Forty years on, Uganda votes under the shadow of one man

Mototaxi drivers supporting Uganda’s incumbent president and NRM presidential candidate Yoweri Museveni head to the party’s closing campaign rally in Kampala on January 13, 2026. [AFP]

For nearly a half-century, Yoweri Kaguta Museveni has spent most of his life walking toward power and then refusing to relinquish it.

When he first emerged on Uganda's national stage, having spent 16 years in the bush, Museveni spoke the language of rupture and presented himself as the man who would end the violence, personal rule, and corruption that had scarred the country in previous regimes.

During his bush war era, Museveni was insistent that Uganda needed a clean break from leaders who mistook the state for themselves and that power belonged to the people, not select individuals.

This promise once felt real to many Ugandans because the previous governments of Milton Obote and Idi Amin were characterised by widespread fear, brutality, and prolonged conflict stemming from ethnic divisions, political repression and economic collapse.

The two regimes used the military to consolidate power and push back the opposition, leading to widespread violations of human rights and state-sponsored violence.

By the time Museveni was taking power in 1986, the nation was tired of fear and conflict. In his early years in rule, Uganda had had relative stability and economic recovery.

In most of his public speeches, Museveni spoke about democracy, accountability, and the dangers of leaders refusing to leave office. Museveni suggested that leaders who clung to power were Africa’s problem.

“I will preserve and defend the Constitution. I’ll do right to all manner of people according to the law established without fear or favour, affection or ill will,” Museveni said during his swearing in on January 30, 1986.

In his speeches in the early days of his rule, he gave accounts of how he captured power from Obote, claiming that the people of Uganda suffered under the past regimes.

"Obote killed everybody, the peasants, the working class, young children. On the side of human rights, the repression of Amin did not go as deeply as the repression of Obote. We witnessed people arrested, tortured, and killed in army cells for being sympathetic with other political parties,” Museveni said in an undated video after the bush war.

Four decades later, those words are a contrast to the man he has become.

His rule has been marked by harsh crackdowns on dissent and tight restrictions on the media and civil society organizations.

Cases of police violence, sexual assaults against women, surveillance, kidnappings, and killings of people allied to the opposition leaders have been on the rise.

According to Human Rights Watch, an international non-governmental organization, Uganda's National Bureau for Non-Governmental Organisations on January 12 directed for an indefinite closure of 10 human rights, media, and election monitoring organizations.

Already, the government has imposed an internet blackout ahead of the elections.

The government, through Uganda Communication Authority, justified the shutdown as a move to safeguard public safety by “preventing online misinformation, disinformation, electoral fraud, and incitement of violence.”

This move was a month after the Uganda Communications Commission dismissed reports of internet blackout as “mere rumors,” stating that their role was to ensure uninterrupted connectivity across the country.

The closure is a repeat of the 2021 elections, when there were widespread protests that left dozens of people jailed and the internet shut down for a week.

The actions by the government have sparked concerns among opposition leaders, international observers, and Ugandans.

Critics argue that silencing watchdogs at the verge of the polls weakened transparency and heightens the risks of electoral malpractices, particularly in a race dominated by Museveni who is seeking a seventh term after 40 years in power.

Already, civil society groups are raising concerns over the possibility of election rigging and locking our citizens from documenting violations done by the government.

The violations and abuses carried out by the state stand in sharp contrast to the promise of “land of milk and honey” grounded in the principles of democracy, that Museveni made after years of suffering under the previous regime.

Museveni is now one of the longest-serving presidents in the world, with his rule stretching across generations. The same man who opposed overstaying has remained in power election after election.

Through his 40-year rule, Museveni has managed to remove the constitutional limits that once stood in his way and defend them as legal procedural and necessary changes, but it has simply been bending the system to favour one man, not the other way round.

Even today, Museveni still speaks the language of democracy; elections are held every five-year cycle, but election seasons are mostly marred by intimidation, suppression of opposition, arrests, violence, and reports of election malpractices and rigging.

Dissent in Uganda is only tolerated in theory but is punished in practice as the country goes to another election, the contradictions of a leader who speaks democracy while symbolizing its limits and a liberator who fears letting go are louder to ignore.

Ugandans still wait for the promise that was made so long ago to finally be kept.

As Ugandans cast their vote on Thursday, with the possibility of Museveni getting his seventh term, brings the question of the meaning of democracy and choice, with the fear of predetermined results, and change that is always postponed to another time.

“There is a general consensus across the political aisle that the Electoral Commission cannot preside over a credible election. Even President Museveni, the main beneficiary of its fraudulent processes, claims the Electoral Commission presided over a 2021 election in which he lost over 2.7 million votes,” said Mwanase Ahmed, PanAfrican Solidarity Network Coordinator at a press conference in Nairobi.

Hussein Khalid of Vocal Africa highlighted an aggressive crackdown on digital expression and opposition organizing.

“Over ten activists have been remanded for up to six years for merely expressing displeasure with the President, his wife, his children, or the Speaker of Parliament, Anita Annet Among. While NUP offices and their academy have been raided and equipment stolen by the military, NRM Ministers implicated in stealing billions of taxpayers' money and iron sheets from the vulnerable have seen their charges dropped by the DPP,” Khalid.

Last year, during the campaigns, he announced that the 2025 elections would be his final campaign for the presidency and urged the citizens to support him, one last time. But will that promise hold, or will the chance for Ugandans to elect the leader of their choice be deferred to another time?

“This is the last time I'm vying for President in Uganda. I will never vie again after 2026. So I urge all Ugandans to come out in large numbers and vote for me for the very last time. I have a few projects that I want to finish,” Museveni said in September 2025.

But this promise sits uneasily with statements Museveni made years earlier, in which he openly suggested a lifelong hold on power.

In an undated video that later surfaced, he brushed aside calls for what he termed “alternative arrangements” for Uganda, urging citizens to abandon thoughts of political change.

“I hope everybody will now settle down and forget about alternative arrangements for Uganda. There won't be alternative arrangements for Uganda for a long time to come. It will save a lot of effort if people could settle down and National Resistance Movement and build the country. This revolution is irreversible,” he said in an undated clip.

In another undated clip, Museveni defended his prolonged stay in office by framing it as part of a much longer struggle.

video, he said, “If you’re really worried about my long presidency, you should worry about me being in the struggle for too long. If you’re worried about me being around for too long, you should not start with being in the office because this is only yesterday. I have been in the struggle for 40 years,” he said.