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Countless times, the 1995 Constitution, which, according to the last paragraph of the preamble, we supposedly did ‘solemnly adopt, enact and give to ourselves and our posterity’ in 1995,” is invoked in courtrooms, speeches and headlines, usually as a measure of compliance of all events such as elections, policing, or exercising power.
Consider, for example, the violence characterising our election cycles that concerningly has also began to feel normal. These developments leave a quiet discomfort — a feeling that something basic is no longer holding together.
A few unanswered questions crossed my mind: do the people wielding power in these moments see the situation through the same lens — the constitutional and human rights framework — at all?
Do they genuinely believe in the supremacy of the Constitution and the primacy of human rights? If they do not, what exactly emboldens them? Is it simply that they believe they will get away with it — perhaps because they have before?
Or is it something deeper: that the constitutional order itself does not command shared conviction, even among those tasked with upholding it? And what about the citizens on the receiving end of this violence?
Do they fully appreciate the power they hold, not just as voters, but as constitutional authors and sovereigns? Or have they come to see rights as privileges, granted or withdrawn at the discretion of those in authority?
What if the problem is not only that the Constitution is being broken, but that it is not truly believed in? This raises another uncomfortable question: did Ugandans truly give themselves the 1995 Constitution?
Or have we been operating within a constitutional script that was never fully owned by the people it claims to govern? We are often told that the Constitution was the product of wide consultation, born out of a desire to break with a troubled past.
That may be true at one level. But scholars have long pointed to the other possible realities of this Constitution. Dr Busingye Kabumba has variously examined this tension directly, among others in his article “The Illusion of the Ugandan Constitution,” (2012) arguing that the Constitution often functions more as a symbol than as a real restraint on power.
In other public reflections, he has gone further to call the 1995 Constitution “a book of lies”— not because it lacks good language, but because its promises are repeatedly contradicted by political practice.
Kabumba’s critique points to a deeper truth about constitutions: they are political settlements, shaped by power at the time they are made, in which ambiguities are often deliberate.
While constitutions help secure agreement, they can also leave room for power to be quietly consolidated over time. If this is so, what are the chances that what we see today may not be a sudden betrayal of the Constitution, but the slow unfolding of choices made long ago?
What if these were not accidents of drafting? What if some of the contradictions we now lament about were deliberately designed to serve a particular political moment — one that has long since passed, but whose architecture remains intact?
If that is the case, then perhaps the current developments are not deviations from the constitutional order, but rather its logical maturation. As it is, constitutionalism in our context feels like something we only perform rather than something we live.
If Uganda is to imagine a future that works, perhaps we must begin not with answers, amendments, or (I dare say) elections, but with honest inquiry. With the courage to ask whether we have ever truly constituted ourselves — and if not, what it would take to do so, openly and together.
The writer is a doctoral researcher at the Centre for Human Rights, University of Pretoria, where he doubles as manager of the Litigation and Implementation Unit.
kilbrandonjose4@gmail.com
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