What is it about African strongmen and their pathological fear of ink and airwaves? The latest act in this dreary pantomime comes from Kampala, where Uganda’s army chief, General Muhoozi Kainerugaba, has ordered the shutdown of multiple media outlets. The official line: national security. The predictable response from Britain: a sternly worded condemnation, tutting from the Foreign Office, and a faint whiff of imperial nostalgia. But let us not indulge in the comfortable fiction that this is a simple story of tyranny versus liberty. It is also a story of decadence, of a West that has forgotten how to defend its own values, and of a continent where the rule of law remains a fragile ornament.
Let us first state the obvious: shutting down newspapers and broadcasters is the act of a despot, not a democrat. General Kainerugaba, son of President Yoweri Museveni, is clearly aping the heavy-handedness of his father’s long reign. The outlets in question, including the Daily Monitor and several radio stations, had been critical of the regime, particularly its handling of corruption and the ever-looming succession crisis. This is not about security; it is about silencing dissent. Britain’s condemnation, while welcome, rings hollow. After all, this is the same country that has cosied up to Museveni for decades, praising him as a “stabilising force” in the region while turning a blind eye to his authoritarian excesses. The moral calculus of foreign policy has never been a pretty sight.
But let us step back and consider the broader canvas. The assault on press freedom in Uganda is not an isolated incident. It is a symptom of a wider rot: the failure of the post-colonial state. Africa’s borders, drawn by the arbitrary pen of European cartographers, have given us nations that are often little more than holding companies for ethnic patronage. Museveni, like so many of his ilk, has maintained power by distributing spoils to his inner circle and cracking down on any who dare to question the arrangement. The press, in such a system, is not a public good but a threat. General Kainerugaba’s move is merely the latest chapter in a story that began with the first independent newspaper being suppressed in the 1960s.
What makes this particularly galling is the hypocrisy of the Western response. We tut and we cluck, we issue statements and impose symbolic sanctions. But we do little of substance. Why? Because we are decadent. We have lost the will to project power or to defend our values with conviction. The Victorians would have sent a gunboat. We send a tweet from the Foreign Office. The result is that strongmen like Kainerugaba have learned to ignore us. They know that our condemnations are theatre, designed to placate domestic audiences rather than to effect real change. The fall of Rome was not marked by barbarians at the gates but by the slow erosion of civic virtue and the complacency of its elites. We are living through that same process.
There is, however, a more uncomfortable truth: the Ugandan public is not entirely blameless. In a functioning democracy, a crackdown on the press would provoke mass outrage. Yet in Kampala, life goes on. The markets remain open, the traffic jams continue, and the biggest scandal is usually a footballer’s infidelity. This is the quiet complicity of the apolitical. It is the same phenomenon we saw in the dying days of the Roman Republic, where the plebs traded liberty for bread and circuses. The Ugandan government has long provided its own version: land grants, military contracts, and a thriving informal economy that keeps people just fed enough to stay quiet. Freedom of the press is an abstract ideal when your children are hungry.
What is to be done? The British are right to condemn, but they must go further. Targeted sanctions against the general and his cronies would sting. A freeze on assets held in London, a ban on travel to the UK. These are not dramatic measures, but they would signal that we are serious. More importantly, we must stop propping up regimes that pay lip service to democracy while crushing dissent. If Uganda’s state visits are attended with full honours, then we have no moral ground to stand on. The Victorians understood that empire required a certain ruthlessness when it came to defending civilisation. We, in our decadence, have forgotten that defending liberty requires similar fortitude.
In the end, the shutdown of Uganda’s media outlets is a reminder that history does not move in a straight line. It circles, it stumbles, it repeats. The strongman’s boot on the throat of the press is a timeless image. The question is whether we in the West have the stomach to do anything about it. So far, the answer has been a resounding no. And that, dear reader, is the real tragedy.
