“I know that you will not fail.” -ST

I see this has caused a bit of a storm in my DM so let me explain a little bit more. There are several accounts of treatment of Rwandan immigrants here as second class citizens. Many of them were excluded from access to property and were the victims of ethnic prejudice, especially in Nkore and greater Buganda. Only those who found creative ways to “assimilate” had better luck, but by 1980 they had to join a military struggle to try and guarantee their citizenship. Today, many still struggle to get Ugandan citizenship documents Today, we see that in the North, a society devastated by years of war finds itself alarmed by the influx of Bantu immigrants who are buying land perceivably cheaply, in part, I think, because of the economic devastation of the war. The point I am making is that xenophobia and any such prejudice is wrong. But the prejudice in South Africa comes from structural oppression rather than ideas of South African exceptionalism, as we see with Racism globally: the poverty that causes that prejudice is the same poverty that causes the immigration of its victims. That poverty is caused by entrenched systems of economic oppression that affect Africans almost uniformly. What happened to the Banyarwanda, and now the Balalo, is evidence that, like in South Africa, every oppressed society will resist outsiders if they believe they will take away what little that oppression has allowed them to retain. If you locked people in a room and told them only one could come out, they will clamor and fight as amongst each other to exit, and yet they each did not cause the other’s imprisonment. When (some) Ugandans turned on the Indians in the 1970s, was it because they hated them, or because for decades prior, the British had oppressed both of them, and the Ugandans were trying to step into the Indian position, rather than undo the oppression for both groups? Did the Indians in India and around the world, or the Rwandans impose on us retribution? What we see in South Africa, we see in everywhere, as in the case of Uganda, and we cannot sit in judgment of South Africa when we have not imposed the same judgment elsewhere, including here at home. So those (I believe few) South Africans, even in their prejudice, are my allies because we are oppressed by the same system. Hate will not help in showing them that we need to gang up against those that have put us in this position, and not each other. Africa will overcome these shackles imposed on it, but to achieve it, we must stand by each other.

Ebibumba nga bikaaye.

H&G Advocates wishes you a Happy Heroes Day!

Cornered, Arsenal ended up bottling.

Robbo. ❤️

Come and visit London’s Home of Trophies. 🏆 Book your Stadium Tour at Stamford Bridge now. ⭐️⭐️

Inject it in my veins 😂

RT @andrewkabuura: Retweet if your club has ever won the UEFA Champions League

Champions of Europe, You’ll never sing that shit!!!!!… 😂😂😂😂

Bring on Goncalo Ramos.

Please to see one of our original hosts, @Rushongoza, return to the chair for what promises to be another sharp and necessary conversation. Few moderate public debate with his clarity, calm and intellectual discipline. Kampala, this is one worth showing up for.

Eid Mubarak!

On Falcao, Makerere's Teargas "Inventor" Nearly a decade ago now, NTV news ran a story about a Makerere University student Samuel Mugarura who had "invented" a new brand of teargas. According to the news story Samuel was a student at the department of Chemistry--a claim the department denied in the same broadcast. Police too were involved, warning this budding innovator about the risks of this "innovation". I had left Makerere a year earlier, but knew the student from his activism at Lumumba Hall and his Biotechnology program building which abutted our own Zoology department. Around campus he went by the moniker "Falcao"--after the famous Colombian footballer Radamel Falcao, who had joined Manchester United a few seasons earlier. To many of us Falcao was perhaps more widely known for mischief, a penchant for rowdiness, and was certainly not a Victor Frankenstein. So why did NTV news insist he was a Chemistry student? Days, or perhaps weeks, passed before the young scientist Falcao appeared in the news. The then IGP Kale Kayihura had read about his exploits and summoned him--and from that followed a call from State House. Things took a turn. Now Makerere University Chemistry professors were claiming Falcao as one of their own. Out of the window were their earlier statements of caution to the media that the fellow was a struggling student who would benefit from spending more time focused on his studies than doing pyrotechnics on TV! Suddenly, this unlikely Victor Frankenstein was holding meetings with the heads of URSB, NEC-UPDF, among other government entities. In 2017, he received UGX 400M to help him standardize his teargas product. "He says that the money was channeled to his account through the council for science and technology," reported the online publication Matooke Republic. The last I read he was appearing before a parliamentary committee on Science and Innovation in 2021 to seek 18 million dollars (about 66 billion shillings) funding to establish a tear gas "factory" in Uganda. To date, I am not aware of any teargas manufacturing plant, or what became of Falcao. *** This story is illustrative of how, untethered from scrutiny, "science" and "innovation" can become a vehicle for arbitrary (and most times wasteful) allocation of public resources. In his recent diatribe against Andrew Mwenda, the President seems to suggest that public investments in such schemes dressed as "innovation" or "value addition" should be guided by something closer to faith than evidence. The President invokes the spirit of John 20:29--that those who believe without seeing proof are truly blessed. Such thinking, applied to public funding of innovations, is a path to disaster. Science and Technology is more valuable to society not when it is protected from well-meaning public scrutiny, but when it is open to accountability. In its current state, the funding of innovations appears uncoordinated, arbitrary and raises serious questions about the judgment of those who decide what ideas should or should not be funded. Is there a peer-review process--or its equivalent--that informs such decisions? It should be okay to ask such questions. Photo: Falcao in an NTV news screen grab, September 2016.

wahiiga omurundi gumwe, wayeyeta binyama?

Legal Alert: The Employment (Amendment) Act, 2025, is one of the most consequential overhauls of Uganda's Employment Act, Cap. 226 since 2006. We examine what employers need to know from this amendment. Read the full alert here: handgadvocates.com/insights/…

I hope Wardley v Dubois had a rematch clause. What a battle!

We wish you a reflective and fulfilling Labour Day! "Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing."

What is the legal basis for collecting and processing personal data in Uganda? Find out in this week's Tech Tuesday highlight.