct: the word wright is an archaic English term for a craftsman or builder...

. Beyond his work as a playwright, Ruganda was also a professor at University of North, South Africa, University of Nairobi

University of Nairobi

The University of Nairobi is the largest university in Kenya. Although its history as an educational institution goes back to 1956, it did not become an independent university until 1970 when the University of East Africa was split into three independent universities: Makerere University in...

, and Makerere University

Makerere University

Makerere University , Uganda's largest and second-oldest higher institution of learning, , was first established as a technical school in 1922. In 1963 it became the University of East Africa, offering courses leading to general degrees from the University of London...

.

Ruganda's plays "reflect the reality of the East African sociopolitical situation after independence." He was considered a shaping force of East African theater. The Burdens (1972)and The Floods (1980) have become a regular part of curriculum in Literature classes.

Plays

• The Burdens, Kampala, Uganda, National Theatre, January 1970
• Black Mamba, Kampala, 1972
• The Good Woman of Setzuan, by Bertolt Brecht, translated into Swahili by Ruganda, Nairobi, Nairobi University Players, November 1978
• The Floods, Nairobi, French Cultural Centre, 1 March 1979
• Music without Tears, Nairobi, Nairobi University Players, February 1982
• Echoes of Silence, Nairobi, 1985

Television

• The Secret of the Season, screenplay by Ruganda, Voice of Kenya, March 1973
• The Floods, screenplay by Ruganda, Voice of Kenya, April 1973
• The Illegitimate, screenplay by Ruganda, Voice of Kenya, August 1982

Further reading

• Horn, "Uhuru to Amin: The Golden Decade of Theatre in Uganda," Literary Half-Yearly, 19, no. 1 (1978): 22-49
• Peter Nazareth, "Africa under Neocolonialism: New East African Writing," Busara, 6, no. 1 (1974): 19-32
• Mineke Schipper, Theatre and Society in Africa (Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1982)