I am shocked Ugandan journalists are angry

Museveni’s violence and what it should teach us

THE LAST WORD | Andrew M. Mwenda | Yesterday the NRM government, in characteristic style, used military police to unleash violence against a group of activists escorting Bobi Wine to the UN Human Rights office to deliver a petition. It was the same old style with an added level of brutality this time mercilessly employed against journalists. The evening news and some comments from some of our “development partners” made the beating of journalists a big deal.

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Uganda’s change dilemma

How our country is caught between Museveni’s frying pan and the opposition’s fire

THE LAST WORD | ANDREW M. MWENDA | Ugandan activists, intellectuals and “intellectuals” hostile to President Yoweri Museveni get scared when one presents evidence that change can produce undedsirable outcomes. And so it was that on Thursday February 11, I tweeted an article in the Financial Times. It argued that a decade since a popular uprising toppled long-ruling Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, the country has not improved in anything but retrogressed in everything. This let lose the gods of intellectual, but mostly emotional, war.

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Africa’s democratic dilemma

How the Western world has decided our future for us and it seeks to impose it on us

THE LAST WORD | ANDREW M. MWENDA | President Yoweri Museveni’s suspension of the Democratic Governance Facility (DGF) has caused uproar. This has been a big programme by Uganda’s “development partners” aimed at “providing harmonised, coherent and well-coordinated support to state and non-state entities to strengthen democratisation, protect human rights, improve access to justice and enhance accountability in Uganda.”

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The myth of Museveni’s rigging

Here is why if there was pre-ticking of ballots, it had little influence on the final results

THE LAST WORD | ANDREW M. MWENDA | There is a myth in Uganda’s opposition that President Yoweri Museveni steals their votes. Opposition leader Dr. Kizza Besigye has been the principle promoter of this myth, claiming that he won all the electoral contests against Museveni in 2001, 2006, 2011 and 2016. This has stifled the opposition in Uganda, locking them in victimhood where they indulge in self-pity and refuse to recognise their own internal weaknesses and design a strategy to overcome them.

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The price of shortsightedness

How Bobi Wine is turning his moment of triumph into a missed opportunity for strategic leadership

THE LAST WORD |  Andrew M. Mwenda | Bobi Wine is without any doubt a great guy. His greatness does not lie in his thinking but in his character. And that could be the problem. A little over three years ago, he was largely known as a weed-smoking Rastafarian who sings good music often with strong political undertones. Then by one stroke of political intuition, he transformed himself into a major national political figure and international star, totally eclipsing Dr. Kizza Besigye, the principled, courageous but belligerent leader of Uganda’s opposition. He then took on the indefatigable President Yoweri Museveni by the horns for the presidency and gave him a real run for his money.

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Bobi Wine’s dangerous duplicity

What the evacuation of his family from Uganda before elections reveals about Uganda’s musician turned politician Kyagulanyi

THE LAST WORD | ANDREW M MWENDA | In 2018, I appeared on Frontline program of NBS television with Bobi Wine. In the heat of the debate he said that if there were chaos in Uganda, I would be the first person to board a plane and run to exile. He said for him he has nowhere to go because his only home is Uganda. Right? This week Bobi Wine evacuated his entire family to the safety of America. Please note that he did not send them to Kenya or Rwanda or Tanzania, who are our immediate neighbours. He sent them to far away America. Why?

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A tribute to a great friend, Ezra Bunyenyezi

THE LAST WORD | ANDREW MWENDA |  And so it was that on the morning of December 24th, while going through Instagram, I saw a post on the wall of Lucy Bunyenyezi (Smize) announcing the death of her uncle Ezra Bunyenyezi.

For a brief moment I lost my balance. What? How? When? Why? I just could not believe it! How can Ezra, a man of boundless love and and an abounding generosity, die? He was so full of life and zest, the world needed more and more of him.

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