Domestic Violence and the Law It’s only in Uganda where justice officials will meet with people from the west, accept millions of Euros/Dollars to apparently fight Gender-Based Violence, while the same country’s courts have very senior @PoliceUg officers like The Director of Forensic Services, Mr Andrew K. Mubiru, downplaying the suffering of GBV victims and getting them jailed. See Frame 1 The State acknowledges that a woman was beaten to near death. The aforementioned ACP Andrew Mubiru said her blood was found allover the room, including bloody hair on a door edge where her head was likely banged. But when asked to speak to how her blood might have gotten there if not for domestic violence, he said he didn’t know…..“she might have urinated there”. Asked if a woman can urinate on a ceiling, his answer was : “I don’t know, I’m not a woman….ask women”. The then presiding Judge had to remind him to “stop making outlandish statements”. Frame 2 That’s an excerpt from a court report by @DailyMonitor from when the very highly skilled and experienced Director of Health Services in Uganda Police gave testimony in that case. He essentially said this lady could have died if there was no urgent medical intervention to manage her wounds suffered due to domestic violence. Frame 3 That’s an excerpt from a Dutch funded study that found that while women form 5% of Uganda’s prison population, 87% of them are in prison on domestic violence related charges. Many of those are victims of a police to prison pipeline built in attracting donor funding only to not solve the problem. We desperately need #DPPReforms #EmptyTheJails

Call for freedom of Jailed EACOP Activists. Last week, we had a few prison visits; among which were visits to 11 young men and women, currently locked up in Luzira Prisons for protesting what is essentially a done deal; EACOP. Some of these kids are university students whose parents think they’re in school whereas not. Most of them have been on remand for about a month now and have a court appearance today at Buganda Road Chief Magistrate’s Court where it’s hoped they’ll get bail. A lot of them seem like truly committed environmental justice warriors. A few seem to have gone for the vibes. It’s hard to tell whether they understand the machine they’re up against; both from the pro-oil and anti-oil lobby. What’s clear though is that they need some major help. The boys especially were in dire condition. 3 of them had an eye infection that’s failed to abate. 4 of them have been on remand longer than the period within which mandatory bail is supposed to kick in. They don’t seem to know what to do. @ODPPUGANDA seems bent on ignoring that constitutional provision and continues to oppose bail and keep kids in jail. One girl has a weeks old baby. She doesn’t know when she will be out of the prison walls. It appears the communication between them and their US paid lawyers doesn’t go beyond “I’ll see you in court”. Perhaps the lawyers are overwhelmed. Perhaps the non-profit that pays their legal bills only covers certain aspects (Frame 2). The lawyers, from what I gather, are paid by a US based non-profit to defend any protestors jailed over environmental causes. It’s a mini-economy built on pain. Something has to give. These kids don’t deserve to be in jail for their honest beliefs and convictions about the need to protect the environment. But I feel like someone in the state structures also needs to put their arm around them and give them an education on why the state will go ahead and run its oil projects no matter what. They’re the pawns on a massive international chessboard. It’s unclear as to how much longer this game is gonna be played. The state can’t run away from the Hosea 4:6 obligations. Educate your people; don’t just jail them!! #FreeEACOPActivists

Minister @BalaamBarugahar’s policy of jailing teachers might be misguided. It’s also selective. At the risk of sounding sectarian, this policy seems to mainly be done in communities whose political muscle at national level is considerably weak. Take an example of Bugisu where despite clearly showing proper accounting for monies gotten from parents to subsidize the minuscule amounts from government, Head Teacher Mutyaba was arrested, over protests from his students. Several other education officials are languishing in jails up and down the eastern sub-region, with instructions not to be offered police bond unless the minister intervenes. Now, lots of people, myself included, like Min. Balaam and admire the enthusiasm he brings to the anti-corruption fight. He has managed to tap into a visceral public anger against misuse of government resources by the fat-cats that pass for government officials up and down the country. But now, there’s a risk that his national anti-corruption crusade might be hamstrung by unnecessary theatrics, political undertones that seem to be driven towards re-litigating the last election (only that the jostling is in 2 yellow camps; NRM and PLU) and obvious failure to understand the intricacies of the system he’s looking to correct. Fighting corruption isn’t the problem. Trying to fight it without a clear formula and clearly defined outcomes is. The selective application of the same is also just wrong. I’ll use @MODVA_UPDF as an example Last we checked, the Ministry of Defense runs 53 formal education institutions in and around military installations where they house thousands of servicemen. Of these institutions, 37 are primary schools and 11 are secondary schools. Bombo SS and Mbarara Army SS might be the most famous. These institutions serve more than just servicemen. They’re, oftentimes, the bedrock of community education and a pathway to upward social mobility for people in usually poor communities in and around these military installations. It’s the army’s way of giving back to the communities that house their troops. A good example is Bombo SS, which has served a huge role in educating communities ravaged by the 1980s war and for this, they deserve credit. Their catchment area spans districts. One of my big brothers actually went there briefly. He still speaks highly of them. But I digress. The issue here is while those military education facilities are heavily subsidized, with servicemen and their children getting free rides (thanks to a presidential directive), other parents are expected to chip in a little to help top up the budgetary shortfall because as we all know, there’s no education institution in Uganda for which the government’s budgetary allocation has risen up to meet the demands of daily school operations. In fact, even military parents are asked to contribute towards scholastic materials. This is just the reality of it. But one doesn’t have to posses any special political analytical skills to know that Minister @BalaamBarugahar and his loudspeaker carrying buddies (see frame 2) will not be caught dead in a military school dragging head teachers for daring ask parents to contribute. Reason? They fear for the almighty backlash that will bring. It’s that selective “justice” that’s getting most people in eastern Uganda riled up. And it’s not like the issue started yesterday with Minister Balaam. If you recall, back in 2024, the Minister of Education and First Lady of Uganda faced this very problem. Citing a high number of school dropouts due to lunch shortage etc, she advised mothers to pack warm meals for their kids and try to feed them on milk and eggs. She drew major backlash for that but you could see that she was faced with an impossible choice; either tell her husband to his face (he was standing next to her, btw) to up the schools budget or blame the parents. She chose the latter. But at least, she didn’t arrest teachers. They’re victims too

Nelson Tugume, PLU and the Putinitication of Uganda’s Oligarchy Yesterday, Mr Nelson Tugume, the much maligned Boss of the Africa Coffee Park in Ntungamo, with his own media entourage in tow, made an appearance at the head offices of PLU and made a very public show of supporting the PLU boss’ Presidential ambitions with what seemed like a poorly rehearsed, hastily delivered meandering speech. In short, he ditched his former godfather Mr Odrek Rwabwogo, figuratively bent the knee and kissed the ring of the CDF, General MK who also happens to be Mr Rwabwogo’s brother-in-law. He came promising jabs or is it jobs? (See video and make your own judgement) He promised to bring investors with potential to invest a trillion dollars. Don’t ask why he never went to them for his own investment but instead raised the coffers of a poor country. He promised to support the Supreme Leader. The only promise he didn’t make was turning water into wine. The desperation was that high that he might have been tempted to throw that into the mix. Anyway, the man can talk a good game! You could easily see why President Museveni and the people who handed him billions to “teach Ugandans how to drink coffee” were charmed. But don’t be fooled by those high-sounding nothings. Mr Tugume wasn’t at PLU to make an investment pitch. He went there for a transaction. He went to buy an insurance policy for his growing, recently acquired state funded wealth. The noises from some PLU insiders had grown too loud for his comfort. A few decibels louder and he would have followed his Godfather’s right hand man, Mr Matthew Bagonza, into the basement, via a very public nude show on Twitter. That is an ignominy he wasn’t willing to suffer. Mr Tugume is anything but a fool. He is, what in modern parlance, we call a “sharp man”. He knows that in a country where the state is not only your biggest funder and protector (he moves around with armed SFC guards) but also your biggest threat, strategic alignment is how you hedge against uncertain winds. Throw in uncertainty about transition and you immediately understand the need to align with the perceived next center of state coercive power. A smart businessman needs not wait for elections when the signals are already screaming “MK Presidency”. It’s a clever hedge; an insurance policy if you’d like. The price? A few banal words, public photographs shared in endless media loops, a signing of the PLU support pledge book (See frame 2). In exchange, he receives a public amnesty via Twitter from the man himself and a pledge to protect “his investments”. As risk management goes, this is a masterclass. But this game wasn’t invented here and it won’t end here. This whole state cash bonanza has the feel of the privatization heist by Oligarchs in the evening years of Boris Yeltsin’s reign in Russia. The only difference with Uganda’s reverse privatization happening today is that unlike here where supposed investors get boatloads of state cash, in Russia, they got state business conglomerates at the price of a song. As transition from Yeltsin to Vladimir Putin happened, they quickly had to adjust. They either faced a jail cell or keep the oil wells, steel conglomerates etc in exchange for recognizing the unchallenged power of the new sheriff in town. It’s all eerily similar to our case. On December 31 1999, an ailing Yeltsin who at the time probably had more vodka in his veins than blood, resigned and chose then Prime Minister and former KGB boss, Vladimir Putin as acting President. Mr Putin went on to win an election in May 2000 and the consolidation of power started in earnest. If you are long in the tooth like me, you might recall that famous July 2000 summit where President Putin made 21 of the most powerful Russian Oligarchs “a DEAL they couldn’t refuse”. These Oligarchs who had amassed so much wealth and had turned the Russian state into their own playground were asked to drop any political ambitions, funding for the opposition and stay out of state decision making in exchange for the right to remain “temporary custodians” of their wealth, gotten through massively corrupt privatization and “loans for shares” schemes. Those who refused like Boris Berezovsky, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Vladimir Gusinsky were asset stripped, jailed, exiled or died under mysterious circumstances; a suspiciously strategic high rise window here, a heart attack there serving as the quickest ticket to meetings with their maker. Anyway, back to Uganda, these “loans for shares” schemes have become mainstay. Think DEI Pharma, Atiak Sugar, Africa Coffee Park etc Any “investor” who can oil the system and ride into Mzee’s courtyard comes out with a truckload of state cash. Mr Nelson Tugume did this play just this a few years ago. He rode the coattails of the President’s son-in-law, Mr Odrek Rwabwogo, en-route to a $10 million windfall which then opened the funding floodgates for his coffee contraption or is it public finance soak pit (?) nestled in the Ntungamo hills. He “cleverly” diverted billions off of that $10 million, initially meant to serve as a funding pool for coffee exporters. He paid himself the bulk of the cash, dug up a litany of building foundations in Ntungamo, engaged a fierce media machine, sang the right patriotic songs, repeated Mzee’s favorite investment and development buzz words and he was off to the races. The soup kitchen of a welfare state has now become his personal piggy bank. @PublicSquareEA unearthed a lot of that information. You can find some of it here: xitter.cf/tonynatif/status/17482… Anyway, with the recent political winds starting to blow in the direction of the first son’s presidential ambitions, Mr Tugume found himself in a precarious situation where sails had to be adjusted to align with these winds. What the country witnessed wasn’t really a decision rooted in patriotism and deep love for country. It was a “smart” business decision. Mr Tugume wasn’t the first and certainly won’t be the last to make it. The times, they’re interesting… Signed: #KalebuleHQ #TalkingCoffee

Proposed City Square Giveaway: Uganda Needs its Wangari Maathai It can’t be that the same President @KagutaMuseveni who, in December 2025 wrote a letter to then Minister of Water and Environment, Hon. Sam Cheptoris ordering cancellation of all land titles issued in the Kitubulu Central Forest Reserve is the same President Museveni who in August 2026 is exploring the possibility of giving away the only green space left in the Central Business District for some random developer to stick a shopping mall and a hotel. This is a city in desperate need of clean air. We rank among the worst cities in the world on the air quality front. The President moves around with a mask. That must have something to do with the quality of air, among other issues. Beyond the numerous well known benefits around recreation, people connection etc, forests and green spaces are the lungs of the city. We have a city that supposedly has 11 public parks but this is only on paper. On the ground, you’ll struggle to find a single one that serves that purpose. They’ve all been destroyed or taken up by developers. We can’t afford to decimate the only publicly accessible green space left in our city. Surely, this country still has some brave souls with a public spiritedness that can tell the President that some moves are spectacular own goals. The state, should it so desire, has a lot more options to offer its preferred “private” developers. President Moi tried this in 1989 with Uhuru Park. The people resisted, and now, more than 30 years later, Nairobi is a more livable city because of it and Karura Forest. Having a more livable city attracts a lot more investment and builds more community value than yet another ugly concrete behemoth suffocating the city. Let’s #ProtectGreenSpaces #ProtectTheEnvironment