In Uganda, the whispers of a “mafia” echo through corridors of power, pointing to a quiet dismantling of the very institutions meant to safeguard its people.
From courts to classrooms, the threads of influence are pulling toward a shadowy centre—threatening governance, equity, and the nation’s future. This article explores how this network, entrenched in politics, business, and security, is de-institutionalising Uganda, and what it means for the country’s citizens.
What does de-institutionalisation mean?
I will define de-institutionalisation as “weakening formal institutions, making them serve private interests instead of the public good.”
In the context of Uganda, de-institutionalisation is a system where rules bend to favour a powerful few, eroding accountability and democracy.
The following are what I consider to be the key dimensions of de-institutionalisation in Uganda
Political capture, presidentialism
The 1995 Constitution Article 98 grants broad powers to the President, enabling NRM-aligned governance in all sectors of the economy.
The President appoints all key officials in every sector of the economy, including judges. He dissolves Parliament and influences the making of the national budget in terms of allocation of resources. This explains why, in every national budget and or supplementary budget, security and the state house get more money than the essential sectors of education, health, and agriculture.
Elections and parties
Money politics is squeezing out genuine voices, filling posts with complacent figures or sycophants, thereby undermining professionalism and dividing the nation along ethnic lines. I will not include tribalism here because I do not believe tribalism exists in Africa in general and Uganda in particular.
It is an alien word in Uganda introduced by our British Colonialists and being perpetuated by their neo-colonialists or the black colonialists, who succeeded them and are doing exactly what their predecessors did: violating rights, grabbing land, using ethnic considerations in appointments and employment.
What we have instead are indigenous groups and their clans. If we disregard the constitutional creation of an indigenous group of Banyarwanda, we have, among others, the indigenous groups of Bacholi, Banyankole, Baganda, Bagisu, Bakedi, Bakiga, Banyoro, Basoga, Bateso, Balango, Bakaramoja, Basebei and Batoro.
All these are the ones with natural belonging and identities in Uganda, which the Constitution of Uganda 1995 should have been committed to protect and perpetuate well in future.
Political parties with no ideology underlying building nationalism for the future, but are committed to firming the status quo are of no use to the citizens yearning for democracy, freedom and justices; they will just help power to continue with de-institutionalising the country. They will not question or challenge anything, and their leaders will be easily amenable to their consciences being bought when they want half-brothers and design policies that are anti-people.
Ethnic politicisation
Appointments prioritise loyalty, undermining meritocracy. Ultimately, institutions filled with loyal individuals no longer rely on professionalism to discharge their outputs. The ethics and morality of the institutions are no longer integral to the growth and development of the institutions.
Therefore, while power preaches unity and patriotism, its choice of loyalty over ethics undermines both. Undermining unity and patriotism serves the interests of the mafia when the people are disunited and are not patriotic to their country.
Economic exploitation
Business control is the rule rather than the exception. Major sectors of the economy are dominated by the mafia as much as the mafia can avoid or pay minimal taxes to the national coffers. Public resources, including money and minerals, are diverted.
We now know from the Inspector General of Government (IGG) that the country loses UGX 10 trillion to crooks. Besides, thousands of young people have been forced to manifest as domestic or international slaves, especially in the Middle East.
The mafia has the capacity to squeeze the indigenous businesspeople out of business through overtaxation and other measures. They prefer that they own the business and the indigenous entrepreneurs work under them.
Uganda’s economy benefitted as remittances from the Middle East. These grew from $52.4 million in 2010 to $309.2 million in 2018, which was a contribution of 23% of the $1.3 billion the country got through remittances in 2018.
The Ugandan government boasts that it gets millions of dollars from Ugandans working in the Middle East. Official figures show that by 2024, there were 317, 555 working in the Middle East. 84.45% were women (208,303). This is a negative on the biological reproductive capacity of Uganda. Most of the firms exporting our young people into international slavery belong to the mafia or those connected to them.
Connected to the slave trade is the trade in human body parts. Many slaves are said to be killed as body parts are removed to ensure the Arabs who destroy their organs through eating in unhealthy ways get organ transplants.
Gold has become Uganda’s largest export and foreign exchange earner but it is in the hands of the mafia. Gold-rich areas, such as Busoga and Karamoja, are getting nothing from the sale of the gold on international markets. We don’t know how much the government is getting from the mafia in taxes.
The situation is worse than it was when the British Colonialists invaded, conquered, occupied and exploited our resources.
Agriculture
Operation Wealth Creation (OWC), a side creation of the NRM regime, ostensibly to enrich Ugandans, sidelines professionals and serves the interests of the mafia. Every year, the national budget includes billions of shillings bequeathed to OWC, which is more or less a money-making venture for the military leaders in it, with Salim Saleh Akandwanaho, a half-brother of President Tibuhaburwa Museveni, as its Chief.
OWC deals in things like buying seeds and seedlings and distributing them to farmers; things that used to be done by the Ministry of Agriculture. If anything, OWC is a formidable tool in the process of de-institutionalising the agricultural sector and weakening the Ministry of Agriculture.
Land grabbing
Land grabbing by people with exogenous roots and ethnically related to the dominant ethnic group in power in Kampala has led to the dispossession and displacement of the indigenous communities from their ancestral lands, thereby distorting the belonging and identity of the various cultural groups.
It is also destroying the time-tested cultural institutions and the agroecological systems on which their food security has depended for centuries. The threat of food insecurity and hunger is looming as a consequence of food dependency in the future.
Social decay, education
Leadership of the education sector is suspect, not committed to professionalism. The decayed infrastructure of the traditional schools left behind by the British colonialists characterises the school landscape.
It is as if the managers and leaders are today committed to producing cheap labour for the mafia. The education sector is now dominated by private actors owning schools, some of quality, some not, but exploiting the poor with high fees.
It is good to hear that the government plans to spend over a trillion shillings rehabilitating and reconstructing the decayed and collapsed infrastructures of the traditional schools. Until now, it is the old boys and old girls of the schools who have been trying to keep their former schools standing through personal contributions.
Health
Health is critical for people anywhere in the world. Until recently, the citizens of Uganda got their health services from public health services. However, the government has presided over the decay and collapse of the public sector health care system, with its facilities almost derelict.
Even then the government has preferred to give public money to the tune of billions of shillings to private actors to construct very expensive hospitals, such as Lubowa Hospital. There is concealed genocide as people are denied adequate healthcare and die in large numbers from diseases that were easily preventable and treatable through the public health system.
Recently l, a longtime friend of mine from the early 1970s, Mr Sabastian Mwondha Ngobi, a former Academic Registrar and Human Resources Manager of Makerere University, and Human Resources and Technology Director at the Uganda National Examinations Board (UNEB), died at Platinum Hospital, a private hospital in Kampala, due to poor management of malaria.
In short, privatisation of the health sector favours mafia hospitals and neglects the public sector hospitals, leading to the recent upsuand rge in death of Ugandans.
Media and academia
Self-censoring and threats of closure characterise the media, which constitutes the Fourth Estate. These are continuous through the high-handedness of the Uganda Communications Commission (UCC), which conducts its business as if it were a political appendage of the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM).
Recently, a zealous Resident District Commissioner (RCC) of Jinja City, an office linked to the Office of the President of Uganda, recommended the closure of the Jinja-based Busoga Radio One, reputed to be the most listened to radio in the whole country, on political grounds.
He claimed that the radio was inciting the public. If the radio is not yet closed, it could be because of the intervention of higher powers. However, its function called Ekitudha, which was to be held somewhere in Busoga, was banned despite the intervention of Internal Affairs Minister, Kahinda Otafiire by ordering it to go ahead, arguing that the ban was done on political grounds.
This means that politics is an ever-present threat to media institutions, which are now not sure of their survival, even if they promptly pay taxes to the national coffers.
In the universities, the humanities and social sciences have been muted in favour of the natural sciences, in the same fashion that Adolf Hitler did in Nazi Germany. In any University, critical voices come from the humanities and social sciences. If you mute them, you mute the university. The university staff do not participate in public affairs anymore.
Intellectual death sets in and intellectual production plummets, and fear and silence proliferate. Focus shifts almost entirely onto academicism, scholasticism and careerism. The link between the university and the public is muted. The value of academia to the public becomes less and less visible. Internally, human rights violations of the staff and students multiply, but because of silence and fear may not be apparent in the public domain.
Security and justice
In Uganda, it has become extremely difficult to separate security from justice. Increasingly, the army and police deployed to suppress opposition and protect the gains of the rulers, many of whom are integral to the mafia network. The judiciary has been captured to ensure pro-mafia rulings.
New appointments, or even the old judges may fear handling certain cases, or giving certain rulings, in case they detect that certain mafia are involved. When the NRM regime discovered that the judiciary as a whole may not bow to its judicial wishes to violate the rights of certain Ugandans, particularly because of their political beliefs, it pushed for the UPDF Act 2025.
There are concerns that the Act will be used to silence political dissenters and reward loyalty, thereby subverting or perverting justice in favour of the mafia.
Cultural and societal impact
Let me re-emphasise that the whole Ugandan society is suffering from imposed impoverishment. Weaponised poverty, fear, and silence are widespread throughout the population. Besides, cooperatives, which used to empower the people financially and economically, have been either eliminated, politically co-opted or weakened.
Also, the engagement of the youth, women and disabled has been politicised. Deceptively, they are given representation in the Parliament of Uganda without effective empowerment.
They are hoodwinked by loyalty-driven programmes the way certain individuals in society are hoodwinked by things like Emyooga, Operation Wealth Creation and Parish Development Model, yet ultimately it is the mafia who make further gains from them.
Consequences and risks
Overall, the erosion of democracy has peaked. There is rising inequality, loss of sovereignty, loss of national identity and rising environmental strain and stress in favour of the mafia. Governance cannot occur outside a patronage chain. Entrenched patronage limits future reforms and favours the Mafia even more.
Conclusion
Uganda’s institutions need safeguarding. Transparency, accountability, and inclusive governance are critical to counter this tide. The cost of inaction is a Uganda where power, not people, dictates the future.
For God and My Country.
By Oweyegha-Afunaduua | Center for Critical Thinking and Alternative Analysis
Discover more from tndNews, Uganda
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.