Political policing in Uganda and what it means for the 2026 vote

Uganda's President Yoweri Museveni addressing the media after casting his vote at a polling station during the presidential elections in Kirihura in western Uganda, February 18, 2016.[FILE]

Uganda’s police have long faced criticism for politically charged interventions. These include episodes in which lethal force has been used in ways observers describe as excessive or indiscriminate. The main targets of restrictive or coercive tactics are supporters of the political opposition.

For example, in November 2020, weeks before the 2021 elections, protests following the arrest of the main opposition candidate escalated into nationwide unrest, leaving more than 100 people dead.

Under President Yoweri Museveni – in power since 1986 – the police have become a central pillar of the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM). During campaigns for the January 2026 general election, police have played a critical role in containing demonstrations, mobilising political support and enforcing loyalty, including ferrying ruling-party supporters and guarding NRM processions.

They have also acted forcefully against the opposition. Activities of Museveni’s main rival, Robert Kyagulanyi, are routinely obstructed through teargas and street confrontations. In November and early December 2025, police violently dispersed or blocked his campaign caravans, prompting condemnation from the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.

I have published widely on militarisation, security and policing, including the relationship between the Uganda Police Force and the ruling party. My conclusion is that policing in Uganda cannot be meaningfully analysed through a Western-centric expectation of institutional neutrality.

Instead, policing has developed alongside Uganda’s trajectory of personalised authority and an ideology of cadreship within the NRM. This has fostered an ethos in which officers see themselves as custodians of the political order, not a neutral institution.

My earlier research challenges the assumption that police act only on direct orders. Many officers believe that visible loyalty to the ruling party defines them as “good officers”.

Institutional loyalty

Based on this research, it is clear that the elections scheduled for 2026 are likely to reproduce these established patterns.

My engagement with police officers over more than 15 years, as both a researcher and a consultant, has provided a nuanced understanding of the attitudes and shared mentalities shaping policing culture. These beliefs are reflected not only in what officers say but also in their everyday behaviour.

For example, several commanders prominently display ruling-party symbols or images of the president as their WhatsApp profile pictures – clear indicators of how pro-National Resistance Movement (NRM) attitudes influence conduct and become woven into police identity.

As a result, officers frequently take actions that favour the incumbent even without explicit instructions. They seek to signal allegiance and act in ways they believe are expected of them as police officers.

This behaviour is rooted in a long-standing relationship between political power and control of the security forces. Society has come to expect the police to serve ruling elites rather than operate as an impartial institution. Consequently, the force functions less as a neutral public body and more as an extension of the ruling party.

Uganda’s police force played an active role in political policing while supporting Britain’s colonial administration after its establishment in 1906. It continued to perform a similar function under the post-independence governments of Milton Obote, Idi Amin, the Tito Okello junta, Obote II, and under the National Resistance Movement since 1986.

There have, however, been shifts in emphasis. In the early years of Yoweri Museveni’s rule, the police were sidelined in favour of military and intelligence agencies. A turning point came in the early 2000s with the appointment of senior military officers as police chiefs, signalling a fusion of military command culture with domestic policing.

Under General Kale Kayihura, appointed in 2005, the police expanded rapidly in size, budget and authority. He aligned the force with the ruling party by reshaping recruitment, sidelining older officers and promoting younger cadres loyal to the regime.

By the mid-2010s, the police were firmly embedded within the political machinery sustaining Museveni’s rule.

Kayihura’s legacy also extended beyond coercion. Under the banner of community policing, he mobilised millions of largely unemployed young people into a nationwide network of so-called crime preventers. Their presence during the 2016 elections proved decisive in boosting NRM turnout while undermining opposition mobilisation.

By 2021, however, this apparatus had largely collapsed. Without Kayihura’s centralised coordination – and faced with the rapid rise of Robert Kyagulanyi’s youth-driven movement – the state increasingly relied on overt coercion, resulting in widespread violence during the election campaigns.

As Uganda approaches the 2026 elections, the National Resistance Movement appears to have rebuilt elements of its soft-power machinery alongside strong-arm tactics. The head of police crime intelligence, Christopher Ddamulira, has become central to renewed youth mobilisation, deploying outreach programmes and targeted incentives reminiscent of Kale Kayihura’s approach.

These include the temporary incorporation of ghetto youth into police intelligence networks and funding small-scale business ventures. While such initiatives have diluted opposition support, it is the overt use of force that dominates public debate.

Equipped with armoured personnel carriers, high-capacity teargas launchers, water cannons and fast-response vehicles, security forces use their mobility and intelligence networks to disrupt opposition mobilisation.

A core police strategy is to restrict the movement of opposition candidates, particularly in densely populated urban areas. Candidates are frequently diverted onto back roads or sparsely populated routes, reducing visibility and limiting voter engagement. Police are also often deployed to block opposition candidates from appearing on radio stations.

Political control

These operations are reinforced by Resident District Commissioners representing the presidency and backed by the military, which intervenes whenever political stakes escalate. Together, they form a tightly coordinated national apparatus of political control.

Uganda’s constitution establishes the police force under Article 211, requiring it to be patriotic, professional and disciplined – standards incompatible with partisanship or repression. Article 212 mandates the police to protect life and property, preserve law and order, prevent crime and work cooperatively with civilian authorities.

Uganda’s 2026 elections will not simply test the popularity of competing political actors. They will again expose the deep fusion of policing and politics that has shaped the country for more than a century.

The police have consistently served as instruments of political order rather than neutral guardians of public security. Today’s officers operate within this inherited logic, in a political culture that has never experienced a peaceful transfer of power.

The campaign trail reveals a familiar contradiction: a security force constitutionally mandated to protect all citizens, yet increasingly functioning as a political arbiter, shaping who is heard, and who is silenced, in the public sphere.