COLUMNISTS

By Mahmood Mamdani In the second of this four-part series, renowned Ugandan scholar Professor Mahmood Mamdani examines the historical causes of Zimbabwe’s crisis After the Lancaster House Agreement had expired, the government tried to occupy the middle ground by shifting from the ‘willing buyer, willing seller’ formula with a new …

By The Independent Team ‘If Museveni reconstitutes the Protestant base through UPC,’ one analyst said, ‘he can easily become formidable again. He knows that the Catholics do not have a political party or a leader ‘” so they cannot be politically threatening. Sometime in October 1994, President Museveni held a …

By G. Pascal Zachary Democracy has taken root in Africa,’ says Princeton Lyman, an analyst with the Council of Foreign Relations in Washington DC. And from the perspective of history, it does seem that the people of sub-Saharan Africa have entered a robust period of democracy. The trend toward multi-party …

I pick up where I left off last week: the tragic collapse in the quality of government in Uganda has gone hand-in-hand with corruption on a scale never previously witnessed. Roads are full of potholes, schools are burning, hospitals are death traps and public parks are overgrown bushes. Public institutions …

By Mahmood Mamdani In this four-part series, renowned Ugandan scholar Professor Mahmood Mamdani examines the historical causes of Zimbabwe’s political crisis. It is hard to think of a figure more reviled in the west than Robert Mugabe. Liberal and conservative commentators alike portray him as a brutal dictator, and blame …

By Andrew M. Mwenda Twenty three years since he came to power, President Yoweri Museveni shows no plans of leaving. We should not be surprised by this because Museveni is walking the long-trodden path of other African dictators of old like Marshal Mobutu of Zaire, Paul Biya of Cameroon, Omar …

BY Wanyama Wangah The weakness in our education system was exposed during last year’s international university quiz competition now sponsored by Zain, which covers pre-university questions. All Ugandan universities were eliminated early with the exception of Nkumba University which had fielded Kenyan students. The performance in this year’s Primary Leaving …

By Rosebell Kagumire For Justice Benjamin Odoki, that is the central question for activists calling for elector al reforms In 2011, two years from now, Ugandans are scheduled to vote in presidential, parliamentary, and local government elections. Many are resigned to another rigged electoral process. But a few who are …

By Andrew M. Mwenda I argued in this column last week that multiple checks and balances in public procurement in a country like Uganda tend to accentuate rather than control corruption. This is because multiple centres of control in a neo-patrimonial system do not create checks and balances as would …

By Kalundi Serumaga This is the second and last part of this Outlook as the author comments on technocrats and leaders `who remain silently loud on issues they once propagated. In Africa, capitalism first came in search of free labour giving rise to the transatlantic slave trade. It then developed …