Mr Charles Onyango-Obbo
The brutality unleashed by Ugandan security forces on journalists during last week’s Kawempe North by-election was staggering—unprecedented even by the grim standards of recent years. The videos of these attacks are harrowing. This wasn’t mere suppression; it was war.
Around 15 journalists covering the by-election were assaulted, beaten, and brutalised, some by hooded operatives. Several sustained serious injuries requiring hospitalisation. Among them was Ibrahim Miracle of Top TV, who nearly lost an eye to beatings inflicted by masked agents of the Joint Anti-Terrorism Unit.
Miracle’s ordeal recalls that of Ashraf Kasirye, a Ghetto TV cameraman who bore the brunt of Uganda’s violent 2020 election campaign. On 27 December 2020, whilst filming opposition leader Bobi Wine (Robert Kyagulanyi) at a rally in Masaka, Kasirye was struck above his left eye by a rubber bullet fired by police. He collapsed instantly; footage captures panicked onlookers rushing him to hospital.
He lost vision in one eye and now suffers from hearing impairment. Another victim of that bloody campaign was freelance video journalist and filmmaker Moses Bwayo. On 5 November 2020, while documenting Bobi Wine’s convoy in Kampala, he was shot in the cheekbone with a rubber bullet at near point-blank range. The injury left him in excruciating pain and needing hospital treatment. He was fortunate—it didn’t cost him an eye.
Bwayo’s suffering, however, bore fruit. In 2022, he co-wrote and directed Bobi Wine: The People’s President with Ugandan-born Briton Christopher Sharp. The documentary, chronicling Wine’s campaign against President Yoweri Museveni, won a prestigious Peabody Award for its unflinching portrayal of an artist-turned-politician defying an entrenched ruling class. It also earned an Oscar nomination in the Best Documentary Feature Film category. That election period five years ago was one to forget for Ugandan media.
The Human Rights Network for Journalists-Uganda (HRNJ-U) documented over 100 violations against journalists, with physical assaults particularly rife from November 2020 onwards. On 17 February 2021, in the election’s aftermath, 10 journalists were beaten. At least 10 to 20 were detained.Yet 2020/21 was a presidential election. Kawempe North was merely a parliamentary by-election. If Elias Luyimbazi Nalukoola of the National Unity Platform (NUP), who emerged victorious, retains his seat—currently contested by the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) in court—he will hold it for less than a year before the 2026 general election. So why such excessive force?
The answer lies in both the past and the future. Bwayo’s Bobi Wine: The People’s President and the BBC’s Three Killings in Kampala, which dissected Uganda’s post-election violence, may have rattled the regime more than previously thought. Kawempe North was likely a blunt warning to the press ahead of 2026, when Museveni is expected to seek a record ninth term (two of them unelected).
The security forces seem to have their marching orders: ensure no further Bobi Wine: The People’s President or Three Killings in Kampala emerges. More ominously, Kawempe North may have been a test run—a dry rehearsal for the level of violence needed to secure victory in 2026. A prelude to normalising extreme force. We say "may have been" because beneath the surface, something more profound appears to be stirring. The by-election exposed fractures within the NRM and the security apparatus—not over whether Museveni should stay, but over how his transition should be managed.
Museveni himself hinted at this tension. Even as he justified deploying the Joint Anti-Terrorism Unit, he appeared to criticise its excessive violence. This echoes recent unease among senior security figures about using masked operatives against unarmed civilians. There are growing murmurs that the savagery inflicted on civilians and the opposition—especially in the south—could provoke a violent backlash. Usually silent moderate voices seem to be stirring, advocating a less brutal approach.
This shift is evident in Uganda’s actions beyond its borders. We see it in the toned-down bravado over Uganda’s role in the DRC, and the recent deployment of the Uganda People’s Defence Force (UPDF) to South Sudan’s capital, Juba, to prop up embattled President Salva Kiir has been understated. The logic is clear: one doesn’t bolster an ally by loudly advertising his weakness.
It harks back to a past when the UPDF was more tactful. When, after Uganda’s fallout with Congolese President Joseph Kabila in 1998, the UPDF and Rwandan Defence Forces seized Kisangani, Uganda officially denied it for three months.
The question now is this: Does the NRM retain any of that strategic cunning? Or has it become a blunt instrument, increasingly reliant on repression rather than persuasion, unable to change course? The events of Kawempe North suggest the latter. The regime wasn’t just seeking a local victory; it is scripting the future. And in that script, journalism may well be collateral damage.
Mr Charles Onyango-Obbo is a journalist,
writer, and curator of the “Wall of Great
Africans”. @cobbo3
