Category: Uncategorized

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/video/2009/aug/14/obama-weaver-interview

Well the best of my Obama collection is Obama is my homeboy. Anyone who has worked in TV knows how excited but very scary this can be if it is to do such an interview but the young man looked really very comfortable and he had his questions well set. Then he got a scoop about the president’s basketball skills. watch and enjoy

Read the story of the oldest man to ever enroll in aprimary school. Mzee Kimani Maruge from Kenya http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8202378.stm but he had fullfilled his dream of studying.

The great-grandfather held the Guinness World Record for being the oldest person to start primary school, at the age of 84.

To you Mzee, to me you proved that it’s never too late to salvage a dream. And your willing to persevere studying with kids who are your great grandfather leaves many of us in Africa to rethink education.

May the lord see it that u rest in the well deserved place for your search for knowledge was for a good cause (Kimani wanted to learn how to read the Bible for himself)

Why is Thomas Kwoyelo, a former LRA commander captured during the operation lightening thunder being tried for with the lesser offence of kidnap with intent to murder instead of war crimes. Well the answer lies in the fact that Uganda has been slow in enacting the ICC bill which would see formally war crimes and crimes against humanity be recognised by the Uganda local judicial system.

According to an article by Bill Oketch on IWPR, Thomas Kwoyelo’s trial will begin in August and that prosecution decided to try him for a lesser crime to speed up the legal process. Well this will have implications in the whole process of seeking justice for northern Uganda war victims. Kwoyelo will initially appear before the regional court in Gulu, but his case will be submitted to Kampala once initial investigations are over, according to local lawyers.

If Kwoyelo is not tried by the Uganda War crimes court to which president Museveni appointed 2 judges last year, it will be a failure on part of government to deal with LRA impunity.

There have been delays in the passing of the ICC law in Uganda and one of the controversial parts is the move by government to give immunity to a sitting president in case he’s accused of war crimes yet under the Rome Statute there’s no immunity for heads of state.

If the court is to be effective, police must be trained to investigate war crimes, continued the judge. Likewise, prosecutors and defense lawyers need to be trained on how to prosecute and defend the accused. But all this seems to be on hold. The judiciary is ready at least according to one of the judges of the court whom I spoke to but the law is not there.

But this hurriedly trial of Kwoyelo will have an impact on future trials of those accused of committing war crimes in northern Uganda in a two decade conflict.

Government especially Parliament are giving no choice to the Director of Public Prosecution. They must act soon.

Kwoyelo, 37, was captured in the Democratic Republic of Congo in March, following a gun battle between the Ugandan army and LRA soldiers.He faces 12 counts of kidnap with intent to murder relating to the disappearance of villagers from Atiak and Pabbo, sub-counties of Amuru and Gulu districts, who were allegedly seized by LRA soldiers. They were not seen again. And that’s it, a delay in enacting a law gives a mass murder a charge of intent to murder. How are we mindful of those who lost their lives, their limbs and their loved ones?

Most of you have probably watched this video or heard the news of how the US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton lost her temper when a misinterpreted question from a student was put to her. Well my thinking is the misinterpreted question was not offessive so Mrs Clinton should have not used excessive force to put the question out of the way. This hailed woman should have known where she was, this was Congo where millions are displaced and many have died so there were way too many situations to make her lose her cool than a little reference to her husband which was never there in the first place.

As the media plays this clip over and over, the really story of her country’s offorts to help Congo has been  put in the shadow and it will not be easy to put it out there. The trip extend to Goma in eastern DRC, in fact it was the first for a US Sec of State. Having gone through the grilling days of the Democratic primaries, Clinton should have learnt a thing or two on how to handle the media especially  the western media when it comes to questions related her husband.

The western media got their juicy story of the day for their audience instead of putting facts and images of what is on the ground in Congo. They linked the outburst to Bill Clinton snatching headlines in North Korea late last week when he secured the release of two US journalists, an act that many in the west saw as heroic. And the media were waiting to jump on any moment when Hillary would show her frustration at this competion for media attention and she granted them the chance. I don’t fault the media much, I simply think Clinton should have known better that if she lost her cool in the Congo, Congo would be the loser.

But going in details of what message she delivered, she promised real help for victims of sexual violence which is a great gesture but more effort is needed to end the war otherwise putting up a fund for victims when the war is still raging we will treating just symptoms.

This trip helped little to bring crimes going on in the Congo back to the international arena. The Secretary of State was  the subject of the news instead of Congo. Congo victims remain mostly unheard.

I have read many articles on the growing ethnic tensions that have been fuelled by the president’s words in Bunyoro over the last few months. But the latest, urging Bafuruki (migrants) not to stand for office in the oil reach Albertine region is below the belt. I don’t know how this will end as the Bafuruki are also turning the heat on the president but this should bring us to discuss fully and find solutions for tribalism before it consumes us the Kenya way. And as we see, that will not be done by government but us Ugandans in our every small way we can.

The president needs both Banyoro and Bakiga votes as he continues his rule in 2011 but we must question why the president is ever so tribal. Well the president is not a foreigner so I assume with a lot of tribalism in the country he was not lucky to escape it but what is even more lethal is applying tribal sentiments in the wake of oil exploration as if he has not known a place called the Niger delta. He wants to please two groups but it seems he knows no way how to. What he’s doing is unconstitutional but this shouldn’t be out argument for we are all aware he can easily make it constitutional. He just needs about 5 million shillings to pay to non Bakiga NRM MPs and he will have his way. So we should not rely so much on the legality of the president’s move if we are to bring to realise that his way is the one to hell but rather bring the point closer to his compound. Someone needs to tell him that by raising tribal overtones in Bunyoro leadership positions, Museveni will be siding with those who have always doubted his Ugandan origins therefore his presidency. In his Rwakitura home, the president if he’s to apply the same rule that he’s advocating for in Bunyoro, he should be treated as a Mufuruki but he goes to vote for people there some of whom are Bafuruki like him. In his government and his cabinet people like Kuteesa shouldn’t be allowed to stand for any office in Sembabule for it lies within Buganda. May be when we show him that he too is a Mufuruki and he has been able to live freely and achieve what he wanted with nobody threatening him basing his tribe, he will understand our point of view. More pressure is needed to show that his is not a solution but a catalyst to these two ethnic groups. Today he will deny the Bakiga to stand office; tomorrow he may take away their rights to vote because they are Bafuruki and trust me he can because he has a lot of time left before he clocks 75, his official retirement age, for now. Museveni’s regime has always been accused of being tribal especially in the army promotions and other security organs but taking tribalism to oil wells, Ugandans must wake up before the sectarianism consumes the nation. And the Banyoro should reject the president’s offer for it will never be a solution to their problems or to those of their sons and daughters for generations to come long after this regime.

It’s just days when I left Uganda and my friends messages keep on coming in. Today I received a rather interesting one.

“Take good care of yourself, there’s a new strain of HIV am sure as you have learnt and it’s looking for more people to jump on.” This message made my day. Why? Who gets advice on HIV from a friend and in an email? It’s just not many. Well the fact that you can have someone say something that important in a casual ‘easy’ conversation tells a lot about how far my country has come in dealing with HIV whether it is about information on prevention or dealing with stigma.

In the past there was a lot of stigma that I imagine for a friend to send you such a message you would say hold on a moment does she think that am that wild to give me this advice? But things have loosened up and people know better. And I chose to cite this message because I wanted to highlight the plight of some African women and this week I call it Women who need the grace. And one such woman is an unnamed Cameroonian. She’s the first to be identified with a new strain of HIV. A new strain of HIV has been discovered in a woman from Cameroon. It differs

from the three known strains and appears to be closely related to a form of the virus recently discovered in wild gorillas, researchers reported today in the journal Nature Medicine.

The finding “highlights the continuing need to watch closely for the emergence of new HIV variants, particularly in western central Africa,” said the researchers, led by Jean-Christophe Plantier of the University of Rouen, France.

This unnamed Cameroonian woman needs the grace and I hope the new strain is contained and that it is not yet wide spread. Although there’s no HIV drug/vaccine yet, major steps have been made and that’s why we have Antiretroviral drugs which help HIV carriers’ immune systems and with increased access to drugs, places worst hit by HIV like Africa have been so hopeful.  The three previously known HIV strains are related to the simian virus that occurs in chimpanzees. The most likely explanation for the new find is gorilla-to-human transmission.

It’s still a mystery how the virus actually got to the woman and not much is known about how it will react to existing drugs so I can only imagine what this woman is going through. Many newspapers in Uganda have already given the development a lead and although it may be very scaring, it’s good for people to have this revelation as it comes. I say spread the word on this strain whichever way and keep us informed, this way we can stay at the top and save ourselves.

It’s been days without a post but I have been in transit mostly. I am on my way to Costa Rica where I will be spending the next one year studying a masters in Media Peace and Conflict studies at the UN-backed University for Peace http://www.upeace.org/

I will continue to write the commentaries on what is happening in both Uganda and my little university world. Thanks for the visits I hope to continue hearing from you.

“It’s ironic that the African Union which was the first such organization to accept the R2P principle was also the first to defend Omar Al Bashir when the International criminal Court convicted him of war crimes in Darfur.” –  Vinay Karnataka at  http://win2vin.wordpress.com/

Just when you think the International Criminal Court has gone off the headlines in the Uganda, it crawls back. But this time it’s not about Uganda having to arrest Bashir or General Kony(like most of his sympathisers love to call him).

The ICC in Uganda is being sued for failure to pay rent. In a country where the court’s involvement is still partly blamed for complicating effeorts to find the end of the war, such news about failure to pay rent is the last the court needs.

Well, rent defaulting in Uganda is not a rare thing and if you’re a land lord you understand the pain of having to guage a new tenant on their looks, mannerisms to identify any rent defaulting in them. In fact one cabinet minister is well known for staying in houses for free. The trick is that he will pay you the first months a lump some after that he will stay for free until he identifies another poor landlord to invade. The ICC has long vacated the premises where the owe this money and the case is before court. So I wonder if the ICC got their advice from this minister. But I am not sure the ICC wants to become a laughing-stone, oh! forget Kampala Mayoral language, the ICC can’t risk becoming a laughing-stock.