"Sometimes it falls upon a generation to be great. You can be that great generation."
Museveni and Castro both came to power through a revolution. Despite a crippling international blockade led by America, Cuba under Castro made huge strides in development while Uganda, a darling of the West, has remained backward – with all those millions of dollars in aid. It is a country where ordinary diarrhea is a life-threatening condition.
A look at the region’s political scene reveals the grim struggle between those in power and those who oppose them, in a way that augurs ill for the political pluralism they have all subscribed to, at least on paper. The gap between the written constitutional provisions, which set up multi-party dispensations, and what happens on the ground grows wider every year.
It was another big week of contrasts in East Africa. In Uganda, the government was chasing down and beating up the opposition, arresting its leaders for fear they would disrupt President Yoweri Museveni’s swearing-in for his seventh term. It also shut down social media.
Why do so many African leaders overstay their welcome or break electoral rules? In the recent elections in Uganda, 30 year incumbent Yoweri Museveni won a fifth five-year term. Opposition activists are contesting the results. This has raised again that eternal post-independence question. Museveni is seventy-one years old and has governed since he took power in a military coup in 1986; longer than the majority of the country’s population have lived.
Kampala – Uganda’s main opposition leader, Kizza Besigye, was this morning arrested from his home in Kasangati. Besigye who had earlier announced he would go to the electoral commission to pick the official declaration forms of the presidential race was stopped as he attempted to leave his home. He was taken to a blue police van and whisked away to Naggalama police station where he is cur-rently detained. Besigye has rejected the results of Thursday’s election won by veteran President Yoweri Museveni, and called on his supporters to join a protest march on Monday.
Kampala – Miss Uganda promotes the image of women in agriculture and encourages greater involvement in the sector among youth.
Native of Cape Town, Sean Jacobs lives in Brooklyn, New York and teaches in Manhattan. He obsesses about the relationship between politics and popular culture, but the main rationale for his blog is to comment on what passes for media coverage of the African continent.
Sokari Ekine is a Nigerian social justice activist living in Spain, with a background in technology, gender issues and human rights. She is interested in creating a community of grassroots African bloggers as a way for Africans to exchange ideas, share experiences and tell their own stories in our own words.
Rosebelle Kagumire is an experienced Ugandan Journalist. She won the best Journalist blogger English category at the Panos hosted competition in 2009. Currently she is a student of MA. Media, Conflict and Peace studies at University for Peace (UPEACE), Costa Rica.
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