When the National Resistance Movement (NRM) captured state power in January 1986, President Yoweri Museveni – whom I shall refer to by his full clan name Tibuhaburwa – addressed the nation with words that have now acquired a bitterly ironic resonance.

“No one should think that what is happening today is a mere change of guard; it is a fundamental change in the politics of our country,” he declared. Thirty-nine years later, as we witness the seventh consecutive electoral exercise returning the same leader to power, we must ask: fundamental change towards what?

This article examines the systematic de-democratisation of Uganda under President Tibuhaburwa Museveni. By de-democratisation, I mean democratisation in reverse – the deliberate, calculated dismantling of democratic institutions, norms and practices to entrench authoritarian rule.

It is not merely the absence of democracy but its active subversion, a process whereby the pillars of democratic governance are corroded to feed interests that have nothing to do with the legitimate aspirations of Indigenous Ugandans for genuine democratic development.

Forgotten promise: Democracy in the NRM’s Ten-Point Programme

To understand what Uganda has lost, we must first recall what was promised. The NRM’s Ten-Point Programme debated and adopted in 1984 during the rebel war, was presented as a comprehensive blueprint for national regeneration. At its heart stood democracy, listed as the very first point. The programme defined democracy in the classic Abrahamic formulation: a system “of the people, by the people and for the people,” emphasising both parliamentary democracy and popular participation at grassroots levels through village committees.

Let us recall all ten pillars of this almost abandoned programme, for they serve as a tombstone for the aspirations they once represented:

• Democracy – popular democracy and participation
• Security – restoration of peace and security
• Consolidation of national unity – elimination of all forms of sectarianism
• Defending and consolidating national independence – genuine sovereignty
• Building an independent, integrated and self-sustaining economy
• Restoration and improvement of social services – rehabilitation of war-damaged areas
• Elimination of corruption and misuse of power
• Redressing errors – addressing historical injustices and dislocation of populations
• Cooperation with other African countries – defending human and democratic rights of all Africans
• A mixed economy strategy – balancing state and private sector participation

Today, each of these pillars stands either abandoned or grotesquely distorted. Democracy has been replaced by electoral authoritarianism. Security has been militarised into a weapon against citizens. National unity has been subverted by systematic ethnicisation of politics. Independence has been compromised by donor dependency and external manipulation. The economy remains unintegrated, with 80% of Ugandans still dependent on subsistence agriculture. Social services are in decay despite increased budgetary allocations.

Corruption has become so systemic that 61 per cent of citizens acknowledge that officials who commit crimes “frequently get off scot-free.” Historical injustices remain unaddressed, particularly in northern Uganda. Continental cooperation has been subordinated to regime security interests. And the mixed economy has produced a predatory crony capitalism that benefits a narrow clique.

Indicators of democratisation: Checklist for measuring regression

In our previous writings, we have scattered references to what genuine democratisation would entail. Let me now systematise these indicators, against which we can measure the extent of de-democratisation:

Constitutional democracy: Genuine separation of powers, with the legislature and judiciary exercising independent oversight over the executive. The 1995 Constitution was meant to provide this, but subsequent amendments – particularly the removal of presidential term limits in 2005 and the removal of the presidential age limit in 2017 – have concentrated power in ways the Constituent Assembly never intended.

Rule of law: Equal application of laws to all citizens, regardless of status or political affiliation. Instead, we have witnessed the selective application of justice, where regime insiders enjoy impunity while opposition figures face relentless prosecution.

Political pluralism: Genuine competition among political parties with equal access to voters, media, and resources. The reintroduction of multiparty politics in 2005 was supposed to restore this, but the playing field remains so tilted that opposition participation amounts to little more than legitimising a foregone conclusion.

Civil liberties: Freedom of speech, assembly and association. While 81 per cent of Ugandans still say they feel free to speak their minds, the qualitative reality is that this freedom exists only insofar as one does not criticise the president or his family. The Public Order Management Act 2013, which requires police permission for political gatherings of three or more people, effectively criminalises assembly.

Civilian control of security forces: The military subordinate to democratically elected civilian authority. Instead, we have witnessed the progressive militarisation of all state functions, with active and retired military officers occupying key positions throughout the civilian bureaucracy.

Free and fair elections: Elections that meet international standards of transparency, competitiveness, and credibility. As we shall see, Ugandan elections have become rituals of legitimation rather than genuine exercises in popular choice.

Accountable governance: Leaders who respond to constituent concerns and can be removed by peaceful means. Afrobarometer data reveals that only 25 per cent of Ugandans think their local councillors listen to them, and merely 15 per cent say the same about their Members of Parliament – both proportions declining over the past decade.

Inclusive citizenship: Equal rights and opportunities for all ethnic, regional, and social groups. Instead, we have witnessed the systematic privileging of one ethnic formation and the marginalisation of others.

Deliberative participation: Meaningful public engagement in policy decisions. The 2024 Coffee Act, passed despite unanimous opposition from farmers and industry stakeholders, exemplifies how Parliament now routinely ignores public input.

Militarisation of electoral process

The greatest falsehood propagated by the Museveni regime is that the periodic holding of elections constitutes democracy. This reduction of democracy to a mere electoral exercise allows the regime to claim democratic legitimacy while systematically undermining every other democratic indicator. In reality, Ugandan elections have been reduced to militarised, manipulated rituals at all levels of the electoral process.

The 2026 general election, concluded barely a month ago, offers the most devastating evidence. President Tibuhaburwa, now 81 years old, was declared winner with 71.65 per cent of the vote. The election took place amid a complete internet blackout – a hallmark of digital authoritarianism that prevents citizens from sharing information, organising independently or verifying electoral commission claims.

Pan-African Solidarity Network, a coalition of some 70 organisations, denounced the results as a “manufactured fiction,” accusing the Electoral Commission of poisoning registers with duplicate entries, biometric data of deceased persons, minors and entirely fictitious “ghosts.”

But the manipulation extends far beyond the voter register. The campaign environment itself was characterised by what the opposition correctly identified as the “militarisation of politics.” Security forces intensified their presence around opposition activities, transforming political rallies into military operations.

Kampala Mayor Erias Lukwago warned that involvement in opposition politics now carries a high risk of arrest, describing the election as a direct contest between citizens and the president.

The post-election violence revealed the true nature of the regime. Gen Muhoozi Kainerugaba, the president’s son and Commander-in-Chief of the Defence Forces, took to social media to announce that security forces had “killed 30 NUP terrorists” – referring to members of the main opposition National Unity Platform – and detained approximately 2,000 opposition supporters.

Such public admission by a senior military officer that extrajudicial killings had been committed, framed as counter-terrorism operations, represents a catastrophic normalisation of state violence against political opponents.

The term “terrorist” applied to opposition supporters is itself a calculated discursive strategy. By criminalising political opposition as terrorism, the regime justifies any level of state violence while delegitimising the very concept of loyal opposition that democracy requires.

President Tibuhaburwa’s mind-set is clear: there is no opposition to him, only enemies of the state. This explains why, even though opposition members have consistently been returned to parliament and local councils in every election since the reintroduction of multiparty politics, they are treated not as legitimate representatives of their constituents but as enemies to be neutralised.

Dr Kizza Besigye, the four-time presidential candidate and Museveni’s former physician, embodies this persecution. His abduction from Nairobi in November 2024 – a violation of international law – followed by his detention in a military court, his trial for treason based partly on AI-generated audio recordings flagged as 73 per cent deep-fake by fact-checkers, and his continued imprisonment despite a Supreme Court ruling that military courts cannot try civilians, represents the complete criminalisation of political opposition .

When the Supreme Court delivered its unanimous judgment, President Tibuhaburwa simply signed the Uganda Peoples’ Defence Forces (Amendment) Act 2025, overriding the court and restoring military jurisdiction over civilians. This is not merely disrespect for judicial independence; it is the active subordination of the judiciary to executive will.

Political ethnicisation and ethnic politicisation

Perhaps the most insidious dimension of de-democratisation has been the systematic manipulation of ethnic identities to ensure that power perpetually remains in the hands of one ethnic group. We must distinguish here between political ethnicisation – the process by which political competition is framed in ethnic terms to mobilise support – and ethnic politicisation – the process by which ethnic identities themselves become the basis for allocating state resources and opportunities.

Under President Tibuhaburwa, both processes have been deliberately cultivated to entrench what political scientists term an ethnocracy: a political system based on kinship, real or presumed, where citizenship effectively becomes governed by biological descent and access to power is determined by ethnic affiliation . The British colonial project laid the foundations for ethnocracy through policies of racial and tribal stratification . But the Museveni regime has perfected it.

The army, as I have noted in previous commentaries, remains the ultimate guarantor of this ethnic hegemony. This follows a pattern established in the Obote years, when the doctrine of ethno-functionalism was explicitly articulated by Defence Minister Felix Onama, who argued that Northerners had historically been soldiers and should therefore dominate the military.

Today, the doctrine operates less explicitly but just as effectively. When President Tibuhaburwa’s son holds the position of Chief of Defence Forces, when key security commands are reserved for co-ethnics, when military recruitment and promotion follow ethnic and regional patterns, the message is unmistakable: ultimate power rests with those who control the guns, and control of the guns rests with those who share the president’s blood and soil.

The consequences for democratic development are catastrophic. When citizens understand that no election can remove an incumbent whose ethnic base controls the security forces, electoral participation becomes either a futile gesture or, worse, a form of legitimation of the inevitable. This explains the declining electoral turnout, from 72.6 per cent in 1996 to 59.3 per cent in 2011, and the widespread perception that an NRM victory is the only possible outcome.

Long-term demographic engineering

Two related strategies deserve special attention for their long-term implications: Bantustanisation and the regime’s affinity for refugees as a political constituency.

Bantustanisation refers to the proliferation of districts – from 30 in 1986 to over 130 today – as a mechanism for political control rather than effective service delivery. Each new district creates new political office-holders: MPs, district councillors, administrative officials. These office-holders owe their positions not to popular mobilisation but to presidential favour.

The districts themselves are often too small to be economically viable, but they serve a crucial political function: they fragment opposition, reward loyalists, and create a class of politicians whose survival depends on perpetuating the regime that created their offices. Simultaneously, the regime has cultivated a special relationship with refugee populations, particularly from neighbouring countries.

While Uganda’s refugee policy is internationally praised as generous, its political implications are rarely examined. Refugees, dependent on state and UN protection, are unlikely to participate in opposition politics. Their presence dilutes the political weight of Indigenous communities in border areas. In the long term, the naturalisation of refugee populations—a process the regime controls—can alter demographic balances in ways that advantage the incumbent’s ethnic and regional base while disadvantaging historically oppositional Indigenous communities.

This is not accidental. It represents a deliberate strategy of demographic engineering designed to ensure that power remains concentrated in one ethnic formation while the broad masses of Indigenous Ugandans are systematically depoliticised and reduced to what I have previously termed slaves to power – subjects of authority rather than citizens with agency.

Corruption, commercialisation of politics

Corruption in Uganda is not merely a failure of governance; it is a pivot of de-democratisation. When the seventh point of the Ten-Point Programme promised “elimination of corruption and misuse of power,” it envisioned a clean break from the predatory politics of the past. Instead, corruption has become systemic, functional, and essential to regime maintenance.

The commercialisation of politics means that electoral competition has become an investment opportunity. Parliamentary seats are expensive to acquire – estimates suggest successful candidates spend hundreds of millions of shillings on campaigns – but they offer even greater returns through access to constituency development funds, procurement contracts and opportunities for rent-seeking. MPs who might otherwise exercise oversight over the executive are instead preoccupied with recouping their electoral investments.

When parliament approved substantial funds for members to purchase personal vehicles during a period when ordinary Ugandans were struggling economically and the government was soliciting private contributions for Covid-19 vaccines, it merely made explicit what had long been implicit: parliamentary office is a pathway to personal enrichment, not public service.

This commercialisation produces what we must call the Mafia-isation of the state – the emergence of a criminalised political class whose interests are aligned not with citizens but with each other and with the patron who distributes opportunities. The deep state – the network of security officials, loyalist judges, compliant prosecutors, and entrenched bureaucrats who operate beyond democratic accountability – ensures that even if elections produced an opposition victory, the actual machinery of state would remain under regime control.

Digital authoritarianism: New frontier of control

I have previously written about digital authoritarianism, and the 2026 election has confirmed my deepest fears. The internet shutdown during voting was not merely an inconvenience; it was a deliberate strategy to prevent citizens from documenting fraud, coordinating independent observation or communicating with each other about the electoral process.

In an age where democratic participation increasingly requires digital connectivity, the ability to sever that connectivity at will represents ultimate control.

But digital authoritarianism extends beyond election-day shutdowns. The regime has systematically weaponised social media platforms for disinformation campaigns. The Besigye case revealed that AI-generated deep-fake audio recordings were introduced as evidence in treason proceedings. Accounts linked to pro-government networks systematically amplify narratives that criminalise opposition figures, framing them as traitors and foreign agents.

These digital tactics serve multiple functions: they shape public opinion, legitimise state repression, and provide evidentiary justification for legal proceedings against opponents.

The tragedy is that the internet and artificial intelligence could be powerful tools for democratisation. They could facilitate citizen engagement, enable independent media strengthen civil society networks, and enhance electoral transparency. Instead, under conditions of digital authoritarianism, they become instruments of perpetual control and domination.

Ecocide, genocide, ethnocide and intellectual death

In our previous writings, we have documented the multiple forms of destruction accompanying Museveni’s long rule. Let me summarise them here as the clearest indicators that the political environment being cultivated is the antithesis of democratisation.

Ecocide: The destruction of Uganda’s natural environment – wetlands drained for political cronies, forests encroached upon, the Albertine Graben devastated by oil extraction with minimal environmental oversight – represents not merely poor environmental policy but a deliberate sacrifice of collective heritage for elite enrichment.

When the president personally intervenes to authorise wetland encroachment for politically connected investors, he signals that environmental law applies only to those without connections.

Genocide and ethnocide: While the international community reserved the genocide label for Rwanda, what occurred in north-eastern Democratic Republic of Congo during Uganda’s military adventures, and what has been inflicted upon the Ituri and other communities, bears the hallmarks of ethnically targeted violence.

Within Uganda, the long war in the north – which displaced up to 1.5 million people and lasted nearly two decades – was allowed to continue not because the Uganda People’s Defence Force lacked capacity to end it, but because instability served regime interests by preventing the emergence of a northern political alternative.

The doctrine of “negative peace” that prevails in post-conflict areas – where the guns have fallen silent but justice remains unaddressed – represents ethnocide: the destruction of communities’ capacity to live with dignity and self-determination.

Intellectual death and the erasure of public intellectuals: Perhaps most devastating for Uganda’s future is the systematic elimination of intellectual space. Public intellectuals – those who should be the conscience of the nation, who should analyse, critique, and propose – have been silenced through a combination of co-optation, intimidation, and exile.

The academy, once a site of vigorous debate, has been depoliticised and professionalised into technical training rather than critical inquiry. The public sphere has been evacuated of substantive debate about the nation’s future. When I retired from academic life sixteen years ago, I imagined that retired professors might occupy a respected space as public elders offering guidance. Instead, even retired academics find themselves subjected to surveillance and intimidation if they speak truth to power.

People still want democracy

Despite everything – despite three decades of de-democratisation, despite militarised elections, despite ethnic manipulation, despite corruption and repression – the Ugandan people have not abandoned their democratic aspirations.

Afrobarometer data consistently reveals strong popular support for democratic governance. Nearly three-fourths of Ugandans (73 per cent) prefer democracy to any other form of government. More than three-fourths (77 per cent) believe multiple political parties are necessary to ensure real electoral choice. Large majorities reject dictatorship (86 per cent), military rule (75 per cent) and one-party rule (63 per cent).

These numbers reveal a profound disconnect between elite behaviour and popular will. The de-democratisation occurring in Uganda is not a response to popular demand; it is a project imposed by a ruling clique against popular preferences.

President Tibuhaburwa’s repeated assertions that Ugandans want him to continue leading, that no alternative exists, that opposition represents foreign interference—these are ideological justifications for a project of authoritarian entrenchment that enjoys no democratic mandate.

The data also reveal declining satisfaction with how democracy actually functions – down 7 percentage points since 2012, to just 45 per cent. This gap between democratic aspirations and democratic satisfaction represents both a warning and an opportunity. It warns that prolonged democratic failure can eventually erode democratic commitment; indeed, opposition to authoritarian alternatives has decreased slightly since 2022.

But it also signals that citizens recognise the gap between promise and reality, and remain available for mobilisation around genuine democratic renewal.

De-democratisation as deliberate project

Let me conclude with a proposition that may seem harsh to those who still hope for gradual reform, but which the evidence compels: The de-democratisation of Uganda under President Tibuhaburwa Museveni is not the unintended consequence of governance challenges, nor the inevitable result of Africa’s difficult conditions, nor the product of cultural factors rendering democracy unsuitable. It is a deliberate, calculated project designed to ensure that power remains permanently concentrated in one family, one ethnic formation, one network of cronies, at the expense of the Indigenous Ugandan majority.

The Ten-Point Programme was abandoned not because it proved unworkable but because its implementation would have empowered citizens at the expense of the ruling clique.

Democracy was subverted not because Ugandans are unready for it but because genuine democracy would have removed the incumbent.

Elections were militarised not to ensure security but to ensure that no election could produce an alternation of power.

Ethnicity was manipulated not to manage diversity but to entrench hegemony.

Corruption was tolerated not because it could not be stopped but because it purchased loyalty.

The deep state was constructed not to ensure stability but to ensure that even if citizens voted for change, change could not occur.

For those who ask what is to be done, I offer no facile prescriptions. The forces arrayed against democratisation are powerful, entrenched, and increasingly ruthless. But I offer this analysis in the belief that naming the problem accurately is the first step toward addressing it.

De-democratisation is real. It has a history, a structure, and agents who benefit from it. Understanding it is the precondition for reversing it.

Ugandan people still want democracy. They still believe in the possibility of a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. That reservoir of democratic aspiration, despite everything, has not been exhausted. Whether it can be organised, mobilised, and translated into political change before the forces of de-democratisation complete their project of permanent authoritarian entrenchment – that is the question upon which Uganda’s future depends.

• A Tell Media report / By Oweyegha-Afunaduula. The writer is a retired Ugandan scholar and elder who has witnessed and analysed Uganda’s political evolution from colonialism through independence to the present day.