By Wilfred Arinda Nshekantebirwe
For twelve uninterrupted months, veteran opposition leader Dr. Kizza Besigye and his aide, Hajj Obeid Lutale, have remained in detention on treason charges whose substance has yet to be tested in open court. A full year of liberty extinguished, not by a conviction, not by a judicial finding, but by the slow, silent suffocation of due process. Uganda has witnessed the detention of political opponents before, but each repetition deepens the wound and sharpens a question that every citizen must ask: What becomes of a republic when political opponents are held indefinitely under the heavy shadow of a charge as grave as treason without the state ever presenting its evidence?
Treason is, by definition, the gravest offence against the State. Its charge is supposed to protect national security and the integrity of the republic. Yet, in this case, the invocation of treason has become a tool of suspension rather than prosecution, a mechanism of intimidation rather than accountability. Legal systems around the world, from the most established democracies to emerging states, recognise the corrosive potential of this approach. Detaining individuals under a charge so serious, without presenting evidence or proceeding to trial, is a fundamental violation of the constitutional guarantee of a fair and speedy hearing. This is not merely a procedural lapse; it is an affront to the rule of law itself.
The Constitution of Uganda, like any modern legal framework, protects the rights of citizens from arbitrary detention. Article 23 explicitly guarantees the right to personal liberty, and Article 44 enshrines the right to a fair hearing. These rights are not symbolic; they exist precisely to prevent exactly what we are witnessing today: the use of criminal charges as instruments of political suppression. Detaining Dr. Besigye and Hajj Lutale for a full year without trial is a direct contravention of these principles. It is a message that the law, in its highest forms, can be manipulated to serve political objectives rather than justice.
Politically motivated cases such as this are dangerous far beyond the individuals affected. They set precedents that normalize the suspension of liberty for political gain. They train the State to treat opposition as a threat to be contained rather than citizens whose ideas deserve contestation in the public arena. This is a precedent with long shadows. Once the logic of indefinite detention for political opponents is introduced, it rarely ends with a single case. It metastasizes into a broader doctrine where legal instruments are no longer safeguards but levers of coercion. Every opposition voice then risks being silenced not by the people’s vote, but by the selective application of law.
Ugandans do not need to look far across the continent to see how treason, once loosened from the discipline of law, becomes a tool of political theatre. Mobutu Sese Seko perfected this art in Zaire, turning treason into a flexible vocabulary for silencing opponents, disciplining dissent, and entertaining paranoia.
One such episode was the “Pentecostal Coup d’État” of the 1970s, in which a group of Zairian pastors were arrested and charged with treason for allegedly plotting to overthrow the state through prophecy. Their crime was not weapons, armies, or subversion, it was prayer. Their prayers were too bold, too confident, perhaps too unsettling for a regime nervous about its own legitimacy. In the end, Mobutu pardoned them on the condition that they stop prophesying about politics. A whole treason file collapsed because prophecy could not be tendered as evidence. It was absurd, but it captured the essence of authoritarian logic: the ruler’s insecurity defines the crime.
Even more bizarre was the case of the Makanda Brothers, musicians and traditional healers accused of using witchcraft to weaken Mobutu’s rule. It was claimed that their drums, herbs, and rituals formed part of a supernatural conspiracy to overthrow the state. When the matter reached court, prosecutors struggled to demonstrate how a spell could topple a government, and the case unwound embarrassingly. The judge reportedly remarked that the court “could not convict a spell.” The brothers were released, and the world laughed, because only a collapsing regime believes that songs and charms are treasonous threats.
These episodes may seem distant, even comical, but they remind us that once treason becomes a political tool, its definition expands infinitely. It ceases to be a legal concept and becomes whatever the government finds inconvenient at any given moment. And that is precisely the risk Uganda faces today. When Dr Kizza Besigye, who has been charged with treason multiple times, none ending in a conviction, is held for a year without trial, we are no longer debating evidence; we are witnessing a pattern. We are watching a state quietly drift toward Mobutu’s logic, where power, rather than law, decides who is a citizen and who is an enemy.
Countries where political cases have been weaponized often witness a cascade of democratic erosion. The law becomes a theatre of delay, courts become venues of intimidation, and prisons turn into warehouses for those who dare articulate alternative visions for the nation. Citizens begin to internalize fear as a natural condition of political engagement, and the very notion of political participation becomes hazardous.
Legally, the invocation of treason without trial also undermines the credibility of judicial and prosecutorial institutions. Treason is the ultimate crime in the eyes of the State, yet its invocation without substantiated evidence dilutes its seriousness. If treason becomes a flexible tool to detain political opponents, the public begins to see the law not as an instrument of justice, but as a weapon of convenience. Courts lose legitimacy, the prosecution loses authority, and the very concept of justice becomes conditional on political loyalty rather than facts and evidence.
This is why the case before Dr. Besigye and Hajj Lutale is so dangerous. It signals that political considerations can override constitutional rights. It suggests that power, rather than law, dictates liberty. And it teaches future leaders that the suppression of dissent through legal manipulation is permissible. The consequences for democracy are profound. Free political contestation,the lifeblood of any representative system, becomes conditional, fragile, and perilous. Citizens learn that opposition is not an exercise of constitutional rights but a gamble with personal freedom.
The State has an obligation to act decisively and constitutionally. Either the evidence against Dr. Besigye and Hajj Lutale should be presented in a court of law, so that the justice system can adjudicate it, or they must be released. Anything short of this is not merely an injustice; it is an institutionalised rehearsal for a political culture in which dissent is criminalised and liberty is optional. Every day they remain in detention without trial, the State erodes its moral and legal legitimacy, and every citizen loses confidence in the promise of justice.
No nation strengthens itself by silencing those who disagree with it, and no government earns legitimacy by relying on charges it is unwilling, or unprepared to prove. What is at stake is not only the liberty of two men, but the integrity of the constitutional order we claim to honour. Uganda must insist that justice takes its proper course, not because Besigye is an opposition leader, but because the rule of law means nothing unless it protects those whom the State is least comfortable with. The true measure of our democracy will be whether we choose the path of fairness over fear, law over expedience, and due process over political convenience. Only then can the country claim to stand on principles strong enough to withstand its own future.
The writer is the LC5 Male Youth Councillor for Rubanda District
Wilfred Arinda Nshekantebirwe
wilfredarinda@gmail.com
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