Category: Africa

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Barney Walsh, Senior Lecturer in Security, Leadership and Development Education, King’s College London

Uganda’s Kizza Besigye has been described as possibly the most arrested man in Africa. Besigye was once President Yoweri Museveni’s ally, and personal physician. He broke ranks with Museveni in 1999, and emerged as the most long-standing political opponent to the ageing president, who has run the country since 1986. For this, Besigye has been jailed, kept under house arrest, renditioned, forced into exile, and endured state violence countless times. He has been in jail since 2024. Barney Walsh and Dennis Jjuuko have studied Besigye’s remarkable political career.

Who is Kizza Besigye?

Kizza Besigye was born in Rukungiri district, south-western Uganda, in April 1956. After graduating with a degree in human medicine from Makerere University in 1980, he joined the National Resistance Army (NRA) rebellion, which dislodged the dictatorial rule of President Milton Obote in 1986.

Besigye served in different senior positions in Museveni’s new government, including minister of state for internal affairs and the president’s office. In 1993, he was appointed the army’s chief of logistics and engineering and later senior military adviser to the defence minister. He was part of the inner sanctum of the National Resistance Movement which became the civilian government.

Besigye remained close to Museveni until 1999, when he abandoned the ruling party. He said the movement had departed from its original principles, like democracy through free elections, security for all and eliminating corruption.

He believed Uganda needed liberation again, this time from a government he’d helped establish. This would define his life’s work.

Under the pressure group “Reform Agenda”, and later the political party Forum for Democratic Change, he was the leading contender against Museveni in successive presidential polls. He scored 27% of the vote in 2001, 37% in 2006, 26% in 2011, and 35% in 2016. The Ugandan supreme court acknowledged irregularities but refused to overturn the result in 2006.

After leaving the government, Besigye became the focal point for Ugandans wary of Museveni’s increasingly vicious authoritarianism. He was forced to flee to South Africa after the 2001 presidential elections. He has been brutalised, detained and charged numerous times. His younger brother died in 2007 from illness associated with incarceration on trumped-up conspiracy charges.

When the opposition one day take the reins of power in Uganda, the debt it owes Besigye will be immense.

What are the highlights of this legacy?

Besigye, 69, stands out as the foremost opposition figure who was part of Museveni’s original Bush War victory. His 2011 “walk to work” protests, in response to dramatic fuel prices and general inflation, will not be forgotten in the history of Uganda’s political economy.

Besigye seemed to think this civil action could be Uganda’s “Arab Spring” moment. Some mocked his efforts as a mis-reading of the socio-economic conditions in sub-Saharan Africa.

The protests were, indeed, subdued in the face of brutal repression by security agencies.

But similar protests would soon remove Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe in 2017 and Blaise Compaoré in Burkina Faso in 2014.

Besigye has developed credibility as someone trustworthy because of what he has been through. And he has a heartfelt connection with supporters.

His leadership has transcended other opposition figures during Museveni’s administration in terms of longevity and consistent vision for change. Other opposition leaders have emerged only fleetingly, failing to sustain any moral standing or coherent transformative vision.

As we argue in our recent paper, it is unclear whether opposition leader Robert Kyagulanyi (better known as Bobi Wine) could have emerged without Besigye laying the foundation and sustaining the momentum for change.

It’s important, too, to recognise his failings.

He is given to outbursts. His call for Chinese debts to be written off as odious was thought to alienate an essential development partner. His storming of what he described as a “rigging centre” during the 2016 election led to accusations of leading mobs to take over elections.

He is also partly to blame for the fact that Uganda’s opposition has not yet mustered a single candidate against Museveni due to competing egos and moral certitudes. Besigye has never seemed to be able to convince other opposition candidates to drop their candidacy and support him (or to do that for them).

Nevertheless, his individual role has been fundamental to the emergence of the idea and principle of peaceful opposition politics emerging in Uganda in the post-1986 era.

This is not to be underestimated in a country which has yet to experience a peaceful change of government since independence in 1962.

What is the context in which you assess his legacy?

Uganda’s post-1986 political landscape has been dominated, and controlled, by Museveni. His most recent election victory in January 2026 will extend his reign beyond 40 years.

While his public popularity has been in decline, Museveni has relied on two things. First is the Ugandan political and military elite. Since the mid-2000s he has taken steps to proof his regime against a military coup, by keeping influential military personnel on board.

Second is external support, mainly from western governments. This stems from Uganda’s involvement as a key security actor in the sub-region at the behest of western powers. This role has gradually been prioritised over the west’s pursuit of human rights.

Partly for these reasons, Besigye was never able to get the full backing of western donors to support his democratic goals. Instead they supported Museveni’s regime.

A lack of support for Besigye in western capitals was evident in 2024 when he was abducted while visiting Kenya, and returned as a prisoner to Kampala. It barely registered international condemnation or action – save for a belated push from US lawmakers.

This silence must be seen within a global context of democratic backsliding, including developments within President Donald Trump’s second term.

In east Africa, Kenya’s violent response to the 2024 Gen Z riots in Nairobi included state-led abductions and enforced disappearances targeting young people linked to the protest movement.

In Tanzania, the October 2025 presidential elections also saw human rights abuses of protestors met with unjustified lethal force.

What next?

Besigye has not managed to shake up Museveni’s inner circle of corrupt powerbrokers. This is because his progressive democratic vision of change threatens their privileges.

Neither has he ever enjoyed the global profile that he would have hoped for, such as Raila Odinga of Kenya or Morgan Tsvangirai of Zimbabwe managed – even as Bobi Wine did briefly before the 2021 election.

But the idea of a free and fair election is now at least ingrained in Uganda’s people. In a February 2025 interview, he revealed the lens through which his life work should be viewed:

We can only influence whether change happens quickly or is delayed, but change is inevitable. Sooner or later, Ugandans will take charge of their destiny and rebuild their country in a way that ensures equal opportunities for everyone.

If Besigye’s decades of sacrifice are to mean anything beyond retrospective praise, they demand engagement now, not memorialisation later. To remain silent is to collude in the slow erasure of a political life spent insisting that a truly democratic Uganda was a cause worth fighting for.

– Kizza Besigye: the firebrand who has shaped opposition politics in Uganda
– https://theconversation.com/kizza-besigye-the-firebrand-who-has-shaped-opposition-politics-in-uganda-275568

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Luisa T. Schneider, Assistant Professor, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam; Independent Social Research Foundation

In the decades after Sierra Leone’s civil war (1991-2002), there was pressure on the west African country to demonstrate progress on gender equality. Laws were passed to fight domestic violence, rape and teen pregnancy. But drawing on colonial legal models, the reforms don’t always match social realities and in many cases are harming young people from poor communities. Punishment is being made more important than resolution or education.

Luisa T. Schneider is an anthropologist who has spent a decade researching the subject. We asked her about her open source book Love and Violence in Sierra Leone: Mediating Intimacy after Conflict.

---

What did your study involve?

My research began in Freetown in 2012, ten years after the civil war’s violence, especially against women and girls. In 2016 I began living in a hillside community in eastern Freetown and also with a group of young men downtown. For 13 months I studied intimate relationships and followed disputes from household quarrels to community mediations and court cases, tracing over 100 through the magistrate’s court. I also spent time in Central Prison, interviewing men and boys convicted in “women cases”.

I wanted to know how love and violence intersect in everyday life and how law reshapes both.

What did you find?

In Sierra Leone, gender and relationships lie at the heart of moral life. Care, warmth and resilience are virtues held in high regard, and they are cultivated and learnt from women. But this masks the widespread abuse of women and places the unpaid labour of holding families and communities together on them. When the state tries to regulate intimacy without considering these moral realities, it deepens the very violence it seeks to end.

---

Read more: Why Sierra Leonean women don’t feel protected by domestic violence laws

---

Love and violence often live together, tangled in ways that make harm hard to end. People say that when harm occurs, judgment falls not only on the act but on the person’s character. Communities call for state involvement in cases of rape against minors or severe violence. But everyday conflicts in consensual relationships are generally understood as matters of character and relational repair rather than criminal intent. They are mediated internally, often by women who bear the burden to prioritise group stability over punishment.

Yet, the country’s legal system often tells a different story.

After the war, new laws were introduced to protect women and girls from rape, early pregnancy, and domestic violence. Key laws include:

• Sexual Offences Act (2012; amended 2019): criminalises rape, sexual assault and sexual exploitation; raises age of consent to 18; mandatory sentences; zero-tolerance enforcement reshapes policing of adolescent sexuality and youth relationships.

• Domestic Violence Act (2007): criminalises physical, sexual, emotional and economic abuse within intimate and family relationships; recognises private-sphere violence as a public concern.

• Child Rights Act (2007; revised 2025): defines children as rights-bearing subjects entitled to care, protection and due process, aligned with international standards.

• Prevention of Child Marriage Act (2024): prohibits marriage under 18 to end early marriage and related health and educational harms.

• Diversion and Alternatives to Detention Framework (2025): redirects children in conflict with the law from imprisonment to rehabilitation, mediation and reintegration.

Together, these reforms are meant to protect. But I found they also collapse care, consent and harm into a single criminal framework that misfits the lived realities of the Sierra Leoneans I lived and worked with. Importantly, mine is not an argument against protecting children from sexual harm, but about how protection is defined and enforced.

Although recent reforms frame children as having rights and promote alternatives to detention, boys charged under sexual offences law are routinely denied bail and treated as adult perpetrators. This reveals a contradiction in the system. It conflates rape, harm and consensual adolescent intimacy into a single category of criminality.

By raising the age of consent to 18, many ordinary youth relationships became criminalised. A 19-year-old can now face years in prison because his girlfriend is 17, even though she has chosen to love him. In aiming for zero tolerance, the state has policed intimacy instead of teaching consent.

In a society battling poverty and corruption, the new laws often shield the wealthy and punish the powerless. Young couples, especially across class lines, can be convicted, while powerful older men who abuse children can walk free.

One High Court judge told me:

We have serious problems with rape in this country. But of 25 or maybe 30 cases … mostly there are boyfriends here, you know, lovers. Maybe almost 23 of them are lovers. But the law is so rigid that I have to convict no matter the circumstance.

The updated Sexual Offences Act has deepened fear. It lowered the age of criminal responsibility to 12; sexual cases are now sent directly to the High Court; and life sentences are allowed.

Convictions happen even when girls testify that they love the boy or man who stands accused and confirm consensual sex took place. Many of the cases I studied are initiated by parents, neighbours, or teachers. This was often after pregnancies, school conflicts, or community disputes made relationships visible. Often the relationship happened within unequal social conditions between the partners.

In my view, what communities seek to mend through care, the law isolates and punishes. Conversations about consent, safety and protection disappear when love itself risks imprisonment. Women in violent relationships, meanwhile, lose attention and resources as the system turns to criminalising consensual intimacy.

What does this say about gender and justice?

Sierra Leoneans believe a good man is made not by punishment but by being raised with respect, love and care for others. As a community elder put it:

A child taught to kill becomes cruel. A child taught to love protects everyone.

Yet laws carry war’s legacy in their effort to discipline masculinity instead of guiding it.

What do you hope readers take away from your book?

Sierra Leone’s moral vision, found in everyday speech, mediation practices and women’s community leadership, reminds us that femininity is not weakness but wisdom. And that any just system must build on that strength.

If women were actually treated as they are morally regarded in Freetown – as strong, capable and central to social wellbeing – then both patriarchy and violence would begin to lose their hold. Ending violence begins in the home, in everyday care, and in the way we raise our children.

This isn’t just about Sierra Leone. It matters the world over. Law alone cannot end violence. Laws can punish, but they cannot teach care, consent or empathy. Yet punishment increasingly replaces education.

---

Read more: We used performing arts to map out gender violence in Sierra Leone. What we found

---

The lesson is clear: without engaging local understandings of care, consent and responsibility, laws meant to protect risk reproducing harm rather than preventing it.

– Sierra Leone’s harsh new laws to protect women and girls are causing harm in the wrong places
– https://theconversation.com/sierra-leones-harsh-new-laws-to-protect-women-and-girls-are-causing-harm-in-the-wrong-places-269662

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Tinashe Sithole, Postdoctoral research fellow at the SARChI Chair: African Diplomacy and Foreign Policy, University of Johannesburg

Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, South Africa’s foreign policy has been under sustained international scrutiny.

Its stance on the war in Ukraine has been one of active non-alignment. This means it has called for negotiations while abstaining from UN resolutions condemning Russia. However, it decided to take Israel to the International Court of Justice over the Gaza conflict in December 2023.

To many observers, including US policymakers and international analysts, these decisions suggest uncertainty or inconsistency. However, a closer look suggests a different interpretation.

In my recent research, I show how South Africa’s negotiated transition to democracy has shaped a foreign policy tradition that prioritises mediation, multilateralism and non-alignment.

I argue that South Africa’s foreign policy since 1994, including the period after the 2024 election, has been shaped by more than political shifts.

Instead, its negotiated democratic transition experience continues to guide how the country understands conflict and cooperation. This is even as the costs of maintaining this approach rise in a more fragmented and competitive global order. I describe this trajectory as “idealism under strain” – a principle-based foreign policy maintained under growing external pressure.

As a middle power, South Africa exerts influence most effectively through international institutions. By working through the African Union (AU), the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and the UN, it helps broker agreements and shape regional and global agendas.

What has changed is the international environment. Global politics has become more polarised and more transactional. States are increasingly expected to take clear sides on major issues, from security alignments to trade relations. This shift has narrowed the space for diplomatic independence.

In this context, South Africa’s preference for dialogue and institutional process has become harder to sustain and easier to misinterpret. Positions that once appeared principled are now criticised as evasive or contradictory.

This matters because South Africa’s influence depends less on power and more on trust.

To remain effective, it needs to continue leading regional mediation and peace efforts and to apply its principles consistently. When its positions on international law or human rights appear selective, its credibility weakens. When they are consistent, its voice carries more weight.

Behind the choices

South Africa’s post-apartheid foreign policy reflects the negotiated nature of its democratic transition. The end of apartheid in 1994 came through compromise rather than a military victory. This experience shaped a preference for mediation over coercion; for dialogue over exclusion.

These preferences shaped the country’s early diplomatic engagements on the continent. In Burundi (1999-2003), the Democratic Republic of Congo (2002-2003) and Lesotho (1998 and again from 2014 to 2017), South Africa promoted negotiated political settlements and power-sharing arrangements rather than military solutions.

This history helps explain current policy choices, including the call for negotiations on Ukraine.

It also explains the contrast in how the country engages across crises. For example, in 2023 it brought the case against Israel at the International Court of Justice. In other situations, such as political tensions in Zimbabwe, it has relied on quiet diplomacy, working behind the scenes rather than openly criticising the government.

In my view, these decisions reflect an adaptation to constraint rather than inconsistency.

This pattern has persisted across administrations. Successive governments have sought to balance democratic values with geopolitical realities rather than abandon one in favour of the other.

What has changed is the level of external pressure under which this balance must now be maintained.

A changing world

A more polarised and transactional world has narrowed the space for diplomatic independence.

Pressure from the US to align with the west has become more explicit, particularly following the South Africa vs Israel case.

Tensions have also affected the trade relationship. In Washington, some lawmakers called for a review of South Africa’s eligibility for the African Growth and Opportunity Act (Agoa). The legislation provides duty-free access to the US market. The criticism reflected concerns that South Africa’s positions on Russia and Israel, and its broader stance of non-alignment, were increasingly seen as out of step with US foreign policy priorities.

South Africa’s Agoa benefits expired in September 2025 and were only renewed on 3 February 2026. The months of uncertainty highlighted the economic risks that can accompany geopolitical pressure.

For a country whose influence depends more on diplomacy and external partnerships, such signals matter. They show how the costs of maintaining diplomatic independence are rising in a more competitive international environment.

What needs to happen next

South Africa is unlikely to abandon its preference for mediation, multilateralism and non-alignment. The key challenge is how it sustains this approach as international pressure intensifies.

First, South Africa needs to use the institutions where it already has influence more actively. This means taking visible leadership roles in the AU and SADC, and continuing its involvement in UN peace missions. These platforms are the main channels through which the country exercises diplomatic influence.

Second, regional cooperation needs to result in coordinated action. Conflicts in places such as Mozambique or eastern Democratic Republic of Congo affect neighbouring states and cannot be managed by one country alone. Working with regional partners on joint mediation and shared responses helps avoid fragmented or competing interventions.

Third, consistency matters. When South Africa calls for international law, negotiated settlements or civilian protection, the same principles should guide its positions across different conflicts. Applying these standards evenly reduces accusations of selectivity and helps preserve trust in its role.

These priorities do not require a new foreign policy. They reflect the need to apply an existing approach more clearly and more consistently.

– South Africa’s foreign policy is rooted in negotiation with all nations – a shifting global order makes this difficult
– https://theconversation.com/south-africas-foreign-policy-is-rooted-in-negotiation-with-all-nations-a-shifting-global-order-makes-this-difficult-275033