The NUP Corruption Allegations: A Sign of a Deeper Political Failure?

The Illusion of Choice: A Radical Rejection of Uganda’s Political Theatre

In Uganda’s vibrant and often furious political discourse, a dangerous illusion persists: that the path to liberation runs through State House in Kampala. The heated rivalry between the National Resistance Movement (NRM) and the National Unity Platform (NUP) dominates headlines and social media, framing a national debate that pits the established rule of Yoweri Museveni against the impassioned challenge of Bobi Wine. Yet, this fierce contest is a spectacle—a diversionary theatre that keeps the public trapped in a cycle of hope and betrayal, while the real structures of power remain untouched.

This analysis, echoing the radical critiques of voices like Stella Nyanzi, argues that Ugandan politics is not a choice between good and evil, but a selection between two heads of the same beast. Both NRM and NUP operate within a centralised, hierarchical system designed for one purpose: to extract wealth and power from the many and channel it to the connected few. The accusations of corruption, the cults of personality, and the tribal loyalty demanded by both sides are not bugs in the system; they are its core features.

But there is another way, deeply rooted in Ugandan tradition yet radically urgent for its future. This path rejects the vertical politics of presidents and parties in favour of horizontal organising, direct action, and the ancient principle of Bulungi Bwansi—communities working together for the common good. It is a call to stop begging for change from above and to start building it from below: through community assemblies, cooperatives, and mutual aid networks that make the state irrelevant.

This exploration delves beyond the surface-level conflict, examining how the weaponisation of corruption, the distraction of online debates, and the state’s role as an extractive machine all serve to maintain the status quo. It offers a compelling vision for a truly free Uganda, built not on the flawed foundation of state power, but on the unshakeable strength of self-reliant, empowered communities taking control of their own destinies. The question is not who will lead Uganda, but whether Ugandans will finally choose to lead themselves.

The Puppet Show: When “People Power” Becomes Just Another Master

In the dusty, vibrant heart of Uganda, where the struggle for a dignified life is a daily grind, politics is the grand theatre. The stage is set with familiar characters: the ageing strongman, the fiery challenger, and a chorus of commentators shouting from the stalls and the diaspora. A recent online storm, ignited by the provocateur Stella Nyanzi over an MP’s resignation, has ripped down the backdrop. It reveals not a battle of ideals, but a squabble between two sides of the same coin—a spectacle designed to make us look here while power is consolidated over there. This isn’t about democracy; it’s about which manager gets to run the plantation.

Forget the red and yellow colours. Forget the slogans of “People Power” or “Sustained Development.” When we peel back the layers of insults, accusations, and tribal loyalties, we are left with a simple, brutal question: why do we keep begging for crumbs from the master’s table, instead of taking control of the bakery ourselves?

1. The Two-Headed Cow: Why Voting for a New Master Isn’t Freedom

In the bustling taxi parks of Kampala and the quiet trading centres of the villages, the political debate often sounds like a fierce argument over which driver should take the wheel of a broken-down vehicle. One group insists their driver, who has been at the wheel for decades, is the only one who knows the treacherous road. The other shouts for a new, younger driver, promising a faster, smoother journey to a better destination. Passengers are forced to pick a side, and the argument becomes so loud that no one stops to ask a more radical question: Why are we all still crammed into the same rickety, leaking taxi that only ever goes where the driver wants it to go?

This is the grand illusion of choice in Ugandan politics. The heated rivalry between the National Resistance Movement (NRM) and the National Unity Platform (NUP) is presented as the ultimate political decision. But from a perspective that seeks genuine self-rule and freedom from domination, this is a false dilemma. It is a choice between two heads of the same cow, both ultimately serving the same body—a centralised system of power that exists to perpetuate its own control.

As the old adage goes, “A dog offered two bones does not choose freedom; it only chooses which jaw to be in.” We are being offered bones, not liberation.

The Same Structure, Different Colours

At its core, both the NRM and NUP are built on the same blueprint: a top-down, hierarchical structure where power flows from a single leader down to the obedient followers. The NRM’s ‘Movement’ system and NUP’s ‘People Power’ slogan may sound different, but in practice, they both demand the same thing: that ultimate decision-making authority is concentrated at the top.

The NRM has perfected this over 40 years. Power begins and ends with the ‘Chairman’ and his inner circle. Members of Parliament, local councillors, and party officials are not representatives; they are appointees and loyalists in a vast patronage network. Their primary role is not to serve their constituents, but to maintain the structure that feeds them.
The NUP, despite its image as a radical alternative, mirrors this structure. Power is intensely centralised around its president, Robert Kyagulanyi. The candidate vetting process, the allegations of money and favouritism for party flags, and the fierce defence of the leadership from any criticism all point to an organisation that is not building a new kind of politics. It is merely preparing to occupy the old, oppressive structure and sit in the same seats of power.

Challenging the System Itself

The great tragedy of this illusion is that it forces people to waste their energy on a debate that changes nothing fundamental. The real system—the state itself—remains utterly unchallenged.

The state is not a neutral tool that can be used for good by the right people. It is a mechanism designed for control, extraction, and coercion. Its very nature is hierarchical and violent. It operates on the principle that a small group of people in Kampala have the right to make decisions for millions of people in Kasesi, Gulu, or Mbale, enforcing those decisions with police and military power.

By arguing over who should control this machine, we accept the machine’s right to exist and to control us. We are like villagers arguing over which witch doctor should wield a poisonous charm, instead of questioning whether we need the charm at all.

The Ugandan Path to True Self-Determination

The alternative is not another political party. It is a complete reimagining of how we organise our society, drawing on the best of Ugandan traditions of community and mutual aid.

Look to Our Past, Build Our Future: Long before colonial borders were drawn, societies across Uganda practised forms of decentralised, community-based governance. Elders’ councils, community assemblies, and collective decision-making for the common good (Bulungi Bwansi) are in our DNA. This is not a foreign idea; it is a forgotten one. We must revitalise this spirit, creating village and parish assemblies where people directly decide on issues that affect them, without waiting for permission from a minister in Kampala.
Build Power from the Ground Up: Real power isn’t given by a ballot paper; it is built by people organising together. Imagine if the energy spent campaigning for politicians was instead directed into community-owned cooperatives for farmers, neighbourhood watch groups that are accountable to residents instead of the state, or community kitchens during hard times. These are structures we control directly. They cannot be corrupted or sold to the highest bidder because we are the owners.
Withdraw Consent: The power of every ruler, whether in NRM yellow or NUP red, depends entirely on our obedience. Their authority is a fiction that we reinforce every day. By building our own functional, self-reliant communities, we can slowly withdraw our consent from their system. We can stop looking to them for solutions and start recognising the power we already hold in our own hands and communities.

The next time you are drawn into the heated debate between the two heads of the same cow, step back. Reject the false choice. The future of Uganda will not be found on a ballot paper that offers only different flavours of the same bitter medicine. It will be built by us, from the ground up, in our villages, parishes, and cities, when we finally decide to stop choosing jaws and instead, claim our freedom.

2. The Waiting Disease: How Looking for a Saviour Weakens Our Hands

Across Uganda, from the crowded streets of Kisekka Market to the quiet shores of Lake Bunyonyi, a dangerous sickness has taken hold. It is not a virus that fevers the body, but a parasite that weakens the spirit. It is the belief that our salvation—from poverty, from oppression, from despair—will come from a single, powerful leader. We are taught to look up to the podium, to the presidential convoy, to the man on the poster, and wait for him to act. In doing so, we forget the power in our own hands and the strength of the person standing next to us.

This devotion to a single figurehead, whether it is Yoweri Museveni in his yellow shirt or Bobi Wine in his red beret, is what we might call The Waiting Disease. It trains us to be passive spectators in our own lives, believing that change is a gift to be given by a great man, rather than a reality to be built by us all.

As the old proverb warns, “He who waits for a chief to feed him will starve with a pot in his hands.” We are holding the pot. We have the ingredients. Yet we stare at the palace gates, waiting for a command to begin cooking.

The Hypnotic Dance of the Saviour

Both the NRM and NUP, despite their apparent differences, perform the same hypnotic dance. They centre everything on the personality, the wisdom, and the will of one man.

The NRM’s ‘Mzee’ Myth: For nearly four decades, the state machinery has worked tirelessly to create the image of President Museveni as the indispensable father of the nation—the wise ‘Mzee’ who alone can hold the country together. Criticism of him is not framed as political disagreement but as disrespect, akin to a child rebelling against a parent. This forces people into a child-like role, reliant on the parent for protection and provision.
NUP’s ‘People’s President’: On the surface, Bobi Wine’s rise from the ghettos appears to be the opposite. But look closer. The movement quickly transformed from a grassroots idea called ‘People Power’ into a party tightly controlled around the persona of its ‘President.’ Supporters are encouraged to see him as the chosen saviour, the martyr who suffers for them. The intense, often vicious, defence of his image from any criticism—like that from Stella Nyanzi—shows a deep emotional attachment that mirrors the very cult of personality they claim to oppose.

In both cases, the message is identical: Do not think for yourself. Do not organise without permission. Wait for your leader to show you the way. This is the opposite of true strength; it is a voluntary surrender of your own agency.

The Cost of Waiting: From Citizens to Spectators

This focus on a saviour has a devastatingly practical cost. It actively discourages the very things that make a community resilient and powerful: self-reliance and grassroots organising.

It Kills Initiative: Why would a community come together to fix a road themselves if they believe the MP—who belongs to the great leader’s party—will eventually bring government machinery to do it? They wait. The road deteriorates. Their own ability to solve problems withers from disuse.
It Creates Fragility: A tree that depends on a single, deep root is vulnerable. If that root is cut, the tree dies. A community that depends on a single leader is the same. What happens if the leader is arrested, dies, or simply changes his promises? The entire movement collapses into confusion and despair because no one was taught to lead themselves.
It Diverts Energy: All the passion, hope, and energy of millions of people are funneled into campaigning for one man, chanting his name, and defending his reputation online. This is energy that is stolen from building community gardens, creating neighbourhood watch schemes, forming savings cooperatives, or holding local councils accountable. The grand, national spectacle makes us neglect the small, local work that truly builds power.

Reclaiming Our Power: Remembering Our Traditions

The alternative to this waiting is not a different leader. It is to remember a older, Ugandan way of being.

Think of the tradition of ‘Bulungi Bwansi’. This does not mean waiting for a government minister to send a tractor. It means the community coming together, with their own hoes, their own strength, and their own collective will, to work on a common good. There is no single leader in that process. There are organisers, elders who advise, and strong youths who dig—but the power and the success belong to the collective.

This is the path forward:

Look Beside You, Not Above You: The real experts on the problems in your village are not men in Kampala. They are you, your neighbours, the local farmer, and the shopkeeper. Start there. Hold meetings under the mango tree without waiting for a party official to grant you permission.
Build What You Need: If the water pump is broken, form a committee to collect contributions and fix it. If security is bad, organise a community patrol. These acts are a direct rejection of the saviour complex. They declare, “We do not need to wait. We can do this ourselves.”
See Leaders as Servants, Not Saviours: A true representative is not a celebrity to be worshipped. They are a delegate—a trusted voice from within the community who is tasked with speaking your agreed words to a larger council. They are recallable and accountable to you, every day. They do not lead you; they serve the community’s will.

The cure for the Waiting Disease is action. We must stop chanting the names of chiefs and start speaking the names of our neighbours. We must stop investing our hope in a man on a stage and start investing our labour in the soil of our community. Our liberation was never going to be gifted to us by a president. It has always been, and will always be, in the work we do together.

3.The Poisoned Well: How Accusations of Corruption Blind Us to the Real Thief

In the heat of a Ugandan political argument, there is no weapon more readily thrown than the accusation of corruption. It is the ultimate insult, the definitive proof that the other side is morally bankrupt and unfit to lead. Stella Nyanzi hurls it at the National Unity Platform (NUP). NUP supporters volley it back at the National Resistance Movement (NRM) with furious energy. The public watches this match, convinced that choosing the ‘less corrupt’ team is the path to salvation.

But this is a dangerous illusion. This frantic pointing of fingers is like two groups arguing over who is polluting a well, all the while ignoring the fact that the well itself is built over a toxic spring. The problem is not just the people drawing the water; it is the very structure of the well. The frantic debate over which leader is the bigger thief distracts everyone from the most radical truth: the system of state power is not a tool that can be used cleanly; it is itself the engine of corruption.

There is a wise adage that speaks directly to this folly: “When two elephants fight over a muddy pond, it is the pond that makes them dirty.” We are so busy arguing about which elephant is covered in more filth that we refuse to see that the pond itself—the system of concentrated, unaccountable power—is the source of the mud.

The Political Football Game

The accusations levelled by Nyanzi and others are never meant to truly end corruption. They are a tactical move in a political game. Their purpose is to:

Create Moral Superiority: By labelling the other side as corrupt, a party claims the moral high ground. It frames the political struggle not as a clash of different visions for wielding power, but as a simple battle between good and evil. This makes supporters feel righteous and dismissive of any criticism from the ‘corrupt’ side.
Distract from Empty Promises: When a party cannot point to meaningful achievements or a coherent plan for genuine community empowerment, it can always point to the opponent’s corruption. It is the ultimate distraction, shifting focus from what they will do to what the other side has done.
Justify Their Own Grab for Power: The underlying message is always: “They are stealing from you. Vote for us, and we will stop the theft.” This implies that the problem is the people in charge, not the charge itself. It reinforces the idea that the goal is to seize control of the state’s treasury and machinery, just to use it ‘more honestly’.

The Elephant in the Room: The State is the Pond

This entire game rests on a lie: the idea that the immense, concentrated power of the state can be wielded virtuously by the right people. This ignores the irresistible incentives the system creates.

The modern state, by its very design, is a hierarchical structure that centralises wealth and force. It creates a situation where a small group of people in Kampala have legal access to billions of shillings in taxes and resources, and the authority to dictate how it is used for millions of others. This setup is an open invitation to corruption.

It Incentivises Greed: Why would a politician serve the people when the system rewards them for serving themselves and their patrons? Contracts, tenders, and appointments become tools for building patronage networks, not for delivering services.
It Demands Obedience, Not Accountability: The structure flows from the top down. Officials are accountable to their superiors, not to the communities they are meant to serve. A police officer takes orders from his commander, not from the residents of his parish. This lack of local accountability is a breeding ground for abuse.
It Creates a Class of Rulers: The state creates a separate class of people—the political elite—who live by different rules. They have access to resources, privileges, and impunity that the average citizen can never dream of. This separation from the daily struggles of the people is what makes corruption feel consequence-free.

Drawing from a Different Well: A Ugandan Path Beyond the Mud

The solution is not to find cleaner elephants. It is to stop relying on the muddy pond and to start digging new, clean wells where communities have direct control over the water.

Build Community-Controlled Resources: Imagine if tax revenue was managed not by a distant ministry in Kampala, but by transparent parish and village assemblies. Communities could decide their own budgets for their own needs, watching the flow of money at every step. This is direct accountability. It is far harder to steal from your neighbour while looking them in the eye than it is to embezzle billions from a faceless government account.
Reject the Patronage System: True power comes from self-reliance, not from waiting for a patron to give you a job or a handout. Strengthening community savings groups (VSLAAs), farmer cooperatives, and other forms of mutual aid builds economic resilience from the ground up, making people less vulnerable to the bribes and empty promises of politicians.
Focus on the Structure, Not the Puppets: We must shift the debate. Instead of asking “Which leader is less corrupt?” we must start asking: “Why does any single leader have so much power to be corrupt in the first place?” The goal should be to dismantle the centralised power structures that make corruption inevitable and to redistribute that power back to communities.

The next time you hear a politician accusing another of corruption, do not get swept up in the game. See it for what it is: a distraction. The real thief is not just the man with his hand in the till; it is the till itself, and the system that built it. Our future lies not in choosing a new manager for the plantation, but in uprooting the plantation itself and sowing the seeds for a harvest that we all own, control, and share together.

4.The Poisoned Well: How Accusations of Corruption Blind Us to the Real Thief

The Political Football Game

The accusations levelled by Nyanzi and others are never meant to truly end corruption. They are a tactical move in a political game. Their purpose is to:

Create Moral Superiority: By labelling the other side as corrupt, a party claims the moral high ground. It frames the political struggle not as a clash of different visions for wielding power, but as a simple battle between good and evil. This makes supporters feel righteous and dismissive of any criticism from the ‘corrupt’ side.
Distract from Empty Promises: When a party cannot point to meaningful achievements or a coherent plan for genuine community empowerment, it can always point to the opponent’s corruption. It is the ultimate distraction, shifting focus from what they will do to what the other side has done.
Justify Their Own Grab for Power: The underlying message is always: “They are stealing from you. Vote for us, and we will stop the theft.” This implies that the problem is the people in charge, not the charge itself. It reinforces the idea that the goal is to seize control of the state’s treasury and machinery, just to use it ‘more honestly’.

The Elephant in the Room: The State is the Pond

This entire game rests on a lie: the idea that the immense, concentrated power of the state can be wielded virtuously by the right people. This ignores the irresistible incentives the system creates.

It Incentivises Greed: Why would a politician serve the people when the system rewards them for serving themselves and their patrons? Contracts, tenders, and appointments become tools for building patronage networks, not for delivering services.
It Demands Obedience, Not Accountability: The structure flows from the top down. Officials are accountable to their superiors, not to the communities they are meant to serve. A police officer takes orders from his commander, not from the residents of his parish. This lack of local accountability is a breeding ground for abuse.
It Creates a Class of Rulers: The state creates a separate class of people—the political elite—who live by different rules. They have access to resources, privileges, and impunity that the average citizen can never dream of. This separation from the daily struggles of the people is what makes corruption feel consequence-free.

Drawing from a Different Well: A Ugandan Path Beyond the Mud

The solution is not to find cleaner elephants. It is to stop relying on the muddy pond and to start digging new, clean wells where communities have direct control over the water.

Build Community-Controlled Resources: Imagine if tax revenue was managed not by a distant ministry in Kampala, but by transparent parish and village assemblies. Communities could decide their own budgets for their own needs, watching the flow of money at every step. This is direct accountability. It is far harder to steal from your neighbour while looking them in the eye than it is to embezzle billions from a faceless government account.
Reject the Patronage System: True power comes from self-reliance, not from waiting for a patron to give you a job or a handout. Strengthening community savings groups (VSLAAs), farmer cooperatives, and other forms of mutual aid builds economic resilience from the ground up, making people less vulnerable to the bribes and empty promises of politicians.
Focus on the Structure, Not the Puppets: We must shift the debate. Instead of asking “Which leader is less corrupt?” we must start asking: “Why does any single leader have so much power to be corrupt in the first place?” The goal should be to dismantle the centralised power structures that make corruption inevitable and to redistribute that power back to communities.

5.The Controlled Burn: How Managed Dissent Keeps Us in the Dark

In the political landscape of Uganda, a clever and dangerous performance is underway. On one side of the stage stands the ruling party, the National Resistance Movement (NRM), a fixture of power for decades. On the other stands the National Unity Platform (NUP), the loud, passionate, and seemingly fearless opposition. The public is cast as the audience, encouraged to cheer for their chosen gladiator, believing the struggle is real. But what if the fight is fixed? What if the purpose of the opposition is not to win, but to make sure the real game—the consolidation of power by a privileged few—never actually gets challenged?

This is the performance of opposition. It is a carefully managed spectacle designed to give people an outlet for their anger while ensuring the foundations of the system remain untouched. It functions as a safety valve on a pressure cooker: it lets off just enough steam to prevent a catastrophic explosion, but the heat source underneath—the centralised, oppressive structure of the state—is never turned off.

There is an old adage that perfectly captures this deception: “The dog that barks by the permission of the leopard is not a watchdog, but a messenger.” The NUP is allowed to bark. Its barks are even broadcast on the news. But it barks only within boundaries set by the very system it claims to oppose, delivering the message that dissent is happening, all while the leopard’s reign goes unchallenged.

The Mechanics of the Managed Opposition

How does this performance work in practice? It is a sophisticated strategy with several acts:

The Illusion of Contest: The constant media presence of NUP, the heated parliamentary debates, and the social media wars create a powerful drama of conflict. This makes citizens believe that a real political battle is raging, that democracy is ‘working.’ It consumes our attention and energy, making us spectators of a political soap opera rather than architects of our own destiny.
The Safety Valve Function: Public frustration over unemployment, corruption, and oppression is immense. This pressure needs an outlet. By tolerating NUP’s protests and rhetoric, the regime provides a channel for this frustration. People can wear red berets, chant slogans, and feel like they are part of a resistance, all within a controlled container. This prevents that same energy from flowing into unpredictable, horizontal, and truly threatening forms of organisation, like general strikes or widespread community mobilisation independent of any political party.
Defining the Boundaries of ‘Acceptable’ Dissent: The government’s ‘tolerance’ has limits, and those limits are the point. NUP is allowed to operate as long as its challenges remain within the confines of the existing system—participating in elections, giving speeches in parliament, holding permitted rallies. The moment any movement threatens to step outside this framework—to encourage mass civil disobedience, workers’ strikes, or the creation of parallel community power structures—the full force of state violence is unleashed. This teaches a brutal lesson: dissent is welcome only if it plays by the master’s rules.

Why the Core Power Structure Remains Safe

This performance is so effective because it protects the core of the system in two crucial ways:

It Reinforces the Myth of the Ballot Box: The entire spectacle pushes a single, disempowering idea: that the only way to create change is to wait for the next election and vote for the opposition. This keeps people trapped in a five-year cycle of hope and betrayal, always looking to a political party to save them. It actively discourages people from taking direct action into their own hands today because they are told the ‘proper’ channel is to wait and vote.
It Prevents Unity Based on Class, Not Party: The bitter, tribal rivalry between NRM and NUP supporters fractures the population. A poor youth in Kisenyi and a poor farmer in Kotido are taught to see each other as enemies because one supports Kyagulanyi and the other supports Museveni. This prevents them from recognising their shared class interest: that they are both being exploited by a system that serves the wealthy and powerful, regardless of the colour of their beret. The performance keeps the oppressed fighting amongst themselves.

Turning Off the Show: Reclaiming Real Resistance

The path to genuine liberation requires us to see the performance for what it is and to walk out of the theatre.

Withdraw Your Audience: Stop investing your energy in the spectacle. The political drama is designed to capture your attention. Refuse to give it. Shift your focus from arguments about politicians to conversations with your neighbours about your common problems.
Build Real Power, Not Symbolic Protest: Real power is not measured in decibels at a rally or likes on a Facebook post. It is measured in the ability of a community to meet its own needs. Channel energy into creating community gardens, neighbourhood watch schemes that are accountable to residents, and savings cooperatives. These are structures of self-reliance that exist outside the state’s control and diminish our dependence on the political class.
Practice Irreverent Direct Action: The most powerful response to managed dissent is unmanaged dissent. This means taking action that solves problems or challenges power directly, without asking for permission. It is tenants negotiating rent reductions as a united front. It is communities maintaining a road themselves and refusing to thank an MP for it. These acts declare independence from the political spectacle and show that we do not need their permission to be free.

The goal is not to find a more authentic opposition party to cheer for. It is to realise that the entire game is designed to make us cheerleaders when we should be players. Our power does not lie in choosing a new master for the plantation. It lies in uprooting the plantation itself and learning to cultivate the land together, as equals.

6.The Poisoned Darts: How Personal Attacks Silence Real Debate

In the heat of a Ugandan political argument, when the facts are inconvenient and the questions are too sharp, a familiar strategy is deployed. Rather than address the uncomfortable allegation—say, of corruption within a party structure—the response is to attack the messenger. The focus is shifted from the message to the person delivering it. Their character, their past, their personal life, their choices are put on trial in the court of public opinion. This is not a mistake; it is a deliberate and highly effective tactic of control.

The furious personal attacks levied against Stella Nyanzi—mocking her exile, speculating about her love life, weaponising her past activism—are a masterclass in this distraction. They are poisoned darts designed not to win a debate with facts, but to shut down debate altogether. By making the conversation about her flaws, her critics ensure the conversation is never about the powerful, unaccountable systems she is critiquing.

An old Ugandan adage offers profound wisdom here: “When the hunter is cursed by the monkey, he does not abandon his hunt to become a priest; he examines his arrow.” The personal attacks are the monkey’s curses. They are noise meant to confuse, shame, and divert the hunter’s aim away from its true target. To fall for it is to abandon the hunt for justice and instead get lost in a jungle of irrelevant insults.

The Machinery of Distraction

This use of ad hominem (against the person) attacks is a core tool for maintaining the status quo. It functions with brutal efficiency:

It Changes the Subject: A substantive allegation about corruption or mismanagement requires a substantive response. It forces a discussion on facts, accountability, and power. This is a dangerous discussion for those in power. It is far easier, and safer, to change the subject. By turning the spotlight onto Nyanzi’s personal life, the underlying claim about systemic rot is left unexamined in the shadows.
It Exiles Critical Thinkers: This tactic is used to police the boundaries of acceptable dissent. By subjecting anyone who raises uncomfortable truths to a barrage of personal vitriol, a powerful message is sent to others: This is what happens to those who step out of line. It creates a chilling effect, discouraging others within the movement or the community from asking difficult questions for fear of similar character assassination.
It Appeals to Emotion Over Reason: Facts and logic require a rational response. Personal attacks trigger tribal emotions—outrage, disgust, loyalty. It is much easier to rally people to defend a ‘tribe’ against a ‘disreputable’ outsider than it is to rally them around a complex argument about financial accountability or political structures. This emotional response overrides critical thinking.

The Real Target is Your Focus

The ultimate goal of this strategy is to keep you, the public, from focusing on what truly matters. While we are busy arguing about someone’s relationship or their choice to seek safety abroad, we are not talking about:

How party tickets are awarded and to whom.
How resources are collected and distributed.
How power is concentrated in the hands of a few.
How the entire system is structured to benefit those at the top.

The personal attack is a magician’s trick, directing your gaze to the waving hand so you don’t see how the coin disappears.

Sharpening Our Own Arrows: A Radical Response

To resist this, we must adopt a disciplined focus that serves our own liberation, not their distraction playbook.

Relentlessly Refocus the Conversation: When a personal attack is launched, the radical response is to calmly and persistently steer the discussion back to the original, substantive point. The response to “She is a bad woman” is “That may be your opinion, but it doesn’t answer the question: is it true that party flags were sold?” Do not engage with the curse; examine the arrow.
Value Critique, Not Celebrities: We must learn to separate the message from the messenger. A flawed person can still speak a truth. A saint can still tell a lie. Our loyalty should be to principles—like transparency, accountability, and community control—not to individuals whose characters we are encouraged to worship or destroy.
Build a Culture of Substance: In our own community gatherings, savings groups, and associations, we must consciously practice this. We must encourage tough questions and judge ideas based on their merit for our community, not on the personality of the person who suggested them. We must celebrate critical thinking, not blind loyalty.

The fight for a truly free society is not a popularity contest. It is a struggle against deeply entrenched systems of power. These systems are defended not just with guns and prisons, but with clever tricks designed to cloud our minds and waste our energy.

We must refuse to be distracted. We must see the poisoned darts for what they are and let them fall harmlessly to the ground, while we keep our eyes fixed firmly on the target: the dismantling of every structure that allows a few to rule over the many. Our future is too important to be derailed by gossip.

7.The Great Deception: Why Voting for a Master Can Never Bring Freedom

In Uganda, and across much of the world, we are taught a powerful and comforting myth: that the path to change is found in the ballot box. We are told that every five years, we hold ultimate power—that with a single mark on a piece of paper, we can choose our leaders and shape our destiny. This idea is so deeply ingrained that to question it is seen as heresy against democracy itself. But what if this sacred belief is the greatest trick ever played on the people? What if the ballot box is not a tool of liberation, but a carefully designed mechanism to give us the illusion of choice while ensuring real power remains exactly where it has always been?

This blind faith in elections ignores a simple, brutal truth: the game is rigged. Those who already control the state—its army, its treasury, its courts, and its media—will never allow a process that truly threatens their power. The electoral process does not disperse power; it centralises it. It teaches us to beg for crumbs from the high table in Kampala, rather than to build our own table in our communities.

There is an old adage that cuts to the heart of this deception: “You do not use the master’s tools to dismantle the master’s house.” The ballot box is the master’s favourite tool. It is designed to create the appearance of change while leaving the foundations of the house of power untouched and stronger than ever.

How the Ballot Box Centralises Power

The very structure of representative democracy, as practised in Uganda, is engineered to take power away from people and place it in the hands of a distant political class.

The Illusion of Participation: Every five years, we are granted a dramatic, high-stakes spectacle. We campaign, we argue, we vote. For a moment, we feel empowered. But what happens after? The elected MP retreats to Kampala, enters a system of patronage, compromise, and corruption, and becomes accountable to party bosses, not to the voters who elected them. We are reduced to passive spectators, waiting for the next election to punish them—only to elect another who will do the same. This cycle makes us petitioners, not protagonists in our own story.
A System Designed for Manipulation: The idea of a ‘free and fair’ election in a system built on extreme inequality is a fantasy. The ruling party controls the electoral commission, the state finances, the police, and much of the media. It can use public resources for campaigning, harass opposition supporters, and manipulate voter registers. The process is not a neutral contest of ideas; it is a battlefield where one side has all the weapons. To believe otherwise is to believe a leopard can be persuaded to become a vegetarian.
The Concentration of Authority: Elections reinforce the idea that solutions must always come from the centre—from Parliament, from the President, from a minister. This disempowers our communities. It teaches us to look to Kampala for permission, for funding, for direction. It kills local initiative and makes us dependent on a system that does not have our interests at heart. Why would a community come together to solve a water problem when they are waiting for an MP to come and campaign on the promise of solving it for them?

The Ugandan Tradition of Self-Reliance We Have Forgotten

Before the colonial state imposed its centralised government, communities across Uganda practised forms of direct, community-based decision-making. The concept of ‘Bulungi Bwansi’—coming together for the common good—did not require a ballot paper or an MP. It required neighbours meeting under a tree, discussing their problems, and agreeing on a solution they would work on together. This is not a romanticised past; it is a powerful model for a future without masters.

Building Real Power Beyond the Spectacle

The alternative to this exhausting, disempowering cycle is to turn our energy and imagination away from the ballot box and towards building power directly in our communities.

Create Permanent People’s Assemblies: Imagine if, instead of channelling all our energy into electing one MP every five years, we formed permanent parish or village assemblies. These would be regular meetings where everyone has a voice and where decisions on local issues are made directly. These assemblies could appoint recallable delegates to coordinate with other communities, creating a network of real people’s power from the ground up.
Practice Direct Action, Not Petitioning: Stop asking the state for what you need. If the road is bad, organise the community to repair it. If a landlord is exploitative, tenants can organise a rent strike. If a corporation is polluting, blockade its trucks. Direct action solves problems immediately and demonstrates that our power does not come from a politician’s favour, but from our own collective will and organisation.
Withdraw Consent and Build Alternatives: The state’s power relies on our obedience. We can withdraw that consent by building our own alternatives. Create community health programmes, food cooperatives, and neighbourhood watch groups that are accountable to the community, not to a government ministry. Build a world in which the services we need are controlled by us, making the central state increasingly irrelevant.

The myth of the ballot box is the chain that keeps us mentally enslaved. It is time to break that chain. Our liberation will not be delivered by a politician. It will be built by us, every day, through direct action, mutual aid, and the quiet, relentless work of taking control of our own lives and communities. We do not need to choose a new driver for the broken-down taxi. We need to get out and build our own road.

8.The Leopard’s Spots: Why Changing the Driver Doesn’t Change the Journey’s End

Across Uganda, a powerful and seductive idea fuels political campaigns: the belief that change can be delivered from the top. The National Unity Platform (NUP) project, like so many before it, is built on this premise. It argues that the key to liberation is to seize control of the state—the presidency, the parliament, the army—and then use that machinery for the good of the people. It is a promise of a revolution through the ballot box, a peaceful capture of the throne.

But history, both globally and here in Uganda, offers a grim and consistent lesson: the state is not a neutral tool that can be wielded for good. It is a instrument of control, and those who seize it, regardless of their intentions, inevitably become what they sought to destroy. The hunter who enters the leopard’s den to steal its skin often ends up wearing it.

There is a profound adage that speaks to this eternal truth: “He who enters a beast’s den to steal its skin must become a beast himself to survive.” You cannot take hold of a poisonous snake and expect it to obey you; its nature is to bite. The nature of the centralised state is to corrupt, to concentrate power, and to protect itself. To believe otherwise is the most dangerous of political naiveties.

Why the State Corrupts Absolutely

The failure of ‘change from the top’ is not a matter of finding the right people; it is a matter of the irresistible corrupting nature of the system itself.

The Seduction of the Patronage Machine: The Ugandan state is the ultimate patronage network. It controls billions in tax revenue, land, contracts, and jobs. The moment a group takes power, they are faced with a choice: use this wealth to reward the loyalists who put them there and to buy off potential opponents, or risk being overthrown by those they disappoint. The system is designed to force leaders to become patrons, distributing goodies to their tribe rather than empowering all citizens equally. The politics of the stomach will always defeat the politics of principle.
The Iron Law of Oligarchy: This is a stubborn principle observed throughout history. Any organisation, no matter how democratic its origins, eventually becomes ruled by a small, self-serving elite (an oligarchy). This is because managing a large, centralised structure requires specialists, bureaucrats, and leaders who end up gaining privileges and information that separate them from the ordinary people they claim to serve. They begin to believe their own power is essential and start acting in their own interests to preserve it. The NUP’s internal allegations of corruption and favouritism in issuing party flags are not an anomaly; they are the early, predictable symptoms of this disease.
The Trap of State Violence: The state holds a monopoly on ‘legitimate’ violence through the police and army. A movement that seizes the state inherits this monopoly. Suddenly, the same activists who were protesting police brutality are now the commanders of that very force. When faced with dissent from their own disappointed supporters or from other communities, they are forced to make a choice: listen and relinquish power, or use the tools of repression they once condemned to crush the opposition. The beast’s den demands beastly behaviour.

The Ugandan Path: Building from the Bottom Up

The alternative is to reject the futile quest to capture the throne and instead to build a new society from the ground up, one that makes the state irrelevant.

Embrace ‘Bulungi Bwansi’ as a Political Principle: This tradition is our blueprint. It is not about waiting for an MP to bring a government tractor. It is about communities self-organising to identify their own problems and pool their resources and labour to solve them. This ethic must be scaled up from fixing roads to managing community security, justice, and resources. Real power is not given; it is built through collective action.
Create Dual Power: The strategy is to build our own community-powered institutions that can eventually replace the functions of the state. Imagine community-run health clinics, farmer-owned cooperatives that bypass corrupt middlemen, and neighbourhood assemblies that settle disputes and provide security. The more we can provide for ourselves, the less power Kampala has over us. We make the state obsolete by building a better alternative right next to it.
Focus on Autonomy, Not Takeover: The goal should shift from “How do we take control of the state?” to “How do we make our communities self-governing and independent from the state?” This means demanding not better rulers, but the right to rule ourselves. It means decentralising power so completely that the central government becomes a weak coordinator of strong communities, rather than a powerful master of weak subjects.

The lesson is clear: we cannot use the master’s tools to dismantle the master’s house. The state is a tool of domination, and any attempt to use it for liberation will end in a new form of domination. Our future will not be delivered from State House. It will be built by our own hands, in our own villages, through mutual aid, direct action, and the unwavering belief that ordinary people, working together, are the only true force for change. Let us stop begging for a place at the master’s table and instead build our own feast, on our own land.

9.The Seed of Freedom: How ‘Bulungi Bwansi’ is Our Blueprint for a New Society

In the search for a way out of Uganda’s political trap, we are often told to look abroad for solutions—to foreign models of democracy or governance. Yet, the most powerful, radical, and truly Ugandan blueprint for a free society is not in a foreign textbook; it is buried in our own memory, practised in our villages, and whispered in our traditions. It is the timeless principle of Bulungi Bwansi.

This concept—of communities coming together to solve common problems, to build a road, dig a well, or support a neighbour in need—is far more than communal labour. It is a living, breathing example of a society functioning without rulers. It proves that ordinary people, when working together as equals, possess all the wisdom, skill, and power needed to manage their own affairs. While the politicians in Kampala debate endlessly about budgets and policies, communities across Uganda are already getting on with the work, demonstrating a form of direct action that renders the central state irrelevant.

There is an adage that captures the spirit of this perfectly: “A thousand ants, working together, can move an elephant.” Bulungi Bwansi is the philosophy of the ants. It recognises that grand tasks are not achieved by a single mighty leader (the elephant), but by the collective, coordinated effort of everyone, each contributing what they can. It is the ultimate rejection of the idea that we need a chief to tell us how to fetch water.

Why Bulungi Bwansi is a Radical Act

In today’s political context, practising Bulungi Bwansi is not just helpful; it is a profoundly radical act of defiance. It does what opposition politics fails to do:

It Builds Self-Reliance, Not Dependence: The state and political parties want you to depend on them. They campaign on promises of what they will do for you, fostering a culture of waiting and begging. Bulungi Bwansi shatters this dependency. It declares, “We do not need to wait for a government tractor or an MP’s donation. We have our own hands, our own hoes, and our own collective will.” This shift from passive dependence to active self-determination is the foundation of true freedom.
It Is Direct Action, Not Petitioning: Bulungi Bwansi does not involve writing a petition to a minister or holding a placard asking for help. It is the action itself. By fixing the road themselves, the community solves the problem immediately. This demonstrates that power is not something granted by authority; it is something exercised directly by people. It is the difference between begging for a fish and organising with your neighbours to cast a net.
It Creates Horizontal Power, Not Vertical Hierarchy: Notice how Bulungi Bwansi works. There is no top-down command. An elder might suggest the work, but everyone discusses it. The strongest dig, the cooks prepare food, the children carry water. Leadership is temporary, based on task and skill, not on permanent authority. This is a horizontal network of cooperation, a stark contrast to the vertical, hierarchical pyramid of the state where all power flows from the top down.

Cultivating the Seed: From Tradition to Transformation

Bulungi Bwansi is a seed. For too long, we have let it lie dormant, only using it for small tasks while leaving the big picture to the politicians. It is time to water this seed and let it grow to encompass all of society.

Expand the Concept: We must consciously apply the principle of Bulungi Bwansi beyond just physical infrastructure. What would it look like for communities to use this model for:
- Community Justice: Restorative justice circles where communities resolve conflicts themselves, rather than relying on a corrupt and distant police force and court system.
- Community Security: Organised neighbourhood watches, accountable to the community, not to a police commander in Kampala.
- Community Wealth: Creating vibrant cooperatives for farmers, artisans, and market vendors to pool resources, control prices, and cut out the exploitative middlemen.
Federate for Larger Projects: A single village can build a road. A network of villages, organised through councils of recallable delegates, could manage a regional water system or a large-scale food market. This principle of federation allows for large-scale coordination without creating a centralised, powerful authority that can be corrupted.
Withdraw Consent from the State: The most powerful thing we can do is to simply stop asking the state for permission and provision. Every time a community solves a problem through Bulungi Bwansi, it quietly withdraws consent from the central government. It makes the state less relevant. We need to build a parallel society based on mutual aid and self-governance until the state, like a useless chief with no subjects, withers away from lack of purpose.

The path to liberation does not lead to Kampala. It leads to the field next to your home, to the meeting under the tree in your village. Our future will not be won by replacing the ruler in State House. It will be built by us, together, hoes in hand, reviving the ancient, radical wisdom of Bulungi Bwansi. We do not need a leader to give us orders; we need each other to remember our power. Let us get to work.

10.The Tree and the Spiderweb: Two Visions of Power for Uganda

In the heart of every political struggle lies a fundamental question: what is the true nature of power? For decades, we have been fed a single, poisonous answer: that power is vertical. It is a thing to be seized at the top—in State House, in Parliament—and then trickled down upon the people. This belief turns politics into a brutal climb over the backs of others to reach a summit where one person, or one party, can command everyone else. It is the logic of the tree: a single towering trunk (the state) with branches (ministries) extending out, but all life, all sustenance, must flow from the top down.

But there is another way, one that is older, more resilient, and deeply Ugandan. It is the logic of the spiderweb: a horizontal network where every strand is connected, where strength is distributed, and where the whole structure is built from the ground up by the collective labour of the community. This is the difference between vertical power, which demands obedience, and horizontal organising, which generates mutual strength.

An adage from our traditions offers a clear-eyed view of this choice: “A single pillar, however strong, will eventually crack under the weight of the roof; a network of reeds, woven together, can bend in the storm and stand firm.” Uganda has been relying on a single, cracking pillar for too long. It is time to learn from the resilience of the woven reed.

The Failure of the Tree: Vertical Power in Uganda

The vertical model of power, practised by both the NRM and the NUP, is designed to create dependency and control. Its failures are etched into our daily lives:

It Creates a Parasitic Class: The vertical structure necessitates a political class in Kampala—the MPs, ministers, and bureaucrats—who position themselves as the essential trunk of the tree. They justify their wealth and privilege by presenting themselves as the distributors of development. In reality, they function as parasites, siphoning resources from the productive work of the people in the villages and towns and then returning a tiny fraction as a ‘donation’ during campaigns, creating a cycle of gratitude and dependence.
It Is Brittle and Unaccountable: A tree has a single point of failure. If the trunk is rotten or damaged, the entire structure collapses. When power is concentrated in a few hands in Kampala, the failure, corruption, or stubbornness of that small group leads to national crisis. Furthermore, how do you hold them accountable? You must plead up the chain of command, a process designed to dilute and ignore dissent.
It Kills Local Initiative: Why would a community organise to solve its own water problem when it is constantly taught that the solution must come from the Ministry of Water in Kampala? Vertical power infantilises people, training them to be passive recipients of commands and aid, not active architects of their own destiny.

The Strength of the Web: Horizontal Organising in Practice

Horizontal organising flips this entire model on its head. It asserts that real power is not seized; it is built. It is the patient, collective work of people organising their own lives from below.

Imagine this instead:

Community Assemblies: In every parish and village, regular meetings where every adult has a voice. These aren’t rallies for a politician; they are practical forums for making decisions. They appoint and oversee committees for security, health, and resource management. They are the foundation of everything.
Task-Based, Recallable Delegates: For larger projects—like managing a regional water source or coordinating a federation of farmer cooperatives—the community assembly would elect a delegate with a specific mandate. This person is not a ‘leader’ with power; they are a servant with a task. They can be recalled instantly if they fail to follow the community’s will. This prevents the rise of a new political class.
Federation, Not Centralisation: These communities would then link together voluntarily—a network of assemblies—to tackle projects too big for any single village. This is the woven web of reeds. It allows for large-scale coordination and mutual defence without creating a centralised, dominating authority. Power remains rooted in the local assembly.

Weaving the Web: How We Start Now

This is not a distant fantasy. It is a practical path we can start walking today, bypassing the parasitic class entirely.

Start with What You Control: Identify a community problem—security, water, a dirt road—and call a meeting. Do not ask for permission. Use the principle of Bulungi Bwansi and just begin. This simple act is a declaration of independence.
Practice Direct Democracy: In these meetings, ensure everyone speaks. Make decisions by consensus or majority vote. This builds the muscle of self-governance and proves that ordinary people are more than capable of managing their affairs.
Federate Voluntarily: Once a few communities are organised, they can form a council of delegates to share resources and strategies. This builds a counter-power, a network of people’s power that exists outside of and in opposition to the state’s vertical authority.

The goal is not to storm the tree and become the new trunk. The goal is to let the tree wither from disuse as we weave a stronger, more resilient web of mutual aid and direct democracy below it. Our power does not lie in Kampala. It lies in our ability to come together, as equals, and build the world we want to see, one community assembly at a time. Let us put our faith not in pillars that crack, but in the woven strength of our collective will.

11.The Vampire State: Why Changing the Guard Doesn’t Change the Thief’s Mission

In the fierce political debates that rage in Uganda’s trading centres and online forums, one truth is deliberately ignored by all who seek power: the Ugandan state is not a tool for development; it is a machine for extraction. Its primary function, whether managed by the National Resistance Movement (NRM) or the National Unity Platform (NUP), is to systematically siphon wealth—land, taxes, and resources—from the hands of the many and channel it into the pockets of the connected few. The political party in charge is irrelevant; they are merely competing for the right to sit at the controls of the same extraction machine.

Arguing over whether NRM or NUP should run the state is like arguing over which driver should pilot a bank robbery van. The argument misses the entire point: the vehicle’s very purpose is theft. Changing the driver does not change the mission; it only changes the destination of the loot.

A sharp Luganda adage exposes this reality: “Amanvu tagagulwa mu nnyumba y’omugattiko.” – “Strength is not bought from the house of the leech.” You cannot seek empowerment from the very entity whose survival depends on sucking you dry. The state is the house of the leech. It does not build strength; it consumes it.

The Unchanged Machinery of Extraction

The methods of this extraction are ruthlessly efficient and remain constant, regardless of the party colours flying over Kampala:

Legalised Theft (Taxation): The state enforces its right to take a portion of every transaction, every harvest, and every worker’s pay. While some taxes may fund minimal services, a vast amount is lost to inflated contracts, ghost projects, and outright theft by officials. This money is not invested in communities; it is transferred from the productive many to the parasitic few in the political and military class.
Violent Theft (Land Grabs): The state, with its monopoly on legal violence, is the ultimate land grabber. It issues eviction orders, deploys police and army to enforce them, and hands over communally held land to foreign investors, generals, and NRM/NUP bigwigs. This is not development; it is dispossession. It rips the very foundation of life and wealth from communities and gifts it to a privileged elite.
Corruption as a System, Not an Accident: Corruption is not a flaw in the system; it is the system’s lubricant. It is how the extraction machine functions. Bribes, kickbacks, and patronage are the mechanisms that ensure wealth flows upwards. The ‘corrupt’ officials are not rogue elements; they are participants in a designed structure that rewards theft and punishes honesty.

Why a New Manager Changes Nothing

The belief that a ‘clean’ NUP government could use this machine for good is a dangerous fantasy. It ignores the machine’s fundamental design:

The Incentive is Extraction: The state’s structure creates irresistible incentives for corruption. Those who gain power gain access to billions of shillings and the legal authority to distribute them. The system rewards those who use this power to build patronage networks (rewarding loyalists) and punish opponents. It punishes those who try to be honest by isolating them and making them ineffective.
It Attracts the Wrong People: The very nature of a system based on concentrated power attracts those who desire to wield power over others and gain wealth. It repels humble servants. Therefore, the system naturally selects for the most corrupt and power-hungry among us, regardless of their initial party banner.

Building a Future That Serves Us, Not It

The solution is not to find an honest driver for the robbery van. It is to disable the van and build a different system for transporting goods—one we control.

Build Community-Controlled Resources: We must move our wealth and resources out of the state’s reach. Develop community savings groups (VSLAAs), farmer cooperatives, and community-owned land trusts. Manage resources through transparent parish assemblies where everyone can see the money and decide its use. This is wealth held by the many, for the many.
Practice Tax Resistance and Direct Funding: Where possible, communities should collectively resist abusive taxation, especially when no services are rendered. More importantly, we can practice direct funding—pooling our money locally to build the schools, clinics, and roads ourselves, making the state’s extracted ‘contributions’ irrelevant.
Expose the Machine’s Purpose: We must relentlessly change the conversation. The debate should not be “Which party can run the extraction machine better?” It must be: “How do we dismantle this machine of extraction and build a system that serves us all?”

The state is not our benefactor. It is a vampire that feasts on our labour. Our liberation will not come from feeding it a new diet. It will come from driving a stake through its heart and building a society where wealth remains in the hands of those who create it, shared voluntarily for the common good. Let us stop arguing over the vampire’s caretaker and start building a society that thrives in the sunlight of mutual aid and self-determination.

12.Why Begging Fails: The Unarguable Power of Direct Action

For decades, the people of Uganda have been taught that the proper channel for change is the ballot box. We are instructed to be patient, to wait for the next election, to lobby our MP, to write petitions to ministers. This is the politics of begging. It is a process designed to make us passive, to make us believe that our power lies in pleading with our rulers. But there is another way, a way that is older, more effective, and deeply rooted in our spirit of resistance: Direct Action.

Direct action is the simple, powerful idea that we do not need to ask for permission to be free. It is the understanding that when communities organise themselves and act directly to solve a problem or confront an injustice, they achieve immediate results. We see its power in the tenants who organise a rent strike against a slumlord, in the market vendors who collectively refuse to be evicted by KCCA bulldozers, and in the villagers who physically block a corporation from polluting their river. These are not protests; they are solutions. They deliver the goods where years of voting and petitioning have delivered only empty promises.

There is a Ugandan adage that captures the sheer practicality of this approach: “The eye that sees the thorn in its path does not need to consult the chief to remove it.” You do not form a committee, you do not wait for a government directive, you do not beg for help. You see a problem that directly affects your life, and you use your own hands to solve it. This is the essence of direct action.

Why Direct Action Succeeds Where Politics Fails

The political process is designed to delay, dilute, and deny. Direct action is designed to solve, and it works for several reasons:

It Attacks the Profit Motive: A corporation or a landlord understands one language above all others: profit and loss. A well-organised rent strike or consumer boycott hits them directly in their wallet. It is a form of pressure they cannot ignore, unlike a petition they can easily file away and forget. It forces a negotiation on your terms.
It Creates Facts on the Ground: Politicians deal in promises. Direct action deals in reality. When a community builds a water source themselves, they have water. When vendors stand in front of their stalls, they prevent demolition. These are accomplished facts. They do not require a minister’s approval to exist. This demonstrates a power that is tangible and immediate.
It Builds Collective Confidence: The greatest barrier to change is the feeling of powerlessness. Direct action shatters this. When people act together and win—even a small victory—it transforms their understanding of themselves. They are no longer passive victims; they are active agents of their own liberation. This builds the collective confidence needed for larger struggles, creating a momentum that no political party can control.

The Ugandan Tradition of Self-Help

This is not a foreign concept. It is the radical core of ‘Bulungi Bwansi’. When a community comes together to fix a road, they are practising direct action. They are not waiting for the LC chairman or the MP to bring a tractor; they are solving the problem with the tools and labour they have. We must now apply this same spirit to every aspect of our lives that is controlled by oppressive forces.

From Protest to Power: How We Practice It

Direct action moves us from symbolic protest to building real power. Here’s how it works:

Tenants & Landlords: Instead of individually complaining about rotten conditions, tenants can form a union. They can collectively demand repairs and, if refused, collectively withhold rent into a shared escrow account. This is not a request; it is a negotiated settlement backed by power.
Vendors & KCCA: Instead of begging city authorities for mercy, vendors can organise to physically resist eviction, document any police brutality, and launch a media campaign to shame the authorities. They can create their own vendor associations to self-manage the market, rendering the corrupt KCCA officials irrelevant.
Environmental Defence: When a company comes to poison a river, the community does not need to wait for NEMA’s permission to act. They can use their bodies to block the machinery, organise simultaneous legal challenges, and disrupt the company’s operations until they leave.

Direct action is the refusal to be a beggar in your own land. It is the declaration that we are the ones we have been waiting for. Our liberation will not be granted to us by a politician in Kampala; it will be seized by us, in our communities, through courageous, collective action. Let us stop waiting for a saviour and start being the architects of our own freedom. The power is not at the ballot box; it is in our hands, our voices, and our unwavering will to act.

13.Beyond the Keyboard Warriors: The Diaspora’s Power to Build, Not Beg

For many in the Ugandan diaspora, politics is a pain that follows them across oceans and continents. It manifests in furious online debates, a constant, draining battle between the brands of NRM and NUP, fought on Facebook threads and WhatsApp groups. This is a trap. It is a deliberate distraction that turns the energy and resources of some of Uganda’s most connected people into useless noise, serving only the political classes in Kampala who thrive on division.

There is another way, a path of profound impact that bypasses the rotten political system entirely. Instead of funding political campaigns or wasting hours in digital arguments, the diaspora possesses a unique power: the power to build resilience from the ground up. By using their resources to fund community projects, libraries, clinics, and mutual aid networks back home, they can help forge a Uganda that is independent of the predatory state. This is not charity; it is a radical act of building parallel power.

There is an adage that speaks to the futility of the current path and the promise of a new one: “Do not curse the darkness of the chief’s hut; instead, light a candle in your own house.” Cursing the darkness in Kampala online is useless. But lighting a candle—funding a community library, a borehole, a maize mill—literally and figuratively illuminates a path to self-sufficiency and empowers people to escape the chief’s control.

Why Online Battles Are a Dead End

Engaging in the toxic back-and-forth between political brands is a strategic failure for the diaspora because:

It Fights on the Master’s Terrain: The online political spectacle is a game designed by and for the political elite. By arguing over which party is better, the diaspora is playing a game they cannot win, on a battlefield chosen by their opponents. It consumes immense emotional energy and time while achieving absolutely nothing for people on the ground.
It Reinforces the Very System It Opposes: The debate reinforces the idea that politics is about which leader we choose. It keeps people mentally chained to the idea of the state as the sole source of solutions. By fighting this battle, the diaspora inadvertently promotes the centrality of the political system they claim to despise.
It Divides the Diaspora Itself: These arguments create bitter divisions within the diaspora community itself, fracturing potential solidarity along the same artificial party lines that weaken the population back home. It prevents them from uniting around practical, transformative projects.

The Radical Alternative: Funding the Foundation of a New Society

The diaspora’s capital, skills, and global networks are a potent resource. Directed correctly, they can bypass the state and build institutions of genuine people’s power.

Fund Infrastructure of Independence: This means investing in projects that reduce community dependence on the state.
- Community Libraries and Resource Centres: Not just buildings with books, but hubs for digital learning, skills training, and political education. Places where people can learn about their rights, organise, and access information free from government propaganda.
- Water and Energy Projects: Funding boreholes, solar micro-grids, and community-owned irrigation systems. This liberates villages from begging politicians for these basic necessities.
- Community Health Initiatives: Supporting clinics, training community health workers, and buying medical supplies. This builds a healthcare system accountable to the community, not to a corrupt ministry in Kampala.
Seed Mutual Aid Networks: The diaspora can provide the initial capital to strengthen and expand the traditional practice of ‘Bulungi Bwansi’ into formalised mutual aid networks.
- Seed Funding for Cooperatives: Providing grants or low-interest loans to farmer co-ops, artisan collectives, and market vendor associations. This allows them to buy inputs in bulk, access better markets, and break free from exploitative middlemen.
- Crisis Support Funds: Creating diaspora-funded emergency funds for communities to deal with disasters, evictions, or political repression without having to rely on a politician’s ‘donation’.
Facilitate Knowledge Transfer: The diaspora is exposed to different models of organisation. They can act as bridges, connecting communities in Uganda with knowledge, blueprints, and strategies for self-management and horizontal organising from around the world, adapted to the Ugandan context.

A Call to Strategic Action

The role of the diaspora is not to be the shouting tail of a Ugandan political beast. It is to be the quiet brain trust and resource base for a completely different body—a body of self-governing, self-reliant communities.

Stop funding the political circus. Stop wasting your energy in the digital trenches. Your power lies not in who you argue for online, but in what you can help build back home. Invest in projects that make the central state irrelevant. Your relative freedom and resources place upon you a responsibility: to light candles of autonomy all across Uganda, so that soon, the people will no longer need to beg for light from the dark halls of power in Kampala.

14.Moulding Minds: How Our Schools Build Subjects, Not Citizens

From the crowded primary schools in Nakawa to the university halls of Makerere, a silent, relentless project is underway. It is not a project of education for liberation, but of training for obedience. The Ugandan education system, like most systems designed by and for a ruling class, has a primary function: to produce compliant subjects, not empowered citizens. It teaches young people to memorise facts, follow instructions, and look upwards for approval, rather than to think critically, solve problems collectively, and trust in their own capacity to lead.

This is not an accident; it is essential for maintaining the current order. A population that questions authority, that knows how to organise itself, and that believes in its own ability to manage its affairs is a direct threat to any elite that bases its power on top-down control. The fight for a truly free society, therefore, must be waged not just in the streets, but in the classroom. We need an education for liberation, not for obedience.

An old adage reveals the core of the problem: “You do not teach a goat to be a shepherd; you teach it to follow the herd.” Our current system is designed to produce excellent followers of the herd. It is terrified of creating shepherds—young people who can think for themselves and guide others.

The Curriculum of Submission

The ways in which our education fosters obedience are systematic:

Rote Learning Over Critical Thinking: Students are rewarded for memorising and regurgitating information, not for questioning it. The ‘authority’ of the textbook and the teacher is absolute. This trains young minds to accept information from above without scrutiny, a perfect preparation for accepting political propaganda and directives in adulthood.
Hierarchy and Punishment: The school structure is a mirror of the state. The headteacher is the president, the teachers are the officials, and the students are the subjects. Punishment for stepping out of line is swift. This conditions children to respect vertical authority and fear the consequences of dissent, crushing natural curiosity and independence.
The Myth of the Single Answer: Exams test for one correct answer. This creates a mindset that for every problem, there is a single, pre-approved solution that comes from an authority figure. It discourages creativity, collaboration, and the understanding that complex problems often require unique, community-driven solutions.

An Education for Freedom: Building the New World in the Classroom

The alternative is to consciously foster an education that liberates the mind and equips the hands for self-governance. This is not about adding a new subject; it is about a complete change in methodology and purpose.

Pedagogy of the Question, Not the Answer: We must shift the focus from providing answers to nurturing questions. Classrooms should be spaces of debate and dialogue where students learn to analyse information, identify bias, and form their own conclusions. The role of the teacher is not to be a fountain of knowledge, but a facilitator of critical thought.
Teaching Skills for Self-Management: Education should be practical and focused on equipping young people with the skills to run their own lives and communities. This includes:
- Financial Literacy: Managing community savings and credit associations (VSLAAs).
- Conflict Resolution: Mediation and restorative justice practices to solve disputes without relying on corrupt police or courts.
- Practical Skills: Agriculture, mechanics, and coding—not just for jobs, but to foster self-reliance and the ability to maintain independent community infrastructure.
History from Below: Teach the true history of Ugandan resistance, community organising, and the traditional practices of direct democracy like ‘Bulungi Bwansi’. Teach about ordinary people who organised to challenge oppression, not just the biographies of ‘great’ leaders. This provides a blueprint for action and shows that change has always come from collective action, not from benevolent rulers.

Sowing the Seeds of a Free Generation

This transformative education does not have to wait for permission from the Ministry of Education. It can start now, in parallel:

Community-Led Learning Hubs: The diaspora and local communities can fund and establish alternative libraries and community centres where this kind of liberatory education is practised after school and on weekends.
Parent and Teacher Circles: Parents and sympathetic teachers can organise to introduce these methods subtly within the existing system and in their own homes, encouraging children to question and think for themselves.

The goal is to create a generation that does not look to Kampala for answers. A generation that sees a leader not as a saviour, but as a servant—and a replaceable one at that. A generation that is confident in its own ability to assemble, to manage resources, to solve problems, and to build its own institutions from the ground up.

This is how we break the cycle. Not by seizing the state, but by seizing our own minds. We must stop teaching our children to be sheep and start nurturing them to be shepherds of their own destiny. The most radical classroom is one that teaches the young that the only authority they must ultimately obey is the collective, reasoned will of their own community.

15.Who Will Keep You Safe? The False Choice Between State Violence and Chaos

In the face of insecurity, from petty theft to land grabs, we are presented with a false and frightening choice: either accept the brutal, often predatory, ‘protection’ of the state police and army, or descend into lawless chaos. This is a lie designed to keep us dependent on our oppressors. It makes us beg for safety from the very forces that are often the source of our insecurity, that evict us from our land, and that protect the interests of the powerful.

There is a third way, one that is older, more effective, and rooted in the principle of community self-reliance. It is the concept of community-based security: organised groups of people, from within the community, accountable to that community, dedicated to its genuine protection. This is not a militia; it is a neighbourhood watch grown into a sophisticated system of mutual defence. It is a far cry from the police and army, whose primary function is to protect state power and private property, not the people.

A powerful Ugandan adage lays bare the truth: “The lizard that lives in the government tree does not hear the cries of the grasshopper in the village.” The state’s security forces are that lizard. They are perched high in the tree of power, listening to the commands of their superiors in Kampala. They cannot hear, and do not care about, the cries of the ordinary person being threatened or exploited. Their loyalty is to the system that pays them, not to the people they are supposedly meant to serve.

The State’s Security: Protecting Power, Not People

The Ugandan Police Force and army are tools of control. Their structure reveals their true purpose:

Accountability to the Top, Not the Community: A police officer takes orders from his commander, who takes orders from a commissioner, who takes orders from a minister. They are a vertical force. Their job is to enforce the laws and directives of the central state, however unjust those laws may be. They are not accountable to the people of Katwe or Kasese; they are accountable to their hierarchy. This is why they can violently evict vendors or suppress protests against a dam project—they are following orders from above, not the will of the community.
Protectors of Property, Not People: The state’s security apparatus swings into its most violent and efficient action to protect property—land for investors, factories for owners, government buildings. They are deployed to break strikes and evict tenants. Contrast this with their slow, often corrupt, response to a home invasion or a robbery in a poor neighbourhood. Their priority is clear: capital over community.
A Source of Insecurity: For many, especially the poor and politically dissenting, the police are not a source of safety but a source of fear. They are associated with extortion, brutality, arbitrary arrest, and torture. To call them for help is often to invite a more dangerous predator into your home.

The Community’s Shield: Building Real Security from Below

Community-based security flips this model on its head. It is horizontal, not vertical. Its power comes from below.

Rooted in the Community: Its members are not strangers deployed from a barracks. They are neighbours. They know the community, its people, its tensions, and its needs intimately. They have a vested interest in keeping their own families and friends safe. They cannot be easily corrupted to act against their own community’s interests.
Directly Accountable: Such a group would be selected by and report to a community assembly. If they are abusive, corrupt, or ineffective, the community can immediately recall them and choose new protectors. This is a world away from trying to file a complaint against a powerful police officer at a station where he is protected by his colleagues.
Focused on Restorative Justice, Not Punishment: The goal is not to arrest and imprison people, further breaking apart the community. The goal is to de-escalate conflict, mediate disputes, and use restorative justice circles to repair harm. This addresses the root causes of crime and strengthens social bonds, rather than just punishing individuals and creating cycles of vengeance.

Practical Steps Towards Community Defence

This is not a utopian dream. It is a practical necessity we can start building towards:

Strengthen Existing Networks: Begin by formalising and expanding neighbourhood watch schemes. Move from occasional patrols to organised, trained teams with clear protocols for de-escalation and community accountability.
Community Training: Organise training for these groups in conflict mediation, human rights, and first aid. The diaspora could fund such programmes, focusing on building skills for protection, not aggression.
Create Clear Lines of Accountability: The community security team should be mandated by and report back regularly to open community assemblies. Their funding should be transparent and come from the community, making them servants of the people, not masters.

The choice is not between state violence and chaos. The real choice is between security imposed from above by a hostile force, and security built from below by ourselves. It is time to stop begging the lizard in the government tree for protection and to start building our own security, accountable to us, dedicated to us, and forever rooted in the will of our community. Our safety is our own responsibility, and in taking it back, we take a giant step towards true freedom.

16.The Earth Beneath Our Feet: Reclaiming the Source of Life from the Speculators

In Uganda, every conflict, every injustice, and every ounce of poverty can be traced back to a single, burning issue: the land. Land is not just dirt; it is life, identity, history, and survival. For generations, our oppression has been engineered through its systematic theft—by colonial powers, by the post-independence state, and now by a vicious alliance of corrupt officials, foreign investors, and a domestic elite that treats the earth as a mere commodity to be bought and sold for profit.

The current system of land ownership, enforced by the state’s police and courts, is a tool of dispossession. It grants a piece of paper—a title—to a single individual or corporation, giving them the absolute right to exclude everyone else, often from land their families have nurtured for centuries. This notion of absolute private property is not natural or traditional; it is a violent imposition that breaks communities and concentrates life-giving resources in the hands of a few. A truly free society would therefore begin with the reclamation of the land by the communities to whom it rightfully belongs, for communal use and benefit.

An old adage cuts to the heart of this truth: “You can own a piece of paper, but you cannot own the rain that falls from the sky or the earth that feeds your children.” The state can issue titles, but it cannot grant true ownership. True ownership is not the right to exclude; it is the responsibility to nurture and share. It is held not by individuals, but by the community across generations.

The State as the Agent of Dispossession

The Ugandan state is not a neutral referee in land disputes. It is the chief agent of land grabbing:

The Violence of the Title Deed: The state’s land registry and courts exist to legitimise theft. They use legal technicalities to evict entire villages, handing over communally held land to investors for plantations, logging, or game parks. The police and army are then deployed to enforce these evictions at gunpoint, demonstrating that private property is ultimately protected by state violence against the people.
Creating a Class of the Landless: By pushing people off the land and into urban slums, the system creates a desperate, landless proletariat. This serves the powerful in two ways: it provides a cheap labour force for their factories and farms, and it makes people dependent on wages and government handouts, breaking their spirit of independence and self-reliance.
The Corruption of ‘Bona Fide’ Occupancy: Even the legal concept of a ‘bona fide’ occupant is a tool of control. It forces people to prove their right to exist on their own land to a hostile government bureaucracy. It makes our inherent right to the land a gift to be granted or revoked by the state.

The Communal Alternative: Reclaiming Our Birthright

The alternative is to revive and modernise the principles of communal stewardship that existed before the title deed. This is not a return to the past; it is a leap towards a more just future.

Rejecting Private Property for Communal Stewardship: This means challenging the very idea that land can be owned like a car. Instead, we must advocate for a system of communal land trusts. The land is held in trust by the community itself, through its assembly. Families can have exclusive right to use a plot for a home or farming, but they cannot sell it to a speculator or corporation. This prevents the accumulation of land and ensures it remains with the community forever.
Direct Action and Land Occupation: When land is stolen, the most powerful response is organised, collective land occupation. This is not ‘illegal’; it is a reclamation. It is communities moving back onto their ancestral land, farming it, and defending it with their bodies. It creates a fait accompli—a reality on the ground that no court order can easily reverse. History shows that mass, non-violent land occupation is one of the most effective tactics against dispossession.
Building Food Sovereignty: Reclaimed land should be used for community food forests, cooperative farms, and grazing collectives. The goal is not to grow cash crops for export, but to achieve food sovereignty—to feed the community first, creating independence from the volatile market and the political class that uses food as a weapon.

The Path to a Landed Liberation

Our liberation is rooted in the soil. The path forward is clear:

Document and Map Communal Land: Use technology to map ancestral land claims and document state-sponsored theft, creating a people’s counter-narrative to the government’s registry.
Form Community Land Defence Committees: Organise groups to monitor land threats, alert the community, and plan non-violent resistance to evictions, linking with other communities facing the same struggles.
Practice what we Preach: On land we control, immediately establish communal farming projects and demonstrate the viability and abundance of a shared approach.

The fight for land is the fight for life itself. We must stop begging the state for land titles and start recognising that our power does not come from a piece of paper issued in Kampala. It comes from our collective will to work the land, to defend it, and to share its bounty justly amongst ourselves. The question is not who owns the land. The question is: Who will feed the children? The answer must be us—organised in our communities, as stewards of the earth, forever free from the speculator’s grasp.

17.The Political Circus: How Online Theatre Distracts Us From the Real Cage

Scroll through any social media platform in Uganda and you will find a raging war of words. Supporters of the National Resistance Movement (NRM) and the National Unity Platform (NUP) are locked in a perpetual, furious debate. The insults fly, the memes are shared, and the outrage is palpable. This, we are told, is democracy in action. This is political engagement.

But it is all a spectacular illusion. This online “debate” is a carefully staged performance, a political circus designed to absorb our anger, waste our energy, and distract our gaze. It creates the thrilling appearance of conflict and choice, all while ensuring the real structures of power—the oppressive state, the exploitative economic system—are never seriously discussed, let alone threatened. We are encouraged to become fans in a stadium, cheering for our team, while the owners of both teams business quietly in the background, profiting from our passion.

A sharp Luganda adage dissects perfectly this trick: “Okulwana kw’embwa ku nnyindo, tekyuka mutwe gw’omulundi.” – “The fighting of dogs over a bone does not shake the head of the man who holds it.” We are the dogs, snarling and snapping at each other over the meagre scraps of political gossip. The political class—the owners of both the NRM and NUP projects—is the man holding the bone, amused and utterly unthreatened by our performance. Our fighting will never make him drop it.

The Mechanics of the Spectacle

This spectacle is not random; it functions with a specific, cynical purpose:

It Creates the Illusion of Choice: The heated rivalry between the two main parties is presented as a fundamental political choice. This makes citizens believe they are participating in a crucial battle, when in reality, both options ultimately uphold the same system of centralised state power and economic exploitation. It is a choice between two different brands of the same bitter medicine.
It Personalises Politics, Systematises Oppression: The debate is relentlessly focused on personalities—Museveni’s age, Bobi Wine’s courage, Stella Nyanzi’s love life. This keeps the conversation focused on individuals, not institutions. We argue about the character of the driver, but we never discuss the destructive destination of the vehicle or the fact that we are all trapped inside it. The system itself, which will continue regardless of which personality is at the wheel, escapes scrutiny.
It Consumes Our Energy and Time: Political change requires immense focus, organisation, and real-world action. The online spectacle is designed to siphon off this energy and convert it into harmless digital noise. The hours spent crafting the perfect insult or defending a leader online are hours not spent organising a community cooperative, forming a neighbourhood assembly, or taking direct action against injustice.

Seeing Through the Show: The Quiet Structures of Real Power

While we are distracted by the circus, the real work of power continues undisturbed:

The state continues to centralise control and extract resources.
Land grabs continue to dispossess communities.
The police and army remain tools of oppression.
The economic system still favours the connected few.

The online debate never challenges these pillars. In fact, by keeping us focused on the spectacle, it actively protects them.

Turning Off the Noise and Turning On Our Power

The path to liberation requires us to see the spectacle for what it is and to consciously withdraw our participation.

Withdraw Your Audience: The spectacle needs our attention to survive. The most radical act is to refuse to watch. Stop engaging in the toxic back-and-forth. Mute the political noise. When you disengage, you reclaim your time and mental energy for meaningful action.
Shift the Conversation: If you must engage online, relentlessly change the subject. When someone attacks a personality, respond by asking a question about power structures: “That’s an interesting opinion about that leader, but what is your solution to the problem of land grabbing?” or “How do we stop police brutality, regardless of who is in power?” Force the discussion onto systemic issues.
Invest in Reality, Not Spectacle: Channel your energy into the tangible world. Attend a community meeting. Join a local savings group. Help organise a community garden. These are quiet, unspectacular acts, but they build real power from the ground up. They are the antithesis of the online circus.

Do not be a fan in the political stadium. The game is rigged, and both teams are owned by the same interests. Our power does not lie in choosing a new performer for the circus. It lies in turning our backs on the big top, walking out into our communities, and getting to work building a world where the circus has no audience left. Let us stop fighting over the bone and start asking why one man gets to hold it in the first place.

18.The Dictionary of Domination: Why We Must Speak a New Language of Power

In the struggle for a truly free Uganda, we are fighting not just with guns and protests, but with words. The language we use is not neutral; it is a battlefield. The terms we inherit—“MP,” “President,” “Party Flag,” “Minister”—are not mere descriptions. They are the linguistic architecture of oppression, designed to box our imagination into a world where power must always flow from the top down, where we must always have rulers, and where our role is always to follow.

To speak this language is to unconsciously accept the master’s logic. It reinforces the idea that leadership means command, that politics means parties, and that change must be begged from a central authority in Kampala. If we are to build a different future, we must first learn to speak it. This means consciously rejecting the old dictionary of domination and creating a new vocabulary of empowerment, centred on community, cooperation, and horizontal power.

There is a profound adage that speaks to the power of naming: “The hunter who does not name the leopard will always be its prey.” By accepting the names given to us by the powerful, we remain trapped in their narrative, forever the prey in their political hunt. To name something ourselves is to begin to tame it, to define it on our own terms.

How the Master’s Language Enslaves the Mind

The words we are forced to use shape how we think about power:

“His Excellency the President”: This term is not a job description; it is a title of feudal deference. It creates an aura of innate superiority and unapproachability around one individual, training us to look up to a saviour and down on ourselves.
“Member of Parliament (MP)”: This term frames a person as a “member” of a distant, elite institution (Parliament), not a servant of the community. It legitimises their separation from us and their absorption into a corrupt class in Kampala.
“Party Flag”: This reduces politics to tribal loyalty. You “carry a flag” for a party, like a soldier carrying a banner into battle. It demands unquestioning allegiance and stifles critical thought, turning politics into a team sport rather than a process of collective problem-solving.

Building a New Lexicon of Liberation

We must deliberately replace this language of hierarchy with a language of horizontal organising. This new vocabulary is not invented; it is drawn from the logic of how free people actually work together.

From “President” to “Delegate” or “Spokescouncil”:
- A Delegate is not a leader. This is a crucial person chosen by a community assembly to represent its specific decisions to a larger meeting of other delegates. They have no power of their own; they are a messenger with a strict mandate. They can be recalled instantly if they deviate from the community’s will.
- A Spokescouncil is a coordinating body where delegates from many communities meet to discuss issues affecting them all. It does not rule; it facilitates agreement and coordination. Power remains firmly with the local assemblies.
From “MP” to “Community Mandate”:
- We should stop talking about what our “MP” will do for us. Instead, we should be creating and asserting our Community Mandate. This is the collective decision of a village or parish assembly, outlining what we will do and what we expect from any delegate who coordinates with other communities. The power is in the mandate, not the person.
From “Party Politics” to “Assembly Politics”:
- We must shift the focus from which party flag to fly to the work of building our Community Assemblies. These are regular meetings where everyone has a voice and where real decisions are made through discussion and consensus. This is where true politics happens—not in Parliament.

Speaking the Future into Existence

This linguistic shift is not academic; it is intensely practical. It is about changing our reality by first changing our words.

Stop saying: “We need to lobby our MP for a new school.”
Start saying: “Our community assembly has mandated that we build a school ourselves. We will form a committee to organise labour and resources, and appoint a delegate to seek cooperation from neighbouring parishes.”

The first statement reinforces dependence. The second statement is a declaration of self-determination.

By rejecting the master’s language, we shatter the illusions that hold his power in place. We stop believing in presidents and start believing in our own assemblies. We stop waiting for a party flag to follow and start following the mandates we set for ourselves. Our liberation begins the moment we stop using the words of our rulers and start speaking the language of a free people. Let us name our world anew, and in doing so, begin to build it.

19.Growing a New Uganda Inside the Shell of the Old

The great political debate in Uganda is a trap. It asks us to choose between two visions of centralised power: the NRM’s system or the NUP’s promise. This is a false choice that keeps us locked in a cycle of hope and betrayal. There is a third path, one that does not seek to capture the decaying state but to make it irrelevant. This strategy is not about protest or confrontation; it is about construction. It is about building our own powerful, self-sufficient institutions from the ground up, creating a new society within the shell of the old until the old shell simply crumbles away from disuse.

This is not a dream. It is a practical, strategic process of building dual power. We create a parallel network of community power—our own systems for food, health, justice, and security—that exists alongside the state. As we build our systems to be more effective, fair, and responsive than the state’s, people will naturally withdraw their dependence from the government in Kampala and invest it in their own communities. We don’t need to overthrow the state; we can simply out-compete it and let it wither away.

A powerful Ugandan adage guides this work: “When the old tree begins to fall, the wise farmer has already planted new seedlings beneath it.” We are not waiting for the rotten tree of the state to collapse on us. We are the wise farmers, planting the seedlings of a new society—our co-ops, our assemblies, our networks—that will already be strong and growing when the old tree finally falls.

How Dual Power Works: Making the State Obsolete

The strategy is to build what we need ourselves, thereby dismantling the state’s reason for existence.

Build Community Food Sovereignty: Instead of begging the government for aid or depending on volatile markets, we can create food cooperatives and community-owned farms. By growing our own food and distributing it through our own networks, we break the power of exploitative middlemen and the state’s use of hunger as a tool of control. A community that feeds itself is a community that cannot be starved into submission.
Create People’s Health Networks: We can train community health workers and establish natural medicine gardens and clinics run through community health funds. This provides care that is affordable, accessible, and accountable to the people, not to a corrupt ministry in Kampala that steals drug funds. This makes the state’s failing health system irrelevant.
Establish Restorative Justice Councils: Instead of relying on a corrupt police force and court system that serves the powerful, we can revive and formalise community-based justice. Dispute resolution councils elected by community assemblies can mediate conflicts using principles of restorative justice, focusing on repairing harm rather than punishing individuals. This proves that security and justice can come from below, without prisons or state violence.

The Quiet Revolution: From Dependence to Self-Reliance

This process is a quiet revolution. It does not require a violent uprising; it requires relentless, patient organising. It shifts our identity from that of dependent subjects—always waiting for a government service—to empowered citizens—the architects of our own well-being.

It Builds Tangible Power: Every cooperative, every community clinic, every successful mediation is a tangible victory. It demonstrates our capability and builds confidence in our own collective power.
It Creates a Culture of Mutual Aid: These institutions run on the principle of “all for one, and one for all.” They rebuild the social fabric shredded by the state’s divide-and-rule politics and the capitalist mantra of every man for himself.
It Withdraws Consent: The ultimate goal is to make the state an optional, distant entity. When we can secure our own food, health, and justice, we withdraw our consent, our dependence, and our energy from the central government. We become ungovernable because we have learned to govern ourselves.

The call to action is not to storm Parliament. It is to pick up a hoe, a first-aid kit, or a meeting agenda. Our liberation will not be announced on the evening news from Kampala; it will be built in the quiet determination of our parishes, one cooperative, one assembly, one community mandate at a time. Let us stop asking for a place at the master’s table and instead focus on building our own feast, on our own land, with our own hands. The new Uganda is already being born in the shell of the old—and we are its midwives.

20. The Emperor Has No Clothes: How Our Obedience is the State’s Only Power

In the grand theatre of Ugandan politics, we are taught to see the state as a giant: monolithic, permanent, and all-powerful. Its soldiers have guns, its ministers have limousines, and its president commands the airwaves. This illusion of power is so complete that we forget a fundamental, revolutionary truth: the state’s strength is not its own. It is borrowed. It is a loan taken out from us, the people, and it relies entirely on our continued obedience and belief to sustain itself.

The police officer’s authority vanishes the moment the community collectively refuses to recognise it. The tax collector’s power evaporates when people stop paying into a corrupt system. The politician’s legitimacy disappears when we turn our backs and build our own systems of welfare and justice. Their palaces, their titles, and their guns are nothing but empty shells if we withdraw the one thing that gives them life: our consent.

A timeless adage, known across our cultures, holds the key: “A thousand flies cannot break a pot, but the one who owns the pot can smash it with a single stone.” The state has convinced us we are the flies, buzzing helplessly around the unbreakable pot of its power. But we are not the flies. We are the owners of the pot. Our obedience is the stone that props it up. The moment we withdraw that stone, the pot will smash itself on the ground under the weight of its own corruption and irrelevance.

The Architecture of Consent: How They Rule Us

The state maintains its power through a carefully constructed illusion:

The Myth of Legitimacy: They use ceremonies, titles (“His Excellency”), and flags to create an aura of inherent authority. They teach us in schools to respect this authority as natural and right, conditioning us from childhood to be obedient subjects.
The Economy of Dependence: By making us dependent on them for jobs, permits, and sometimes even food aid, they force us to comply. We obey not out of respect, but out of fear of losing our livelihood. This dependence is a chain.
The Spectacle of Power: The convoys, the military parades, the grand speeches—all are designed to project an image of overwhelming, unassailable force. This spectacle aims to make us feel small and powerless, to convince us that resistance is futile.

Withdrawing the Stone: How We Reclaim Our Power

Our liberation does not require us to become stronger than the state. It only requires us to stop making the state stronger than us. We withdraw our consent.

Withdraw Belief: The first and most powerful step is a mental one. We must stop believing in their legitimacy. See the president for what he is: a man, not a demi-god. See the MP for what they are: a supposed servant, not a master. This internal shift is the beginning of revolution.
Withdraw Obedience: This means practising mass non-cooperation.
- Do not cooperate with corruption. Refuse to pay bribes collectively.
- Ignore unjust laws. When a law serves only to oppress, the moral duty is to disobey it.
- Stop expecting them to solve our problems. This breaks the psychology of dependence.
Build Our Own Power: Consent cannot be withdrawn into a vacuum. We withdraw it and immediately invest it in our own institutions. This is the essence of dual power. When we stop believing the police can provide security, we form community watch groups. When we stop believing the courts will deliver justice, we establish community mediation councils. When we stop believing the market will feed us, we create food cooperatives.

The Empty Palace

When we do this—when we believe in ourselves and not in them—a miraculous thing happens. The giant is revealed to be a paper tiger. The presidential palace becomes just a big house. The army and police, comprised of our brothers and sisters, must choose between attacking their own people or joining them. The state’s power crumbles not because it was defeated in battle, but because it was starved of the oxygen that kept it alive: our fear and our compliance.

The ultimate truth is this: power does not reside in State House. It resides in us. It always has. Our struggle is not to seize their power, but to recognise our own and to wield it collectively through our communities. Let us stop begging the emperor for clothes and finally see that he is naked. Let us pick up our stone—our consent—and walk away to build a world that deserves it. Our power is not something they can give us. It is something we already have, and the time has come to use it.

Conclusion: The Time for Talking is Over; The Time for Building is Now

The great Ugandan political debate is a magnificent distraction—a tragic comedy performed on a national stage to keep us all watching the puppets while the real thieves backstage empty our pockets. The furious exchanges, the tribal loyalty to political brands, the endless analysis of who said what about whom… all of it is designed to consume our energy and time, the most precious resources we have. We are like spectators arguing over which actor should play the king, completely missing the fact that the play itself is a tragedy written to keep us in our place.

The ultimate truth, the one every powerholder fears us discovering, is that our liberation was never, and will never be, found in State House. It will not be delivered by a president, an MP, or a political party. It will be built—brick by brick, relationship by relationship—in the daily actions of ordinary people across Uganda. It is being forged in the villages of Gulu where communities revive collective farming, in the neighbourhoods of Kibuli where residents organise their own security, and in the trading centres of Mbarara where market vendors form cooperatives to bypass exploitative middlemen.

An adage from our ancestors offers a clear path forward: “When the drumbeat of the chief brings no rain, the wise village learns to dance to the rhythm of its own harvest.” We have been dancing to the drumbeat of politicians for decades, and our fields remain parched. It is time to ignore the chief’s empty rhythm and create our own music.

The choice before us is not NRM or NUP. The choice is between two entirely different visions of society:

The Old Path: The Politics of the Master
- Goal: To seize the crown in Kampala.
- Method: Begging, voting, campaigning, and waiting.
- Result: A change of faces, a new set of rulers, but the same system of extraction, corruption, and oppression. The master’s tools can never dismantle the master’s house.
The New Path: The Politics of the People
- Goal: To make the crown in Kampala irrelevant.
- Method: Withdrawing our consent and our labour. Building our own power from the ground up through community assemblies, food cooperatives, people’s health networks, and restorative justice councils.
- Result: genuine, tangible power held by communities. Resilience against shock. Self-determination. A society based on mutual aid and voluntary cooperation, not coercion and hierarchy.

The energy spent defending a politician online is energy stolen from a community meeting. The data used to share a political meme is data that could have organised a neighbourhood watch. This is the great diversion, and we must refuse to participate any longer.

Therefore, the call is this: Stop begging. Start building.

Let the political classes have their stage. Let them fight over the rotting carcass of the old state. Our work is elsewhere. Our work is to:

Plant a community garden, where we are told nothing can grow.
Form a savings club where we are told we are poor.
Stand together against a landlord where we are told we are weak.
Hold a meeting under a tree and make a decision for ourselves, where we are told we need permission.

We do not need their permission to be free. We only need each other. The power to shape our lives has always been in our hands. We simply forgot, and they worked very hard to make us forget.

Let us remember. Let us get to work. Let us build a Uganda from the ground up, one based not on the colour of a beret, but on the unbreakable strength of shared purpose and collective care. The future is not something we wait for. It is something we build—and we start building it today.