Oweyegha-Afunaduula: How Uganda’s Opposition Became Enablers of the Regime

By Oweyegha-Afunaduula
Center for Critical Thinking and Alternative Analysis

Uganda has been politically independent since 9th October 1962, but its people remain largely politically undeveloped and politically illiterate. Politics continues to be viewed not as a tool for societal transformation, but as a route to personal access to power, money, and resources—often at the exclusion of others.

In this environment, political leaders have entrenched themselves in power by fragmenting and weakening any form of alternative leadership. The result is a hollowed opposition that, instead of challenging the incumbent, dances to the political tune of the President, letting him set the agenda unchallenged.

Opposition parties are no longer focused on internal renewal or national transformation. Instead, their energies are consumed by internal feuds, hostility to compromise, and endless splintering. Rather than confronting the regime, they direct their political ammunition at one another, and in many cases, maintain covert ties—political or financial—with individuals in the ruling regime. For them, “liberation” is rhetorical.

This disjointed conduct is what I term the “Presidentialisation of the Opposition in Uganda.”

In this framework, the politics of the Opposition begins and ends with President Yoweri Tibuhaburwa Museveni. The President casts a long shadow over the formation of new political parties, the internal politics of existing ones, and even the Opposition’s strategies. What should be a force for democratic renewal has instead become entangled in a personality-driven political contest anchored on State House.

Symptoms of Presidentialised Opposition

1. Singular Focus on the Presidency; Opposition parties disproportionately invest in capturing the presidency, often at the cost of strengthening structures at parliamentary and local council levels. This narrow focus undermines holistic political development and governance.

2. Leadership-Centric Messaging; Political messaging revolves around individual presidential hopefuls rather than clear ideologies or transformative policies. Parties become personality cults, not movements rooted in vision.

3. Neglect of Local Governance and Institutions; By sidelining parliamentary strength, local council development, and institutional presence, opposition parties forfeit essential platforms for checks and balances and policy implementation.

The long-term implications of this trend are profound. Uganda’s political landscape is becoming more centralised, personality-driven, and detached from grassroots governance. While the ruling regime quietly enacts violent and disempowering policies, the Opposition remains entrapped in leadership theatrics.

What we are witnessing is a gradual reversal of independence, a de-democratisation marked by hereditary militarism, political militarism, and external control of the country’s economic and political direction. Uganda’s sovereignty, once a proud achievement in 1962, is now being systematically eroded, and the real beneficiaries of this crisis are not Ugandans but foreign powers and actors.

Without deliberate efforts to depresidentialise politics, particularly within the Opposition, both the regime and the political alternatives will remain burdens to the people. Development, transformation, and meaningful change will remain elusive in this age of knowledge and technology.

For God and My Country.