Five days after being detained by the Tanzanian police for ambiguous reasons, Agather Atuhaire, a Ugandan lawyer, was finally released from jail last week. At the border crossing between the two nations, she was unceremoniously dumped.
Although Atuhaire’s condition is still unknown, a statement from the organization she works for as well as a statement from Kenyan activist Boniface Mwangi allege that she was tortured. After being dumped at the Kenya-Tanzania border the previous day, he himself displayed signs of physical abuse.
The ordeal of Atuhaire and Mwangi has been a painful reminder of how underdeveloped democracy has become in the area. With little opportunity for recovery, people who are organizing to fight against state excesses have been increasingly confronted with structural and physical abuse.
A small group of regional activists and political figures flew into Tanzania to show solidarity with Tundu Lissu, the opposition’s leader. Lissu is facing treason charges for allegedly making comments at a political rally, with the most serious being treason.
However, Lissu is not the only person facing reprisals for political behavior in the area. According to the same theory, organizing and leading opposition in the country’s neighboring Uganda amounts to treason, Kizza Besigye, the leader of the opposition, is facing the same charges.
The country is still bereft of the 2024 anti-finance bill protests in Kenya. Protesters and youth activists have evolved into the country’s unofficial political opposition in the absence of a well-organized political opposition, which is hampered by frenetic horse-trading and deal-making.
During the protests last year, which resulted in at least 82 deaths, the youth were the victims of political violence. Despite President William Ruto’s claim that the contrary, protesters were kidnapped and abducted after the demonstrations, and activist groups claimed that some people are still missing.
People in Burundi continue to live in fear of war with its expansionist neighbors and continue to live in the shadow of police excesses.
Several opposition figures who attempted to challenge President Paul Kagame were detained in Rwanda on various charges. The Democratic Republic of the Congo’s neighbor is perpetually at war with political crisis.
How did this situation arise, then? The simplest response is that we allowed ourselves to associate democracy with malice, and that those who hold the power benefited from that false belief. Real democracy requires round-the-clock vigilance, and building strong democratic systems is much more challenging than holding elections every four or five years.
Strong local government, transparent political parties, institutional accountability, and participation, all of which have been on the decline in the area in the last two decades, are necessary for a meaningful democracy.
Due to the capitulation of legislatures and the “naomba serekali” (“I am asking for the government”) approach to politics, power has remained firmly rooted in the executive.
Parliaments are empowered by a popular vote’s legitimacy, but they repeatedly veto the executive. Evidence of this  can be easily found in the region’s women’s office experience.
The issue begins within political parties, where candidates must kowtow to a kingpin in order to be allowed to appear on the ballot, as noted in a 2018 book, Where Women Are: Gender and the 2017 Kenyan General Election, which I co-edited. Those who don’t frequently miss competitive election cycles are excluded. Women’s participation in electoral politics has decreased as a result of the shrinking democratic space, with the exception of constitutional quotas.
In contrast, parties have developed the skill of managing gender perceptions as a diversion from actual change, reducing debates about democracy to regular voting. Therefore, Samia Suluhu’s presidency in Tanzania is not a sign of a democratic revival but rather of a political system that chose the least contestable candidate to allow Chama Cha Mapinduzi to continue as president. Similar to how well-represented women are in Rwanda’s parliament, the ruling party’s ability to pick candidates with lower oppositional biases is not in itself indicative of gender progress.
Once these candidates are smuggled into the legislature more dependent on their political ally than on the electorate as they are laundered through the political party system. Whether the kingpin is in the opposition or the government, this is the case.
Because their party kingpin has since struck a deal with Ruto and blind obeisance is the only guaranteed way to power in this system, opposition candidates like Edwin Sifuna, who vehemently defended the rights of protesters during the June 2024 protests, have become tongue-tied in Kenya in 2025.
Politicians are silenced in Tanzania due to arrests, detentions, and disappearances of state critics in Uganda and Tanzania. The end result is that elections turn into performances with little impact in the long run.
This is not a problem unique to East Africa, according to a quick analysis of global politics. Similar issues are arising in the United States, particularly as a result of careerist politicians’ evisceration of the Republican Party and the Tea Party Party.
However, the recent events demonstrate that the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency’s unwavering and blind loyalty to the dictates of the state is a source of risk for East Africa. The current US administration aims to incorporate this trait into its operations.
The long-term solution to this situation is for ordinary people to become more engaged in localized democratic practices, elevating the standard of political behavior. This can be challenging when people are merely attempting to survive a hostile political and economic environment, but in the long run it opens up new avenues for civic engagement.
More people take more active roles in the governance of civic institutions like schools, hospitals, trade unions, cooperatives, neighborhood associations, and even sports and social clubs, making them more democratic in ways that can be immediately connected to their quality of life.
Elections are then the culmination of four or five years of regular democratic operations, not a separate process that hovers above the commons.
Additionally, East African legislators have the responsibility to find their voice and purpose. Their primary concern isn’t the development of political careers or political survival. Their mandate is to uphold the constitution’s integrity, rein in the excesses of the executive, and to defend the people who elected them.
Meanwhile, we as a people should follow the advice of Nigerian public intellectual Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem to “don’t agonize, organise” and work tirelessly to rebuild East Africa’s democracy.
Source: Aljazeera
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