Today, we conclude the reflections which were inspired by the Second Annual Convention on Policing, convened by Justice Access Point (JAP) on 6th August 2025.
The central question we aimed at answering was whether ‘democratic’ and ‘accountable’ policing can be achieved in the current Ugandan context. There is no doubt that policing in Uganda needs to be democratized – to ensure that it genuinely serves and protects the people of Uganda, and that it maintains law and order in an accountable fashion.
In this regard, there are certainly some legal reforms which can be undertaken to try and achieve this purpose – both at the psychological and the structural level. In the symbolic sense, there is powerful meaning in the nomenclature adopted to describe the police function.
In the colonial sense, its description as a ‘force’ made absolute sense, given that the main role of the police was the furtherance of the extractive aims of the State, which necessitated the maintenance of oppressive law and policy.
This was additionally an appropriate description, given the near fusion between the police and the army. In a democratic State, however, the police are mainly meant to serve and protect citizens.
There is, thus, a strong case to be made for reference to the police in terms of ‘service’ rather than ‘force’. This is a posture which is increasingly adopted by modern democratic States. In the Republic of Ireland, for instance, the police are referred to as Garda Siochàna – an Irish Gaelic term which means ‘Guardians of Peace.’
Under British rule, the police had been called the ‘Royal Irish Constabulary’ – which communicated its imperial foundation and purpose. Following Irish independence, the name was changed to communicate the new ethos of the police – as protectors of public peace.
Similar trends are evident in such jurisdictions as Ghana, Kenya and South Africa, in which the reference is to ‘Police Services’ rather than ‘Police Forces’. Incidentally, when in 2014 significant proposals were made to change the name of the Uganda Police to the ‘Uganda Police Service’, the then Inspector General of Police General Kale Kayihura rejected the same, arguing that ‘cops are not waitresses’ [See David Lumu ‘Uganda Police changes name’ The New Vision 11th April 2014, cited in Sylvia Namwase and James Nkuubi (eds) Militarization of Economic Sectors and Public Institutions in Uganda: A Socio-Legal Analysis, a 2024 HURIPEC Report, at p.116)
Such a statement was unsurprising, coming as it did from a soldier, unconstitutionally placed at the top of what was meant to be a professional police outfit. At the same time, the statement reflects precisely the colonial – and oppressive – attitude the Uganda Police needs to rid itself of, if it is to truly be accountable and democratic.
Structurally, one of the most important considerations should be the establishment of a robust, truly independent and civilian-led accountability mechanism which would be capable of real oversight over the exercise of police power.
This is also a clear trend now in most progressive contexts. To use the example of Ireland again, the police is headed by a Garda Commissioner who reports to an independent mechanism called the Bord An Gharda Síochàna.
In addition, under the Policing, Security and Community Safety Act (PSCS) Act of 2024 there is established a Policing and Community Safety Authority (PCSA), with oversight over the An Garda Síochàna.
Similar bodies have been successfully established in such jurisdictions as Ghana, South Africa, Kenya, the United Kingdom and others. Kenya, for example, now has the Independent Policing Oversight Authority (IPOA), established in 2011 through a similarly named Act of Parliament (Cap 86), pursuant to Article 244 of the 2010 Constitution.
The Authority is charged, among other things, with investigating any complaints related to disciplinary or criminal offences committed by any member of the Kenya Police Service, whether on its own motion or on receipt of a complaint, and making recommendations to the relevant authorities, including recommendations for prosecution, compensation, internal disciplinary action or any other appropriate relief, and making public the response received to these recommendations (Section 6 of the IPOA Act).
Under Section 8 of the Act, the IPOA is governed by an Independent Policing Oversight Board, composed of a chairperson (who must be a person qualified for appointment as a Judge of the High Court of Kenya) and seven other persons appointed by virtue of their knowledge and at least ten years’ experience in the fields of criminology, psychology, law, human rights and gender, medicine, alternative dispute resolution, security matters or community policing.
Additionally, the Chairperson of the Kenya National Human Rights and Equality Commission, is an ex-officio member of the board (Section 9 of the IPOA Act). South Africa similarly has the Independent Police Investigative Directorate (IPID) established in 2011 by the Independent Police Investigative Directorate Act.
The IPID exercises independent oversight over the South African Police Service, and is headed by by an Executive Director nominated by the Minister of Police and approved by Parliament (Section 6, IPID Act).
The IPID is mandated to investigate complaints regarding offences committed by the South African Police Service (SAPS). Relatedly, in 2018 the United Kingdom established the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) to investigate serious complaints involving the police.
According to its website, the IOPC annually conducts approximately 3000 reviews, enquiring into whether complaints and deaths from police contact have been handled properly.
The creation of such an Independent Policing Oversight Authority (IPOA) in Uganda would go some way in establishing a more accountable police in the terms envisaged under the 1995 Constitution.
Indeed, it was more or less such a body which was proposed by the Judge Julia Sebutinde-led Judicial Commission of Inquiry into Corruption in the Uganda Police Force almost quarter of a century ago.
The Sebutinde Commission proposed the establishment of a Police Service Commission (composed mainly of civilians and retired police officers) which would be tasked with the appointment, promotion and discipline of police officers. It is quite telling that those who instituted the Commission were far more reticent when it came to the implementation of its recommendations.
It is certainly the case that there are some internal accountability mechanisms within the police, such as the Directorate of Human Rights and Legal Services, and the Professional Standards Unit (PSU).
However, these are all purely internal structures, without room for independent and more rigorous scrutiny and oversight. Secondly, the processes of handling complaints and the outcomes of disciplinary proceedings (if any) are rarely made public, leaving room for real doubts as to their credibility and seriousness.
This can only serve to decrease public trust in the police, and to promote impunity and overreach on the part of the ‘police force’. At the same time, the fact remains that these (and other) legal reforms would not, in themselves, be sufficient to realize truly democratic and accountable policing in Uganda.
Experience has, for instance, already shown that including the word ‘Independent’ in the name of the Uganda Electoral Commission could not magically transform that institution into one which could be trusted by the large majority of Ugandans.
Similarly, while the establishment of an Independent Policing Oversight Authority (IPOA) would be an important step towards structural reform, in the current context of Uganda such a body would quickly fall prey to the same malaise which has afflicted several other ostensibly ‘independent’ oversight mechanisms (and even branches of government).
Does anyone, for instance, still seriously believe in the capacity of the Parliament of Uganda to check even the most egregious excesses of the Executive? Or in the capacity of the Judiciary to seriously restrain either the Executive or the Parliament – particularly when the interests of the President (or his son the Chief of Defence Forces) are manifestly implicated?
The same challenges which have led to the erosion of many other State institutions – including militarization, ethnic hegemony, increasingly grand corruption, and a clear commitment to near-monarchical and effectively mono-party rule – would continue to corrode the police, notwithstanding any short, medium or long-term legal or structural reforms.
Put simply, to answer the question initially posed in the first part of this series on the crisis of policing in Uganda, there can be no hope for ‘democratic’ or ‘accountable’ policing in a dictatorship. In this context, ‘reforms’ are cosmetic at best, and cynical at worst – promising much but delivering little in terms of real change.
Just as colonial Uganda was intrinsically inimical to the creation and sustenance of a democratic and accountable police service, Museveni’s Uganda is similarly – by its very nature – an impossible environment for the birth of such an entity.
Unfortunately, therefore, for the police as for a whole host of other important state institutions (such Parliament, the Judiciary, the Uganda Human Rights Commission and others) it is ‘not yet uhuru’.
The writer is a senior lecturer and Director of the Human Rights and Peace Centre (HURIPEC) at the School of Law, Makerere University, where he teaches Constitutional Law and International Law.
Thanks Dr. Busingye.
In other words, a Police that has been militarized and dehumanize into doing all the unlawful things in our Law Books, by our current 85-years-old PROBLEM OF AFRICA, Gen Tibuhaburwa; the man whom Prof. Mamdani has declared to be WORSE THAN AMIN, in his recent book “SLOW POSION”, is therefore irredeemable.
What is even more frustrating is that; because of the love of dirty money, even though many of the top NRM leadership and/or supporters, especially the recent ones who crossed from especially FDC and DP, like Speaker Among, her Deputy and Norbert Mao know that: Mr. M7’s leadership is worse than Amin’s Era of Terror and murder, they will not be bothered even if they are told by Mr. M7 himself that he is worse than Genghis Khan, Hitler or Stalin.
In other words, at all cost they are now dying to campaign for Mr. M7 to become worse than Emperor Nero, who e.g. murdered his mother, and after setting Rome ablaze; blamed the Christians and told the Romans that he was becoming God.