Rt Rev Joseph Anthony Zziwa, the chairperson of the Uganda Episcopal Conference and Bishop of Kiyinda-Mityana Diocese, at the launch of Pastoral Letter of the Catholic Bishops of Uganda in Kampala in April 2025. PHOTO/GEOFREYMUTUMBA
On March 25, the Catholic bishops of Uganda issued their latest edition of the Pastoral Letter under the theme, “The Truth will set you free”.
The Pastoral Letter, the 27th that the Catholic Church has issued since the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) shot its way to power, points to the lingering questions around “how our society could have descended into some of the worst social, political, economic, environmental and moral malaise”.
That looks like an indictment of President Museveni’s nearly four decades in power. Reactions to the conclusion have been varied, albeit for different reasons.
Mr Godfrey Kabyanga, the State minister for Information and Communications Technology (ICT) and National Guidance, disagrees with the bishops.
“That cannot be the case. We have not deteriorated so badly. Sectors like education, health and the economy are working very well. One cannot talk of a malaise,” Mr Kabyanga says.
Mr Faruk Kirunda, the special presidential assistant in charge of the press and mobilisation who also doubles as the deputy spokesperson of the President, weighs in saying the conclusion is unfair.
“Things may not be the best, or they may not be running as some people would want them to, but they certainly cannot be as bad as they were in the past before the liberation. If there are challenges, it is because of the times and those challenges are because the country is more developed today than it was before the liberation,”
Mr Kirunda argues. Mr Livingstone Sewanyana, the executive director of the Foundation for Human Rights Initiative (FHRI), also disagrees, but for entirely different reasons. He thinks that the bishops have misread and, therefore, arrived at a wrong conclusion.
“It is not correct to assert that our society has degenerated. That is escapist. Our society is under siege. A small group of people hold us at ransom. Without an alternative and pushed to the wall, our society is only trying to adapt. The conclusion is abstract and only echoes a fat cat syndrome,” Mr Sewanyana says.
How the conclusion echoes the syndrome is unclear, but a fat cat syndrome refers to the state of mind that one possesses when they become either too successful or too comfortable and, therefore, disregards the inefficiencies or lost opportunities. It is believed to be a state of mind that prevents innovation and opens the door for disruption.
Questioning direction Some of the questions that the pastoral letter raises are whether Uganda should not have done better than it has done in its 62 years of independence and whether the ruling NRM is still guided by the same values that it espoused when it first took power. They noted that the first pastoral letter of the NRM era, which was published in June 1986 under the theme “With a new heart and a new spirit”, commended the NRM for keeping “military action to a minimum; ensuring respect of human life and property; treating prisoners of war well”.
The Church was also happy with the NRM’s “attempt to use political power as a means of service and through negotiation”, and “to overcome tribal divisions and prejudices”, all of which was “a most welcome breath of fresh air”. “In this pastoral letter, we ask whether we are still guided by these values in our day-to-day interactions and administration of public affairs,” the March 25 letter notes.
The statement brings back to the discussion table a question that Dr Kizza Besigye first brought to the fore in November 1999 in the paper, “An insider’s view of how NRM lost the broad-base”, which concluded that “the characteristics which made the NRM government popular, such as the broad-based strategy, principle of individual merit, and the 10-Point Programme” had been eroded.
“All in all, when I reflect on the Movement philosophy and governance, I can conclude that the Movement has been manipulated by those seeking to gain or retain political power, in the same way that political parties in Uganda were manipulated. Evidently, the results of this manipulation are also the same, to wit: Factionalism, loss of faith in the system, corruption, insecurity and abuse of human rights, economic distortions and eventually decline,” Dr Besigye noted.
The bishops are now listing sectarianism; economic and social inequalities; poor planned anti-poverty programmes; land grabbing; corruption; youth unemployment; alcoholism; limited civic knowledge, encroachment on the rights to freedom of association and assembly and; harassment of those with dissenting views and opinions as challenges that require “immediate attention”.
Mr Sewanyana thinks that the bishops missed some of the challenges that the country is facing.
“The letter highlights key issues around governance, the economy and leadership of this country, but it falls short of condemning political patronage, cronyism and State capture. The State is unable to address issues of socio-economic transformation due to an apparent greed, self-preservation and alienation of the majority,” he says.
Left-Right: Philliip Oddi, the communications coordinator, Rt Rev Joseph Antony Zziwa, the chairperson of the Episcopal Conference and Bishop Kiyinda-Mityana Diocese and Msgr John Baptist Kauta, the secretary general, at the launch of Pastoral Letter of the Catholic Bishops of Uganda in Kampala in April 2025. PHOTO/GEOFREYMUTUMBA
Some of those issues are, however, not far from what Dr Besigye raised 26 years ago or those that several other people have been raising.
"Those issues have been raised by many other stakeholders like civil society organisations before, but it is good that the Church has raised them again. I think that we shall look at them as a government and find appropriate responses,” Mr Kabyanga says.
Church’s dilemma
It is worth noting, though, that the bishops suggest that they are baffled that those challenges have persisted despite their best attempts at ministering against them.“
Despite the resolute steps we have taken as religious leaders to build the moral conscience of our people, the country seems to slide back into moral and spiritual turmoil, and we too are asking, why?
We believe, however, that the current social, environmental, political and economic ills are indicative of a moral and spiritual crisis that has eaten deep into our value system,” they wrote.
Mr Moses Byaruhanga, the senior presidential advisor in charge of political mobilisation, says that goes to show that their work is still cut out for them. “I guess that some of the people involved in the vices that the bishops have mentioned are Christians to whom these bishops have been preaching.
All these vices are condemned in the Bible. So the bishops have a lot of work to do,” Mr Byaruhanga says.
Freedoms of association
The bishops say whereas the Constitution guarantees the freedom and right to assembly and association, the government has been hiding behind laws such as the Public Order Management Act (POMA) to curtail those freedoms and impede the growth of democracy, which Mr Kirunda disputes.
“Most political parties and civil society groups freely operate in Uganda. Only a few radicalised ones with declared interests of disrupting national and community stability are complaining,” he says.
Dissenting views
The bishops also note that there is a “rising phenomenon of political prisoners and detainees”. “Security agencies are accused of arresting, detaining, torturing and abducting people of dissenting voices without due process of the law. These actions reflect a troubling pattern in our politics.
The phenomenon of political prisoners and detainees is prevalent in teething democracies where political tolerance is at its lowest and politics operates at the level of victor and vanquished. This should not be the case with us in Uganda,” they say. Mr Kirunda, however, says if anyone has been detained, it is because they have breached the law.
“The law doesn’t know a politician or a non-politician. We should focus on why someone has been arrested. Have they committed crimes, or is it a mistaken identity? If they haven’t committed crime and they are persecuted, there are established channels through which one can seek redress,” Mr Kirunda says.
Other challenges that bishops listed as requiring immediate attention include alcoholism and youth unemployment. In the case of the latter, Mr Kabyanga says the NRM is a victim of its own successes.
“We are talking about unemployment, but that is because children can grow and study. The population of the youth is high because the NRM brought down the infant mortality rate by carrying out massive immunisation campaigns, introducing universal education and liberalising the higher education sector. That is why we have so many graduates,” he says.
Allying call
The letter ends by challenging the citizenry to challenge itself “in the prevailing social circumstances” and take “individual and collective responsibility to make” Uganda true to its motto “For God and my Country”.
It also calls on the laity to “participate actively in the political, economic and social affairs of the country” as a way of stopping the malaise that they write about. Will the laity heed the call?
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The bishops list sectarianism; economic and social inequalities; poorly planned anti-poverty programmes; land grabbing; corruption; youth unemployment; alcoholism; limited civic knowledge, encroachment on the rights to freedom of association and assembly and; harassment of those with dissenting views and opinions as challenges that require “immediate attention”.
