Anne Mugisha, a once-fiery stalwart of Uganda’s opposition and ally of Dr Kizza Besigye, has broken her political silence with a scathing open letter to President Museveni.
Shared via X (formerly Twitter), the letter is part elegy, part satire—and entirely a reckoning.
It accuses the President of presiding over the slow collapse of a revolution he once promised would restore hope, democracy, and constitutionalism.
Mugisha, a lawyer, rights advocate and longtime organiser with the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC), was once among the leading women in Uganda’s pushback against authoritarian rule.
A close collaborator of Besigye in the early 2000s and 2010s, she served as the party’s diaspora envoy and contested for Parliament, building a reputation as a clear, principled voice in the opposition.
But she retreated from the public political arena in recent years, relocating abroad in what she now admits was a failed search for peace and distance.
“I figured I’d done my bit,” Mugisha writes.
“I passed the baton to younger, sharper minds… How naïve of me.”
In the letter, she reflects on returning to Uganda and finding the political order unchanged—if not worsened. “Still seated exactly where I left you,” she writes of Museveni.
“Still controlling the fate of millions. Still deciding who wins, who loses, who lives, and who disappears.”
Mugisha’s critique comes at a time when Uganda’s political climate has grown more militarised and legally restrictive.
When Museveni seized power in 1986, he promised a radical break from the past through a Ten Point Programme that pledged to restore democracy, eliminate corruption, and build a self-sustaining economy.
Nearly four decades later, critics argue that the Programme has withered, replaced instead by a regime of “rule by law” where legislation serves power rather than justice—and where military influence in civilian affairs is not just tolerated but institutionalised.
The creeping role of the army, especially through Museveni’s son Gen Muhoozi Kainerugaba, looms heavily in Mugisha’s letter.
Once a schoolboy at Kampala Parents School and later a trainee at Sandhurst, Muhoozi now styles himself as a military-political force, posting cryptic presidential ambitions and hosting rallies that critics call unconstitutional.
“Is he really the same one we see today, parading around like a warlord in cosplay?” Mugisha jabs, before adding that even Museveni’s opponents now prefer his aging hand to the uncertainty of a dynastic succession.
“The opposition is praying for your long life,” she writes.
“They’d rather you stay in power till you’re 100 than hand over to that product of yours.”
Her words echo a wider discontent in Uganda, where elections are increasingly marked by repression, opposition arrests, and the deployment of security forces against dissent.
The once-promised participatory democracy has, in the view of many critics, given way to militarised governance propped up by constitutional amendments and patronage.
Mugisha’s letter blends humour with lament, describing Museveni as “the great liberator” now “a prisoner of your own power.”
She recalls the early promise of a new Uganda and juxtaposes it with the state of today’s politics—an arena she claims is ruled through “hashtags, bots, and paranoia.”
Although Mugisha says she is no longer angry, the disappointment runs deep.
Her reflection is less about nostalgia and more about disillusionment with a revolutionary journey gone astray.
“You may not have the strength to reply anymore, but don’t worry—your son’s trolls will take it from here,” she writes.
In closing, Mugisha returns not to politics, but to the personal.
“Parent to parent, I’m still praying—for you, for us, for Uganda,” she writes, signing off with a soft Osibegye—Luganda for sleep well.
Whether Mugisha intends to rejoin active politics remains unclear. But her voice, once among the loudest in Uganda’s political resistance, has re-entered the fray at a time when the future of succession, governance, and national unity are more contested than ever.