It had the hallmarks of what one could call Aminism, a term I believe captures behaviour that mirrors what Ugandans who are old enough lived through in the days of the Idi Amin government.

Trying to compare the Amin and Museveni or even their periods in power, however mundane the comparison, does call for treading carefully. There are striking similarities, of course.

Like Yoweri Museveni, Idi Amin had a messianic view of himself. And he, like Museveni, showed a clear reluctance to leave, despite a growing number of his compatriots thinking that it would be good if he did.

The Aminism I have in mind has to do with an extraordinary event last week, to which a number of members of the public bore witness as it unfolded, while others watched video recordings of it on social media, and others reports of it in the print and electronic media.

A magistrate in Kampala had just only moments before freed on mandatory bail, suspects in the murder by shooting in March this year of a senior police officer, former police spokesman Andrew Felix Kaweesi. The video clip shows them walking out of the courthouse with relief written all over their faces.

The embracing and the hugs they exchange with the people waiting for them, family and friends one can assume, testify to how much they have missed each other, and how relieved they all are that, after several months in remand, their jail ordeal has ended, for now at least.

Being all Muslims, one can hear them exchange greetings in Arabic: “As Salaam Aleikum”, and praising God: “Allahu Akbar.” Perhaps some people saw that and thought “terrorists,” given the state had already levelled accusations, while others must have wondered why on earth all the suspects were Muslim.

Obviously elated at having been set free, one of the suspects makes a short speech in which he praises the media for keeping their case in the news.

And then he jumps onto a motorcycle which speeds off. At some point someone in the clip can be heard stating, matter-of-factly, that the men were going to be re-arrested. Within no time, pandemonium breaks out, as a group of three plainclothes men, one brandishing a pistol as though it were a toy gun, grab another suspect and try to handcuff him and shove him into a waiting car.

Ahmad Ssenfuka, for that is the suspect’s name, does his best to resist, while screaming to attract the attention of onlookers of whom there is a sizeable number.

He tries to flee but is cornered as two police officers in uniform join the three “kidnappers.” A bystander tries to intervene but is shoved away by the gunman. And then the small crowd of onlookers take to watching calmly, as if they were watching a movie. Eventually, his shirt in tatters, the suspect is forced into a prepositioned unmarked vehicle.

As I watched the clip, memories flooded my mind. I was an alert young boy during the last years of the Idi Amin government. Scenes such as this one and others involving security agents handling members of the public with neither respect nor dignity were quite common.

Ugandans took them as a sign of the lawlessness that underlay the relationship between them and the state. Kidnappings of this sort by security agents had become something of an epidemic, so much so that no particular episode would raise questions as to who exactly the gunmen were.

It was taken for granted that it was the State Research Bureau (SRB), the regime’s highly effective spy outfit whose agents became notorious for seizing and murdering Ugandans as if it were some kind of sport.

Which is why this particular episode and others that occur from time to time, struck me as resembling the exploits of the SRB, which came to define Aminism.

Of course, Museveni’s Uganda is far from being like Amin’s. Today there is no expectation, for example, that those who may be arrested or seized violently and forced into waiting cars will end up as floating corpses in the Nile or in unmarked graves in forests or random locations.

That said, there are clear risks in security agents wearing civilian attire seizing members of the public in this way and shoving them into unmarked vehicles, in a socio-political context where onlookers are unlikely to pluck up the courage to demand to see the relevant arrest warrants so they can be sure that the arrests have been authorised by the competent authorities.

One risk is that rogue elements within security agencies take to conducting unauthorised operations to settle personal scores or for personal benefit. The other is that criminals in search of new ways of making money could begin to masquerade as security agents and kidnap members of the public for ransom or other purposes.

This is hardly farfetched in a country where members of the public are evidently reluctant to intervene when people are being seized and driven away in unmarked vehicles. The only way to protect Ugandans from these risks is to make sure that members of the public can at all times distinguish between security agents on authorised missions and criminals.

Frederick Golooba-Mutebi is a Kampala- and Kigali-based researcher and writer on politics and public affairs. E-mail: [email protected]