By Andrew M. Mwenda With the nominations for LC5 candidates done, Sunday Vision reported that the ruling NRM has candidates in all the 112 districts; FDC has candidates in only 40 districts, UPC 27 and DP 13. The combined opposition has candidates in only 80 districts. Meanwhile, there are 118 …
Read More »Apartheid in post-apartheid South Africa
By Andrew M. Mwenda On October 24th, I went to Entebbe Airport to catch a South African Airways flight via Johannesburg to Namibia. Airline officials said I needed a transit visa through South Africa. I explained that I was not going to enter the country, only to change flights in …
Read More »How growth can benefit the masses
By Andrew M. Mwenda On Wednesday last week, the Uganda Bureau of Statistics (UBOS) published results of its National Household Survey which showed that the proportion of people living in poverty has declined from 31 to 23%. It was good news for President Yoweri Museveni who had just been nominated …
Read More »Independents expose holes in NRM socks
By Andrew M.Mwenda With nominations for parliamentary candidates finished, independents (largely malcontents who lost in the NRM primaries) are now the largest political party in the contest albeit a non-organised and unconscious one. By November 30, out of the 238 directly contestable seats, independents had fielded 269 candidates (in 95 …
Read More »Why NRM losers don’t join FDC
By Andrew M. Mwenda An important feature of the recently concluded NRM election primaries was the violence and fraud that characterised the process across almost the entire country. This produced a large number of aggrieved NRM politicians who have declared they want to run as independents. This is intriguing because …
Read More »MDGs: Let Africa shape her destiny
By Andrew M. Mwenda Most of this week has been consumed by the debate on the progress poor countries have made in achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). I have never been an enthusiast of MDGs because I see them as part of the increasing efforts by the international community …
Read More »NRM elections and Uganda’s agony
By Andrew M. Mwenda The continuing primary elections for the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) provides an important insight into the political health of our country. For more than two weeks now, we have been witnesses to a political party election that is both a sham and a farce. The …
Read More »Kagame speaks about his victory and political repression (Part2)
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 voting in that country’s presidential election. Mwenda had started the show titled “Rwanda Decides” to promote public …
Read More »Sedition judgment victory for all
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 …
Read More »Kagame speaks about his election victory, claims on political repression
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 …
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