It took me a while to gather the guts needed to watch the gruesome video in which a violent young man is seen furiously beating an old woman said to be his grandmother. In the appalling video shot by an unidentified person, the nuts young man is heard howling: ‘‘I don’t want stupidity. Show me […]

There are things better expressed through poetry. The commonest being love. Stunned by the beauty of Lapobo, an awed AR Cliff Lubwa p’Chong marveled: ‘‘Lapobo, tall but not too tall…when I think of her, makes food drop off my hand.’’ Love triggers poetic expression. The opposite of love too triggers poetry. When the walls of […]

On the Capital Gang, the public affairs talkshow on Capital FM this past Saturday, missiles jutted from the hip and mouth of Democratic Party president (DP), Norbert Mao.  Understandable considering that days before, Mao had been in the trenches with Butambala Member of Parliament Mwanga Kivumbu who he blitzkrieged as a ‘‘meal-card’’ politician. On the […]

Martin Aliker’s autobiography—The Bell Is Ringing—is a deserved self-actualisation chest-thump from a man whose illustrious life cut through major epochs: Uganda under British rule, post-independence turbulence, Uganda under Musevenism and his full embrace of Bretton Woods policies. Under each of these epochs, albeit each with its distinctive features, Aliker prospered. The Bell Is Ringing is […]

A newly published scientific paper on the risks posed by consumption of satchet waragi has found that ‘‘no alcohol consumed in Acoli is safe’’. The study titled: ‘‘Assessing the health risks of consuming ‘sachet’ alcohol in Acoli, Uganda’’ was published in a US- based journal, PLOS ONE, on February 27, 2019. On its website, PLOS […]

The day lands Minister Betty Amongi stormed Amuru bristling with state power in her second attempt to forcefully survey land for sugarcane growing after a botched first assault, a journalist covering the affair told me cowed locals on seeing boots bolted for the bushes or hid in their huts, popping out to ask the journalist, […]

When you watch on TV Arua municipality’s Member of Parliament Ibrahim Abiriga or Kasanda County’s Simeo Nsubuga let out war cries in their surge to rip off the untested age limit from the pages of the 1995 constitution, what do you sense as their true driver? In power for a cool 31 uninterrupted years, a […]

Every time a ”new wave” sweeps our politics, as singer-turned politician Robert Kyagulanyi Sentamu aka Bobi Wine has done in the Kyadondo East parliamentary by-elections, progressive pundits scramble to interpret and assign it meaning and implication, often using a prism that interprets the wave as fresh energy in the fight against the hegemony of long-ruling […]

Tuesday evening, a list, purportedly of appointees in Museveni’s endlessly long and fat cabinet did the rounds online. Ever the eagle-eyed, Uganda’s chattering social media users were quick to note that the name of one prominent ‘‘minister’’ was missing on the list: Beatrice Anywar, the chameleon Kitgum municipality Member of Parliament. When you speak to […]

Financial support for bed-ridden Nanga maestro Ogwang Phillip Clipper has come in bits from far and wide; from the known and unknown; from the prominent and less prominent; from within and outside Uganda. The support is towards meeting the medical bills of the Nanga star with more than 430 songs to his name in a […]