In The Magazine

By Andrew M. Mwenda How Khartoum is using South Sudan to hide a rebellion by its own people The low intensity conflict between the new state of South Sudan and the Republic of Sudan has escalated into a near full-scale war. On Monday April 9, the Sudanese Peoples’ Liberation Army …

By Haggai Matsiko As the dispute between Sudan and South Sudan over oil transportation dues deteriorates into full-fledged war, The Independent reports of an intense rhetoric that could see Kenya and Uganda sucked in. Following separation, most of the oil fields fell in South Sudan’s territory but Sudan remains the …

By Jocelyn Edwards Harassment, beatings for Ugandan migrants in South Sudan Okello (not his real name), a 19-year-old orphan from Uganda, came to South Sudan in search of a better life. Having lost both of his parents and without a job in his own country, he hoped to cash in …

By Andrew Mwenda and Mubatsi A. Habati Leading political philosopher Mahmood Mamdani says the government’s ban on the political pressure group Activists for Change (A4C) is naïve and likely to drive opposition underground. He spoke to The Independent’s Andrew Mwenda and Mubatsi A. Habati. The government has banned the civic …

By Andrew M. Mwenda How government politically miscalculated the threat in spite of activists having lost strategic positioning in their struggle for change As fate would have it, last week the Uganda government banned the civil society advocacy group, Activists for Change (or A4C as it is popularly known). Ironically, …

By Eriasa Mukiibi Sserunjogi Why did Mbabazi, Nandala skip Kadaga’s big moment? On April 4, The Independent’s parliament reporter Agather Atuhaire was stopped as she rushed to cover the proceedings of a committee of the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) assembly at the Kampala Serena Hotel. A plain-cloth security official interrogated her …

By Agather Atuhaire Inter-Parliamentary Union offers lessons from the Arab Spring If the discussion and the subsequent resolutions reached at at the 126th Inter-Parliamentary Union Assembly in Kampala were not just good for the paper as observers say many others have been, Uganda, the host country  benefit most. Unrest and …

By Karien Mukama Ownership queries persist in as it fights financial squeeze As members of parliament witnessed recently when he testified about the “true” ownership of his company, Pioneer Easy Bus’s Managing Director David Ndemeire Bagenda is a master of comic exaggeration. But none of his strokes then matched his …

By Jagdish Bhagwati It should have been clear that a most remarkable candidate – Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala – was already at hand The selection of a successor to Robert Zoellick as President of the World Bank was supposed to initiate a new era of open meritocratic competition, breaking the traditional hold …

By Eriasa Mukiibi Sserunjogi Makes violent revolution inevitable, say experts In 1962, the year Uganda became independent, former US President John F. Kennedy made the following quote; “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable”. Makerere University political scientist Yasin Olum says as Uganda edges towards its golden …