A Plea from a Son of the 1986 Liberation: We Cannot Let the Promise Die
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My Childhood Home of 1980s – School Lane, Jinja District – Uganda. Photo by Diponkar Banerjee
My Mother now 71yrs. Mrs. Kakungulu Constance Kulabako Zirabamuzale
I am a child of Buganda, born and raised in the turbulent 1980s. As a young boy, I lived through the curfews, the hushed whispers in the dark, the sudden disappearances of neighbors, and the constant undercurrent of fear. But I also carry a deeply personal memory of that time: My mother was a forgotten hero of Uganda’s liberation struggle, one of the countless civilians whose quiet acts of courage sustained the fight without ever holding a weapon. In the darkest days of the 1980s bush war, from our home on School Lane in Jinja—next to Madhvani Market and Jinja Senior Secondary School—she risked everything to support the National Resistance Army rebels. She and my now deceased Aunt Dinah (The first in our family to fall to the HIV AIDS Scourge) quietly fed more than 30 National Resistance Army rebel soldiers every single night. As night fell, they would scale our wall in silence, like shadows, to receive her meals before moving on. It was from gatherings like ours that they staged their final push: overcoming the last remaining stronghold at Gaddafi Barracks, right beside the Owen Falls Bridge on the Nile River Barrier, before advancing to liberate Kampala.
As if that were not enough, my mother experienced a truly terrifying moment during the chaotic final days of Idi Amin’s regime in April 1979. Freshly appointed to her first teaching post at a Girls only school on Wanyange Hill in Jinja, she found herself face-to-face with the fleeing dictator himself. Their paths crossed unexpectedly on the dusty feeder roads descending from Wanyange Hill—Amin, accompanied by his soldiers in a convoy that included his distinctive Land Rover, rushing eastward as he fled the advancing liberation forces. He was heading toward Libya via air from the north, having briefly regrouped in Jinja before abandoning the country for exile, ultimately settling in Saudi Arabia.
These personal brushes with Uganda’s darkest chapters; first aiding the rebels who would restore order, then this chilling encounter with the architect of so much terror, only deepened my family’s resolve and gratitude when peace finally returned.
That relief which swept through the nation when the National Resistance Army entered the capital in January 1986 was profound and unforgettable. Like millions of Ugandans who endured the years of terror that preceded it, I have carried a deep, almost sacred gratitude to President Yoweri Museveni and the National Resistance Movement (NRM) for the core principles they brought: peace and security after chaos, unity beyond tribe and region, respect for fundamental human rights, a professional army and police under civilian control, and the conviction that legitimate government rests on the consent of the governed.
That relief which swept through the nation when the National Resistance Army entered the capital in January 1986 was profound and unforgettable. Like millions of Ugandans who endured the years of terror that preceded it, I have carried a deep, almost sacred gratitude to President Yoweri Museveni and the National Resistance Movement (NRM) for the core principles they brought: peace and security after chaos, unity beyond tribe and region, respect for fundamental human rights, a professional army and police under civilian control, and the conviction that legitimate government rests on the consent of the governed.
That foundation pulled Uganda back from the abyss. I still believe it is strong enough to redeem us if we return to it with honesty.
Yet the Uganda I see and hear about today no longer feels like the Uganda those principles built.
What were once isolated incidents have hardened into a permanent climate of fear. Roadblocks, originally welcomed as symbols of restored order, have in many places become sites of prolonged searches, arbitrary detention and humiliation. Nights in suburbs like Kawempe, Bwaise, Nateete, Kasokoso and Kisenyi are frequently shattered by heavy security deployments that leave families searching for missing relatives until morning. Tear gas is routinely fired into markets and residential areas. Credible videos and eyewitness accounts show police vehicles deliberately driving into crowds of unarmed pedestrians. Live bullets have followed.
These are not the disciplined, people-centred forces the NRM built and the world once praised.
I have spoken to parents who, without publicity or drama, have packed their households and moved eastwards to Jinja, Iganga, Mbale and beyond. They are not chasing jobs or better schools; they are fleeing because they no longer believe their children are safe in the only home they have ever known. One father told me quietly, “We grew up being taught that the Uganda Police vehicle means help is coming. Today when we see that same vehicle, we run the other way. That is not normal now.”
This silent exodus of law-abiding, tax-paying families is the most devastating vote of no confidence a nation can receive.
If this continues, the legacy so painstakingly built: the peace, the stability, the pride in our institutions: will be eroded beyond recognition. A government that parts of its own population experience as an occupying force has already lost the legitimacy it earned through bush-war sacrifice. When skilled families leave out of fear rather than ambition, the economy bleeds. When the very security forces we rebuilt with such hope become sources of terror, we lose the instruments that have kept Uganda standing for almost four decades.
President Museveni and the NRM taught us that security without the trust and consent of the people is not security; it is occupation. They taught us that professionalism in the army and police is non-negotiable. They taught us that Uganda belongs to all who live in it, not to one group, one region or one generation of leaders.
Those teachings remain true. Those principles can still save us.
That is why I make this respectful but urgent appeal to the President, to the NRM leadership, and to every officer who still remembers the original mission:
– Order an immediate end to all use of lethal or excessive force against unarmed civilians.
– Establish a transparent, independent commission: with powers to investigate every death, injury and disappearance since 2020 and to hold perpetrators accountable, whatever their rank.
– Open a genuine, inclusive national dialogue where Ugandans of every political shade, region and generation can speak freely and be heard.
The families boarding buses to the east are not rejecting Uganda; they are begging us to rescue the Uganda that the NRM and President Museveni gave us in 1986.
I write as a grateful beneficiary of that liberation who refuses to stand by while its promise slips away. The country you rebuilt is still worth saving.
The time to return to the founding principles is now: before the damage becomes irreversible.
References:
1. Daily Monitor (2025): Bobi Wine likens his campaign trail to war by David Lumu: https://www.monitor.co.ug/uganda/news/national/2026-elections-bobi-wine-likens-his-campaign-trail-to-war-5285390
2. Daily Monitor series (2024–2025) “Tear Gas Nation” (Nov 2024): https://www.monitor.co.ug/uganda/news/national/teargas-becomes-first-resort-in-kampala-suburbs-4801234
3. The Observer (Uganda 2019) Why the corporate are moving from posh suburbs to outskirts by Alon Mwesigwa
Link: https://observer.ug/business/why-the-corporate-are-moving-from-posh-suburbs-to-outskirts/
4. Chapter Four Uganda (local NGO) Abductions Tracker (continuously updated)
https://chapterfouruganda.org/abductions-tracker
5. Uganda Police Force Annual Crime Report 2024 (released 2025) – acknowledges rise in “temporary holding” at roadblocks
6. President Museveni’s Victory Speech, 29 January 1986 (State House website)
https://www.statehouse.go.ug/president/speeches/1986/01/29/victory-speech
7. The NRM Ten-Point Programme (original 1986 version)
https://www.nrm.ug/resources/ten-point-programme
8. Human Rights Watch (November 2024) “Turned Away at Gunpoint: Uganda’s Repression of Peaceful Dissent”
https://www.hrw.org/report/2024/11/18/turned-away-gunpoint/ugandas-repression-peaceful-dissent
9. BBC Africa Eye (October 2024) “Uganda: The Cost of Dissent”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0jts0v1
10. Amnesty International (2025) “Uganda: Marked for Death – Enforced Disappearances by Security Forces”
https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/afr59/7421/2025/
Learn more about the author is Philip Kakungulu
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