In The Magazine

By The Independent Team Disagreed on; Northern and Luwero war Election strategy Will UPC departure boost or weaken IPC? When Olara Otunnu returned to Uganda in December 2009 after 23 years in exile, many political analysts predicted that his entry would boost the opposition interparty cooperation, which was then a …

BY Bonny Rwiyamilira A cloud of allegations is leading Rwanda to renege on earlier commitments to peacekeeping The chorus of denunciations over a leaked United Nations High Commission for Human Rights (UNHCR) report that accuses the Rwandan Army of genocide in the 1990s against Hutus in the Democratic Republic of …

By Andrew M. Mwenda Last week, the Constitutional Court declared the sedition law unconstitutional. The judgment marked a major and symbolic watershed in Uganda’s democratisation process. For almost a century, the law of sedition has been used by successive regimes in Uganda to stifle free speech. Although introduced by the …

By Mubatsi Asinja Habati Bududa landslide victims destined for Kiryandongo after six months in IDP camps James Mangu lost more than his home in the Bududa landslides on March 1, 2010. Seated amongst hovering houseflies and half-naked children running wildly through the parade of tents that dot Bulucheke Internally Displaced …

By Isaac Mufumba The party has no budget, trading arm or known financiers Seven years after the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) was registered as a political party, it has no annual budget nor a clear financial system to guide expenditures on its activities. The NRMs Deputy Spokesman Ofwono Opondo’s …

By Haggai Matsiko President’s intervention buys three months for a solution to contested NIC payments A student crosses at the closed faculty of social science Makerere University during the Lecturers strike on August 27. ‚INDEPENDENT/JIMMY SIYA Emanuel Elamoit, an international relations masters student at Makerere University, is a sad man. …

By Andrew M. Mwenda On Tuesday August 10th, The Independent Managing Editor, Andrew M. Mwenda, hosted President Paul Kagame of Rwanda on a radio show on Contact FM in Kigali, a day after the voting in that country’s presidential election. Mwenda had started the show titled Rwanda Decidesto promote public …

By Matthew Stein Century old law scrapped symbolising new day for press and civil freedom. On the morning of Aug 25, 2010 a dozen or so journalists clamoured into the registrar’s dingy basement office at the Court of Appeals on Parliament Avenue in the hope of witnessing history. The registrar, …

By Matthew Stein During a recent press conference organised by the Uganda Journalists Association (UJA) in the wake of the Andrew Mwenda and Eastern Africa Media Institute sedition victory, Mwenda recalled his four days of detainment with pride and fondness.  ‘Going to jail for me was a very important milestone,’ …

By Andrew M. Mwenda It is rare to read an opinion about politics in Uganda in our media whose premise is our reality. Largely because of the hegemonic influence of Western ideas, most commentators begin with an abstract theory of politics based largely on a context other than our own. …