There are moments when a claim we repeat with confidence begins to feel uncertain the more we sit with it.
“We, the people” gave ourselves the 1995 Constitution, the preamble declares. Yet the longer one reflects on that claim, the more a simple, unsettling question emerges: who exactly is this “we”?
It was this question—not as a legal puzzle, but as a civic inquiry—that shaped my earlier reflection on constitutional ownership, belief, and lived reality. That reflection did not end with publication. Instead, it opened a wider conversation that confirmed the question was worth lingering over.
Responses from readers suggested that the issue was not whether the Constitution exists or what it says, but whether it has ever been collectively owned in a way that gives it real meaning in everyday political life.
Shortly after the article was published, I received an email that deepened the inquiry in precisely the way I had hoped. It was from Dr Zadok Ekimwere, a seasoned journalist, former editor at New Vision, former head of the School of Journalism and Media Management at the Uganda Management Institute, and currently a media consultant and researcher in Kampala.
Dr Ekimwere did not dispute the concerns raised. Instead, he sharpened the question itself. His concern was simple, yet profound: who exactly is the “we” in the question “did we truly give ourselves the Constitution?”
If the Constitution was shaped through multiple layers — framers and drafters, political elites, consulted stakeholders, implementing institutions, courts, and ordinary citizens — can we honestly speak of a single, unified “we”? Or does invoking “we” risk masking the uneven power, influence, and ownership that characterised both the making of the Constitution and its subsequent life?
According to Dr Ekimwere, the elusiveness of the “we” may itself explain why the Constitution has been easily amended, ignored, or dismissed over time as “just a piece of paper.”
A document that is not clearly and collectively owned struggles to command reverence, restraint, or defence. In responding to his email, I agreed with him and promised to return to this question, precisely because it exposes a fault line that legal interpretation alone cannot resolve.
This reflection is part of that continuation. The question of “we” is not academic. While it becomes especially urgent around elections, it does not disappear once ballots are cast. As Uganda approaches yet another electoral moment — or steps just beyond one, depending on when this reflection is read — the familiar patterns are again visible.
Violence and intimidation persist. Citizens are cautioned not to remain at polling stations after voting. Civic presence is treated with suspicion. Internet disruptions are anticipated almost as routine.
Legal and administrative measures quietly narrow the space for participation. What is striking in this moment is not only the persistence of violence, but the direction in which political control appears to be evolving.
The blunt instruments — batons, teargas, beatings, even shootings — remain. Yet the visible brutality that attracts condemnation is increasingly accompanied, and sometimes replaced, by quieter, more technical methods of constraining participation.
Seen this way, the cautioning of citizens not to remain at polling stations, the steady narrowing of civic space, and the anticipated disruption of internet access during elections are not isolated actions.
They are signals that participation is no longer desired, even as a performance. This matters because power that still relies primarily on violence recognises resistance. Power that relies on rules, systems, and silence has already calculated that resistance is weak, fragmented, or resigned.
Being “locked out” of the Constitution, then, is not accidental. It is the logical outcome of a society that never fully settled who belonged inside it to begin with. Dr Ekimwere’s reflections take the inquiry further.
In a subsequent email, he posed an even deeper challenge: how do we arrive at a “we” at all? Not a uniform one, but one grounded in shared recognition — where people fiercely disagree yet still see each other as Ugandans; where difference is not treated as betrayal; where opponents are not automatically branded enemies.
That challenge matters deeply in both pre- and post-election contexts. Reconciliation is often framed as something leaders call for after tensions rise — urging calm, unity, and acceptance.
But reconciliation without constitutional reckoning is shallow. It asks citizens to move on without asking whether they truly believe in the system that produced the outcome. If large sections of society experience the Constitution as something done to them rather than by them, reconciliation becomes an appeal for patience, not a rebuilding of trust.
True reconciliation, however, is not about silence. It is about recognition — acknowledging who felt included, who felt excluded, and why. It is about accepting that disagreement is not treason, and that criticism is not hostility.
This is where Uganda still struggles deeply. We too often confuse opposition with enmity and dissent with danger. Yet constitutions are not only legal texts; they are social agreements about how we disagree, how we coexist, and how we restrain power even when it favours us.
When those habits are weak, elections become zero-sum contests. Victory feels existential. Loss feels unbearable. And the Constitution becomes a tool to be captured rather than a covenant to be shared.
Whether before or after elections, the question therefore remains the same: who is expected to carry the Constitution forward? If it belongs only to the state, citizens become spectators. If it belongs only to the courts, politics becomes detached from accountability.
If it belongs only to those who win elections, reconciliation becomes impossible. Constitutional ownership, if it is to mean anything, must be social before it is legal. It must be lived in everyday habits: staying present, asking questions, tolerating dissent, refusing to normalise exclusion.
Perhaps this is where the elusive “we” begins to take shape — not in uniformity, but in mutual recognition; not in agreement, but in coexistence; not in silence, but in the courage to disagree without destroying.
If we truly gave ourselves the Constitution, then its custody cannot belong only to institutions. It must belong to the people—messy, noisy, inconvenient as that may be. The civic inquiry therefore continues— not only about whether we gave ourselves the Constitution, but who did, who did not, and who we are still willing to become together.
Until we face those questions honestly — before and after elections — the Constitution will remain eloquent, invoked, and legally impressive. But socially, it will remain elusive.
kilbrandonjose4@gmail.com
The writer is a doctoral researcher at the Centre for Human Rights, University of Pretoria, where he doubles as manager of the Litigation and Implementation Unit.