Love, fear, hatred and others: Human emotion and the 1995 Constitution – Part 3

The previous two editions of this column undertook a preliminary exploration of the role of human emotion in constitutional dialogue and contestation in Uganda.

Today, we continue this examination with some reflections as to the implications of this discourse for those struggling to restore genuine democracy, good governance and the rule of law in our country. One of the major weapons deployed by oppressive regimes is the emotion of fear – and hopelessness.

This is why autocrats often wear military fatigues instead of civilian clothes, and needlessly carry guns even in the most inappropriate of situations. A good example of this was when in March 2010, following a landslide in Bududa (Eastern Uganda), Yoweri Kaguta Museveni showed up in the affected area clad in a Uganda Peoples’ Defence Forces (UPDF) uniform, and carrying an AK-47.

More recently, his son, Muhoozi Kainerugaba, seems to have taken up this strategy, with consistent posts on X (formerly Twitter) which emphasize the UPDF’s capacity to find, torture and kill various persons in Uganda and elsewhere. The unmistakable intention behind this is to communicate an air of invincibility, on the one hand, and to produce fear on the part of its addressees, on the other.

Sometimes, this strategy is effective – against both persons holding public office, and ordinary citizens. Parliament’s approach to the just passed UPDF (Amendment) Bill is only the latest instance of this – including the single day provided for public consultations, and the clumsily dispatched invitations sent out in the course of those farcical proceedings (that sent to the Uganda Law Society, for example, was delivered just ten minutes before that body’s envisaged appearance before the Parliamentary Committee handling the Bill).

Members of parliament – grown men and women – could only conduct themselves in such a manner out of fear (of Museveni and his son), or greed, or both. Uganda history is also replete with instances of the judiciary being threatened, directly and indirectly, and Judges responding to those threats with fear.

There are ‘big’ historical examples of such fear – couched, of course, in such legalese as ‘the Kelsen theory’ (used in the 1966 case of Uganda v Commissioner of Prisons, Ex Parte Matovu to legitimize Obote’s coup) and ‘the Political Question Doctrine’ (which was invoked in the 1997 Supreme Court case of Attorney General v Major General David Tinyefuza, in the course of denying that soldier’s bid to retire from the army).

There are also several ‘smaller’ – but no less significant – instances of judicial cowardice, reflected in unjust decisions to deny bail or habeas corpus, and also shadowed in strangely and ‘supernaturally’ expedited and substantively flawed High Court decisions relating to Parliamentary Elections.

At other times, however, the rule-by-fear strategy is less effective. An example in this regard is presented by the decision of Judge John Bosco Katutsi in the 2006 case of Uganda v Kizza Besigye.

In dismissing the clumsily arranged, and obviously politically-motivated rape case against Besigye, Judge Katutsi scolded both the prosecution and, by extension, the unseen state hand (from the very top) which had clearly set the law and institutions in motion against a political opponent, noting: ‘The evidence before this court is inadequate even to prove a debt; impotent to deprive of a civil right; ridiculous for convicting of the pettiest offence; scandalous if brought forward to support a charge of any grave character; monstrous if to ruin the honour of a man who offered himself as a candidate for the highest office of this country.’

Another example is provided by Eron Kiiza – who came from illegal detention at Kitalya (an ordeal clearly designed to put the fear of God, as well as of the UPDF and everything to do with it) and has continued to courageously conduct his work as a lawyer for Rtd. Col. Dr Kizza Besigye and many other clients whom many Ugandan lawyers are unwilling to represent (for fear of state reprisal).

Clearly, like any other mind game, the success of the rule-by-fear approach ultimately rests on the strength of will of those against whom it is deployed – and Ugandans are not the first, nor will they be the last, to be tested in this way.

Those African Americans (and their allies) who demonstrated for civil rights in the United States in the 1950s and 1960s were faced with high-pressure water hoses, police dogs, brutal beatings, imprisonment and death. As were those who fought against apartheid in South Africa – and in several other contexts around the world.

One lesson from these and other places is that violence is only a possible part of a response – and is often not a very successful one. Museveni explored this at length, both theoretically (starting from his undergraduate thesis at the University of Dar es Salaam titled ‘Fanon’s theory on violence: Its verification in liberated Mozambique’ and subsequent work) and practically (from ‘field work’ in Mozambique, to the anti-Idi Amin struggle and eventually the five-year bush war against Milton Obote).

And the example of Museveni is itself a powerful cautionary tale as to the limits of violence as a means for the achievement of liberation from oppression. It is rather tragic that, after fighting Amin and Obote for many years, Museveni has, in the end, done many of the things that he accused them of – and, in some instances, even worse.

I suspect that, if the Museveni of 2025 met the younger version of the 1960s, he would commend to him that old warning, by the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, published in the 1888 Book titled Beyond good and evil: ‘He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And when you gaze long into an abyss the abyss also gazes into you.’

A reading of Museveni’s undergraduate thesis, shows a young idealist who was dedicated to the liberation of his people from colonial and other oppressive forces. He writes, for instance, of the egalitarianism and ‘justice’ embedded in the revolutionary FRELIMO forces, as compared to the parochialism and bourgeois tendencies in other parts of Africa (such as Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu’s failed revolution in Biafra, and the ‘tribal’ loyalties and associations he saw as prevalent in Uganda, and at Makerere University).

To the young Museveni, inspired by Frantz Fanon, revolutionary violence was the only answer – a means on cleansing both the oppressed ‘natives’ (of their learned – and, in some instances, inherited – inferiority complex and problematic superstitions) and the colonial oppressors (of their assumed superiority and exploitative reliance on the labour of others).

Is it not ironic, that over 50 years after the completion of this thesis, Museveni’s much beloved army has become the very anti-people instrument of oppression he so vociferously criticized [from the originally ‘National Resistance Army’ to the ‘Uganda Peoples’ Defence Forces’ and now, unfortunately, to an apparently essentially ethnic militia, headed by the son of the founder, with the ostensible mandate of ‘teaching Runyankore’ (torturing) real and perceived political enemies]?

Museveni stared long (perhaps too long) into the abyss – and he became that monster which he set out to fight. And this is where the lesson for those fighting for democracy and good governance in Uganda today lies: do not, in fighting Museveni and the deeply problematic system he has engendered and trenched, set into motion a process in which you become precisely that which you are fighting now. In this regard, I can do no better than to quote from another undergraduate thesis – the Bachelor of Laws dissertation of Ms. Desire Uthman Amumpaire, recently completed (April 2025) at Makerere University School of Law, under the supervision of Dr. Sylvie Namwase, entitled ‘Non-violent resistance and the law: Assessing the efficacy of legal and non-violent methods in Uganda’s struggle for liberation’.

As Amumpaire correctly observes, regarding the efficacy and long-term sustainability of violent takeovers: ‘They may promise fundamental departures from the old order but as we have seen, particularly in the case of Museveni, the consolidation of power and then an iron grip on [that] power often follows. [This is] not to mention the sort of entitlement and expectation of being rewarded for the ‘sacrifices’ made for the struggle. This traps the ordinary citizens in a loop of authoritarian, repressive and undemocratic leadership.’ [at p.88]

This is a critical identification of what has been the tragedy of post-independent Uganda, from 1962 to present – the vicious cycle of increasingly worse governance. Indeed, it is the same point Museveni made in his ‘Fundamental Change’ speech delivered on 29th January 1986: ‘In Africa, we have seen so many changes that change, as such, is nothing short of mere turmoil. We have seen one group getting rid of another one, only for it to turn out to be worse than the group it displaced.’

One need not add much here – Museveni’s own words sufficiently condemn him, and his group of 1986. The critical question is as to how to escape the ‘loop of authoritarian, repressive and undemocratic leadership’ that we find ourselves in today as Ugandans.

In the column next week, we shall conclude this series – on human emotion and the 1995 Constitution – by answering precisely this question.

The writer is 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 Legal Philosophy.