VIOLENT POLICIES, VIOLENT LAWS IN GENERATING AND SUSTAINING VIOLENCE IN UGANDA

VIOLENT POLICIES, VIOLENT LAWS IN GENERATING AND SUSTAINING VIOLENCE IN UGANDA
By Oweyegha-Afunaduula
Center for Critical Thinking and Alternative Analysis

Anger is not the problem, violence is… we can use our anger to guide us in constructing a more just society. Or we can use it to destroy ourselves and those around us” (Paul Kivel cited by Keith Edwards, 2015).

Ordinarily when we conceive, talk or write about violence in Uganda and the Great Lakes region, we immediately evoke political, military and police violence, all of which are forms of physical violence. Even when we talk or write about genocide, ecocide or ethnocide, we frequently evoke the physical forms of violence, which invariably include torture and sexual abuse. All my earlier writing on violence were on physical violence. However, we should know and convince others to know that the worst forms of violence are not physical – those that violate our human rights by attacking our minds in their diverse dimensions.

Unfortunately, these different types of violence, which may be contributing far more to genocide, ecocide and ethnocide than the physical forms of violence, are almost ignored in peace and security budgets of nations. When they are given attention it is to use them as tools of torture used to conquer, dominate and submerge the citizens into fear in concealed torture chambers.

In Uganda, their use has become integral to security arrangements intended for use as tools to exclude young politicians from meaningful and effective participation in the sociopolitical sphere of human endeavour. These political tools are rendering many people too sick mentally, psychologically and emotionally to survive in a sea of fear. This might explain why medical authorities say 14 million of our nearly 46 million humans are mentally sick and psychologically and mentally insecure. If one is mentally sick, one is also psychologically and emotionally sick. Our 14 million mentally, psychologically and emotionally unwell cannot relate well with other Ugandans. Therefore, they are unable to meaningfully contribute to the development, transformation and progress of the country. They do not only form an aberration of our population, which is mainly a youthful population, but are also a big burden on those who wake up to work and produce.

Thrown into hopelessness and haplessness, mentally, psychologically and emotionally unbalanced or sick people take to drugs, which worsens their situation further, and leads them into committing physical violence against their own parents, brothers, sisters, acquaintances, etc. A violent population cannot produce. This increasingly non-productive nature of the youthful population partly combines with the greed and selfishness of our political and military leaders to make our debt burden spiral upwards.

In Further Reading at the end of this article, I have given you some readings so that you may expand your knowledge and appreciation of the different forms of non-physical violence in the total equation of violence, which is often presented as physical violence. There are many forms of non-physical violence.

We can mention environmental violence (in the socioeconomic, sociocultural dimension and temporal dimensions of the environment); ecological violence (in the ecological dimension of the environment); moral violence, cultural violence, ethical violence, intellectual violence, academic violence, economic violence, mental violence, psychological violence, emotional violence, and biological violence in the total environment. All these types of violence are occurring concurrently and may be separately or collectively used in political violence, military violence and police violence. We can refer to all the violence of whatever type as sociopolitical violence since they all occur in the sociopolitical dimension of the environment.

On the whole, violence depends not only on long-standing background conditions but on time-patterns that determine when and if it breaks out, how long it lasts and how severe it is. Different scales of violence have different time-dynamics, ranging from micro- to meso- to macro- time-dynamics (Randall Collins, 2022).

The Italian Institute for International Studies (2024), has written that “In the age of mature Putinism, direct violence and control over society, accompanied by ideological postulates that form a new morality based on so-called “traditional values”, are a crucial instrument for managing society. Apparently, this is also true of Uganda. Using the educational system and cultural institutions to indoctrinate the population – above all young people – is in fact a form of violence, only intellectual and spiritual rather than physical.”

It is true that most totalitarian regimes will employ all the non-physical forms of violence, simultaneously with physical violence to dominate, control and create fear among the citizens. This is the basis of the intelligence systems: sowing the seeds of fear. Sometimes they even employ sexual violence as a tool of torture, violating women and girls sexually before members of their families.

There cannot be one cause but a multiplicity of causes of sociopolitical violence. The causes are not mutually exclusive and are, therefore, interconnected. Between 1957 and now there has been a lot of sociopolitical violence related to leadership and governance in Uganda in particular and the Great Lakes region in general (Oweyegha-Afunaduula, 2023). Most of the violence has been in form of armed conflict, but some has been in form of mental torture, land grabbing, denials of all types, stealing of mineral wealth of others, exclusion from education, health, food sufficiency, clash of civilizations, greed, selfishness, and exclusion from opportunities such as employment, participation in governance and leadership by a few self-interested individuals (Oweyegha-Afunaduula, 2023). Karamoja and Busoga promise to join the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) because of their mineral wealth. Just as I was preparing to write this article this morning, I heard on a local FM radio station, Busoga One FM, that robbers in gold-rich Namayingo stole, from one gold mine, a chemical used in the mining of gold, and valued at 200 million Shillings. We don’t know yet if the robbers were disgruntled Basoga who see their gold being taken away by mafias in government or those of Indian, Chinese and Rwandese extraction.

I want to add violence generated and sustained by violent policies and violent laws. Uganda is very rich in discriminatory laws and discriminatory policies, many against the indigenous groups of Uganda and favourable to foreigners and to a constitutionally created indigenous group of Uganda, who gained from the making of the Uganda Constitution 1995.

Another aspect of the Uganda Constitution 1995 is the depoliticisation, disempowerment of the traditional political-cultural-spiritual institutions and their reduction to so-called cultural institutions with no power to make decisions and policies in favour of their people. Unlike before when traditional leaders were political and had power over their resources, the power over people and resources was strategically invested in the Institution of President by the Uganda Constitution 1995. The President more or less owns the country, the people and natural resources and decides what the people get or do not get, who accesses the resources and benefits from them. So far it is foreigners benefiting from the resources of Karamoja and Busoga, which are then cast by government as the poorest regions of Uganda.

“Violent policies” generally refers to government actions that either directly result in or enable violence, either through the use of force by state actors or by creating conditions where violence is more likely to occur. This can include things like policies that authorize excessive use of force by law enforcement, policies that lead to disproportionate sentencing or incarceration rates (especially in marginalised communities), or policies that neglect or suppress the root causes of violence.

Violent policies tend to be discriminatory. A discriminatory policy is the merging of communal group identity with the state apparatus. It is argued, for example, that as the Indian government enacts policies beneficial or discriminatory to particular identity groups within the country, other groups feel threatened. Groups who feel disadvantaged by the policy may begin to fear for their own security, belonging, identity and political interests, motivating them to rebel. When focusing on Indian policy and ethnopolitical violence during the period 1945 to 2000, it was found that although there are many cases of seemingly spontaneous episodes of violence, when identity-based policies do occur, they are often followed by violence and/or protest (Olson Lounsbery and Pearson, 2003).

This is also becoming a reality in Uganda where policies are being made to prepare Uganda for violence, not tranquility. Many policies that originate directly from the President, such as the one displacing traditional fisherfolk from the lake using the military, which has instead enriched the soldiers, is causing a lot of indignation and anger among the local population. The people see it as designed to destroy their socio-economic well-being and cultural attachment to the lake for the benefit of foreigners, including Rwandese, Indians and Chinese. This factor played a big role in the presidential elections of 2021 when the affected people voted against the President. However, the President does not see it that way. His explanation of his poor showing is that the Opposition connived with the Electoral Commission, which he single-handedly composes, to steal his votes. Initially he claimed the Opposition stole 1,000,000 votes. Recently he raised the figure to 2,700,000 as the votes the Opposition connived with the Electoral Commission to steal. Of course, one day researchers will be attracted to investigate the morality, ethics and psychology of the presidential claims. They will let us know if the presidential claims are or are not calculated ethical, moral and psychological forms of violence against Ugandans.

Violence initiated by policy-making can be categorised as “structural violence,” where policies unintentionally or intentionally create conditions that lead to harm or violence. This can manifest in various ways, including through policies that marginalise specific groups, perpetuate inequalities, or have unintended consequences that lead to conflict or violence.

“Violent laws” generally refer to criminal laws that address acts involving the use, attempted use, or threatened use of physical force against another person or their property. These laws often encompass a range of offenses, from assault and battery to more serious crimes like murder and kidnapping. Many laws have been passed to control the thinking, movements and actions of Ugandans by creating fear in them so that they do not choose demonstrations and violence to express their indignation. Such laws include the Political Parties and Other Organisations Act 2005 (which guides and limits political parties in their political activities); Anti-sectarian Law (which Eric Kashambuzi said was made to protect the sectarianism instead), the Antiterrorism Act 2002 (under which the President has overseen the emergence of violent paramilitary groups such as JATT and SFC; the latter has been legalised by Parliament in the UPDF Act 2025, which seeks to have civilians tried in military Courts). All these are oppressive internally violent laws capable of generating and sustaining anger and violence by the State and by aggrieved people. They inhibit cultivation of the sociopolitical conditions necessary for transformation of society towards social justice (e.g., Edwards, 2015).

Goodfellow (2014) explores the interplay between violent protest and the making of laws in Uganda. He advances two main arguments. First, since multipartyism was restored in 2005, the Ugandan government has repeatedly drafted intentionally contentious new laws in part to provoke, divide and politically manipulate opposition. Implementing these laws has often not appeared to be a priority; rather, drafting, debating and (sometimes) passing them represent tactical ‘legal manoeuvres’ geared towards political gain. Second, I argue that these manoeuvres can be linked to another trend since 2005: the rise in urban-based protests and riots, which have often become violent and resulted in aggressive crackdowns by the state. In bringing these trends together, this article argues that the use of legislative processes as part of a strategic repertoire to destabilize political opposition has exacerbated unrest, especially among urban dwellers. Moreover, in response to rising protest the government has engaged in further legal manoeuvring. The analysis suggests that the semi-authoritarian nature of the regime in power, where the symbolic importance of the legislature and relatively free media contend with fundamentally authoritarian tendencies at the centre, is propagating this cycle of legal manoeuvres and violence.

Emma Blomdahl (2016) submitted that inclusion could play a role in a law’s success. However, inclusion is not enough. Other factors such as allocating enough money in the budget together with educating both the public and the officials that are enforcing the law are also of great importance for a law’s success. Yet, this study also shows that a greater inclusion could affect these factors in a positive way. However, inclusion alone is most likely not sufficient for creating a successful law.

We need quickly to usher ourselves into a new era of law-making and policy-making that enables us to transit from laws and policies for oppression and exploitation to building a violence-poor and social justice-rich Uganda.

For God and My Country.

Further Reading

• Amnesty International (2014). Rule By Law: Discriminatory Legislation and legitimised abuses in Uganda. Amnesty International, October 15, 2014. https://www.amnestyusa.org/reports/rule-by-law-discriminatory-legislation-and-legitimized-abuses-in-uganda/
• Anna Agathangelou and Kyle Killian (2017). Time, Temporality and Violence in International Relations: De-fatalizing the Present, Forging Radical Alternatives. Routledge, 16 May 2017. https://www.routledge.com/Time-Temporality-and-Violence-in-International-Relations-Defatalizing-the-Present-Forging-Radical-Alternatives/Agathangelou-Killian/p/book/9781138091832
• Bobbi Gray (2023). What is Economic Violence and what can Financial Providers do about it? Grameen Foundation, 10/19/2023. https://grameenfoundation.org/stories/blog/what-is-economic-violence-and-what-can…