Whenever Ugandans online call for protests on the streets of Kampala, there is a video of President Museveni that is shared in which he sends out a warning to people who might want to topple his government through unconventional means. 

“It was a miscalculation for the schemers to think they could use such unpeople techniques in a country led by the original National Resistance Army (NRA). Make that calculation, but you do so at your own risk. Wherever you are,” an angry Museveni, who was sporting a military jacket, said gesturing. 

Museveni made this speech in 2020 after a crackdown on protests that erupted after then-Opposition presidential candidate Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu, popularly known as Bobi Wine, was arrested in the eastern district of Luuka. 

Three years after the crackdown that left more than 50 people dead, Ugandans have been plunged into a debate on whether they can engage in a sustained protest just like what has happened in Kenya, Uganda’s eastern neighbour.

Uganda’s population, just like Kenya’s, is made of largely young people and these youth have been on the streets for weeks, forcing President William Ruto – who has been in power since 2022 – to reject the Finance Bill aimed at raising $2.7b through tax hikes. 

The unity among Kenya’s young people against Ruto’s Finance Bill has surprised many since the country is conventionally driven by ethnic affinities, but the financial hardships facing its young people have stimulated their unity under a common cause. 

In Uganda, the young people aren’t doing any better because a 2019/2020 study done by the Uganda Bureau of Statistics (Ubos) concluded that about 30 percent of the youth who are institutionally qualified are unable to find jobs, and the situation is even worse for semi-skilled and unskilled youth. 

Several factors cause youth unemployment in Uganda. According to Ubos, they include poor access to quality education and training, a skills gap between job seekers and open positions, a dearth of formal jobs relative to the number of young people entering the labour force, and the dominance of the informal sector. 

Both Kenya and Uganda, like the rest of Africa, are currently undergoing high levels of urbanisation. The combination of urbanisation and a growing, young population makes these countries susceptible to widespread demonstrations. 

Despite the hardships, corruption levels in Uganda have been skyrocketing, prompting an online campaign that started earlier this year dubbed the Uganda Parliament Exhibition. 

The exhibition, led by Mr Jimmy Spire Ssentongo, a cartoonist and Makerere University lecturer, and Ms Agather Atuhaire, a journalist-turned-activist, has exposed corruption in Parliament, prompting sanctions from the West.

The United States (US) and the United Kingdom (UK) have slapped sanctions on Speaker of Parliament Anita Among and her husband Budiope East Member of Parliament Moses Magogo, among other Cabinet ministers.

Among has responded with defiance. 

“You are better having a child who eats and brings home,” Among said as she visited Lwengo District, the constituency of MP Cissy Namujju who is in jail on remand over corruption-related charges. “The President has heard your cries where you said that when your child misbehaves, you beat and say go back and do something good.” 

With the protests in Kenya achieving success, there has been a call to take corruption-related protests from the internet to the streets of Kampala if a desired change is to be achieved. 

Just like Kenyans who stormed their parliament as it passed the contested Finance Bill 2024, Ugandans have been proposing that they do a similar move without being led by mainstream politicians. 

“If you’re tired of corruption killing the vibe. Then mark your calendars for this July. On July 23, a public peaceful protest march will take place against corruption. Don’t just stand by and watch as our country struggles under the weight of corruption,” a Ugandan online activist said on X, formerly known as Twitter. 

But Mr Yusuf Nsibambi, the Mawokoto South MP, ruled out the possibility of people in Kampala storming Parliament in the Kenyan fashion, because of the malleability of Baganda who dominate parts of the country where power is concentrated. 

“The Kikuyus in Kenya empowered their children that you can’t just impose on them things you don’t want. The Baganda here are raised to fear power. They fear everything. If Parliament was in the north or the west, then it would have been possible to storm it,” Nsibambi said on a TV political show.

Nsibambi’s views have not gone down well with a section of people in Buganda, but the overriding claim as to why it’s not possible to storm Parliament is the crushing response the protesters might get from the security forces. 

While the Kenyan security operatives have been accused of extrajudicial killings after Ruto’s administration called in the military to support police, the fear among Ugandan activists is that the security forces in Kampala are more brutal. 

“Kenya, unlike Uganda, isn’t a personal estate. Ruto doesn’t own the army. He thought he would rely on the might of the state and the army and the coercive machinery of the state, but the police couldn’t match the surge of the youth,” Erias Lukwago, the Opposition-leaning Kampala Lord Mayor, says. 

The clearest example of how the Ugandan State deals with demonstrations was what happened after the November 2020 protests.

Security forces not only killed more than 50 people, but a strategy that to some in the Opposition was meant to stop any more demonstrations was laid. 

It involved kidnapping the youth from markets, petrol stations, homes and workplaces and many have never been accounted for to date. 

“The numbers keep fluctuating and the reason is because some people are released every day while others are arrested and others are abducted daily. But I want to say this; there is a clear difference between those who are arrested and those abducted. Those who were abducted during elections and up to now are nowhere to be seen are 18,” says David Lewis Rubongoya, the secretary general of Uganda’s biggest Opposition party, National Unity Platform (NUP).

“But since then, I think more than 100 of our supporters have been abducted at different points and freed without even any single document,” he adds. 

After the violent crackdown or the November 2020 demonstrations, ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) presidential candidate Museveni, who was on the campaign trail in Karamoja sub-region, sent out a warning to the Opposition. 

“Some of these groups are being used by outsiders; the homosexuals and other groups outside there who don’t like the stability and independence of Uganda. But they will discover what they are looking for,” Museveni said. 

“Those who have been attacking NRM people will soon lose appetite. You will see the uniform of the NRM, you will lose your appetite to touch it. They have entered the area we know very well of fighting and they will regret it.” 

Another point that has been explained is that Uganda, unlike Kenya, historically has had no sustained demonstrations that lead to serious change in status. 

It shouldn’t be lost on us that there were demonstrations in the 1940s in which Ugandans said colonial rulers were exploiting them, but this colonial resistance can’t be compared to what happened in Kenya. 

While Jomo Kenyatta, who would turn out to be Kenya’s first president, was trying to engage the colonists, other Kenyans were not convinced with these tactics.

They instead encouraged a violent approach which morphed into the Mau-Mau rebellion. The colonial state reacted by instituting a state of emergency and relocating many Kenyans and also prosecuting Kenyatta and his co-conspirators. 

“Kenya has had a long tradition of civic competence that can’t be compared to Uganda. We still have a long way to go if we are to achieve that kind of competence and resilience,” Lukwago says.