Musaazi NAMITI | The Founder’s Mind Space

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President Yoweri Museveni started his new five-year term almost three months ago, but problems are multiplying like malaria parasites, and he is doing little to fix them.

Let us consider the raw facts. On Wednesday, Uganda Human Rights Commission chairperson Mariam Wangadya and her commissioners were supposed to appear before the parliamentary committee on human rights. But she turned up alone. The commissioners deliberately gave the meeting a miss. When the MPs asked her why she came alone, she said there was a rebellion at the commission.

There you have it. Ms Wangadya, it seems, has lost control over the commission she heads. Everyone does what they want. A couple of weeks ago, she appeared in a viral video and said she was quitting because Mr Museveni, who appoints the commission, had turned it into a dumping ground, appointing individuals who had been rejected by voters and those who—as she put it—needed money for antiretroviral therapy.

The crisis at the commission comes at a time when reports of repression, abduction and torture have become rampant. In the eyes of many Ugandans, the commission remains largely dysfunctional.

On the very day Ms Wangadya appeared before Parliament, security forces who abducted former Butambala MP Mohammad Muwanga Kivumbi and held him incommunicado for weeks dumped him at Nateete Police Post. He was later hauled off to a court in Butambala and charged with inciting violence.

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Police and the army had denied they were holding him. His lawyer, Medard Sseggona, told reporters that he did not know where his client had been detained because he was blindfolded the moment he was abducted.

“We have not been able to establish where he has been all along because he himself does not know,” he said.

“He was blindfolded, taken and dumped to a place he does not know, where he received more than a fair share of beatings until he bled profusely after being hit on the head. That’s when they stopped beating him. The only treatment he received, he says, was only to stop the bleeding and no more.”

Mr Kivumbi’s case is not an isolated one. Many Ugandans who have been abducted tell harrowing stories of torture. When Mr Museveni addressed the nation on July 4, he did not address the public outcry against human rights violations. Instead, he said some people who are currently in detention cannot be granted bail because “they attack witnesses”.

While the country is aiming to grow the economy tenfold over the next 10 years, it continues to attract negative media attention. On June 28, security forces, acting on the orders of army chief and Mr Museveni’s son, Gen Muhoozi Kainerugaba, shut down Daily Monitor and its sister broadcasters—NTV, Spark TV, KFM and Ddembe FM—over “biased” reporting for a whole month.

In May, the US updated its travel advisory on Uganda and raised it to level 4—the worst any country could get. It is often highlighted in red and simply means: “Do not travel.”

US nationals and generally foreigners who take US travel advisories seriously would be reluctant to travel to Uganda. And with that comes the loss of revenue from tourism.

The US cited disease, crime, unrest and terrorism as the main reasons for the advisory. Ebola was factored in, although the Ministry of Health declared this week that the country is free of the disease.

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But other problems remain. Aggravated robbery, for example, rose by 6.7% in 2025, according to the police. Videos of people getting robbed on streets in broad daylight are doing the rounds on social media.

While police continue to share regular updates on how they are tackling crime, public opinion suggests their response has been woefully inadequate. There have also been cases that suggest criminals collude with the police.

Lydia Wanyoto, the State Minister for Public Service, said in a radio current-affairs show that a thief snatched her phone in a supermarket and ran away with it. She reported the matter to the police, and a few days later they returned the phone to her.

Uganda may not be falling apart, but there is a lot to suggest that it is going in the wrong direction.

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🔴 Musaazi Namiti is the Founder and Editorial Director of OJ-UGANDA. He previously led the Africa Desk at Al Jazeera in Doha, Qatar, worked for Globe Media Asia in Cambodia and writes a widely read column for Uganda’s Weekend Monitor. His work has been quoted by The New York Times, The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal, Jeune Afrique, The Africa Report—not for playing it safe, but for saying what others will not.