Africa Is a Country

The other news from Uganda this week

Africa Is a Country Podcast
African Five-a-Side Podcast

The other news from Uganda this week

By
Dan Moshenberg

Here’s the ‘other’ news from Uganda this week. Dateline: Kampala: “Police have warned the public against undressing women whom they perceive to be indecently dressed, saying the Anti-Pornography law is not operational yet.” Yet.

Ever since Simon Lokodo, State Minister for Ethics and Integrity and lead proponent for a ban on miniskirts (that’s him above), announced that the Anti-Pornography Bill had been signed into law, women have faced violence, especially in taxi ranks. According to Lokodo, “If your miniskirt falls within the ambit of this definition then I am afraid you will be caught up by the law.”

Except that, despite Lokodo’s most fervent efforts, the miniskirt ban actually never made it into the final legislation. Women across Uganda shut it down. From #SaveTheMiniSkirt online campaigns to Save the Miniskirt parties to formal lobbying to organizing in the streets and off, women shut it down. Women understood that the issue of their clothing was nothing more or less than an attack on women’s autonomy. For Rita Aciro Lakor, the executive director of Uganda Women’s Network (Uwonet), “It’s about going back to controlling women. They’ll start with clothes. The next time they’re going to remove the little provisions in the law that promote and protect women’s rights.”

Control. Protection. These are familiar terms to women who have struggled against the State’s attempt to rein them in, from New York to Jakarta to Kampala and beyond. The discreteness of the discourse serves to cover up the heart and soul of the operation, which is violence and terror, all in the name of protecting women.

So here is the reality of the Anti-Pornography Law 2014. There is no ban on miniskirts. Yet women university students are raped and murdered. Yet women across the country are brutally assaulted in public by crowds of men, stripped, sometimes naked, and then further assaulted. And a nation, and a world, asking, “Why are Ugandans killing, undressing” their daughters and sisters? And the police warn the law is not operational yet.

Yet.

Further Reading

Africa and the AI race

At summits and in speeches, African leaders promise to harness AI for development. But without investment in power, connectivity, and people, the continent risks replaying old failures in new code.

After the uprising

Years into Cameroon’s Anglophone conflict, the rebellion faces internal fractures, waning support, and military pressure—raising the question of what future, if any, lies ahead for Ambazonian aspirations.

In search of Saadia

Who was Saadia, and why has she been forgotten? A search for one woman’s story opens up bigger questions about race, migration, belonging, and the gaps history leaves behind.

Binti, revisited

More than two decades after its release, Lady Jaydee’s debut album still resonates—offering a window into Tanzanian pop, gender politics, and the sound of a generation coming into its own.

The bones beneath our feet

A powerful new documentary follows Evelyn Wanjugu Kimathi’s personal and political journey to recover her father’s remains—and to reckon with Kenya’s unfinished struggle for land, justice, and historical memory.

What comes after liberation?

In this wide-ranging conversation, the freedom fighter and former Constitutional Court justice Albie Sachs reflects on law, liberation, and the unfinished work of building a just South Africa.

The cost of care

In Africa’s migration economy, women’s labor fuels households abroad while their own needs are sidelined at home. What does freedom look like when care itself becomes a form of exile?

The memory keepers

A new documentary follows two women’s mission to decolonize Nairobi’s libraries, revealing how good intentions collide with bureaucracy, donor politics, and the ghosts of colonialism.

Making films against amnesia

The director of the Oscar-nominated film ‘Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat’ reflects on imperial violence, corporate warfare, and how cinema can disrupt the official record—and help us remember differently.