Kingdom of Kubala echoes colonisation

All jokes aside,the Kingdom of Kubala echoes colonisation.

In recent weeks, the small Scottish town of Jedburgh found itself at the centre of an unusual development, three Black individuals, who include a Zimbabwean Jean Gasho , established what they call the "Kingdom of Kubala" on private woodland. Their act of occupying land and declaring it a sovereign kingdom provoked a range of emotions among local residents from unease to outrage.

Beyond the surface, this episode invites a deeper reflection. The feelings that many in Jedburgh expressed  of intrusion, loss of control, and violation  are strikingly similar to how Africans felt when European powers colonised their lands. It mirrors the profound sense of dispossession endured when entire communities were displaced, resources seized and lives uprooted.

The analogy extends even further. Just as slavery violently stripped Africans from their homelands and identities the emotional reaction to Kubala reveals how unsettling it feels when power, ownership, and control are challenged in unexpected ways. What happened in Jedburgh is, in many ways a symbolic reversal,a reminder of what was done on a much larger and devastating scale to Africa and its people.

Some may argue that colonisation and slavery belong to history, more than a century behind us. But history does not simply evaporate with the turning of the calendar. The legacy of those violations continues to reverberate. Structural inequalities, economic disparities, and cultural trauma remain embedded in the lived realities of Africans and their descendants across the world. The past is not distant, it is present in the way societies function and in the narratives communities hold about themselves and others.

The Kingdom of Kubala may be dismissed by  as an eccentric or unlawful act. But it forces us to confront an uncomfortable truth, violations of land and sovereignty leave deep wounds. For Africans, those wounds have not healed, and what took place in Jedburgh is a stark reminder of how painful it feels to have one's space and dignity undermined.

The uproar around Kubala shows that people everywhere share a common instinct to protect what is theirs. If anything, it should deepen our understanding of why colonisation and slavery remain such sensitive, unresolved, and urgent issues in our collective memory.

Then you hear people blame the Late Zimbabwean President Robert Gabriel Mugabe for embarking on a Land Reform exercise in Zimbabwe. Those guys in Kubala were only 3 people occupying less than a Hectare of land but they were fought like they had invaded Scotland in its entirety.

Kubala Kubala Ilizwe.