Skip to main content

Author Archives: Admin

Older posts
Newer posts

Disinformation flips the journalist’s job

Posted on by

Newsrooms and individual journalists seeking to positively impact the 2026 election must mix informing with confirming

Journalists covering the 2025-26 Uganda general election must be aware that the advent of digital media engagement has revolutionised their practice and that they must technologically retool to work in the shifting new environment.  

Instead of the one-to-many media engagement of the radio, television, and newspaper era, news reports are now generated by a multiplicity of diverse actors in a participative and interactive way.

Statistically, with 301 FM stations, according to sector regular Uganda Communications Commission (UCC), more Ugandans might still rely on radio for their main media engagement, but the switch to the many-to-many communications of the digital era is real.

Preference for social media has risen from 10% in 2019 to 26%, according to a survey in June 2024 by GeoPoll, a US-based international research solutions provider. The survey was done in Kenya, Ghana, and South Africa but it could reflect trends in Uganda and other sub-Saharan countries. 

A recent media consumption report for Uganda by IPSOS revealed that although radio leads in media engagement at 70%, it has dropped from 89% in 2019. TV too dropped from 38% in 2019 to 37% in 2024 and newspapers from 8% to 7%.  

Relatedly, Twaweza, an East African-wide non-governmental organisation that tracks citizens’ views, reports that WhatsApp is the most used social networking service in Uganda, followed by Facebook and TikTok. Others like X and Instagram are least preferred.

Based on such data, many experts predict that the 2025-26 general election news will be conveyed via a personalised news stream, filtered by a social network of friends, Facebook, and Google instead of mainstream media. 

With so many voices in the mix, it will be difficult for citizens to separate fact from fiction, information from disinformation. 

Coping with this new reality will require journalists to switch to new roles – as professional verifiers. Traditionally, the principal role of journalism has been to inform. In the post-truth digital era, the principal role of journalism is to double-check, debunk, confirm.  The investigative tool kit for journalists has been superseded by the fact-check toolkit for every actor in the public sphere. 

In the 2026 election, every media house should have a fact-checking team or – at a minimum – a fact-checking desk. Nora Martin, an academic researcher from University of Technology, Sydney, says in `The pressures of verification and notions of Post-truth in civil society’, that in this new era, the public will come to mainstream media to confirm or dismiss what they have gathered from social media.

The GeoPoll survey in Kenya, Ghana, and South Africa revealed that although general media usage is highly integrated into people’s lives with 86% of respondents engaging daily, not all media are equal. Up to 57% hook on to social media, TV 25%, radio and websites 7%, and newspaper 2%.

However, when asked which source is most reliable for news and information, 35% named social media and TV. Only 9% mentioned websites and radio and newspapers 4%. But when asked how much they trust information and news on social media compared to traditional media (such as TV, Radio, newspaper), 35% said they trust both but 31% said they trust traditional media more compared to 30% for social media.

The GeoPoll team concluded: “The survey reveals a nuanced perception of trust across media platforms. A significant segment of the population (31%) still regards traditional media as more reliable than social media (30%). This reflects a skepticism towards the credibility of content found on social platforms despite their popularity”.

The popularity of social media, however, means professional journalists must also adapt its agility in capturing and broadcasting breaking news events more rapidly than traditional media. They must also use social media as an avenue for newsgathering, especially via access to citizen reportage.

In their election coverage, professional journalists; whether online, electronically, or in good-old print, must maintain a `personal brand’. Media houses too must cultivate a strong ‘news brand’ because the public will look out for bylines, mastheads, and TV and radio frequencies they trust.

According to the Radio Television Digital News Association (RTDNA), which is the world’s largest professional organisation devoted exclusively to broadcast and digital journalism, when disinformation becomes a significant threat, news professionals and newsroom managers must be part of the solution. Journalists must become the front-line protection against false and misleading information on all platforms.

Only free and independent journalists can fully assume the duty of providing needed information during an election. This supposes that they are up to the task professionally and have been trained in advance. That is according to the `Handbook for journalists during elections’ published by Reporters Without Borders as “a concise didactic work-tool that can help to prepare journalists who want to cover elections in an objective manner”.

Objectivity in journalism recognises that disinformation creates digital echo-chambers that exploit the human tendency to accept what confirms their personal biases and beliefs more than objective facts.  It exploits bandwagon effects, group think, and group emotion. In the age of social media, following, liking, and sharing come before searching for truth and facts.

As a first step, therefore, journalists must be equipped to recognise misinformation which is not intentional mayhem-making, and disinformation and mal-information, which are intentionally unleashed to cause harm. The purveyors of disinformation intentionally troll, spam, amplify and viralise falsehoods or fake positivity.

All this is useful information for any newsroom manager or individual journalist aiming to cover the 2025-26 general election in a positive and impactful way. The preference for social media but trusting in traditional media is a significant paradox.

The GeoPoll survey listed 10 reasons respondents gave for their media preference, with trustworthiness as number one. Other reasons in descending order of importance include convenience, speed of updates, diversity of content, credibility of updates, user experience, interactivity, personalisation, cost and editorial independence.

The public media preference clearly favours social media and yet 51% of respondents ranked trustworthiness as number one and a significant number 31%, say traditional media is more reliable than social media.  This means that a journalist’s job must shift from informing to confirming.   

This is an opportunity for media houses to reinforce the difference between unreliable information provided by social-media under pressure to be first, gather more clicks, and gain more followers and reliable, accurate, and balanced information provided by mainstream media through journalistic rigour. The emotional association with accurate, fact-based truth telling will restore the journalist as a dependable authority.

This strategy may imply a core shift; from journalists as providers of breaking news stories gathered from authoritative sources to journalists as verifiers of news stories already available to the public.

Expert tips on countering disinformation as 2026 electioneering take shape

Posted on by

Disinformation has yet again come into sharp focus in public debates as Uganda enters the 2025-2026 general elections season. 

The debate is timely. While the main parliamentary and presidential elections are still months away, electioneering activities begun this January with the update of the national voters’ register and nomination of candidates is expected later this September and October. 

Research has shown that disinformation around elections takes root on social media, often undermining electoral integrity and stoking post-election violence.

For a country that has never experienced peaceful transfer of power since it attained independence in 1962, stakes are even higher this time. AGORA spoke to experts who shared insights on how the disinformation problem can be countered.

Dr. George Lugalambi

Executive Director, African Centre for Media Excellence (ACME)

Invest in providing high quality news and information to citizens 

The first thing, says Dr. George Lugalambi, the Executive Director, African Centre for Media Excellence (ACME), should be to appreciate that if the quality of the information the public receives is not paid attention to, then the ability of a citizen to make decisions is undermined. 

“If you aggregate bad decisions then ultimately the sum of all those poor decisions that are informed by poor and misleading information translates into policies that might misrepresent the best interests of the citizen.

“What then our job really should be, those of us in the professional business or the professional industry, is to invest in providing the highest possible quality of news and information to citizens and to our audiences,” Lugalambi says.

He adds: “To this end, ACME trains journalists and produces research aimed at making the media a more effective platform for the provision of information on public affairs, a tool for monitoring official power, and a forum for vibrant public debate.

Understand the technologies used in manipulation of information 

ACME also trains journalists to understand how the manipulation of information works and the technologies that are used.

Lugalambi says: “I think for journalists, whether they are activists or whether they are campaigners for free speech, it is important to…have the ability to use the tools available to check to verify information, to fact check, for example, the truthfulness of information to the truthfulness of news”.

Turn purveyors of disinformation into focus of reporting

Additionally, Lugalambi says journalists and other producers of information and news have to spotlight people who use disinformation for harmful purposes, including corroding civic space.

“I think if we get a critical mass of people who are out and paying attention to those who have made it their business to create negative information that is harmful to public discourse and turn them into a focus for our very reporting, I think that is one way that you can really put the pressure on them, keep the pressure on them so that they get exposed.”

Angelo Izama

Journalist and tech enthusiast

Demystify the disinformation technologies

Journalist and tech enthusiast, Angelo Izama, emphasizes the need to demystify the potential technologies and red flag likely abuse.

“It is important to demystify this technology early such that it is not strange to people who might encounter it. Also, those who may choose to use it won’t have the advantage of surprise.”

Izama says timely red flagging of abuse of this technology is the easiest way to prevent further harm. 

“If a video is manipulated, if voice is AI generated; whatever is manipulated for political purposes, that should be red flagged immediately.”

John Musinguzi Blanshe

Winner of the African Investigative Journalist of the Year 2024

Make fighting disinformation a daily job

Journalist John Musinguzi Blanshe and winner of the African Investigative Journalist of the Year 2024, says fighting disinformation should be a daily job. 

“I have seen people who do fact-checking, but you do fact-checking after a week. That may not be effective. We should be at any time ready to say, this is fake, so that we counter it as early as possible, before it spreads very fast towards subgroups and then reaches deep, deep in the villages where you may not catch it.”

Fact-checking should be embedded in newsrooms

Second, Blanshe adds, this work shouldn’t be left to small organisations.  

“I think it [fact-checking] should be embedded in the newsrooms, [such] that a newsroom which has one or two million or three million followers can easily counter these facts,” Blanshe notes, “They [newsrooms] have also been victims of fake news. We have seen people creating fake posts of Daily Monitor, fake posts of NTV, fake posts of NBS, and then they come out and say, “Oh, this is not true. We have not put out this.” I feel they need to also be at the center of fighting this information.” 

Blanshe adds that journalists need to be more aggressive in their reporting.

Given that politicians tend to say wrong, fake, and innacurate things whenever they are asked to comment or whenever they are addressing the public,  journalists need to arm themselves with facts and always be ready, in their reporting, to offer alternative information. 

“For instance, information about budgeting, it is there, it is around so we can use it and counter the disinformation that politicians want us to put in our news outlets and news products.”

Jimmy Spire Ssentongo

Makerere University senior lecturer and activist

Understand the psychology producers of disinformation

Makerere University senior lecturer and activist, Jimmy Spire Ssentongo, says it is critical for consumers of information to understand the psychology of [procucers] of disinformation.

In this era, where there is so much information yet people don’t have much time, Ssentongo explains, thinking twice about whatever information is received and trying to understand the possible motives of whoever is sharing it, what they are sharing, when they are sharing it, and that entire context, would be very helpful in countering disinformation.  

“Let’s say one is an activist,” Ssentongo explains, “what do you expect from those that he is always exhibiting or always critiquing? [One] would expect that, of course, they are not happy with it.” 

As they say, Ssentogo adds, if one calls out corruption, it fights back, if one calls out bad governance, bad governance fights back. 

“So how is it likely to fight back?” Ssentongo asks rhetorically. “By tarnishing.”

Countering Disinformation ToolKit

Posted on by

Imagine waking up to a viral story claiming that a well-known public figure has resigned in disgrace, only to discover hours later that the entire narrative was fabricated. Or picture a widely shared image depicting a wildfire in your city – except the photo was taken in another country years ago. In today’s information ecosystem, it is not uncommon to encounter these scenarios.

False information, whether spread deliberately to mislead or simply shared without verification, has the power to shape public opinion, distort reality, and undermine trust in institutions, the media, and even our own perceptions. Disinformation is a problem that affects everyone. Misleading content, from manipulated images and deep fake videos to coordinated campaigns pushing false narratives influences social and political conversations worldwide. With the rise of digital platforms, information travels faster than ever, often outpacing efforts to verify and correct falsehoods. The consequences can be severe, making it increasingly difficult for people to distinguish fact from fiction.

The toolkit below aims at equipping readers with the right tools and strategies to push back against falsehoods and reinforce the importance of truth.

Part I: One political activist’s lasting fight with Speaker Among

Posted on by


An acquittance invited Habib Buwembo, 42, a renown political activist, for a meeting at a Kampala hotel in January 2017. When Buwembo arrived, the acquittance asked him to sit, and excused himself. Suddenly, Anita Among (now the speaker of parliament), then an ordinary Member of Parliament, a few months into her first term, showed up with two other politicians. 

READ PART II

Buwembo was surprised. He had not expected to meet Among here. But they both knew each other as leaders in the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC). Among had previously served on the party’s National Executive Committee as deputy treasury. Buwembo was also a member of the party’s NEC as the national secretary for labour and pensions. 

A father of three and husband of two wives, Buwembo’s demeanor can be misleading. Initially, he appears soft-spoken and somewhat shy. But as our conversation goes into his run-ins with security operatives (he has been arrested and detained in countless police cells and prisons including Kitalya and Luzira), because of his decades’ long fight for human rights, which is what he is most known for, his eyes widen, and his voice gets deeper and coarser. It is hard to miss the parallels between him and four-time presidential contender, Kizza Besigye, who he immediately reveals inspired and emboldened his already budding knack for fighting injustice and leadership. 

A father of three and husband of two wives, Buwembo’s demeanor can be misleading. Initially, he appears soft-spoken and somewhat shy. But as our conversation goes into his run-ins with security operatives (he has been arrested and detained in countless police cells and prisons including Kitalya and Luzira), because of his decades’ long fight for human rights, which is what he is most known for, his eyes widen, and his voice gets deeper and coarser. It is hard to miss the parallels between him and four-time presidential contender, Kizza Besigye, who he immediately reveals inspired and emboldened his already budding knack for fighting injustice and leadership. 

As a senior two student, Buwembo had started the Nateete Muslim Students Association (NAMUSA) and become its first chairperson. With in a few years, he had become the chairperson of the Inter Muslim Association of Kampala district (IMUSAK). These roles would lay a solid foundation for his politics and establish him as an influential actor in the Muslim community in Kampala—part of the reason Among deemed it important to meet him.

The ruling NRM had even initially attempted to recruit him as a student leader but he was more inclined towards the opposition.  After a short stint in JEEMA under the tutelage of its former secretary general, the late Hassan Kyanjo, Buwembo converted to FDC in 2011.  And he was immediately thrust at the centre of action– he had allocated himself the responsibility of protecting votes. The walk-to-work protests that followed that election, saw him arrested for the first time, and marked the beginning of endless run-ins with the authorities including with Among and her henchmen.

After a few pleasantries, Among went straight into it. Buwembo had sued then Rubaga South MP, the late Kato Lubwama, on grounds that the latter didn’t have the right academic qualifications. Up until then, election petitions were only allowed within 30 days after the election. Buwembo had gone to court many months after the 2016 elections, and court was about to rule on whether this was legal or not. Extending the window for hearing election petitions was a major threat for members of parliament (majority of whom were members of the ruling party), Among said. President Museveni had sent Among to negotiate with Buwembo and settle the matter out of court. If Buwembo was ready to reach an out of court settlement, he would walk away with a staggering Shs300 million.

Buwembo was stunned. He knew Among had gone to parliament as an Independent, but thought she was FDC-leaning. How was she now acting for President Museveni who they had been trying to unseat?

“That is a story for another day,” Among responded curtly, and quickly indicated she wanted to conclude the matter at hand.

Buwembo could not drop the case because he was not the only person involved in the matter. While the petition required him to gather 500 signatures from the constituents, with the support of fellow activists in the constituency, they had raised over 2000 signatures, he explained to Among. These players were stakeholders and couldn’t just be wished away.

Among insisted that the petition didn’t read Buwembo and others. It read Habib Buwembo v Kato Lubwama.

Feeling cornered, Buwembo said he needed at least three days to consult. Among warned him. “If you decline the win-win, where you accept the money and drop the case,” she said, “Please note that there is the lose-win.”

What would the lose-win entail? Buwembo asked.

“Well, you don’t get the money and still don’t win in court,” Among responded calmly. 

Buwembo mumbled that he had his fair shot because the judiciary is independent. “You really believe that? Among asked with a sneer, and shortly after excused herself.

“I didn’t know it then,” Buwembo said, “But looking back now, I am convinced she never forgave me.”

It would be the last time Buwembo would meet Among physically. But in a typical case of abuse of power, Among would get him severally arrested and detained, often spending hundreds of days in prison. Almost all the cases would be dropped because the complainant would not show up in court, and the prosecution couldn’t produce any evidence. Buwembo’s case is peculiar because he has been arrested and detained numerous times. But over a dozen other activists, journalists, opposition politicians, and ordinary Ugandans, have revealed that they have been targeted, harassed, tortured, detained for merely criticizing or challenging Speaker Anita Among, amidst concerns of ever-growing abuse of power and stifling of dissent by her and other ruling party functionaries with over-sized political power.

READ PART II

Three days after the meeting with Among, court announced that he had won. But Lubwama immediately challenged the ruling. 

At the Court of Appeal, Buwembo found Justice Stephen Kavuma, then the Deputy Chief Justice. Alife-time member of the ruling party, who had served in the Resistance Council, at the party secretariat, and in different capacities as minister, before joining the judiciary, Kavuma had come to be known by the moniker ‘cadre judge’. Most of his rulings favoured the ruling party.

Buwembo had already briefed his lawyer, Isaac Ssemakadde (the current Uganda Law Society (ULS) President), about the encounter with Among. Ssemakadde had almost immediately concluded that it was clear the state had now opted for the lose-win Among had mentioned. It was pointless to expect justice from Kavuma, he said.

But Buwembo was hopeful. Kavuma had previously bungled up one of his cases. Buwembo was now convinced they could use that experience to demand Kavuma recuses himself from the case. 

In 2017, Buwembo and colleagues had sued then Police Chief, General Kale Kayihura, after police had brutalised their leader Kizza Besigye and his supporters. Besigye had been sued and granted bail for attempting to swear himself in as the president of Uganda following the 2016 elections. His supporters were accompanying him to his home when police descended upon them and unleashed terror. 

The day Kayihura was called to appear at Makindye Magistrate’s Court, members of Boda Boda 2010 led by Abdullah Kitata, who at the time worked closelt with the police chief, stormed court. They destabilised the court’s business, beat up people, and locked others inside court premises. The Chief Magistrate, Richard Mafabi, who had issued criminal summons against Kayihura and seven other senior police officers to answer torture charges, would later collapse and die under unclear circumstances. His wife said he died of a blood clot in the brain citing a post-mortem report, but Buwembo and other opposition activists suspected foul play.

Kavuma had picked that file, noting that that court handling it had no jurisdiction, and allocated it to himself but had gone ahead to ‘sit’ on it until the matter died out. Buwembo was convinced they could use that experience to force Kavuma out of the case. They petitioned court.

But the justice system allows judges to decide whether they are conflicted to handle a matter or not. After six months, Kavuma declined to recuse himself. In a ruling read by the court registrar, he said that he was not convinced that there were substantive grounds for him to recuse himself from the matter. He was ready to proceed and hear the case. Two and a half years later, he would retire without writing a single word on the file. 

Justice Alfonse Owiny-Dollo (now the Chief Justice), who succeeded Kavuma as the head of the Court of Appeal, took up the case together with the two other justices (Hellen Obura and Cheborion Barishaki). They called Buwembo and his lawyer and informed them that they would be taking on the case. At that meeting, they revealed that Kavuma’s bench had not written a single word on the file. But offered assurances that they would expedite the matter and offer Buwembo justice. 

A year and months later, with the nominations for a new term of office already done, around November 2020, the justices invited Buwembo and team for the ruling. When Buwembo saw the notice, he was shocked. What kind of ruling were they going to read without hearing us, Buwembo recalls wondering. 

“We immediately resolved that the lawyer remains behind, and I represent myself,” Buwembo noted. On the day of the ruling, only Barishaki was there. Buwembo didn’t wait. He shot up and said he had an issue to address to court.

“If you may recall, my lord,” he said, “the last day we appeared before you, you were introducing yourselves.” 

He added: “You notified us that the former bench had done nothing about the file. The current bench which you are part of has not heard from us. Now, what kind of ruling are we here for?” 

“Are you serious? the justice asked seemingly taken by surprise.

“No, is this the case?” he muttered, before asking for a 30-minute adjournment.

When he returned, he apologised and noted that they had mixed up the files. Buwembo wondered what would have happened if he had not been bold enough to question the justice. He resolved to ask his entire bench to also recuse itself from the matter because “they already had a ruling in mind”.

Another six months passed without any communication from the justices. Eventually, after the elections were done, and the defendant, Kato Lubwama had even lost the election for another term, they  called and gave the ruling, agreeing to recuse themselves from the bench.  

A new bench was constituted. It involved Justices Irene Mulyagonja, Geoffrey Kiryabwire, and Elizabeth Musoke. Around November 2021, they heard from Buwembo and team. Their ruling came in December 2021. Buwembo won and was awarded losses and damages. 

But by now, Kato Lubwama, had completed his five year term of office, and even lost the election for the second term in parliament. It had taken over 5 years.The law says that all election petition matters should be accorded expeditious process.

Nevertheless, Buwembo applied for damages of a billion shillings, which Kato challenged, saying it was exaggerated.

However, since it was a political matter and Kato had lost a political position, Buwembo wasn’t too keen on pursuing the debt. He was mostly sympathetic to Kato Lubwama. Kato later died of health complications.

“I pronounced that I had forgiven the debt,” Buwembo said, “I even wrote to court about the same. But the unfortunate part of the story is that Kato died when he had also not been given justice. He died when his application was not yet fixed for hearing.”

He added: “That leaves us wondering if they say that courts are temples of justice. In that story, where do you see justice?”

Yet his troubles were just beginning.

Part II: How Buwembo was jailed for threatening Speaker Among

Posted on by

On February 8, 2022, the Ugandan parliament was unusually charged. One after another, legislators lambasted government over widespread state-sponsored torture. Kampala Central MP, Mohammad Nsereko, had increasingly toned down his criticism of government. But on this day, he was unusually livid. 

The problem was so severe that that torture victims were owed Shs12 billion in the form of compensation, as a result of having been tortured by errant officers, he said. Even fellow legislators werent spared. Courts had judged that MP, Francis Zaake, had been tortured and was awaiting compensation, Nsereko told parliament.

“We cannot keep quiet,” Nsereko said, “Our silence is deafening. If we fall silent, then where will people run?” 

Anita Among, who then as Deputy Speaker, was charing parliament—Speaker Jacob Oulanyah was away on sick leave before passing on—interjected. “Much as he (Zaake) was tortured – as you have said – he was able to win a gold medal in athletics as Member of Parliament of Uganda with a broken leg…I am appreciating my Member that he won a gold medal for us,” Among said (Hansard Feb.8)

Zaake was incensed. He took to his X account the following day and lambasted her, describing her comments as “idiocy” and “meant to mock him and break me down”. 

Among would later respond by sanctioning a parliamentary hearing into his conduct that led to his removal as a parliamentary commissioner. 

But more incensed was the Concerned Citizens Activist Uganda (CCAU) and Lubaga Social Justice Centre, chaired by Habib Buwembo. They organised a press conference at Pope Paul Memorial Hotel in Ndeeba, accused Among of trivialising concerns on state-sponsored torture.  

To make their case, they listed several instances of severe state torture. These included when Dr Besigye’s car was damaged by Gilbert Bwana, who then pepper-sprayed him. Since then, they claimed, Dr Besigye had lost his eyesight. They also cited an example of Masereka, a NUP coordinator from Kasese, who had also undergone hell at Nalufenya.

They also cited an example of the former mayor of Kamwenge whose kneecaps were drilled while in detention at Nalufenya, and he later died after being released. He was not even an opposition element, he was an NRM member and had won an election on NRM ticket. 

Another case of torture, which they brought up, had even come up during the parliamentary debate.

“You all saw a gentleman called Kakwenza – we cannot keep quiet,” Nsereko had said, “He was arrested, detained beyond the reasonable hours prescribed by the Constitution and beaten to pulp like you all saw. Up to now, you can see all the marks on him after being beaten. What message are we sending out to the country; that officers can arrest people and detain them?”
 

Buwembo and fellow activists had been pursuing the release of Kakwenza for months. They had even secured a court order, ordering for his immediate release. In the company of his wife, they had taken the court order to prision.

But prison warders had declined to receive it claiming Buwembo and group were not officers of court and as such they couldn’t get documents from them. The warders had gone ahead to sneak out Kakwenza and rushed him to his home. But Kakwenza would later talk to the media and reveal the wounds he had sustained. 

“Seeing Kakwenza’s back never left some of us in the space of activism the same,” Buwembo said. “We resolved that he should come out and speak.” 

He added: “We gave her (Among) an ultimatum of seven days within which she had to come out and apologise to one, the victims of torture, two, to their relatives, three, to the public,” Buwembo said.

If the Speaker didn’t heed their call and also apologise within seven days, they would take further action, they vowed. Even before the presser was done, police raided the venue and arrested some of the activists. Buwembo escaped.

It was a Friday. The following Tuesday, a group of activists stormed Among’s home with crutches as evidence of state torture with people who had been maimed and sat at the gates of her home in Nakasero calling for her to order to open up her eyes. 

The Special Forces Command (SFC) personel, part of her security detail, crashed the protest instantly. One of the operatives brutalised a journalist from the New Vision and destroyed his cameras. While some of the activists managed to run away, many were arrested and detained.

That very week, another group of activists stormed the parliament with a pig painted in red colours around its lips, then yellow and white covered with a white handkerchief or a white small towel. They said the red colour on the pig’s lips represented the red lipstick that Anita Among wears on her lips.

Yellow, the political party she was affilliated to. White, the wigs that she wears. The pig represented her greed. When a pig is eating, it does not think beyond the feed its feeding on. When the feed is finished, it can even decide to feed on its young ones. 

Buwembo didn’t participate in these two protests.

Around this time, Among told parliament that she feared fo her life. She told parliament that there were people trailing her. She asked parliament to beef up her security. 

Buwembo claims that he was later informed that after that, Among reported to the highest levels of police that the person commanding the groups that wanted to kill her was Habib Buwembo.

She claimed that Buwembo had commanded the teams that raided her home and her workplace. If they had successfully attacked her from home and her workplace, and had gone ahead to issue an ultimatum of seven days for her to come out and apologise, she wondered, what would happen to her life after the elapse of the seven days.

One Thursday morning, 9:30am, Buwembo was on a phone talking to one of his brothers, while leaving home. Suddenly, four people surrounded him. 

“Yes, Afande, we have him,” one of them relayed a message on a radio call. 

“I know the man,” he added, “This is him”

“What is going on?” Buwembo asked.

“You are under arrest,” the man responded.

Buwembo immediately got off the phone and put it his pocket.

“Under arrest for what?” he asked again.

“Please try to cooperate with us,” the man threatened before adding, “If you don’t, we are going to take you the Kakwenza way.”

Buwembo quickly recalled the images of the scars on Kakwenza’s back. The photos had been trending. He said they had traumatised him and colleagues in the activism space.

“So when I heard that, I froze,” he said. He handed over the two phone and the laptop bag he was carrying as they had ordered.

Immediately, he saw a group of military and police officers running towards them. They surrounded them. Four trucks arrived. 

He was a few metres from his home. The entire area is full of residential houses. He turned and could only see neighbours trying to peep to observe what was going on. No one made an alarm. He did not see anyone recording a video or taking a picture with his phone.

“I was engulfed with a lot of fear for my life,” Buwembo said. 

There had been a lot of allegations of kidnaps and abductions and Buwembo thought this was his end. They pushed him into a double cabin. A police truck led the convoy and two other trucks followed.

There were sticks and an AK-47 in the double cabin. After what felt like a life-time of driving, Buwembo gathered courage and asked one of the officers where they were taking him.

“I have been cooperative to you,” he said, “why are you not talking to me. I am a simple man.”

“You are not simple,” the officer finally responded. “Do you know how long it has taken us tracking you?”

The officer removed his phone and showed him that in the evening he was at Wakaligga, where they stationed for hours. Then later they lost  him until morning. He remembered that indeed, he had been in Wakaligga and his phone had gone off as the battery got drained. He later went to Busega.

He started charging his phone but it was still off. He switched it on in the morning and started making calls. That is when they managed to locate him again. 

“You cannot know how badly we have been looking for you,” the officer said, “Our bosses are at our necks. If I show you how many calls I have received between yesterday and now, you cannot just imagine. But anyway we are taking you to our bosses at Kibuli CID Headquarters.”

“When I heard Kibuli, I regained my life,” Buwembo said, adding that all along he had been worried, he was being driven to state torture chambers.

At Kibuli, they called Charles Twiine, the Director of Parliamentary CID.

After a meeting with colleagues, Twiine approached Buwembo.

“I believe we have you now,” Twiine said with a smile.

Buwembo explained that if at all they had been looking for him, all they had to do was to call him and he would have brought himself instead of frightening an entire neighbourhood with huge deployments. 

Twiine turned to other officers and narrated how Buwembo had almost cost Kato Lubwama his seat in parliament. 

“This man is not simple,” Twiine said. “Now he is battling number three of the country.”

When Buwembo asked who the number three was, he turned and looked at him.

“Arent you in a battle with the Speaker of Parliament?” 

Buwembo wondered how he could be in a battle with the Speaker yet he wasn’t a member of parliament. 

“Do you know how many calls the speaker has made to our boss,” Twiine said, “Let me even call him.”

He picked his cell phone and called a person he claimed was the IGP and informed him before leaving.

At around 2:30am, Twiine came and asked whether he had had anything to eat.

Buwembo said he had not been allowed to access his people. Twiine called a lady and told Buwembo to order for a meal. Buwembo declined noting that he could not trust them to give him safe food given the way they had picked him up.

Instead, he asked for access to his phone to call his wife and lawyers.

Twiine said they had instructions not to allow him access to his phones. He could only offer his phone for him to call those people, Twiine said.

Buwembo said the way he was arrested traumatised him so much that he forgot all the contacts. He didn’t even remember his wives’  numbers.

Initially, they declined. An hour later, they allowed him to call his wife and lawyer. 

When he told the wife where he was, she noted that she had seen the operatives along the road to their home while taking their children to school but it had not occurred to her they had come for the husband.

He talked to his lawyer too, who arrived within 30 minutes. 

Buwembo’s lawyer asked Twiine what the charges were. Twiine brought out a laptop and played one of the video clips from the press conference they had held at Pope Paul Memorial in which Buwembo had given the Speaker seven days to come out and apologise.

Do you know who that is? Twiine asked, pointing to someone in the video.

“Yes, that is me,” Buwembo responded.

“Are you the one who uttered those statements?” Twiine asked again.

“Officer,” Buwembo said, “even if you like and you have a camera here and you put me in front of the camera, I am ready to repeat exactly what I said from the press conference. The person you are talking about, the Speaker is my servant. 

She is paid from the taxpayer’s money and I am a taxpayer.”

Buwembo was after charged with threatening violence against the person of the speaker and detained in Luzira for over 100 days. The charges would later be dropped because the complainant—Speaker Anita Among—never appeared before court. Yet again on September 25 2023, the same Twiine preferred fresh charges—transmitting malicious information against Speaker Among. The charge sheet notes that Buwembo had on September 21 2023 addressed Speaker Anita Among as a Karamajong Iron sheets thief, “well knowing that this was unlawful and intended to injure and ridicule the name of the person of the Rt. Hon speaker Anita Annet Among.”  Yet again Buwembo would be detained for 53 days. Again, court found no evidence and acquitted him on September 10, 2023, almost a year later.

Older posts
Newer posts