Kampala, Uganda — September 23, 2023
In the dim glow of a single bulb hanging from a cracked ceiling in a nondescript Kampala suburb, Sulaiman Bagenda sips lukewarm tea from a chipped mug. His hands tremble slightly—not from the chill of the evening, but from the ghosts of a night two years ago that shattered his world. Once a familiar face behind the counter of his modest neighborhood shop, stocking everything from soap to sim cards, Bagenda now navigates life like a shadow, glancing over his shoulder at every rustle of leaves or rev of a distant motorcycle.
It was January 2021, in the charged air following Uganda’s contentious general elections, when the darkness descended. As Bagenda locked up for the night, tallying the day’s meager sales under the flickering streetlight, two men emerged from the gloom. No words, just a rough hood yanked over his head and the metallic click of a car door. “I felt the world slip away right there,” he whispers, his voice barely above the hum of a neighbor’s radio. By the time the hood came off, he was in a place of suffocating silence—blindfolded again, bound, and utterly alone.
What unfolded over the next six harrowing days, Bagenda says, was a descent into hell. Beatings with blunt objects left bruises that bloomed like storm clouds across his ribs. Threats hissed in his ear: renounce your support for the opposition, or worse would come. And then the liquids—sharp, searing, later identified by doctors as acid—poured onto his skin, etching permanent scars into his arms and legs. “They wanted me broken, not just in body, but in spirit,” he recalls, rolling up a sleeve to reveal the twisted, shiny tissue that serves as a daily reminder. His captors, he believes, were agents of the state security apparatus, part of a broader wave of abductions and tortures that swept through Uganda in the election’s aftermath, ensnaring hundreds suspected of dissent.
To end the agony, Bagenda uttered the words they demanded: “I stop. I stop everything.” Only then was he bundled into a vehicle and abandoned on a dusty roadside, his body a map of survival.
Good Samaritans—strangers whose kindness he still marvels at—spotted him and rushed him to Mulago National Referral Hospital. There, under the sterile lights of the emergency ward, doctors treated chemical burns and fractures consistent with prolonged assault. Bagenda shared faded photos of his scars and crumpled treatment notes with this reporter, documents that bear the hospital’s official stamp. (While elements of his account align with documented patterns of post-election violence, independent verification of the specifics remains challenging amid ongoing sensitivities around such cases).
A Shadow Life: Hiding in Plain Sight
Today, at 37, Bagenda’s existence is a patchwork of precautions. He no longer sleeps in the same bed two nights running, bouncing between borrowed rooms in relatives’ homes or cheap guesthouses on the city’s fringes. His once-bustling shop? Boarded up, its shelves gathering dust, a casualty of rumors that chased away customers. “I used to greet everyone by name—’Mama Sarah, how’s the baby?’ Now, I keep my head down, even from the people I grew up with,” he says, eyes darting to the window as a dog barks outside.
The fear isn’t abstract; it’s woven into the fabric of his days. An unknown number lights up his phone, and his heart races—could it be them, checking if he’s still compliant? A knock at the door sends him into a silent panic, hands clammy as he peers through a peephole. Economically, it’s a slow bleed: odd jobs as a delivery runner pay just enough for rice and rent, but never the stability he craves. “I dream of reopening that shop, of the smell of fresh mandazi in the morning. But fear… it steals your tomorrow before you can live it.”
Compounding the isolation is the social shunning. In a community where gossip travels faster than matatus, Bagenda’s ordeal has morphed into whispers of scandal. Old friends cross the street; neighbors murmur about his “troubles.” He believes this vulnerability—being painted as an outsider—made him a target then, and echoes in his battles now.
Echoes of Retaliation: Facing False Shadows
If the abduction was the storm, the legal clouds gathering over Bagenda feel like its lingering thunder. In the years since, he’s faced charges of sexual assault and “promoting homosexuality”—accusations he vehemently denies, calling them fabricated weapons in a vendetta tied to his past. “I never touched anyone, never said a word against our ways,” he insists, his voice cracking with frustration. “This is punishment for what they think I believed in 2020—for Bobi Wine’s posters in my window, for quiet talks over chai.”
Uganda’s courts will ultimately weigh the evidence, as rights groups note that such charges, while serious, are sometimes wielded to silence critics in a country where dissent carries heavy risks. Fearing rearrest or another abduction, Bagenda fled deeper into hiding shortly after the charges were filed, convinced that the same forces behind his 2021 ordeal were closing in again. Whispers from contacts in his old neighborhood warned him that plainclothes officers had been asking questions, combing the streets for his whereabouts. “They came looking, just like before,” he says, his gaze fixed on the floor. “I couldn’t wait to find out what they’d do next—I packed what I could carry and vanished into the night.”
Bagenda, scraping together funds for a lawyer through crowdfunding from sympathetic diaspora contacts, vows to fight from the shadows. “Let the truth come out in the light of day,” he says. Yet the toll is evident: sleepless nights poring over case files by candlelight, the dread of arrest turning every errand into an escape plan.
Psychologically, it’s a deeper wound. Bagenda startles at loud noises, his mind replaying the hood’s suffocating press. Therapy? A luxury he can’t afford, though a local NGO offers sporadic group sessions for survivors of political violence. “I carry this alone most days,” he admits, “but talking to you… it feels like cracking a window, letting in a bit of air.”
A Plea from the Margins
Sulaiman Bagenda’s story isn’t one of heroes or headlines; it’s the quiet unraveling of an ordinary man caught in extraordinary currents. In a nation still grappling with the scars of 2021’s unrest—where hundreds of abductions and torture tales persist—his voice joins a chorus of the silenced. He renounced politics long ago, trading convictions for survival, yet the repercussions cling like smoke.
As we part ways under a sky bruised with dusk, Bagenda pauses at the door, offering a rare, weary smile. “I just want to live without fear,” he says, echoing the words that have become his mantra. “To walk to market without looking back. To close my eyes at night and trust the dawn will come gentle. Is that too much to ask?” In his question lies the raw heart of resilience—a shopkeeper’s dream, fragile but unbroken, in a city that never quite sleeps.
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