On 15 January, Ugandans went to the polls in an election with a largely predetermined outcome. As polls opened, mobile internet services halted, contributing to a lack of scrutiny over President Yoweri Museveni’s victory. In power since 1986, Museveni secured a seventh consecutive term. Far from offering democratic choice, the vote reinforced one of Africa’s longest-running presidencies by providing a veneer of democratic legitimacy while stifling true competition.

Four decades of power

Museveni’s tenure originated in the Bush War, a five-year guerrilla conflict led by his National Resistance Army. In 1981, he founded the National Resistance Movement as the political wing of his rebel group. After seizing power in 1986, he established a ‘movement system’ of single-party rule that lasted for almost two decades, arguing it was necessary for national reconstruction.

Some improvements came with the 1995 constitution, which gave autonomy to parliament and the judiciary and introduced a two-term limit and age cap of 75 as safeguards against a permanent presidency, but maintained the ban on political parties. In 2005, Museveni made a decisive shift, restoring multi-party politics after one-party rule had increasingly been called into question. However, he simultaneously orchestrated a constitutional amendment to remove presidential term limits. In 2017, he abolished the age restriction, allowing him to run for a sixth term in 2021.

Over repeated elections the regime has moved from legal manipulation to open repression, with control maintained through militarisation of the police, which has seen active-duty army generals appointed to lead the force and soldiers deployed for domestic law enforcement. Over the years, opposition leader Kizza Besigye has been arrested or held in ‘preventative detention’ – a tactic used to stop him participating in rallies – more than a thousand times.

Museveni’s 2021 campaign against challenger Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu, better known by his stage name Bobi Wine, who leads the National Unity Platform, was defined by state violence and the killing of dozens of protesters. Weeks before the election, in November 2020, protests sparked by Wine’s arrest escalated into nationwide unrest, and over a hundred people were killed.

In 2024 Museveni promoted his son, 51-year-old Muhoozi Kainerugaba, to Chief of Defence Forces. Kainerugaba has boasted on social media of using torture against political opponents, reflecting a regime that no longer feels the need to conceal its brutal repression. His rise also suggested the potential for a hereditary handover.

Civic space shutdown

The 2026 electoral charade required the neutralisation of credible opposition and election monitors. Civil society suppression was accelerated by the withdrawal of international support; following the Trump administration’s dissolution of USAID in early 2025, the termination of US governance programmes left local democracy initiatives abandoned. In Uganda, almost all US-funded Good Governance and Civil Society awards were cancelled, hollowing out the civic education networks that once reached first-time and rural voters. The vacuum was filled by state propaganda.

The state has increasingly criminalised civil society activism, using prolonged pretrial detention to stifle dissent. Between June and October 2025, 12 young climate campaigners and 11 environmental activists were repeatedly denied bail, spending months in prison for peacefully protesting against the East African Crude Oil Pipeline.

The regime’s efforts to silence dissent crossed borders. On 16 November 2024, Besigye was abducted in Nairobi, Kenya, appearing four days later at a military court in Uganda’s capital, Kampala. He was charged with security offences and unlawful possession of firearms – serious crimes that can bring the death penalty – and taken to military court, in direct defiance of a January 2025 Supreme Court ruling declaring military trials for civilians unconstitutional. Museveni legalised this practice in June 2025, signing the Uganda Peoples’ Defence Forces (Amendment) Bill into law.

The final weeks of 2025 saw direct intimidation of high-profile activists. On 30 December, authorities arrested Sarah Bireete, executive director of the Center for Constitutional Governance, without a warrant. She was detained for four days, in violation of the 48-hour constitutional limit, and charged with data-related offences after publicly discussing the National Voters’ Register.

The day after Bireete’s arrest, in a New Year’s Eve address, Museveni explicitly instructed security forces to use more teargas to break up crowds of opposition supporters, calling them criminals. He argued that the chemical irritant was ‘both legal and non-lethal’, and therefore preferable to live ammunition. In the days that followed, security forces followed his command by using teargas, along with pepper spray and physical violence, to disperse opposition rallies. Hundreds of Wine supporters were abducted or detained in the final run-up to the vote.

The government then moved to dismantle the infrastructure needed for independent election monitoring. Citing ‘intelligence information’ about activities prejudicial to ‘the security and the laws of Uganda’, the National NGO Bureau suspended five prominent human rights organisations: the Alliance for Election Finance Monitoring, Chapter Four Uganda, the Human Rights Network for Journalists-Uganda, the National Coalition of Human Rights Defenders and the National NGO Forum.

Finally, on 13 January – two days before the vote – the Uganda Communications Commission implemented a nationwide internet shutdown, citing the need to prevent disinformation and electoral fraud. The blackout prevented real-time documentation of election day irregularities.

Election day irregularities and post-election violence

Voting was plagued by technical problems. Biometric voter verification machines failed across the country, forcing officials to revert to manual voting processes. Even Museveni had authentication problems when his fingerprints failed to register. These technical failures caused significant delays, with some constituencies experiencing waiting times of up to four hours.

But malfunctions were the least of the concerns. In a social media post, Wine claimed wholesale ballot stuffing and the abduction of polling agents. The integrity of the process was further compromised when the head of the Electoral Commission admitted receiving private warnings from senior government figures against declaring particular opposition candidates as winners.

A joint election observation mission from the African Union (AU), the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa and the Intergovernmental Authority on Development however found no direct evidence of ballot stuffing at the polling stations it visited. The mission’s preliminary report attempted to strike a delicate balance, noting that the environment was ‘relatively peaceful’ compared to 2021 – diplomatically acknowledging a decrease in violence while recognising an underlying culture of intimidation – but expressing serious concerns about the broader electoral climate, specifically citing the ‘harassment, intimidation and arrest’ of opposition figures and the suspension of human rights groups, stating these actions ‘eroded public trust in the electoral process’. East African Community observers were particularly critical of the internet blackout, with the mission head stating it directly hindered field reports from polling stations, disrupting their ability to document irregularities.

Following the vote, violence erupted in multiple locations, with at least 12 people killed, though there were conflicting accounts about the number and causes of deaths. The deadliest incident occurred in Butambala district, where security forces killed between seven and 10 opposition supporters who’d gathered at a candidates’ house to follow early results. The local police spokesperson claimed the victims were machete-wielding opposition ‘goons’ who attacked a police station and vote-tallying centre.

While counting was underway, security forces raided Wine’s home and placed him under house arrest, with military vehicles and police surrounding the building to prevent him contesting the results.

The counting process was opaque. Mirroring practices from the 2021 election, the Electoral Commission announced results by region rather than by polling station, limiting monitors’ ability to validate them. On 17 January, it announced Museveni had won 71.65 per cent of the vote, with Wine on 24.72 per cent. This represented a significant decline for Wine, who according to official figures secured 35.08 per cent in 2021. Turnout stood at around 52 per cent, meaning over 10 million eligible voters didn’t participate.

Despite observers’ documented concerns and while the observer mission was still detailing issues with arrests and abductions, AU Commission Chairperson Mahmoud Ali Youssouf issued a statement congratulating Museveni on his re-election and commending the conduct of the election, effectively downplaying the more critical findings of the AU’s observers.

A generational breaking point

In Uganda, the median age is 17 and 78 per cent of people are under 35. This means most Ugandans have lived all their lives under one president, and in an economic reality defined by astronomic levels of corruption that cost an estimated US$2.3 billion a year. Wine, a 44-year-old singer turned politician whose music had long resonated with young Ugandans’ frustrations, campaigned on promises to ease economic hardship and end family rule.

During the 2025 primary season, over 50 people, including around 10 from Generation Z, picked up presidential nomination papers from the Electoral Commission, the first step in declaring their intent to run. This was made possible by Museveni’s 2017 constitutional amendment that removed age limits, which inadvertently opened the door for young challengers. The youngest aspirant was 20 years old. But to appear on the ballot, candidates must gather at least 100 signatures in at least 98 districts and pay a high, non-refundable fee. While none ultimately completed the nomination process, their effort was symbolic: young people used a law designed to entrench Museveni’s power to challenge him, despite not standing a realistic chance.

Young people are finding other ways to make their voices heard. Recent years have seen Gen Z-led protests challenge economic hardship and entrenched leadership across Africa and beyond, including in Uganda, where July 2024 anti-corruption marches inspired by those in Kenya were met with over a hundred arrests.

Unlike Kenya’s leaderless 2024 protests, which renounced traditional opposition figures, young disaffected Ugandans have a genuine figurehead in Wine. But he’s now lost a highly uneven race twice. Young people who want change now face a choice of working within a rigged electoral system that could delegitimise resistance, or protesting and risking brutal repression.

No path forward?

Avenues to political change remain blocked. Opposition representation in parliament is insufficient to provide effective checks on Museveni’s power or advance constitutional reform, while harsh prison sentences and systematic violence may deter protests. Civil society groups are hampered by restrictive laws and the loss of international support.

International partners are largely silent. Uganda is an important western ally, providing troops for regional operations and sheltering around two million refugees, primarily from the Democratic Republic of the Congo and South Sudan. Museveni recently agreed to accept US deportees and has facilitated Chinese and French oil drilling operations. The European Union is doing little.

Authority has been increasingly concentrated on a tight inner circle of Museveni relatives. An eighth Museveni candidacy in 2031 may be unlikely given his advanced age, but in the absence of electoral reforms and restored civic freedoms, a democratic transition may be less likely than a handover to his son. Uganda’s young majority may have a difficult choice ahead: accept a dead-end status quo or confront a security apparatus that has perfected violence over four decades of repression.

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