We are detaining our best people to death
These things have been documented. The illegal arrests. The safe houses. The bodies that come back from custody speak of bruises. We know what is happening. Uganda knows what is happening. The question is whether we have decided to look away.
By Robert Maseruka
On April 8, 2026, Mrs Edith Katende Mufumbiro lost her battle with cancer. She died with dignity. She died with courage. She died, we are told, the way good people do surrounded by those who loved her. Sadly her anchor, her husband, was not by her side.
Alex Waiswa Mufumbiro, Deputy Spokesperson of the National Unity Platform, sat in a cell while his wife took her last breath. He had asked to go to her. The request was denied. He had asked for bail. The courts were in no hurry. They never are, not for people like us.
There is a word for this. It is not inefficiency. It is not a backlog. It is cruel. Administered slowly. Deliberately. With the full authority of a state that has learned to use procedure as punishment.
This is not one man’s tragedy. It is a pattern with a long and ugly history. Kizza Besigye has been in detention for so long that his health is now a concern, a man who ran for the presidency of this country four times. Who stood before millions and said, I believe Uganda can be better. That brave Ugandan is sick. That brave Ugandan is deteriorating. And the state that holds him has not answered a single serious question about his condition.
We are told the courts are processing his case. We are told that due process is being followed. But due process does not take this long unless someone wants it to. Delay is a sentence. Detention without conviction is punishment. Torture, whether physical or psychological, does not require a confession to count. Aren’t we the same people who were refused access to hold a mass to pray for him?
These things have been documented. The illegal arrests. The safe houses. The bodies that come back from custody speak of bruises. We know what is happening. Uganda knows what is happening. The question is whether we have decided to look away.
The judiciary is not broken. Let us be precise about that.
A broken system produces random outcomes. This system produces consistent ones. Opposition figures wait in cells for months. Bail applications are heard slowly, ruled on reluctantly, or ignored entirely. Meanwhile, the same courts move with surprising efficiency when the state needs them to.
That is not dysfunction. That is design. When a man cannot hold his dying wife’s hand because a court will not grant him leave, that court has made a political choice. And when the same court denies the same man a chance to go and bury his wife, then that court has failed to work for the good of its people. When a former presidential candidate wastes away in detention without trial, that detention is a political instrument. Call it what it is.
Uganda’s constitution guarantees the right to a fair and speedy trial. It guarantees the right to human dignity. It prohibits torture. It prohibits cruel and degrading treatment. These are not suggestions. They are the foundation upon which everything else is supposed to stand.
That foundation is cracked. And we cannot keep burying our dead, cannot keep burying our principles and calling it governance. Edith Katende Mufumbiro deserved a better farewell. Her husband deserved to give it to her. That he couldn’t is heartbreaking.
The world may not be watching. But we are here. We see it. And we must say so, loudly, clearly and without apology. Justice does not whisper. Neither should we.
Hon. Robert Maseruka is the MP-elect for Mukono South in Mukono district, and member of National Unity Platform (NUP).
