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A year after his arrest by the Fish Protection Unit of the Uganda People’s Defence Forces (UPDF), Moses Musitwa was still paying off debts he incurred to get out of prison when we interviewed him for this story in April this year.  

Musitwa, a resident of Buyange Island, had been picked from his bed on a cold night in March 2023, alongside other fishermen from Bubeke Sub-county in Kalangala District, following a protest intended to overthrow an association leader of the silver fish (mukene) community. 

The fishermen accused leaders of Bubeke Sub-county of conniving with the UPDF and the wealthier Nile Perch and tilapia fishing communities, to introduce rules that would disadvantage those with licences for silver fish, commonly known as mukene.    

“They wanted us to only fish for just a few hours after midnight,” revealed Robert Ssebuguzi, a leader of mukene fishermen on Buyange Island.

Following new rules that would limit access to Lake Victoria, Ssebugizi says mukene fishermen had no choice but to try and replace their leader, who had abandoned his role representing the people that elected him. 

The UPDF reacted by branding the protesters National Unity Platform (NUP) supporters, seeking to cause political instability. The army proceeded to arrest all the fishermen from their homes, the night after the protest.  

The arrests are part of the diverse actions taken by different government officials to sabotage fishers of mukene, explains Ssebugizi, in favour of the bigger fishing community and particularly those who invested in Nile Perch, which is an important contributor to Uganda’s foreign exchange.    

Fish and its products contributed $140 million (Ush526.6 billion) to Uganda’s export receipts in 2023, with the Nile Perch as the biggest source of this income, according to Bank of Uganda statistics. Nile Perch is considered a major foreign exchange earner alongside gold, coffee and maize, which in turn partly explains the stringent government policy on fishing standards.  

Dr Robert Kayanda, the Fisheries Director at Lake Victoria Fisheries Organisation (LVFO), says the high export receipts mean the Nile Perch fishing community has more resources and an educated mass better equipped to organise and push its interests.  

“The Nile Perch association is well organised, rich and even able to call the President [of Uganda] when they need to,” Kayanda explains.

Other users on Lake Victoria and particularly the poor fishermen and dealers in mukene, and not as well organised, on the other hand, end up suffering because they cannot afford similar access to local government and national level policy makers.

“The mukene people are looked at as poor and so government is willing to pay attention to the Nile Perch people who want the lake to themselves so that they can drift, with no trouble,” Kayanda adds. 

He says that with many mukene fishermen on the lake, the big fish players cannot drift over large swathes of the lake uninterrupted. Drifting is difficult if not impossible, as mukene fishermen cut nets of anyone disrupting their own fishing. Indeed, this has been the source of friction and harassment of people like Musitwa and the majority at Buyange Island.  

Moses Kabuusu, the Member of Parliament for Kyamuswa County in Kalangala, a constituency that includes Bubeke Sub-county, revealed that many of the fishermen arrested alongside Musitwa even admitted to the trumped up charges against them, which made leaving jail difficult. 

FPU’s history on the Lake and its changing enforcement practices 

The cohort of mukene fishers from Bubeke were arrested under the FPU regime headed by Col Dick Kirya Kaija. For most of 2023, the UPDF would arrest fishers from their homes, have them charged in either Kalangala, Kampala, Mbale or Masaka, which often meant being far away from anyone that could stand surety or even bring food to the prisoner. 

“That is why I did my best to borrow and sell everything I could to make sure I left jail before being moved out of Kalangala,” says Musitwa, who spent a month in prison.    

Luckily, Kabuusu says the new FPU team under Lt Col Mercy Tukahirwa was doing things differently. Now the remaining concern is the UPDF’s inconsistence in applying fishing standards and extortion of bribes from the fishing community. 

Lt Lauben Ndifula, the FPU spokesperson, disputes these allegations. She says the complaining fishermen are likely wrongdoers, released at the mercy of the solders enforcing standards on the lake.   

First mooted in November 2015, following a decision to disband the fish enforcement body from the Ministry of Agriculture, Animal Husbandry and Fisheries, the UPDF’s FPU was supposed to restore sanity on lakes so that fish stocks could increase. Increased stocks would ensure full factory capacity returns to a time when annual export receipts from fish and its products stood at $400 million (Ush1.5 trillion). 

At the time of the FPU’s formation, Uganda’s export receipts stood at $150 million (Ush570.5 billion). The figure stood at $140 million in 2023. This means that despite the UPDF’s human rights violations against the fishing community, stocks and export receipts have not changed significantly over the last eight years. 

However, according to Kayanda, the Fisheries Director at LVFO, an organisation that coordinates East African partner states in the development of fisheries and aquaculture, the one advantage of the UPDF on the lake is that they can prevent their colleagues from fueling trade in immature fish.

“Senior army officers used to help in the cross-border trade of immature fish and the civilian force could never have stopped them,” says Kayanda. 

According to the 2022, Lake Victoria hydro-acoustic survey, through which LVFO measures fish stocks, there were 736,683 tonnes of Nile Perch in Lake Victoria. The report also noted that the size structure of Nile Perch in Lake Victoria was dominated by the smaller sizes.

“This could be attributed to concentrating fishing efforts on big size,” reads an excerpt from the report. 

When compared to the 2021 survey, the Nile Perch stocks were 34 percent lower, with the highest reduction registered in Tanzania, while Uganda registered a slight increase.  

Despite a slight increase in the fish stocks on Uganda’s side of Lake Victoria, Kabuusu, observes that it has not been adequate as evidenced by the low export receipts, under capacity production of fish factories, and the regular complaints from the fishing community.

 He adds that the main explanation for Uganda’s failure to stabilise fish stocks is the arbitrariness that has characterised the FPU over the years. 

“If existing policies on fishing were implemented consistently, and with uniformity, certainly fish stocks would have already come back,” says Kabuusu. 

Since its establishment, FPU has been managed by three different regimes, starting with the first one under Lt James Nuwagaba, who made himself a name as one of the most brutal enforcers of fishing standards. 

Lt Nuwagaba would reportedly only report to the President and ignored every other leader whether minister, Member of Parliament or local government.   

“He and the soldiers under him had the latitude to do many things, including using torture and brutality,” Kabuusu says, “They scared, scarred, crippled, and even killed. They shot at people and nobody was questioned.”

Led by Rebecca Kadaga, the Speaker of Parliament between 2016 and 2021, parliamentarians demanded accountability from the UPDF but this did not stop the torture of fishermen by the team under Lt Nuwagaba. 

Since the executive did nothing to hold FPU under Lt Nuwagaba accountable, the NRM was punished at the polls. 

“Most of the NRM Members of Parliament lost the elections because of the failure to intervene when the army officers were violating rights of people,” Kabuusu says. 

“In my constituency, I was out of Parliament, I found people with wounds from live ammunition and others had been killed by boats.”

The executive finally listened to the people’s cry and replaced Lt Nuwagaba, who had been FPU boss since January 2017, just before the 2021 general elections.

According to the fishing community, Lt. Col. Dick Kaija did bring some sanity to the FPU’s work around controlling illegal fishing. 

“There was no burning and torching of houses like it was in the Nuwagaba era, but still, he failed to stop his people from taking money from the fishermen,” says Kabuusu. 

Coupled with the extortionist tendencies was the decision to arrest and hold fishermen far away from home—in Mbale, Masaka and Kitalya, among other places. Kaija’s other challenge was that the other officers with whom he had been appointed had too much power and would ignore him. 

“I cannot fault Lt. Colonel Dick Kaija, but you would even wonder if his team was actually under his command,” Kabuusu explains, “It was common to find junior staff at the rank of captain that didn’t take orders from their senior commander.” 

New mukene fishing rule

Kaija has since been replaced with Lt. Col. Mercy Tukahiirwa, under whom cases of arresting people in the night and holding them in far-flung places have reduced. 

However, the fishing community say the corruption and enforcement of policies that favour those fishing Nile Perch, still exists. They cite the case where the FPU connived with the Association of Fishers and Lake Users Uganda (AFALU) to convince the Minister of State for Fisheries to pass a law that makes fishing mukene unprofitable.   

At the beginning of the year, Hellen Adoa, the Minister of State for Fisheries announced a review of the fishing methods of mukene from hurry-up method to chota-chota method. 

Lt. Ndifula, the FPU spokesperson, explains that the hurry-up method, banned in February 2024, applies a long net that can cover up to 100 metres in length and with a depth that can go up to between nine and fifteen panels. 

“It is long and they have been using them. When they are doing the fishing, they pull that net and you find the mesh size is about 5, 6 millimetres,” says Ndifula. The right mesh size for mukene is supposed to be between 8 and 10 millimetres, says Ndifula. 

Consequently, the Ministry of Agriculture, Animal Industry and Fisheries, decided to innovate backwards, and return the mukene fishing community to the more traditional chota-chota method. 

“With Chota chota design, a net is circular, cannot be long, as it is can be about 8 feet in length,” he says. 

Ndifula says the UPDF sampled ten boats of mukene in Kiyindi, Buikwe and found all types of fish. 

“We tried to count and you find that ten boats have come up with 3000 young Nile Perch and numerous tilapia,” Ndifula explains, noting that the UPDF found that mukene fishing was harming young tilapia and Nile Perch and compromising stocks on Lake Victoria.

Ndifula, however, notes that fishermen have told the UPDF enforcement team that chota-chota is primitive and dysfunctional in the current economic conditions. 

Additionally, Madi Ssebaduka, a mukene fisherman, says that it is the Ministry of Agriculture, Animal Husbandry and Fisheries working with its supporting agencies that taught fishermen to use the hurry-up method. Under the current economic circumstances, where one needs ten to 30 jerry cans of fuel to power a night of fishing, he adds, chota-chota is just impractical.

“It is like they have asked us to cut off one of our legs,” Ssebaduka says of the new regulations. 

The new regulations are not what the mukene fishing community needs, says Kayanda. Instead, it would be better for Uganda to encourage Mukene fishers to invest in equipment that takes advantage of the deeper parts of Lake Victoria. 

According to the Lake Victoria hydro-acoustic survey for 2022, Uganda has the highest mukene stocks owing to failure to adequately invest in deeper water fishing technologies.  Unlike Kenya, Uganda also has a large section of Lake Victoria and this has helped in safeguarding mukene stocks. Since Tanzania, with the biggest portion of Lake Victoria has lower than Uganda’s mukene stocks, size is not the only explanation.

On most complaints, made by AFULU, which include that the Mukene fishing community uses solar lights to allegedly chase Nile Perch to Kenya and Tanzania, Kayanda says these same technologies are employed in all the countries that share Lake Victoria. 

Kayanda says instead of forcing mukene fishers to cut on their capacity, encouraging deeper fishing and penalising those found fishing close to the lakeshores where breeding happens, would be a better option.

It is 7:00pm July 14, 2022. Despite the onset of darkness, hundreds of students are moving on all university roads, chanting their candidates’ names. On the road from Livingstone Hall to Mitchell Hall alone, about 10 bands draped in different colours of different political parties, are singing all tribes of names and sounds. Kadodi (the Gishu traditional dance) is the most dominant.

Suddenly, there is gloom. News is circulating that at Northcote, a student has been stabbed. Minutes later, it is confirmed that Betungura Bewatte, a Uganda Christian University student, has succumbed to the stabbing. Betungura had studied at Mbarara High School with Tukamushaba Justus, the Forum for Democratic Change party candidate in the Students’ Guild presidential race. He had joined the campaign trail to support his friend.

His death is an unprecedented disaster. The Student Guild election campaigns at Makerere had always been peaceful. The final campaign day was always like a mega festival with students giving a final push of support for their candidates. Even students (like Betungura) from other universities, most of whom were close associates of candidates, youths, and politicians, from political parties all joined the campaign trails.

But on this day, all students are engulfed by a mixture of shock and fear. The public is outraged and the incident is immediately politicised.

As different camps blame each other for the incident, police swing into action arresting even those that helped take Betungura to hospital. The nation is looking to the University Management for answers.

At about 11:00pm, four hours after news of Betungura’s death, the University Council chairperson, Lorna Magara, releases a letter with three directives. The ongoing election is suspended indefinitely; the Students’ Guild is also suspended with immediate effect (this includes the Guild caretaker government and the Students Common Room (leadership of residential halls); and lastly, Management will investigate the cases of violence in the electoral campus and report to the council for appropriate action. 

The writing is on the wall: the university management is going to teach students a lesson.

Alionzi Lawrence alias Dangote, the National Unity Platform (NUP) candidate, was poised to win the election (he eventually becomes Guild President after the resumption of the electoral exercise). A sensational campaign song composed by his team had taken social media by storm. What did the death of Betungura Bewatte mean in terms of freedoms at the University? “Everything, everything changed,” Alionzi responded in his quintessential Lugbara accent when I asked him early this year as I did interviews for this story.

Prof Jude Sempebwa, the General Secretary of Makerere University Academic Staff Association (MUASA), would later tell me the same thing.

Following Ms Lorna Magara’s letter, student representatives were kicked out of the University Council and removed from the caretaker government. The caretaker government was the temporary student leadership that existed during election time. 

On July 29, 2022, two weeks after the University Council suspended the Guild, the students decided to form a select committee to push for the restoration of the Students’ Guild. The first meeting was held on Google Meet. This is where the concerned students chose the select committee representatives.  The meeting was held on a Friday. The following Monday, August 1, 2022, Namwoza Sulaiman, a third-year student of Medicine and Surgery and Speaker of Lumumba Hall who convened that meeting, was suspended.  “It is alleged that you made resolutions tantamounting to misinforming fellow students as well as directing the University Council to reinstate the student Guild, senior common room, and all student leadership structures,” reads part of the suspension letter he received from Vice Chancellor. 

Kabulwa Muzafalu, a student of Journalism and the host of ‘Out Of The Box’ X Space was also threatened severally by the University Management for hosting controversial discussions about the university. He received messages and phone calls from senior officials including from the Vice Chancellor’s office warning him against conducting certain discussions or hosting certain critical voices on his X Space. These senior officials even contacted his lecturers to further exert pressure. But his lecturers defended him saying hosting controversial discussions was a central part of the journalism they were teaching him. 

After the suspension of Sula, as he was commonly known, I took over the leadership of the select committee. I had been its spokesperson. Along with Luyomba Kelvin, the General Secretary to the committee, and other concerned students, we decided to come up with more creative but less risky ways to voice the students’ concerns. 

We organised prayers at the university’s Freedom Square, and invited heads of the Anglican, Catholic and Islamic faiths at the university to lead the prayers. The prayers were fairly attended by students. The Reverends and the Iman did not attend. The following day, the warden of Mitchell Hall, where I was residing, called me to his office.

He seemed to have grown fond of me as one of the disciplined but influential student leaders. Our interactions were always warm. But on this occasion, I saw a different man—he looked worried and had no time for the usual pleasantries. Instead, immediately I entered, he pulled out a letter from the drawer of his desk. It was a warning letter – the last warning! There had been a few warnings before over student organizing related activities. But this time, I was being warned for organising prayers!

The famous Freedom Square was no longer free. Even before the incident of the student’s death, three Guild Presidential candidates had been struck out of the Guild Presidential race for holding what was termed an illegal assembly at Freedom Square. 

The Square was even fenced off. Students had to write to the office of the Deputy Vice Chancellor of Finance and Administration DVC F&A to access it. The three candidates had been punished for not following this procedure. 

One of the victims, Mwesigwa Mugambya Calvin was a tall, notable medical student, who enjoyed massive support. His efforts to petition the Vice Chancellor and the University Council came to naught.  He finally gave up and decided to back Alionzi, who had at the time stood for the post of Nsibirwa Hall chairman.

Aftermath of Bewatte’s death, the university did not only stop at the three directives. The university established the Student Constitutional Committee to come up with a new students’ Guild constitution. This new constitution would address students’ issues. The students opposed this move. They argued that a new Guild leadership ought to have been voted into power and charged with reviewing the constitution and then amendments could be made by a leadership with a legitimate and popular mandate. 

But the University Council went on with this committee. The committee was formed by law students, largely detached from the mainstream student leadership, who seemed excited about the idea of making a constitution, and whose other claim to this role were familial ties and connections to members of the university top management. 

For instance, the chair of that committee was a son to Dr Kiggundu Muhammad, former university Public Relations Officer under Prof. Nawangwe. The young man had been a close friend. He had even called to consult me as to whether he should join the committee after administrators had called him and asked him to join. I discouraged him from standing against the students to extend the interests of the administration. I also told him that despite our friendship, I would lead the effort to oppose him and the entire scheme.

A few days after our conversation, he went ahead and took up the position. He is now an aide to Prof. Sarah Ssali, a member of the University Council, representing the Senate. Other members of that committee have since been awarded jobs in different university offices or placements for graduate studies for a job well done.

The committee came up with new changes, which included banning political parties at the university campus, putting the Dean of Students at the centre of organising the student elections, thereby taking power from the students, banning first-year students from standing for any Guild leadership positions, among others. 

The state of political rights and the capacity of students to express themselves at the university was never the same again.

On June 23, 2022, a week after the death incident, Makerere University held the annual Frank Kalimuzo memorial lecture in celebration of the former Vice Chancellor’s contribution and sacrifice towards academia in Uganda.

Dr Kalimuzo had been the first indigenous Vice Chancellor of Makerere University appointed by President Apollo Milton Obote. Shortly, after his appointment, Idd Amin overthrew Obote in January 1971. Amin’s leadership would be characterised by abductions and extra-judicial killings. 

In 1972, Kalimuzo would be picked up by security personnel never to be seen alive again. Other academics including Mahmood Mamdani, Robert Serumaga, George Kanyeihamba, and Dan Nabudele, would escape into exile. Some joined political groupings that later kicked Amin out of office. The Obote II government provided a short sigh of relief but later relapsed.

The 1986 capture of power by the National Resistance Army under Yoweri Museveni promised a new dawn. For academics, it was a time to flourish. This culminated in the hosting of a continental conference on academic freedoms in 1990 that resulted into the Kampala Declaration.

The Cold War had ended thereby marking a new epoch in the trajectory of African states. As decolonisation had spread through much of the continent, the struggle against apartheid was underway. The likes of Mamadou Diouf, Mahmood Mamdani, Arthur Mafeje, and other African intellectuals wrote about this new trajectory in their works such as the Academic Freedom in Africa that emerged from the declaration. In this sense, Uganda was hoisted as the centre of intellectual freedom on the continent.

The process that sought to establish a new national consensus was initiated. Consultations on the aggregate aspirations of the citizens were in high gear. In 1995, a new constitution was promulgated. While academic freedoms were not exclusively defined, they were provided for in the broader provisions like Article 29 on the right of expression and Article 30 on the right to education. 

But shortly things started changing. 

End of Part I

How Makerere erased our freedoms – Part 2