Uganda’s electoral commission has declared incumbent president Yoweri Museveni as winner of Saturday’s presidential election.  The commission says Museveni won with fifty-eight point six-four percent of tallied votes.

The commission claims seventy-six-year-old Museveni beat his main rival, thirty-eight-year-old Robert Kyagulanyi, also known as Bobi Wine, a popular musician-turned politician.  Kyagulanyi is said to have garnered thirty-four point eight–three percent of the total votes tallied.

Kyagulanyi has since rejected the declared results.  He says the election was rigged.  The Ugandan army and police have stepped up security in the capital city of kampala to prevent possible violence.

This will be Museveni’s sixth term in office.  He has ruled the country for thirty-five years now.

COVID-19 cases on the African continent now exceed three point two million as of Saturday, and the death toll has hit nearly seventy-eight thousand.

Africa centers for disease control and prevention, Africa CDC, says South Africa remains the hardest-hit country by the pandemic on the continent.  The country has one point three million COVID-19 confirmed, cases and a death toll of nearly thirty-five thousand.

Zambia and Senegal both reported highest daily spike on Saturday with seventeen hundred ninety-six and three hundred forty-two new cases respectively.

Emirates Airlines says it will suspend all flights to and from south Africa from this weekend till January the 28th for operational reasons.

The Dubai-based airline says customers holding tickets with final destinations in South Africa during that period will not be accepted for travel at their point of origin. It did not elaborate further.

Emirates is popular to and from the country. South Africa has seen a surge in cases since a new variant was identified in the country in November.

Emirates is popular with travellers to and from South Africa, but there has been a sharp drop in travel because of the coronavirus outbreak.