On the morning of April 27, 2025, Uganda woke up to a story that sounded painfully familiar.
Edward Rogers Ssebuufu, better known as Eddie Mutwe, a bodyguard to opposition leader Robert Kyagulanyi, was abducted in broad daylight by armed operatives. Days of silence followed—no formal charges, no disclosed location, no legal access.
Then came a tweet.
Not a police statement. Not a judicial order. A tweet—posted by none other than Uganda’s Chief of Defence Forces, Gen. Muhoozi Kainerugaba.
The General posted a photo of Eddie Mutwe, visibly fatigued and handcuffed, and boasted: “Captured like a grasshopper. He's in my basement.”
Basement.
Not barracks. Not a police station. Not a gazetted holding facility.
The state, through one of its most powerful security officials, had just confessed—not only to an abduction—but to holding a civilian in an undisclosed, illegal detention center.
And that, right there, is where Uganda’s soul continues to hemorrhage.
Let’s call this what it is: Uganda has normaliwed abductions as a tool of political intimidation.
The language has evolved—from “arrests” to “disappearances,” from “security operations” to “picking someone up.”
The faces change. The uniforms sometimes differ. But the story remains the same: armed men, usually in unmarked vans—called drones—abduct Ugandans and detain them without trial, without charge, and without accountability.
This isn’t a new tactic. It’s not even subtle anymore.
We saw it in 2018 after the Arua by-election.
We saw it during and after the 2021 general election, when hundreds of opposition supporters went missing.
Some returned with tortured bodies. Others haven’t returned at all.
Now it’s Eddie Mutwe again—a man who has been arrested more times than can be justified. This isn’t law enforcement. This is political repression.
The irony is suffocating.
Before 1986, Yoweri Museveni was one of the loudest voices against abductions and state brutality. He cited it constantly to justify launching a guerrilla war against Milton Obote’s regime.
In his 1997 autobiography Sowing the Mustard Seed, Museveni wrote:
“The government abducts people at night. It tortures them. It denies them due process. No legitimate government can behave like this and expect to rule peacefully.”
In 1980, just before forming the NRA, Museveni thundered that Uganda was descending into “a criminal state where men disappear and the law means nothing.”
He positioned himself as the liberator—the one who would end the culture of impunity and build a nation governed by the rule of law.
The Luwero Bush War was framed as a moral crusade.
And the people believed him.
They gave him sons, daughters, food, and shelter—because they believed he was different.
Fast forward to 2025, and the very acts Museveni once condemned—abductions, torture, disappearances—have become state policy under his watch.
When Museveni took power in 1986, he was hailed as a hero.
He promised a “fundamental change, not a mere change of guards.”
But fundamental change requires accountability. It demands dismantling the same structures of fear that previous regimes used to crush dissent.
Instead, the abductors changed uniforms.
The vans got newer.
The lies became more rehearsed.
The institutions that were supposed to protect citizens—police, courts, Parliament—have become complicit or toothless.
Soldiers have become judges. Generals, kings.
And at the center of it all stands a man who once swore to fight tyranny, but has instead become its most enduring symbol.
When military commanders behave like gang leaders, when the law is mocked openly—are we still a republic, or are we hostages in a rogue state?
The Uganda Human Rights Commission has issued a release order for Eddie Mutwe.
That is commendable—but symbolic. Because the truth is, UHRC has become more of a PR outfit than a watchdog.
Where is Parliament?
Where is the Judiciary?
Where are the religious leaders? The constitutional lawyers? The ruling party MPs who once quoted scripture about justice?
If the only sound we hear is silence, then the system is broken—or terrified.
Is Eddie Mutwe being punished for a crime—or for association?
For loyalty? For proximity to a man the regime sees as a threat?
We deserve answers.
Is this meant to break him—or to send a message?
Is it to remind anyone supporting Bobi Wine—or anyone asking questions—that the state has no line it won’t cross?
And for years now, that has been the template:
Arrest. Torture. Release. Re-arrest. Silence.
It’s a psychological war on political opposition—and it works because the public has been conditioned to move on.
Every time we forget a name—when we move on without accountability—we fertilize the soil for the next abduction.
Kakwenza Rukirabashaija was abducted and tortured for mocking Muhoozi.
Remember him? He now lives in exile.
Dozens of NUP supporters were picked up in 2021.
Some returned with rotting limbs. Others never returned at all.
We are now a nation of forgetfulness.
The cost?
Our sense of justice has eroded.
Our outrage is seasonal.
Our hope is fractured.
A country where political opponents disappear without due process is a democracy in name only.
A republic where fear rules louder than law is no republic at all.
Let’s not pretend this is “normal politics.”
This is weaponized state terror.
The tools used against Mutwe today will be used against others tomorrow.
You don’t have to be in opposition to be a target—only inconvenient.
What do we tell our children when the state kidnaps its own citizens?
What do we tell law students learning about habeas corpus when generals treat it as optional?
What do we tell families waiting for sons taken by “unknown gunmen”?
What do we tell Eddie Mutwe’s mother—that her son is now a trophy in a general’s basement?
We are raising a generation either too scared to speak—or too angry to hope.
The tragedy of Uganda is not just in the brutality.
It is in the silence.
The apathy.
The complicity.
Today it is a bodyguard.
Tomorrow, it’s a journalist. Then a lawyer. A student. A voter.
The vans don’t discriminate once the law is gone.
Uganda must decide:
Do we want to live in a nation of laws—or in a state of fear?
Because the last van is coming.
The only question is: for who next?