Three decades after the citizens of East Africa won hard-fought freedoms against autocratic and, in some cases, murderous regimes, the ball has moved full-circle and they are back to exactly where it all started.
From Kampala to Dar es Salaam, a wave of regression has entrenched ruthless and self-serving autocratic regimes, freedom of expression, and basic rights are in retreat. Progressive constitutions that once promised so much have been trashed as fear and uncertainty once again blanket the lives of citizens.
The statistics are staggering. A statement by the East African Law Society makes chilling reading. Since the June 2024 youth protests in Kenya, 82 cases of abduction — 29 of them unaccounted for — have been documented.
In Tanzania, long seen as an island of sanity, murders of opposition politicians, abductions and disappearances, arrests of youth and acid attacks on political activists, have been reported.
Alarmingly, institutional capture means that state structures set up to ensure civil order and security of persons have been overrun by shadowy outfits or rendered dysfunctional by political interference.
Kenya’s Inspector-General of Police Douglas Kanja has made the confounding revelation that police are not responsible for the abductions of civilians. But neither does he reveal whom he thinks is responsible.
The emergence of outfits that operate outside the law to execute functions reserved for law-and-order personnel only sets the stage for a total breakdown in law enforcement and subsequent chaos.
In Uganda, dozens of opposition supporters who disappeared in the run-up to the January 2021 elections remain unaccounted for. Others were arraigned in military courts on charges that the state could not prove for three years. They only regained their freedom after involuntary confessions and subsequent presidential pardon.
More recently, Ugandan opposition figure Dr Kizza Besigye and a colleague were abducted from Nairobi and renditioned to Kampala, where they face charges in a military court.
This was the latest incident in which political dissidents from neighbouring countries were abducted from Nairobi, and some have not been seen alive since.
This state of affairs is untenable and should not be allowed to go on unchallenged. All legal means should be brought to bear. The heads of institutions that are abdicating their duty should be put under pressure to either perform or go.
Leaders who purport to have ascended to power on a democratic mandate should live up to democratic principles.
In Uganda, President Yoweri Museveni now wants the police and the courts to deny suspects access to bond and bail – interim freedoms that are all the more important in a state where cases drag on for years before resolution.
Left unchecked, these actions are a recipe for disaster. The youth cannot be expected to stand by and watch as their future is squandered by corrupt, insensitive, violent and arrogant regimes.
From the struggle for independence through blood-drenched agitation for civil rights and liberation struggles, Africans have made a lot of sacrifices. The current crop of leaders should look at history, the fearsome figures that once held sway over their people, and save their countries the unnecessary conflict that their actions are bound to provoke.
