As Uganda enters its fifth day of digital darkness, a government minister has offered a bizarre explanation for the internet shutdown: a ship cutting a cable in Mombasa.

State Minister Balaam Barugahara claimed on live television that the outage, which conveniently coincided with the contentious general election, was due to a severed undersea cable at the Kenyan coast. "A ship was passing by, it hit a cable... our people are fixing it," he told viewers, dismissing the blackout as a technical glitch.

The "Technical" Excuse

However, industry experts and official directives contradict this narrative. The Uganda Communications Commission (UCC) had explicitly ordered telcos to suspend internet services on January 13 for "national security." Furthermore, global network monitors like Cloudflare show no corresponding dip in traffic for Kenya or Tanzania, which share the same infrastructure.

• The UCC Order: Leaked letters confirm the shutdown was a directive, not an accident.
• The Impact: The blackout has paralyzed cross-border trade, with truck drivers stuck at Malaba unable to process digital customs clearance.
• The Deflection: Barugahara urged youth to stop "wasting time on TikTok" and support President Museveni, revealing the political intent behind the shutdown.

The "cable cut" theory appears to be a clumsy attempt to gaslight a population that knows all too well why the lights went out. In the digital age, you can cut the connection, but you cannot hide the truth.