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A senior Ugandan official Wednesday defended the Internet blackout imposed ahead of elections, saying it was necessary to prevent riots and misinformation.The east African country goes to the polls today in a vote widely expected to secure President Yoweri Museveni his seventh term, due to his total control over state and security bodies.The authorities shut off access to the Internet on Tuesday, despite repeated promises not to do so, adding to fears of renewed repression and manipulation on election day.Presidential advisor Hajat Hadijah Namyalo Uzeiye defended the move, saying: "Internet creates wars, riots, misinformation."They had to shut down the Internet because of the misinformation from different stakeholders," she said.The UN human rights office said the shutdown — as well as a ruling this week to suspend 10 rights NGOs — was "deeply worrying".Uzeiye told AFP they expected a landmark win of "at least 70 percent" in the election."We are not ready for him to leave," she said.She rejected allegations from opposition leader Bobi Wine, analysts and rights groups that he is a military dictator who has violently repressed the opposition during his four-decade rule."I won't call it dictatorship," she said."What they are trying to portray to the world is the element of dictatorship without giving any version of the why, the who, the where, and the what." 

A daughter of former South Africa president Jacob Zuma pleaded not guilty at the start of her trial Monday to charges of inciting 2021 riots that left more than 350 people dead.Duduzile Zuma-Sambudla, 43, is accused of inciting terrorism and public violence via social media after her father was sent to prison in July 2021 for refusing to testify in corruption proceedings against him.The explosion of rioting and looting that followed was the deadliest unrest in South Africa since the fall of the White-minority government in 1994.A parliamentarian with her father's MK party, Zuma-Sambudla faces three charges related to posts on Twitter, now known as X, including some that showed images of the unrest with the caption "We see you", which the state alleges were inflammatory.Zuma, president between 2009 and 2018, was at the court in the eastern city of Durban where his daughter pleaded not guilty at the start of a two-week trial.Zuma-Sambudla and her supporters claim the case is politically motivated.Durban, the main city in the KwaZulu-Natal province that is Zuma's heartland, suffered the brunt of the deadly violence, which also spread to Johannesburg and caused damage estimated at billions of rands (dollars).President Cyril Ramaphosa, who took over from Zuma in 2018, deployed the military to control the violence, which he called an attempted insurrection.Zuma was sentenced to 15 months in jail after refusing to testify to a panel probing financial corruption and cronyism under his presidency. He served only two months before being released for health reasons. Ramaphosa later commuted his sentence.