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Last week, violent clashes broke out in Yumbe district over, of all things, pork.
It is a poorly kept national secret that many Ugandans treat this as a delicacy. Indeed, many lifelong friendships (not to mention marriages) and other abiding ties have been forged, and strengthened over the years, by a shared love for pork (and alcohol).
The Yumbe ‘disturbances’ were, therefore, inevitably designed to capture national attention. It transpired that the skirmishes were informed by an edict issued by a particular Muslim Sheikh – Kassim Abdallah – who had taken it upon himself to determine what meat could be consumed in that area.
It seems that he was particularly emboldened by the fact that many, if not most, people in that district are Muslims. In a video clip circulating on social media, Sheikh Abdallah says quite menacingly: ‘I sound it as a warning… there is no pork joint which will ever be here. We do not like it. This is our district. And it is a Muslim district. That is why you see … any leader coming here, he salams.
Even though he is not a Muslim. Because they know there is Islam here. Why do you roast pork here? … We do not want pork here … And we shall still knock them to death. No pork joint in Yumbe. This is a Muslim district … In our worship there is no pork joint.’
Fighting words, and deadly serious ones. Sheikh Abdallah lays claim to an entire district, based on demographic factors, and proceeds to lay down ‘law’ derived from religious dictates.
Now imagine if somehow this Sheikh had control of serious State power in Uganda. Would he not declare Uganda a Muslim country and proceed to generalize the ‘Yumbe declaration’ to all parts of the country?
The public response to Sheikh Abdallah’s pronouncements has been as might be expected – with broad condemnation across the board. Many people begun re-circulating an old video clip (which first surfaced a couple of years ago), in which President Museveni says: ‘If somebody has eaten pork, has he put it in your mouth? No, he has put it in his mouth. He has put it in his mouth. And you are rioting … disturbing peace. That somebody has put pork in his mouth? We shall teach you a lesson.’
Although an older statement, it is certainly a most fitting response to the ‘Yumbe incident’. Unfortunately, President Museveni has in the past himself been guilty of adopting more or less the same stance as that of Sheikh Kassim Abdallah.
Not too long ago, when Hon. Asuman Basalirwa and a broad coalition of persons and entities (many acting out of religious fervour) introduced a law penalizing sexual minorities in Uganda, Museveni offered his full support to that law on the basis that the behavior of the targeted groups was ‘disgusting’.
On another occasion, the President again expressed disgust at the sexual preferences of some Ugandans, arguing that ‘the mouth is for eating’. At yet another time, the Head of State (perhaps half-jokingly) case aspersions of a group he described as ‘those Banyankore who eat pork’.
Evidently, the President shares at a certain visceral level, the prejudice, animus – and hubris – exhibited by Sheikh Kassim Abdallah with regard to persons who do not share certain beliefs or choices of his.
And tragically, the President went along with the religious and populist mob which conspired, through law, to use criminal sanctions to humiliate and oppress an entire section of Ugandans who happen to express themselves sexually in a form the majority finds distasteful.
It was exactly this danger – of groups weaponizing religion and religiosity to transform their beliefs into public law and policy – that Article 7 was included in the 1995 Constitution.
This deceptively simple provision reads: ‘Uganda shall not adopt a State religion’. It is one of the shortest, if not the shortest provisions of the Constitution.
At the same time, it is one of the most critical ones for the maintenance of the freedoms and liberties which lie at the heart of that document. For the avoidance of all doubt, the provision does not say that Ugandans may not be religious.
Indeed, the right to freedom of religion (alongside other rights related to belief, conscience, expression and so on), is itself specifically protected under Article 29 of the Constitution.
Rather, Article 7 simply means that no religious community may use access to state power to foist their religious beliefs (and accompanying edicts, commands, prohibitions etc) onto other persons.
At the root of the provision is the simple notion of: ‘live and let live’. If you do not like pork, do not eat pork. If you believe the mouth is only for eating, by all means, only use it for eating.
What you cannot, constitutionally speaking, do is to then seek to regulate what others eat, and how they choose to use their various body parts.
This same notion – of respect for others (however few they might be in number or whichever other vulnerabilities they might exhibit) – is also expressed in, among other provisions, Articles 32 (which recognizes the historical discrimination suffered by minorities and other vulnerable communities); 36 (which secures the right of minorities to participate in decision-making) and 43 (which underscores the vision of Uganda as a free and democratic society).
The vision of Uganda articulated in the 1995 Constitution is of an open, free and democratic society, which tolerates all kinds of diversity. In which pork-eaters can live side by side with those for whom pork is anathema.
The Article 7 idea – to ‘live and let live’ – seems straightforward and almost incontrovertible. At the same time, this critical Article happens to be one of those provisions of the Constitution which is most observed in breach than in practice.
Indeed, the very tensions embedded in this aspiration to secularity, on the one hand, and the tendency towards overt religiosity (accompanied by an impulse to assert this over other persons) is reflected both in the national motto (‘For God and my country’) and the national anthem (many lines of which contain references to God).
This is not a tension we like to speak about, given its sensitivity – and the innate defensiveness (others might perhaps uncharitably say closed-mindedness) that many Ugandans have on this subject.
Nonetheless, if one scratched the surface even a little bit, and asked which ‘God’ is referenced in the anthem and motto, the responses would be uncomfortable. That God cannot be the same, in so far as the reality is that the various ‘Gods’ are in competition.
The God of the Yumbe Sheikh, for instance, strictly prohibits the consumption of pork and alcohol, among other things.
On the other hand, the Catholic and Anglican God (assuming this entity is one and the same, of which there is not a little theological doubt) seems to have a much more liberal view in this regard, evidencing absolutely no problem with either of these items.
Indeed, pork and beer are some of the most significantly consumed items during the annual martyrs’ day celebrations at Namugongo.
Matters are not helped by the fact that the God of the Seventh Day Adventists seems to also significantly frown upon pork (and perhaps beer. There is then the God of the Jehovah’s Witnesses who has very significant problems with blood transfusions of any kind – even to save life.
Certainly, there is a real question as to the identity of the God referenced in the motto and anthem – it being clear that the various Gods worshipped by various Ugandan groups are distinctly different, and by some indication quite hostile to each other.
It is for the purpose of somewhat avoiding these (admittedly difficult and uncomfortable) questions that the simple but critical idea of ‘live and let live’ is posited in Article 7. It is a call for basic humility, as a basis for co-existence.
And it is this basic humility which is increasingly lacking in the Ugandan public sphere. We are daily inundated with ‘Prayer Breakfasts’ – and other lavish displays of flagrant and forcefully communal religiosity – convened by public institutions with ever decreasing efforts to even pretend at ecumenism.
Unfortunately, these are even convened by institutions – such as the Judiciary of Uganda – which should know better, with the appearance even of ‘standing’ or ‘standby’ clerics such as Bishop Joshua Lwere (the good Bishop has so far officiated at the Judiciary Prayer Breakfasts held in November 2024, and in March, June and September 2025).
What message does it send, for instance, to a Muslim judicial officer, watching this blatant violation of Article 7 by the Judiciary itself? In so glaringly adopting a ‘Judicial religion’ (flying in the face of Article 7 of the Constitution) – of Christian (or more particularly Pentecostal) dent – is the Judiciary of Uganda any different from Sheikh Kassim Abdallah of Yumbe?
The ‘pork war’ of Yumbe – and the religious arrogance which occasioned it is an important reminder of an uncomfortable truth: that religion when inordinately instrumentalized in the public domain is one of the most clear and present dangers to individual freedoms and, indeed, community cohesion.
We must collectively hold fast to, and scrupulously respect, the letter and spirit of Article 7 of the Constitution. It is a call to humility. A reminder to treat our fellow citizens with basic respect and consideration.
As a country we have a strange obsession with what people eat, drink, wear, the ways in which they love (and unlove) and a whole host of other strange things. We are obsessed with mouths and other orifices – unfortunately at the cost of attention to a number of legitimately pressing matters of public concern.
The irony is that part of the downside of majoring in minors is that our already minor place in the international community of nations is further diminished. It was Donald Trump who not too many years ago referred to ‘shithole countries’ – of which Uganda was an obvious part.
In Trump Part 2, not only does Uganda continue to be effectively designated as a shithole country, it is also one of those ‘special’ countries chosen as to be the dumping ground for unwanted immigrants into the USA.
We cannot take our rightful place among the nations of the world if we continue to live up to the worst stereotypes about countries such as ours – as places where parochial concerns triumph over patriotism and principle, where one’s personal religion can determine the extent to which one can enjoy and exercise the rights which otherwise logically and naturally flow from citizenship.
If the ‘Yumbe pork affair’ is to teach us anything, it must be of the extreme danger of arrogant and reckless religiosity – the very danger which Article 7 sought to avert.
The writer is a senior lecturer and director of the Human Rights and Peace Centre (HURIPEC) at the School of Law, Makerere University, where he teaches Constitutional Law and International Law.
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