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There are moments in the history of a nation when the past ceases to be history and begins to knock on the doors of the present. Uganda may be standing at such a moment. The country that emerged from decades of political upheaval, military coups, constitutional breakdown, exile, repression and bloodshed now finds itself confronting questions that its 1995 Constitution was expressly designed to answer. The disturbing question is not simply whether Uganda has changed since the liberation of 1986 or whether the National Resistance Movement has fulfilled the promises upon which it came to power. The deeper question is whether a nation that once fought to free itself from tyranny, oppression and constitutional disorder is slowly becoming comfortable with the very habits of power that its people once rejected.
From the political exile associated with figures such as Dr Aggrey Kiyingi, through the long history of political persecution and exile, to the contemporary experiences of Dr Kizza Besigye, Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu—popularly known as Bobi Wine—Erias Lukwago, Muwanga Kivumbi, Ibrahim Ssemujju Nganda, Sam Mugumya and countless opposition supporters, activists and human-rights defenders, a disturbing pattern continues to emerge. Arrests, detention, politically charged prosecutions, allegations of torture, restrictions on political mobilisation, military involvement in political affairs and the increasing fear among political actors of remaining in their own country have become recurring features of Uganda's political conversation. These incidents must not be viewed merely as isolated confrontations between the government and its opponents. They should be examined against the much longer historical journey of the Ugandan State and, most importantly, against the constitutional promise made to the people of Uganda in 1995.
The most unsettling development may therefore not be that opposition politicians are being arrested or prosecuted. Uganda has witnessed such episodes before. What should concern every citizen is the possibility that society is gradually becoming accustomed to them. A nation becomes vulnerable not only when rights are violated, but when repeated violations cease to shock the conscience of the public. Fear becomes politically powerful when people begin to regard it as normal. Exile becomes significant when citizens begin asking whether leaving their homeland is safer than remaining in it. And constitutional erosion becomes most dangerous when institutions created to prevent the abuse of power begin treating that abuse as an ordinary feature of political life.
The 1995 Constitution did not emerge from a vacuum. It was born out of Uganda's painful memory. Its Preamble deliberately reminds the nation that its history had been characterised by political and constitutional instability and that Ugandans had struggled against tyranny, oppression and exploitation. Those words were not inserted for literary decoration. They were a constitutional warning to future generations: remember what happened to this country, understand why it happened, and never build a political order that allows it to happen again.
Yet three decades later, one is compelled to ask whether Uganda has remembered the Constitution but forgotten its memory.
The question is particularly important because the Constitution places the sovereignty of Uganda in the people. Article 1 declares that all power belongs to the people and that all authority of government emanates from them. Article 2 establishes the supremacy of the Constitution. Article 79 entrusts Parliament with the responsibility not merely to make laws but to protect the Constitution and promote democratic governance. The security institutions are equally bound by constitutional limitations: the UPDF is required to be non-partisan and subordinate to civilian authority, while Article 221 requires the country's security and intelligence institutions to observe and respect human rights and freedoms in the performance of their duties.
These provisions reveal something fundamental about the constitutional project of Uganda. The Constitution was never intended to be merely a document regulating elections or distributing offices among political elites. It was designed to restrain power. It was designed to ensure that no President, Parliament, political party, army, police force or security institution would become greater than the law. It was designed to make the State serve the citizen rather than make the citizen fear the State.
This is where Uganda's present crisis becomes more profound than an ordinary contest between government and opposition. The question is whether the institutions established by the Constitution are still performing their intended functions or whether, gradually and incrementally, political convenience has begun to take precedence over constitutional principle.
The legislature sits at the heart of that question. Parliament possesses enormous constitutional power, but that power is not absolute. It exists within the Constitution. The history of the removal of presidential term limits in 2005 and the subsequent removal of the presidential age limit in 2017 demonstrates how constitutional architecture can be altered through Parliament itself. The legal question of whether Parliament possesses amendment power is one thing; the constitutional and democratic question of whether every politically convenient amendment strengthens the Republic is another.
A Constitution can therefore remain formally alive while its spirit is slowly weakened.
That is the danger Uganda must confront today.
For when Parliament ceases to function as a meaningful check upon executive power, when security institutions become associated with political contestation, when citizens begin to fear arrest for expressing political opinions, when opposition leaders contemplate exile, and when criminal law increasingly becomes entangled with political competition, the issue is no longer about the fortunes of individual politicians. It becomes a question about the health of the Republic itself.
Uganda's history offers a warning that should not be ignored. Political instability did not suddenly appear in 1971. Constitutional government had already been weakened by years of political conflict and institutional failure. The 1980 disputed elections were followed by armed rebellion and years of violence. The National Resistance Movement subsequently came to power in 1986 promising to establish a fundamentally different political order. The 1995 Constitution was part of that attempt to construct a new Uganda.
The tragedy would be if the generation that inherited the responsibility of protecting that constitutional order eventually became the generation that forgot why it was created.
Perhaps, therefore, Uganda's most important question today is not who will win the next election, who will succeed President Museveni, or which opposition party will become the dominant political force. Those questions belong to the ordinary contest of politics.
The greater question is whether Uganda will remain a constitutional democracy in which power is restrained by law, or whether it will gradually become a State in which the law is repeatedly adjusted to accommodate power.
That is why the country stands at a crossroads.
One road leads back toward the lessons of history: constitutionalism, institutional accountability, democratic competition, civilian control of security forces, protection of fundamental rights and the recognition that political opposition is not treason against the State.
The other road leads toward the dangerous normalisation of fear.
And the question that history now places before Uganda is painfully simple:
Have we learned nothing and forgotten nothing?
Or have we learned everything, only to forget it when power became comfortable?
About the Writer
Evan Sande Ndahura is a Ugandan political and legal commentator, columnist, poet, and social justice advocate whose writings focus on governance, constitutionalism, democracy, and the political economy of power in Africa. He is widely published on issues of judicial accountability, electoral justice, human rights, and institutional reform, with particular emphasis on Uganda's political and legal systems. Writing from a Pan-African critical perspective, he interrogates the failures of state institutions and the lived realities of ordinary citizens under entrenched systems of power. He believes that the liberation of Africa will come through the mighty pen, not the gun.
