Uganda’s legal and academic communities are facing a severe dilemma over whether to challenge military overreach in court, amid warnings that the judiciary has become a primary tool for legitimising authoritarian rule.

According to Ugandan constitutional lawyer Jude Byamukama, mounting legal challenges against state overreach has become dangerous because the country’s captured courts increasingly give systemic illegalities an official stamp of approval. This warning follows the recent closure of the Daily Monitor and NTV Uganda by the Chief of Defence Forces, General Muhoozi Kainerugaba, who demanded all news stories be cleared by his office.

Byamukama argued that focusing solely on the media shutdown misses the deeper, judicially-sanctioned militarisation of the entire state apparatus.

“Increasingly, we are even worried that mounting legal challenges may instead result in a situation where existing legalities receive a stamp of approval from the judiciary,” Byamukama cautioned, noting that the courts have routinely failed tests on basic constitutional rights like mandatory bail for political prisoners.

According to Byamukama, the Ugandan Constitutional Court directly enabled this environment last year by dismissing a challenge against President Yoweri Museveni appointing active military officers to top civilian roles. As a result, soldiers now legally run public services, road construction, and immigration, completely inverting the constitutional clause that subordinates the army to civilian leadership.

The current media crisis also fulfills a historic irony for the region. Byamukama pointed out that the Daily Monitor was originally shut down years ago for publishing a “prophetic” leak exposing a plot to install Kainerugaba as his father’s successor. Decades later, that same son has assumed de facto presidential authority, using his military rank to silence the very station that predicted his rise.

–ChannelAfrica–