Timothy Kalyegira, one of Uganda's most controversial journalists, has long set off my "crazy" radar. He's a vocal denier of the thousands of political murders perpetrated during Idi Amin's reign, for one. Even more strange: he's claimed for almost two years that he has access to a "seer" who predicts the future of African politics. In today's Monitor he has an article titled Why I no longer fear President Museveni, in which he somehow manages to equate skepticism at the power of his fortune-telling friend to belief in Museveni's omnipotence and to declare that this "seer" has guaranteed him protection from censorship and arrest, all at once. Enjoy:When I first wrote about the seer in July 2006, I was roundly criticised by my colleague Andrew Mwenda who recommended I check into a...
My latest piece is up at Global Voices Online:(UPDATE: Andrew Mwenda has been freed on bond, see his letter to supporters on the TED blog.)Bloggers and independent media outlets in Uganda are reporting that three journalists and a photographer at The Independent, an opposition newspaper based in Kampala, have been arrested and that the paper's offices have been raided by Ugandan security forces. One of those arrested was Andrew Mwenda, who was previously charged with sedition for his coverage of the death of Sudanese vice president John Garang in 2005.Read more...
Yesterday Reuters reported that Andrew Mwenda, one of Uganda's — if not Africa's — most tenacious journalists, has been arrested along with two colleagues, Odobo Bichachi John Njoroge. The Daily Monitor is saying a photographer, Joseph Kiggundu, has also been taken.Mwenda's paper, the Independent, has an account of the arrest and the raid that followed it:At [Mwenda's] house, the police confiscated his lap-top, flash disks, 43 CDs full of information – both official and private, a manuscript of a book he has co-authored with Prof. Roger Tangri on Elite Corruption and Politics in Uganda. After that, Mwenda was driven to the offices of The Independent. ...Then the search starts from the editors’ offices but not before some ugly scenes. Herbert Labejja, the magazine’s...
I got an e-mail this morning from my friend Kate, a student at Makerere, with the subject line "Kampala Riots."The Monitor and the New Vision both say that over 50 people were arrested on Friday after a riot sparked by a strike to protest a recent police crackdown on taxi drivers who operate without permits or whose vehicles are in poor condition. Princess writes that it may also have to do with a new law restricting taxi stops along Kampala road to City Square.The strike, organized by the Uganda Taxi Operators and Drivers Association (UTODA) committee, seems to have started with taxi drivers and conductors and spread to boda-boda drivers via intimidation. Can anyone confirm this? Are boda-boda drivers part of UTODA?Also, the New Vision says the crackdown started on March 31, but I...
My next piece is up at Global Voices Online. Featured are Ugandan Insomniac, Moses Paul Sserwanga, Nappy Brain, Scarlett Lion and Rafshizzle.The blogren had their collective eye on Uganda's mainstream media this week. One blogger "treads where the brave dare not go" by posting photos from a tragedy near the capital, while another criticizes the government paper for its seeming support of rapists.Read...
My next piece is up at Global Voices Online:To scroll down the main page of Citizen Uganda is to indulge in a visual symphony: carefully selected photos align harmoniously with well-crafted blocks of text. Thick lines in complementary colors separate commentary from current events. Trios of links gracefully rotate, gliding from entertainment tips to featured blogs to Africa-focused videos and back again with the ease of a concert harpist trailing her fingers over the strings.In short: Citizen Uganda is the best new online source of information about Uganda, and it's also very, very pretty.Read more...
In light of a recent spate of posts and comments asking what its purpose is — one-stop entertainment hub? blogren free-for-all? — The Kampalan is running a poll. What do you think should happen to the site?If you think The Kampalan should stick around and you want to become a contributor, e-mail me at...
CitizenUganda is a new site covering politics, business, fashion, citizen media (including a series of blog profiles that's hit up Dennis and Glenna so far, among others) and other goodies.The site's still under construction, but a steadily growing body of editorial posts already talks about Facebook, the iPhone and the Daily Monitor's redesign.XOXO, and can't wait for...
In Uganda I held the Economist as the Holy Grail of Western media. I had a friend who had somehow connived his way into a free transfer of his subscription, and Post Office Mondays were better than weekends because I knew I would find the magazine cradled in the box like a gift from the heavens. The Economist could do no wrong.Until now, with their article on Iraq and Uganda.I don't take issue with the content, and I think it's great that they're spreading the reporting love around. Only it's not exactly reporting, is it, to rip all your information from a Daily Monitor article written two months ago.Imitation is supposedly the highest form of flattery, in which case David Gauvey Herbert should be thrilled, but if I were him I'd be composing a very angry SIR— right about...
My latest piece is up on Global Voices Online:Ugandan blogger and radio personality Dennis Matanda's provocative opinions on African culture, Idi Amin and recolonization have been covered on Global Voices before. Dennis caused another stir last month when he posted on his blog under the title “How to Be Dead.” The post chronicled the radio show, ensuing threats and frightening act of vandalism leading up to his flight from Uganda, a decision met with a mixture of support, bemusement and skepticism by his fellow blogren.Now living in the United States, Dennis is working on hisfirst fiction piece: a novel titled Master of the Sagging Cheeks, which he hopes will bring a change in the way the world views African leaders. He agreed to share his story with Global Voices.Read...
My next piece is up at Global Voices Online:Uganda's lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) community has gotten a lot of press recently in the form of a number of articles written by Katherine Roubos, a 22-year-old Stanford student from the United States. Most recently, Roubos covered the first ever LGBTI press conference, a story that prompted an anti-gay rally in Kampala.Read...
Radio Katwe is a independent Ugandan news radio station that gained international attention from Reporters Without Borders last year when its website was blocked by the Ugandan Communications Commission just before the presidential election.Despite the block, the site is still going strong, publishing a daily mixture of hard-hitting journalism and amusing gossip. The following article falls in the latter category:British etiquette experts in Uganda to train M7 in table mannersWe got some information some months ago that as the CHOGM plans continue to gather momentum, some British experts in protocol and etiquette were flown to Uganda to help Museveni get CHOGM compatible.Those people who have sat in the same room with him at state dinners know that M7 is a very crude man. He eats like a...
I met Andrew Mwenda earlier this year at the Royal Ascot Goat Races. He was wearing a tie and put his arm around me, and together we watched the Casino Simba girls perform a blend of Kazakh-traditional and Britney-exotic dances.This is how I will always remember him, though Mwenda is known for other things: his passionate argument against foreign aid to Africa during this year's TEDGlobal conference is one. His run-in with the Ugandan government for reporting openly on the death of southern Sudanese leader John Garang is another.This month will add another line to his CV: after spending a year as a Knight Fellow at Stanford, Mwenda is back in Uganda, and he has big plans. He's leaving the Daily Monitor, where he has served as the political editor since 2004, and starting his own...
I wanted to bring your attention to a few bloggers who just crossed (or re-crossed) my radar screen:GayUgandaI am a gay blogger, blogging from Uganda, and willing to talk knowledgeably about my sexuality, my lover, and my personal life in Uganda. Strange. Very strange.GayUganda covers issues concerning sexual minorities in Uganda and Africa. Check out the sidebar for news about the Ugandan GLBTI community.Building the Nationi am jose acadio buendia. or pip in sons & lovers. prince kung in the last empress. xuma in mine boy. ekwueme in the concubine. i am.Degstar switched from Blogger to Wordpress in March, and I missed it. His most recent post is a letter to fellow blogger Dennis Matanda.Daniel KalinakiJust an ordinary bloke.Not sure how I missed this one. Daniel writes about media and...
My strongest support goes to my friend Katherine Roubos, whose courageous coverage of the GLBT community in Uganda has garnered this:I went to the rally to be a part of a team of white female decoys (Katherine's editor sent her to cover it, which theoretically gave her some sort of journalistic immunity, but the purpose of the rally already nullified that. Better safe than sorry, not so?) and to exercise my own curiousity: the event was organized by Martin Ssempa, a conservative Ugandan religious activist with whom I recently exchanged words.Wow. Martin Ssempa is undeniably charismatic. He is also undeniably creepy. For all you Lawrencians: imagine Fred Phelps shaking your hand. I came home and took a very long shower.P.S. Aga Khan, if you fire her, that's it. We're...
I haven't been great about updating lately — I've been busy planning the July Student Global Ambassador Immersion and watching The L Word with my housemates. But then Salim Saleh went and gave me the push I needed to start writing again:State minister for finance Gen. Caleb Akandwanaho [Salim Saleh, brother of President Yoweri Museveni] has lashed out at scholars for failing to invent solutions to eradicate poverty and corruption in Africa."We need to blame you the academia for failing to conceptualise our problems and get solutions to our people's problems. You just talk, then write a few sentences and blame everybody else except yourselves," the minister told a three-day conference organised by a network of Black American policy specialists and the Makerere University Business...
It's a week late, but I wanted to point you all towards David Tumusiime's fantastic article about Ugandan bloggers in Sunday's New Vision. I especially appreciate him quoting my use of the word...
Kelly, UBHH newbie Tim and I had a run-in with the ever-opinionated 27th Comrade over the Virginia Tech tragedy at this week's UBHH. Our passionate young communist argued that Americans deserve what they get and shouldn't make a big deal out of things like this because far more than 33 people die from violence, preventable illness or sheer neglect each day in Africa because of things America has done or failed to do. Kelly and Tim were ruffled, and I think the appropriate response to insensitivity and callousness isn't more of the same. Still, I get his point...sort of.The VA Tech shootings earned far more American media coverage than any event in Africa last week, despite the fact that Nigeria had hotly contested elections, Somalia is exploding, the Ugandan peace talks resumed and...
Last week Reuters launched a new Africa-focused news site called (what else?) Reuters Africa. The site features pages for each country (check out Uganda's) that, in addition to regular and business-focused news content, include this:Yep. You know what that means? We just got ourselves an audience. Global Voices Online already gets 300,000 readers each month, but the new partnership will expose GVO content to about 7.6 million more.A lot of you have already been featured on GVO — in the last month, Degstar, Inktus, Dennis Matanda, Baz, Pernille, Ivan, Mr. Magoo and Zack and Joshi have all been mentioned. The Uganda section, which Josh edits, follows the big stories and conversations coming out of our part of the blogosphere — our stories. And now, those stories are going...
The Daily Monitor reported today that Vice President Gilbert Bukenya drove himself home last Friday. This is not the first time the VP has flagrantly disregarded his security squad: in December he went, unsupervised, to the gym.Another star example of this week's African media: Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo defended his People's Democratic Party presidential candidate Alhaji Musa Umar Yar'Adua against rumors of ill health using the infallible logic, "Can somebody with one kidney play squash?"Last one: Ghana's Accra Mail declared that smuggling in Ghana is decreasing. The cause? Police efforts to decrease...
Lots of goodies this week. Commenting on them all would take more time than I have, but I want to put them out there for discussion:Country Boi makes an excellent point in his comment on my post about blogging and anonymity. He's right — blogging is self-publication, which means that you're never entirely anonymous. Even if you blog under an assumed name and keep personal details off your site, you're still putting your opinions in the public sphere. This gives anyone license to debate and reference these opinions and anything else you post using your pseudonym, which is exactly what Dennis did in his article — he didn't connect anyone's pseudonym with their real name if that name isn't published in connection with the blog.That doesn't mean I don't take issue with some...
Earlier this week, White African featured an interview with Neville Newey, creator of the Reddit-esque African social bookmarking site Muti. I think Newey, in addition to having an awesome name, is doing great things, and I agreed with every point he made in his interview until he answered the last question: What are your thoughts on the impact of blogging in Africa?Newey claims blogging in Africa isn't as influential as blogging in North America because news here is more independent (less frequently corporately owned) than it is there. I would argue that both corporate and government ownership play enormous roles in the censorship of major African media. Furthermore, the main reason blogging has been slower to take off in Africa than in other parts of the world isn't because of the...
Check out more Happy Hour pictures on the Jackfruity Flickr siteThe topics of conversation at Thursday night's Inaugural Uganda Bloggers Happy Hour ranged from cell phones to Alice Lakwena to the transvestitical possibilities of Philip Seymour Hoffman. The Jabberwocky was recited, blogging addictions were confessed, heaven was declared to be just like North Korea, and the Ugandan blogosphere gained a fanboy. Also, we unanimously agreed that Inktus is hot.We came together to discuss the issues circulating among our blogs and throughout the country, to put faces with names, and to enjoy a few drinks with our fellow geeks. I'd like to think we all got something special from our exchange — I came home with multiple offers of free jackfruit and the shocked insistence of many of my...
The first Uganda Bloggers Happy Hour will take place on Thursday, January 18, 2007 at 6:30 PM at Mateo's (above Nando's on Kampala Road, K'la). Bring your wit, your feistiness, your eloquence and your humor and meet up with the myriad of voices, minds and opinions that make up the Ugandan blogosphere.Friends, readers and the blog-curious are welcome, as is anyone willing to debate the faults and merits of Aga Khan or Jay-Z. We hope this happy hour will serve as a springboard from which the Uganda blogging community can trade ideas, stories and opinions and continue to grow. We look forward to seeing you there!(Out of the Uganda blogger loop? Check out the Global Voices Uganda page or the links to the right.)Leave a comment in the box below if you're planning on coming, and we'll add...
Several weeks ago I was discussing my interest in Aga Khan with a friend of mine over a couple of rounds of waragi-and-tonic. This friend works for the Daily Monitor, the more independent of Uganda's two main newspapers. He informed me, somewhat conspiratorially, that Aga Khan owns the paper.I filed this piece of information away somewhere in the back of my brain with the waragi and let it sit there until yesterday, when I decided to see if it was true.First resort: Google, the Omniscient God of Search Engines. I typed in "aga khan daily monitor" and was shocked/thrilled/somewhat disappointed to see that, aside from a couple of news articles about Aggie's recent publicity stunts, the first result listed was none other than yours truly.Hello, I'm Jackfruity, and I'm an Aga...
In their October 7 Daily Monitor article on the Ugandan cricket team's disappointing performance in Kenya last week, Hussein Bogere and Innocent Ndawula manage to use all of the following phrases:the angel of death who plucks out the heart of our loved onesUganda's batting problems stand out like spilled gravy on a white sheetwake up and smell the coffeemedia hullabaloocricket Czarsfor heavens' sakecry the beloved countryAnd they say Uganda has no literary...