PREVIEW
Kampala's lobbying campaign for tariff relief collides with mounting scrutiny of its treatment of the opposition
The admission of Kizza Besigye, the leader of the opposition Forum for Democratic Change, to an intensive care unit in a Kampala hospital after collapsing unconscious during a court appearance related to treason charges against him could become another public relations disaster for President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni.
‘He is unconscious, unable to speak, and unresponsive even to a pain stimulus,’ his wife, Winnie Byanyima, who heads the UN's agency tackling HIV and Aids (UNAids), wrote on X. The gravity of Besgiye’s condition – he has looked increasingly frail during recent hearings in court – should be a concern to Museveni’s government.
Besigye has been in prison after being abducted by Ugandan agents from an apartment in Riverside, an affluent suburb of Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, in November 2024, with the complicity of the Kenyan authorities (Dispatches, 17/12/24, Keeping Martha Karua out of court).
Should the condition of the opposition leader, formerly Museveni’s personal doctor, worsen, his maltreatment by the state will make it hard for the international community to ignore the rising tide of rights abuses. Activists across East Africa, who have formed a formidable campaigning network covering state political repression in Uganda, Tanzania and Kenya, have already redoubled their efforts (AC Vol 67 No 3, Opposition solidarity goes regional).
In recent months, Museveni has hired two K-Street lobbying firms to press for Uganda to resume tariff and quota free trade under the United States African Growth and Opportunity Act, and to kickstart broader economic relations with the Trump administration.
Though some in the Trump White House appears to be receptive to this, there is pushback from Capitol Hill. Jim Risch, the Republican chairman of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee has lambasted the Museveni regime’s repression of opposition forces during the January general elections which he dismissed as a ‘hollow exercise’ (Dispatches, 20/6/26, Museveni hires US lobbyist for tariff relief and AGOA return as alarms ring over Muhoozi succession).
Besigye has repeatedly been denied access to his legal counsel and kept in poor condition in prison. The unveiling of a statue of Yonatan Netanyahu who was killed during the Entebbe hostage rescue mission 50 years ago, is unlikely to sway opinion in the US. Yonatan was the older brother of Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Presiding over the ceremony, Uganda's army chief General Muhoozi Kainerugaba, who is accused of serial rights abuses against oppositionists, said the monument honoured Yonatan Netanyahu’s courage and selfless service, underlining the Museveni government’s close and covert ties with Israel.
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