Love, fear, hatred and others: Human emotion and the 1995 Constitution – Part 5

The central idea behind the last four columns in this series has been a simple one – government and law (including the Constitution) are conceived and implemented by human beings.

They thus inevitably reflect humanity, and human emotion, in their best and worst forms. In its ideal sense, the purpose of government, and of law, is to constrain the worst human impulses (greed, envy, prejudice, hatred and others) – and to protect and promote the common good (that which the framers of one famous Declaration of Independence from 1776 summarized as ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’).

States are at their best when those who run them – those tasked with making law, implementing it and interpreting it – are intentional about restraining the baser human impulses and promoting, at the very minimum, those conditions which make our co-existence on this small planet possible.

As the African American civil rights leader, Martin Luther King Jr aptly noted: ‘It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can stop him from lynching me, and I think that’s pretty important.’

This necessarily begs the question as to whether leaders who are obsessed with killing and violence are best placed to preserve, protect and defend life, liberty and human flourishing in its broadest sense. One may, using the set-a-thief-to-catch-a-thief logic, be tempted to trust gunmen for protection from other gunmen, but the lessons of history (including our country’s own) strongly suggest that any such trust would be misplaced.

In last week’s column, we analyzed Museveni’s own journey as a student and later practitioner of Frantz Fanon’s theory of ‘revolutionary violence’ and pointed out the clear parallels – evident in the 1960s but brought into even stronger relief over half a century – between what ‘revolutionaries’ purported to fight and what they became.

Museveni valorized violence – and dedicated almost the entirety of his life to its intellectualization and deployment, even while purporting to distinguish his own brand (‘revolutionary violence’) from other forms (‘violence for its own sake’ – that pursued by homicidal maniacs’).

In the end, as with the animals in George Orwell’s ‘Animal Farm’, when Ugandans look ‘from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again’ it is ‘impossible to say which [is] which’.

I am sure, if the people of Mukura from 1989, or Kasese from the 2016 clashes, or of Central Uganda from November 2021, or the various other persons detained, tortured or killed since 1986 were consulted, they might find some difficulty to distinguished the NRM/A ‘revolutionaries’ from the past leaders (including the British colonialists) who were called ‘swine’ by Museveni.

Inspired by Fanon, Museveni’s undergraduate thesis suggested that ‘revolutionary violence’ could purify those who pursued it (of learned inferiority and inherited superstitions or parochialisms) and restore to them their full humanity.

Unfortunately, the Museveni of 2025 both denies his own humanity (including through refusing to admit a feeling of sadness upon the demise of close friends) and unironically clings to strange myths and superstitions (such as the idea of a Cwezi dynasty, and the effect of eating certain kinds of meat, such as chicken and pork, on the human constitution).

If ‘revolutionary violence’ not only failed to cure Museveni of the illogical superstitions of Banyankore herdsmen, but also deprived him of a full sense of the human experience, how distinguishable is this kind of violence from that pursued for its own sake (by so-called ‘homicidal maniacs’).

In his quieter moments, if Museveni were to have a conversation with himself over a cup of tea (or bushera) on one solitary evening, he might admit to himself that he was wrong to so strongly advocate for, and almost evangelically pursue, the mantra of revolutionary violence.

He might realize that while certain forms of force might be important, in very limited circumstances (such as defence of self or of others), the attempt to build a national myth or ‘story’ or political movement on such a foundation would be deeply problematic. Unfortunately, not only did he pursue this path for himself – he appears to have committed the cardinal sin of foisting the same albatross around the neck of his son Muhoozi Kainerugaba.

And it might very well be the case that a number of the excesses Uganda is currently being subjected to by Kainerugaba have their roots in a form of instruction that was steeped more in a fanatical belief in militarism than a trust in the innate goodness of the human spirit.

Indeed, even the most cursory examination of Muhoozi Kainerugaba’s X feed is quite revealing of some of the ghosts he struggles with as a result of the path he was set upon. On more than one occasion, for instance, he has referenced the line from the 2004 movie ‘Troy’ in which Achilles says: ‘At night I sometimes see them. The faces of the men I killed. They are waiting for me on the far bank of the Styx. They say, “Welcome, brother”.’

On another occasion, on 31st March 2025, in response to a rather innocuous, if slightly impudent, comment from a one Adam Kungu, Muhoozi asked him: ‘Kungu, how many men have you killed?’. Kungu replied: ‘None, Gen. Kainerugaba. Killing is a sin, isn’t it?’. And Muhoozi then replied: ‘Then you shouldn’t even be talking to me. Talk to Balaam please.’

Evidently, death – and the power to bring death upon others – is something which the Chief of Defence Forces (CDF) is engrossed by. It is especially troubling that this is also a measure by which he assesses the ability or status of interlocutors.

Apparently, if one has not killed any men, or a sufficient number of men, one is not worth his time or attention. This might then explain his recorded disdain for parliamentary summons, interventions by the Uganda Human Rights Commission, and court decisions (including those by the Supreme Court).

This might be the most problematic legacy of the journey Museveni started in the 1960s – a Uganda in which the right to speak is not assessed on the basis of one’s expertise, experience or office, but rather on the number of persons one has killed.

In such a country, the opinion of the current Chief Justice Alfonse Owiny-Dollo and anyone else who might replace him in that position, is to be given less weight than that of a Private in the UPDF. The Chief Justice might be invited to talk to Balaam, while the Private would be permitted to the talk to the CDF.

This is not a country in which any person – or institution – can be safe, in the short, medium or long-term. And we must collectively find a response that saves the revolutionaries, ourselves and the country for the inevitable mayhem which must follow from an unchecked vicious cycle of militarism.

The Museveni story is a cautionary tale regarding the role of violence in state-building. Those who develop a taste for it are, more often than not, consumed by it and can hardly be trusted with the exercise of governmental power. This is precisely why the National Unity Platform (NUP) tendency towards military clothing and parades is distinctly ill-advised.

First, it provides a ready justification for the State to clamp down against not only NUP but the opposition and broader civil society as a whole, as it looks for real and perceived enemies against whom to unleash the full force of an unhinged military establishment.

Secondly, and perhaps even more troublingly, it represents an iteration of precisely the false premise upon which Museveni proceeded in the late 1960s. Even while officially disavowing violence, the adoption of military paraphernalia evinces some kind of latent admiration or jealousy – on NUP’s part – of the NRM’s military character and credentials.

This is deeply problematic, for all the reasons we have set out in this series. Uganda is a country suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). We have pain and trauma which now run across generations – from ‘duka duka’ and ‘panda gari’ to the now common ‘jokes’ as to which colour of ‘drone’ one would like to be picked in; being taken to ‘basements’; and being ‘taught Runyankore’.

Unfortunately, in so far as the trauma is not only ongoing but, by all indications, might even worsen in the months and years to come, it is even wrong to refer to ‘post-trauma’. The trauma has been with us, is with us and will be with us for the foreseeable future.

Again, it is also for this reason that NUP, FDC and any other political formations which aspire to offer alternative leadership to Uganda must avoid taking this country – consciously or inadvertently – through another cycle of violence (revolutionary or otherwise).

It is clear what must not be done, by NUP and others, as they seek to assume political power. What remains unanswered is what should be done – by the ruling party, the opposition, the broader civil society and, indeed, the rest of us to save ourselves, and yesterday’s revolutionaries, from the collective trap in which we find ourselves today.

We shall attempt to answer this question next week – and we ‘finally finally’ close this series.

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.