A voter destroys polling material in Kampala during the February 18, 2016, elections after waiting for long for ballot papers. FILE PHOTO
Last Sunday, religious leaders across the country used the Easter Sunday services to implore Christians to strive to remain peaceful.
The message of the Bishop of Mukono, Enos Kitto Kagodo, was much more pointed. He called on members of the armed forces to be more empathetic during the forthcoming elections.
"Don't be tough on people in elections, guide them and create peace like Jesus did," Bishop Kagodo said. Bishop Kagodo inadvertently raised the issue of brutality of the security forces during the elections, a matter that had previously appeared in the 2023 Country Report on Human Rights Practices: Uganda, which was produced by the United States’ Department of State in April 2024. The report accused members of the security forces of involvement in “arbitrary arrest or detention”, “arbitrary or unlawful killings, including extrajudicial killings”, “enforced disappearance” and subjecting political opponents and journalists to “torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment”.
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Now, if cold water had been poured on the contents of the report, the March 16 Kawempe North parliamentary by-election during which journalists were brutalised by members of the security forces served to lend credence to those accusations. However, even before the clerics took to the pulpits on Sunday, one of the FM stations in downtown Kampala had been running an advert sponsored by the Women’s Situation Room, which call for tolerance ahead of the 2026 General Elections, saying it is possible for the country to hold a peaceful election even when we have divergent views. If the clerics and women activists are making passionate pleas for peace and tolerance, it is because the threat of violence during the coming elections is a clear and present danger.
History of violence
The 2026 elections will be the eighth to be organised under the watch of the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM). The year 2026 will mean that we will have attained 30 years of experience in organising elections. Whereas more years of experience do not make you better at your job, every opportunity to do something again presents an opportunity to make amends and do better than you did on the previous attempt. That has, however, not been Uganda’s cup of tea. According to the contents of the 2019 research report, “Election-related conflict and violence in Uganda,” a product of the Women’s International Peace Centre, the country has been slipping deeper into violence with every election cycle. “Since 1996, when the first presidential elections took place under the NRM, election-related violence has been on the rise, although the elections of that year suffered little violence, compared to subsequent ones,” the report noted. The downward spiral has been very disturbing. In 1996, acts of violence were limited to parts of western Uganda.
Mr Museveni’s main challenger, Paul Kawanga Ssemogerere, was blockaded in a hotel in Rukungiri District and was pelted with stones in Fort Portal Town. Under the circumstances, he could not campaign in the two places. That limited show of violence was, however, not condemned by the Movement leadership. It is not clear whether it was what opened the door to increased violence that was unleashed on Dr Kizza Besigye and supporters of the Reform Agenda by Maj Roland Kakooza Mutale’s Kalangala Action Plan and the Presidential Guard Brigade (PGB) during the 2001 elections. Dr Besigye’s campaign ended on a bloody note. The PGB gunned down Johnson Baronda after his last rally in Rukungiri. Thirty four people were left nursing injuries. More violence in the form of beating, maiming and killings of Opposition supporters was witnessed in 2006, 2011, 2016 and 2021. If what transpired in Kawempe is anything to go by, it looks like there is no end in sight, but how did we get here?
Armed men in plainclothes patrol downtown Kampala on November 19 on the second day of violent protests following the arrest of NUP presidential candidate Robert Kyagulanyi, alias Bobi Wine in Luuka District. PHOTO/ STEPHEN OTAGE
Who is to blame? The NRM and the political Opposition trade blame. Mr Moses Byaruhanga, the senior presidential advisor in charge of political mobilisation, says the Opposition is guilty of orchestrating acts of violence. He points to the violence that broke out in the run-up to the 2021 elections. “During the 2020 riots, some NRM supporters were targeted by the NUP rioters. Women putting on yellow were undressed, and some vehicles belonging to the NRM were burnt. The NUP riots of 2020 were not called for. If in the campaign period all the actors behaved well, everything would move smoothly,” Mr Byaruhanga 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, blaming the violence on what he described as “unruly groups”. “As you know, unruly groups have chosen defiance and other methods that subvert the purpose of elections.
They use that as a cover to plan other things. What do you expect from people who, rather than campaign and show what they can do for Ugandans, are inciting them to hate and finish off those they disagree with?” Mr Kirunda asks. The problem is that the violence, as already pointed out, has not been limited to the last election, and other watchers have always blamed it on President Museveni and the NRM. That feeling has been around for quite a while. It should be remembered that on April 16, 2002, Ms Beti Olive Kamya, the spokesperson of the Reform Agenda – a pressure group composed of Movement cadres who were disenchanted with Mr Museveni’s leadership and supported Dr Besigye’s futile 2001 campaign bid to have Mr Museveni voted out of power – told a select committee of Parliament that the public show of anger that was exhibited by Mr Museveni after Dr Besigye announced on October 28, 2000, that he would challenge him for the top job intimidated military officers into showing support for him, which resulted in mass violence in the country.
The select committee had been formed to investigate, among others, the causes of election violence; the mismanagement of electoral processes and; the misconduct of public officials during elections, that violence and intimidation in all elections that had until then been held under the NRM had started in State House. “Top government officials would call us secretly, urge us to go on, give us information, show their frustrations, but in the day (they) would not show support for Besigye. They needed to show loyalty to the President," Ms Kamya said. Mr Kirunda is quick to defend his boss, saying his will to oversee violence-free elections is beyond question. “There is so much political will from President Museveni to instil healthy electoral democracy and non-violence that I don't know which words to use to express it. He is the number one advocate of tolerance and orderliness, not only during elections, but at all times. If everyone listened and did their part, a lot would change,” Mr Kirunda argues.
Missing voice
When Ms Kamya appeared before Parliament in 2002, she insisted that violence would have been stamped out if decisive action had been taken against the perpetrators, regardless of which side of the political divide they belonged to. Ms Kamya was one of the proponents of the Reform Agenda who formed to the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC), which she left to form the Uganda Federal Alliance (UFA) party, but later joined NRM and served as minister for Lands and Urban Development and later Kampala Affairs before being named Inspector General of Government (IGG). While speaking in Parliament, Ms Kamya added that Mr Museveni should have made a strong statement condemning violence. Twenty three years since she made those remarks, the condemnation of violence has been selectively done, with accusing fingers being pointed at the Opposition, but would a strong statement condemning it and warning all and sundry not to walk that path help to draw a line under it?
Mr Sarah Bireete, the executive director of the Centre for Constitutional Governance (CCG), believes that one word from Mr Museveni would do magic. “Ideally, it should have been institutions like Parliament and the Judiciary to deal with election violence, but these institutions are suffocating under the situation of complete State capture that we find ourselves in. Now, because of State capture, President Museveni has remained the only functioning institution in the country.
So if he talked about violence, condemned it strongly and took action, it would end because he is larger than the institution,” Ms Bireete argues. There is, however, a school of thought that argues that whereas this might not be lost to Mr Museveni, he is not about to do so. Mr Marlon Agaba of the Anti-Corruption Coalition of Uganda, who belongs to that school of thought, argues that whereas the President has previously written a few statements and letters condemning abuse of human rights, he is not about to speak out against violence as it would amount to self-indictment. “This is about regime survival. The President is ageing. He is no longer as he used to be, but is still interested in keeping power. So he is going to rely on the systems and institutions that he has, that is, security, Parliament, Judiciary, army and financial resources to keep himself in power. Whenever he speaks, he has no option but to speak in favour of the system that he has because that is the system that keeps him in power,” Mr Agaba says.
Do or die
However, even as Mr Museveni’s missing voice or lack of decisive action may be cited as the biggest factor fuelling the violence, Mr Emmanuel Dombo, the communications director at the NRM Secretariat, says the evolution of the practice of politics over the years, making it come across as a “do or die” is the biggest driver of election violence. “Elections in Uganda are an issue of life and death, both within the Opposition and NRM. Even during NRM party primaries, the things that people do can make somebody easily imagine that there will not be life beyond the primaries, yet after the primaries or any election, many of those who lose and get out become stronger and more successful than those who succeed in elections,” Mr Dombo says.
Mr Dombo calls on all political actors to come together and understand that losing an election does not condemn one to death or make them desolate. Mr Dombo was the MP for Bunyole East for 20 years having started representing the constituency in 1996. He bowed out of elective politics after losing the 2016 NRM party primaries. If he is saying so, it is because he knows that losing an election is not the end of the road.
Security operatives are seen during a crackdown on opposition NUP party supporters in Kampala on March 3, 2025. PHOTO/MICHAEL KAKUMIRIZI
Money
However, Mr Agaba says if politics has become a “do or die”, it is because of the huge amounts of money that those seeking political office pump into elections. “The involvement of money in politics has become a very big problem in terms of what is injected into the process of elections and in terms of the envisaged gains. There are studies that have shown that MPs spend a billion shillings to get elected. This has ceased to be about service delivery. It is an investment. It is now about earning and making deals,” Mr Agaba says.
Such investment outlays makes the entry into politics a high-stakes game, opening the way for violence as a means of protecting one’s investment. Ms Bireete weighs in, saying the hefty perks paid to our politicians make them some of the highest-paid people, even when they are neither the most qualified nor most experienced professionals. That prompts people to heavily invest in elective politics. “The pay has turned the elections into a business for the contenders. They are desperate not to lose their investment, and they are aided by the impunity of security agencies to perpetrate violence to protect the obscene monies invested in elections, hence the context that we find ourselves in,” Ms Bireete says.
The pay cheques and allowances drawn by Members of Parliament have been a major talking point for quite a while now. Whereas it is difficult to establish how much an MP picks every month because mileage if incorporated into their pay, information that we in the past obtained from the Parliamentary Commission revealed that each MP is entitled to a monthly salary of Shs25 million; a one off vehicle allowance of Shs150 million; a subsistence allowance of Shs4.5 million a month; a town running allowance of Shs1 million per a month, a medical allowance of Shs500,000 per a month; a sitting allowance of Shs50,000 for committee meetings; a plenary sitting allowance of Shs150,000 for plenary sessions; as well as mileage allowances. Mileage allowance is determined based on the distance between Parliament and the furthest point of the particular MP’s constituency.
Other allowances include an inland travel per diem for Shs150,000 a night, a foreign travel per diem of $520 (approximately Shs1.9 million), air tickets when on official business and facilities like iPads. Amounts spent on inland and foreign travel were difficult to compute as there were no actual figures on who went where for how many days or nights.
The same applies to sitting allowances for committee and plenary sessions, as they are dependent on how busy a committee is and how frequently an MP attends. Such perks are tempting enough to drive anyone into violence, analysts say. Having them reduced is highly improbable. The alternative would be to introduce laws that would slap a cap on campaign spending. Electoral Commission chairperson Simon Byabakama told Sunday Monitor in a previous interview that his Commission had proposed the introduction of such caps as one of the electoral reforms that could be considered ahead of the next elections.
“One of the areas where we need to reform is in the area of campaign financing. People have been voicing concerns about the increased commercialisation of our politics. This is auctioned democracy, which is unacceptable. We must have a democracy that is based on principles, values and ideas for the betterment of our country. So we have recommended that we have a law capping what one should spend on elections,” Justice Byabakama said.
The country is not sure whether any reforms will be coming anytime soon and whether such a cap could be part of them, but could such a law help cure the disease of election violence? That is the question.
