FORTY-EIGHT hours before Ugandan voters went to the polls the country’s Communications Commission (UCC) imposed a social media blackout. It had been a bitter and violent election campaign pitting the 76-year-old veteran president, Yoweri Museveni against Robert Kyagulanyi – better known as Bobi Wine – a 38-year-old pop-star-turned-politician.
Museveni has been in power for 34 years and a victory in this election would be his seventh in a row in a tenure marked, say his critics, by a slide towards authoritarianism.
According to BBC reports, the shutdown affected not only popular social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, Signal and Viber, but more than 100 virtual private networks (VPN) which people were using to circumvent restrictions. The BBC also reported that the Uganda Communications Commission had ordered telecoms companies to suspend internet access altogether the evening before the January 14 election, although this information has yet to be officially
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