There are many types of fear. When I was growing up in the early 1950s, I feared God and people. I feared God because I was told he was all powerful and could do anything to me. I feared coming across him as I moved in the expansive landscape.

I feared people because I heard stories that there were kidnappers who would sack blood out of people. I also feared wild animals such as buffaloes, lions, leopards, pythons, cheaters, hyenas, foxes and wild dogs. They roamed the landscape and were far more than people in terms of numbers. However, by 1960, wild animals were rare and human populations had grown exponentially. I was left with fearing people. Indeed, in biology we know Man, Homo sapiens is the worst animal still roaming the landscape. But man is also a fearful animal, whether he is in power or outside power.

Today people are fearful of politics and those who have made it their profession and who use it to feed their greed and selfishness rather than provide services such as quality education, quality health and quality transport to the citizenry. People become more fearful when the professional politicians begin to grab their land, forests and swamps; exclude them from fishing; or even imprison or kill those that do not agree with them politically. What dismays me most is that the people are supposedly the ones who put the politicians in power without first studying and understanding the characters of those men and women they select as their leaders.

Apparently and increasingly, once selected they use politics as an instrument to dominate the people and exclude them from resources. This way the fear of the people of their governors and the future keeps on mushrooming. The people lose hope and even begin thinking that God has abandoned them. Some commit suicide while others do all sorts of things that end up harming them well into the future.

In this article I want to look at ‘politics of fear’, mainly from 1986 to the present and to 2026. However, we should remember that there has been politics of fear ever since the British colonialist wove a country that came to be known as Uganda out of 15 self-governing traditional nations, including Acholi, Ankole, Buganda, Bugisu, Bukedi, Bunyoro, Busoga, Karamoja, Kigezi, Lango, Moyo, Sebei, Teso, Toro and West Nile.

Politics equates to power: power of decision-making and action, which frequently influences the lives, thinking, actions, inactions and movements of those subjected to power. What should concern us here is what I call punitive power, which the rulers and or the governor evoke to cause people to submit to them and accept that they are inferior to them.

Punitive power and the state’s right to punish is the institutionalised power of the state to instil fear (negative or intimidatory general deterrence) in citizens to discourage them from committing crimes. It is a form of social control par excellence. Punitive power exploits people’s fear of social exclusion and the possibility of being labelled as a criminal to subject them to its control. In order to keep these threats alive, the punitive system enshrines penalties that have evolved over time and whose main paradigm today is the prison (Paz Francés Lecumberri, 2023). What is growing to alarmingly extreme levels is the political manipulation of criminality by those in power to control those they rule by ensuring that there is a lot of fear in them.

Apparently state and state agents spend most of the time, energy and money available to them to manipulate criminality. In the process the states become more of criminal states than deterrents to crime. They emphasise fear generation, fear proliferation and fear application in governance and leadership.

Many Ugandans have lived through fear over the four decades – either because of the actions of National Resistance Movement in the Luwero triangle from 1981-1986; Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army or from the campaign of an Islamist insurgency known as the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF). However, Ugandan Muslims face a different anxiety or fear. In peacetime, unknown assailants have ambushed and killed a dozen of the country’s leading Muslim clerics. Others survived and now live in fear. The attacks have occurred across the country, from the capital, Kampala, to border towns such as Mbale (e.g. Al Jazeera, 2016).

Zbigniew Brzezinski, cited by François Sennesael (2020) noted that politics of fear is an efficient means of control because it “obscures reason and intensifies emotions. I do not hesitate to add that it also occludes critical thinking from political processes. Yet reason and critical thinking are the real focus and products of education. It not rare to see that most political actors today hate reasoning and critical thinking and prefer to use emotions to do their politics. Many political conflicts are emotional clashes; not clashes of minds that value reasoning and critical thinking in politics. Indeed to fit in the politics of Uganda one must postpone reasoning and thinking and tick by emotions under the dictates of fear – political fear.

Politics of fear is rooted in political fear as distinct from other human and societal fears. Political fear is here used to imply apprehension about political threats to one’s political power, political pursuits, and political advantages, which is then generalised to include larger groups and/or publics. It is the worry that afflicts individuals and groups who are involved in power struggles, that is, politicians (viz election candidates, rebels, incumbents) and political structures (say cabinets and executives, politburos, militaries, or political parties).

Indeed, without reasoning and critical thinking, political fears and actions in the political parties of Uganda are emotionally-driven. It is extremely rare to pinpoint a politician in power or outside power who values reasoning and critical thinking. Their responses to political opponents or challenges are emotional. This could explain why in Uganda political illiteracy and political underdevelopment are rising supersonically.

Political threats can be human and non-human. Both as individuals and groups, human threats range from the minutest to the grand, and can take the form of election opponents, rebels, terrorists, pressure groups, potential and/or actual coup-plotters, assassins, as well as internal and external supporters to such individuals and groups. Non-human threats can be natural catastrophes, pandemics, economic crises, and generalised fears resulting from group conflicts and trepidations about historical processes in which individuals and groups may have been involved. These situational threats make political actors fear for their power, survival and/or ability to continue with their political pursuits (Centre for Basic Research, 2021).

Ugandans fear the once humble guerrilla leader, Yoweri Tibuhaburwa Museveni who kicked out the country’s rulers in the 1980s he called swine. Many Ugandans think, believe and are convinced  that President Tibuhaburwa Museveni himself is increasingly an autocratic ruler, convinced that only he can take the East African nation forward (Relief web, 2005). They refer to him, as he refers to himself, as “Ssabalwanyi”, another source of political fear in Uganda. Some think he is not only an embodiment of fear but fear itself.

Many Ugandans fear becoming victims of political intimidation or violence during elections. A majority think that they have to be careful about what they say about politics and which political organisations they join, and that the freedom of the opposition to function is more constrained now than it was a few years ago (AfroBarometer, 2022). This status quo explains why there is a deep see of conspiracy of silence even at the numerous university campuses in the country before, during and after elections. At the universities focus is now on academicism and scholasticism, less on debating, articulating and clarifying national issues such as good governance and good leadership.

Elections are an important source of regime legitimation across sub-Saharan Africa in general and Uganda in particular, but they are increasingly being held amidst climate of fear, tension, and threat of ensuing violence (e.g. Jenkins, 2020). The language of security is used to justify the construction of a “militarised” environment and restrictions upon the freedoms of assembly and expression. Whilst these served to create a highly uneven electoral playing field, they are nevertheless tolerated by key stakeholders in the process (e.g. Jenkins, 2020), yet it excluded most citizens from participation in the governance and leadership of their countries. Many become disillusioned and uninterested in politics, choosing or compelled to just look on. This way governors and leaders we do not need end up being the governors and leaders. The saying that we get governors and leaders we deserve has stuck.

During the 2021 national election, Uganda witnessed the highest level of election-related violence in its recent history. Protests erupted in many parts of the country after the arrest of presidential candidate Robert Kyagulanyi, popularly known as Bobi Wine, for allegedly flouting Covid-19 regulations (Gillian, 2021; Burke & Okiror, 2020 cited by Afrobarometer, 2024). A crackdown by security forces resulted in dozens of people being killed, wounded or arrested, while opposition candidates as well as their campaign teams were detained (Dahir, 2020; Atuhaire, 2020; Al Jazeera, 2020). In just two days in mid-November 2020, 54 deaths were recorded, mostly in the capital (Human Rights Watch, 2021) and in my district called Luuka. The events shook the country and unleashed a torrent of repression against opposition forces and the media.

Generating and sustaining political fear among the youthful political actors in the Opposition continue since the last general and presidential elections of 2021 when several young people were gunned down in Luuka District on the day Opposition Leader Kyagulanyi Sssentamu went there to campaign for his presidential bid. The media reported that the President’s Special Forces Command (SFC) and some soldiers from the war theatres in Somalia were militarily active against the political youths. Those who escaped death were sent to prison by the military court martial.

On October 23, 2024, followed their pleading guilty a week before on charges of attempting to overthrow the National Resistance Movement (NRM) government and being in possession of military wares, including 13 bomb materials, 16 youths active in the National Unity Party (NUP) were sentenced to prison terms. Prior to their sentencing the youths had been on remand for almost four years. Their several bail applications were denied on the military reasoning that their sureties were not substantial. Even when members of parliament, including the leader of opposition in parliament, came as sureties, the General Military Court Martial still denied the accused bail.

According to NUP leaders, the military did not have convincing evidence to pin the incarcerated NUP members and political activists. So, in their reasoning the military used Balaam Bagaruhare, the State Minister for Youth, to force the political victims to accept the charges even without evidence. According to NUP the political victims were denied their lawyers and instead assigned a military lawyer by the General Military Martial Court itself.

Interestingly Balaam Bagaruhare was cited in the media saying, “I am happy that Olivia Lutaaya and others have finally pleaded guilty to the charges. I will now persuade the Court and the President to pardon them”

Meanwhile the Court Martial Chairman, Brigadier Robert Freeman Mugabe, sentenced each of the 16 political victims to three months ans 22 days in jail for treachery, gave them caution for unlawful possession of ammunition, and informed them that they still had their right to appeal within 14 days. This was after Muhydin Kakooza, the leader of the political victims, expressed their intention to appeal the martial court decision. Kakooza was dismayed that after pleading guilty and spending over three years on remand, they were being sent back to prison. Most political leaders in the opposition interpreted the subjection of the NUP youth to the dictates of the general martial court as political repressions, deradicalisation, depoliticisation, silencing and marginalisation of the youth who constitute more than 80 per cent of the Uganda population, from active political participation.

Political repression is the act of a state entity controlling a citizenry by force for political reasons, particularly for the purpose of restricting or preventing the citizenry’s ability to take part in the political life of a society, thereby reducing their standing among their fellow citizens. Repression tactics target the citizenry who are most likely to challenge the political ideology of the state in order for the government to remain in control. The greatest threat to the NRM conquest and occupancy on the political space militarily are the youth of Uganda. The military court martial continuing subjection of civilians to its processes is sseen by many Ugandans as torture of civilians to subject them to full military control.

Mujuzi (2022) has observed that unlike in the constitutions of other African countries such as Botswana and Lesotho, where the relationship between the High Court and courts martial is stipulated, the Ugandan Constitution 1995, made under the full control of the former rebel combatants in the Luwero Triangle, does not deal with this relationship. The Constitution is also silent on the question of whether courts martial have jurisdiction over civilians. The Uganda Peoples’ Defence Forces Act (the UPDF Act) creates different types of courts martial with varying jurisdictions (section 197). The Act also provides (section 119) for the circumstance in which the General Court Martial has jurisdiction over civilians and appeals against the decisions of the General Court Martial lie to the Court Martial Appeal Court, which is the final appellate court except in cases where the offender is sentenced to death or life imprisonment. According to Regulation 20(2) of the UPDF (Court Martial Appeal Court) Regulations, in case an offender is sentenced to death or life imprisonment and his/her sentence is upheld by the Court Martial Appeal Court, he/she has a right to appeal to the Court of Appeal.

Since 2003, Ugandan courts have grappled with the issues of whether courts martial are courts of judicature within the meaning of article 129(1) of the Constitutionor organs of the UPDF and, therefore, part of the executive under article 210 of the Constitutionand whether courts martial have jurisdiction over civilians (Mujuzi, 2022).

Judges of the Supreme Court, Constitutional Court and Court of Appeal have often disagreed on these issues. Mujuzi (2022) relies on the drafting history of Articles 129 and 210 to argue that courts have erred by holding that courts martial are not courts of judicature under article 129(d) of the Constitution; and that courts martial are subordinate to the High Court.

Mujuzi (2022) also relies on the drafting history of the Constitutionand on international human rights law to argue that courts martial in Uganda should not have jurisdiction over civilians because they lack the necessary independence and impartiality and were established for the single purpose of enforcing military discipline in the army.

One school of thought argues that by continuing to subject political actors in the Opposition to their processes, Court Martial are no more no less than political appendages of the ruling clique in Uganda. It is doing political business in military fashion. The school of thought further argues that the Court Martial is a politico-military instrument.

It is extremely rare to hear that the Court Martial is trying soldiers of the UPDF who directly engage in political activities in the country. In fact, when most Ugandans thought and believed the Chief of Defence Forces (CDF), General Muhoozi Kainerugaba, should have been subjected to the military Court martial, and dropped as CDF for engaging in politics, making political statements and declaring that Ugandan civilians will never rule Uganda again, there was, and continues to be, total silence of the Commander in Chief and the UPDF. Some Ugandans thought that there was injustice mooted at General Sejusa and General Henry Tumukunde when they were subjected to Court martial for choosing to pursue independent political thinking after they had directly engaged themselves in NRM politics.

Since 2002, military courts in Uganda have prosecuted well over 1000 civilians for offences under the criminal code such as murder and armed robbery and increasingly political activists. In 2006 Uganda’s Constitutional Court ruled that military prosecutions of civilians were unlawful. This ruling upheld on appeal by the Supreme Court in January 2009 was consistent with international law, which unambiguously holds that military tribunals are not competent courts to try civilians accused of peacetime criminal offenses. Despite this, military courts continue to prosecute civilians and pass sentences as we have just seen with the 16 NUP youth political activists. Meanwhile military men and women who engage in politics get away scotch free. It is confusion of the justice system and accentuation of discriminatory administration of justice.

Let me end this article on the politics of fear by evoking President Tibuhaburwa Museveni’s statement during his presidential campaigns of 1996 in Seeta, Mukono, that “I am a quarter pin of a bicycle, which goes in by knocking and comes out by knocking; and a piece paper (the ballot) cannot remove me from power”.

Critical political analysts believe that this was President Tibuhaburwa Museveni’s way of managing fear in the politics of the time, which is entrenched. Movementists feared they might lose power, and non-Movementists thought the President wanted to rule Uganda for ever. Indeed earlier, the President had repeatedly said he can never hand over power to civilians; something his son resounded recently when he said civilians will never rule Uganda again.

Besides, during the NRM/A initiated and guided Constitution making process between 1992 and 1995, one Movement enthusiast, Basoga Nsadhu said “the Movement will rule Uganda for 1000 year”. Many hitherto fearful Ugandans decided to field behind Colonel Kizza Besigye to challenge Tibuhaburwa Museveni, which he did 4 times before he gave up. They called him the Hammer (Ssenyondo) and believed he could fell the President politically through the ballot paper. Kizza Besigye does not believe anymore that the ballot paper can remove Tibuhaburwa Museveni from power, although he led a group of Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) to break up the party that had all along fronted him in presidential elections, leading to the formation of a knew Party call People’s Front for Freedom (PFF). This is in the process of being registered as a full-fledged political party in Musevenite times. All these things are happening in a sea of fear sustained by the powers that be.

Many Ugandans are now asking, “Can opposition parties unite against the politico-military NRM?”  Well, according to President Tibuhaburwa Museveni during his swearing in for the 5th term as President of Uganda, he did not want organised opposition to exist by 2020. There is widespread fear that the president is frantically working to ensure that what did not happen in 2020 happens anytime. The many conflicts in the political parties are ascribed to the president’s anti-pluralism attitude.

There is a general perception that the president is employing many strategies to achieve the feat of erasing the opposition from the political spectrum of Uganda, chief of which is fear. Others include money, jobs, poverty and wars in the Great Lakes Region, which are siphoning off trillions of shillings away from social development of Ugandans for power retention.

There is fear that the “fear factor” will grow in stature towards the 2026 elections. Fear will continue to be central to elections in Uganda so long as NRM organises elections using an electoral commission unilaterally assembled by the president whose main interest is power in and over Uganda. One political analyst told me without fear and corruption the NRM government cannot stand; that fear and corruption are the biggest investments in the Ugandan economy towards 2050.

For God and My Country

• A Tell report / By Oweyegha-Afunaduula / Environmental Historian and Conservationist Centre for Critical Thinking and Alternative Analysis (CCTAA), Seeta, Mukono, Uganda.

About the Centre for Critical Thinking and Alternative Analysis (CCTAA)

The CCTAA was innovated by Hyuha Mukwanason, Oweyegha-Afunaduula and Mahir Balunywa in 2019 to the rising decline in the capacity of graduates in Uganda and beyond to engage in critical thinking and reason coherently besides excellence in academics and academic production. The three scholars were convinced that after academic achievement the world outside the ivory tower needed graduates that can think critically and reason coherently towards making society and the environment better for human gratification. They reasoned between themselves and reached the conclusion that disciplinary education did not only narrow the thinking and reasoning of those exposed to it but restricted the opportunity to excel in critical thinking and reasoning, which are the ultimate aim of education. They were dismayed by the truism that the products of disciplinary education find it difficult to tick outside the boundaries of their disciplines; that when they provide solutions to problems that do not recognise the artificial boundaries between knowledges, their solutions become the new problems. They decided that the answer was a new and different medium of learning and innovating, which they characterised as “The Centre for Critical Thinking and Alternative Analysis” (CCTAA).