Uganda Law Society President Isaac Semakkade’s Remarks on Aloikin Praise and Criminalization of Free Speech
Agora X- Space on 6.10.2026
Transcribed by: Muhwezi Joshua Lawel
Human Rights are a site of battle
First, I want to correct an impression I heard from some of the panelists, especially those who go to law school and find this depressing reality that rights as written are different from rights in action. That is not uniquely a Ugandan problem; that’s the nature of constitutionalism in post-colonial states like ours, which did not emerge naturally.
So, the true position to take is to acknowledge that human rights are a battle. The very concept of human rights that we have and the Bill of Rights arises from two world wars that the oppressor class fought amongst themselves in the global North. Even the idea of human rights in America is a contestation; it’s a battle, it has always been, and therefore human rights are a site of battle.
It is not as presented in class, perhaps for the sake of elementary understanding, that it’s a tree shade that is there; no, it’s a tree shade that someone wants to cut away, and there’s a constant battle of ‘omuti’ogwo ngenda gutema wo: tojja gutema, nnja gutema tojagutema, ngutemye, nkukubye and so on and so forth’
You can use the example of forest cover. We inherited this earth in a way that forest cover was massive; look at how much forest cover is there now and the contestation by those who understand climate change, the length to which they are willing to go to battle for its preservation of earth and biodiversity. So there’s no such thing as human rights entitlements that we are supposed to receive as switch on the lights and the light comes on; the bus stops: vilamu waali (I’m getting out from there), that understanding of human rights is wrong. Human rights should be conceptualized as a battle. In fact, in Uganda, this human rights journey is an experiment of the last 30 years, and for a long time they have been stale
On Article 33 – Women’s Rights
Recently, I was discussing a right called Article 33, women’s rights. I have always argued with women lawyers about what that thing does in the constitution. It sounded nice when they were putting it, but even the women themselves violate it. A good example is Aloikin herself. She is a mother; she appeared before a magistrate. A magistrate (Winnie Nankya Esther), who probably has a master’s degree, even if she doesn’t have it, understands the Children’s Act requires that, when a woman, because it says in Article 33 (3), all of us shall treat women as being a special category of rights holders because they carry certain maternal factors, maternal responsibilities, privileges. So the first thing a woman appears in a dock, you ask is, are you a mother? Is there a child involved? And if there’s, you turn guns on a prosecutor and ask what is a mother doing here. Article 33 is supposed to be a site of battle. I don’t see a battle, even in the women. The same Nankya didn’t ask Dr. Bireete. Dr Bireete’s lawyers didn’t think it was a point. Everybody doesn’t think it’s a point. The whole thing has become stale.
On Elite Bargain
There’s something called elite bargain that doesn’t seem to enter our discourse here.
But it should be very clear that in every society, there arises what we call an elite. And the elite bargain amongst themselves a certain status quo. In which certain violations will be minimized, diminished; they will look away. If they offer any descent, they will offer it silently in the back door.
And you will hear this a lot, some people saying that for us we are not like Agather, but it’s not like we are doing nothing; we are talking, we are doing something, about this man, silently, quietly, and they are out to convince you that that’s something honorable.
I think the most recent example is that of this young boy who wants to join the gov’t, Raymond Mujuni. He has made a bargain. It’s called the Faustian bargain. That’s part of the elite bargain. The main part of the elite bargain around speech is that the elite demand of the rest of us who are not in the elite class, from themselves and those whom they consider of lower rank: civility, caution, and compromise. Politeness, humility, meekness, niceness when dealing with authority.
They create a rule-based system that completely erodes things like human rights. Why do we have human rights in the constitution? It was a bargain between this government which wanted to enter international society, allow donors to come in. Donors insisted on this thing, which is why the constitution was promulgated on 8th October 1995. We ratified the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights in August, two months before. Basically, we had never considered these human rights as a serious thing. Someone insisted on it as a precondition for accepting our constitution and funding our budgets. In that case then, this criminalization of speech- I differ with Marvin; it’s not specifically a Muhoozi thing; this is how power operates in our current situation.
Most people who access power in Uganda accept it through a pipeline known as the mission school complex. They interacted with power in the English language, and therefore power was shown to them in a very dictatorial setting called a mission school. This denounces things like resistance and insists on things like civility, caution, and compromise when dealing with authority. This is exactly how a Vice Chancellor would react if they were called a cabbage. And I know this; I represented very many students for just free speech. So even in a University setting, literally every week, two weeks, at Makerere University, we used to be fighting back against students who were threatened. This is how a headmaster, a pastor in your church, an employer would react. This is something important to understand how freedom of expression gets to be criminalized.
On rights and rights discourse
Rights discourse as I said, should not be taken as a human a God given guarantee, its as a result of ruins of battle. We have as many rights as the last battle, so in terms of our situation normatively, rights mean nothing; we must ask ourselves how much awareness of rights exists even within ourselves. I have listened to a discussion here, and I have rarely heard it in many discussions about free speech in Uganda; there’s a case that is almost never mentioned, known as Mwenda & EAMI V AG, the case that nullified sedition.
Oftentimes I ask law students, law graduates, lawyers in practice to tell me what sedition is and they do not know. What are the translations in our languages? Sedition was an offence with four provisions: to insult and annoy the person of the president; to insult and annoy lawmakers; to insult those who work in courts, those who work in and around them, and bring their reputation into disrepute; to insult and annoy district administrations; of course, it has a colonial existence. And it goes all the way back; this is an offense they used in colonies and back in their England; I think it was called where they said you will not scandalize big people, you will respect them, you will regulate yourself around them.
It has since been brought back in different laws; our awareness is low, our advocacy for rights, sitting down, and saying, we are going to advocate for something is low. Everyone asks, ‘nfunila wa’, (how do I gain) what’s the purpose of extending rights; ownership of rights is low, and when there’s very low ownership, there can’t be the last aspect, confrontation. There won’t be battle.
On Aloikin and battle
Most of the battle for human rights tends to rest on two professions in law: the bar and the bench. You have to ask yourself in Uganda, do we have a fearless bar, or do we have a compliant bar, a bar that prioritizes civility, caution, and compromise? You realize that even when the state does battle, our responses tend to be very accommodative and not a battle formation because that’s how we understand our profession, but our profession is capable of being fearsome.
We blame judges a lot and everything, but without a fearless bar, you can’t have a fearless bench. Judges will choose comfort until you bring discomfort; trust me, no judges will sit in a court that is uncomfortable. No judge can rule as directed by some stranger when they have a present reality, but how do you create the kind of staff? Those are tactics.
The question is, how many people have the capacity to influence these legal end games if the process happens in court.
Now I don’t want to say that courts are valid instruments for expanding rights, they might have their challenges but if we are going to if we are going to operate outside court that brings me to society.
Does our society appreciate these moments? Does our society appreciate education? Does our society support these things? Does our society remember? Does our society have memory? Does our society invest in memory, or is it challenged in that way? or to use Lawel’s words, it yields agency and power to elite bargain. It is blanketed; it has a ceiling of its aspirations dictated by those who are least competent but are enjoying this elevated status.
I think, and here I want to make a comment, whenever these moments of criminalization of speech come up, it appears that the terminal point of our aspiration, the highest aspiration, we have is bail. And therefore, we tend to squander the moment of battle.
When you look at other countries where rights discourse has grown and rooted, they have understood how to utilize these contestations as a society; they have mobilized differently, and we need to start; we, the people on this call, need to start to have our own goals and objectives around these issues. Oftentimes it would be for those who least, who are least privileged. I think Aloikin has privilege; she has sureties, she has friends who want her out easily, and that’s her prerogative, but there are people who don’t have sureties; maybe they are foreigners, maybe those whose cases provide an interesting moment for battle.
The content of freedom of speech: the insult
I have not heard the insult thoroughly articulated, ventilated, probed, or its place in your contestation. For us at the Violence Academy, we have picked the Aloikin case as a moment to do a daily deep dive on the right to insult. This evening we have released a paper that I have co-authored with Senior Advocate Phillip Karugaba showing the place of the right to insult within the most accessible laws of Uganda.
The point is that we want to remove the gaslighting that the right to insult is criminal. But how do you do that if you don’t provide the information in a simple manner, so we have done our part?
For political purposes, in the case of this young lady, the soldier Muhoozi is not stupid; he understands that an insult is a weapon of political combat. Etymology means words; where does the word come from? It comes from the Latin word insulateli, to leap like maybe a crab and get on someone’s ear and stick.
An insult democratizes; it’s the unit of sovereignty; it’s the only thing you have as citizen. It’s a weapon; the general cabbage may have all the guns, but he doesn’t have the insult; that one is not in his armory. It’s in your armory.
I want to close on Aloikin’s case; this is a dicey area. Definitely, she has the potential to spark a national moment that can lift our collective resistance against misrule, but we owe her a duty to understand that there’s a history, ‘waliwo empeewo ezitambulila kubantu abo” (there are spirits that move around such people); some people are not spiritual; they might not understand it. She has the capacity to stand up and be brave, but it appears that our response cuts her to size, puts her where she has been before, and then we support the elites to continue. You will notice that Aloikin has not been charged with a speech offence; she has not been charged that you called Muhoozi a cabbage.
They are charging her with a regulatory offense which offers some form of protection against the person that has been shown level (the CDF).
So why, why are they arraigning her in court? If they know court is dangerous, that’s something I don’t see coming out. They are putting her in court because court, the court system, this whole police system; they are using it for what we call lawfare; they are using it to intimidate her and others; they are using it to crush her, and by the way, a lot of people they are using it for is the support they have because it can easily migrate; they are using it to even recruit. As you may know, some people like strong people; it’s not that they agree with ideas; they just say huhh, nze ayine emundu ennene wengwa” (I side with whoever has the big guns).
They are using it to achieve these goals of lawfare
Utilizing the dock
Now how do we use it? We are left with two options: when the state is using its institutions of law, its personalities of law, its laws for political purposes, we are left with two choices, either to normalize the injustice by providing civility, caution, and compromise, calling it procedure/formalism, “it’s what is done,” but that suppresses the resistance. It sucks and silences the resistance.
The other option we have is that we could conscientiously reject formalism and proceduralism, which would disrupt the system. Because the system is no longer used for proper purposes, it’s being used for immoral, wrong ends; if you don’t disrupt it, if you are supporting it, you are normalizing it. When you disrupt it, what happens is that some people won’t understand what you are doing, and that is radicalizing the base. By subverting the system
When you ask Aloikin to plead, and she makes a speech, she continues what she was saying on the video. Every time I have argued Aloikin, I have always made the case that the lawyers who represent her, kill her case because she is capable of telling the magistrate “komanyoko” and in that box they don’t add you additional charges, you are the king in that box and Aloikin’s legal representation today, has not taught her how to utilize the box because Aloikin is capable of being too big for the dock that they don’t bring her to the dock anymore and therefore she has a standing injunction and if Aloikin can did it others can did it too and so on and so forth. There’s a young man I really respect, Ibrahima Pressure 247. He has not been broken. He is out, back in, out, and continues where he stopped doing all these things.
There’s something about disruption. There is no one way of doing it, but in truth, it has to start to happen one way or the other. So this is the matter of engaging with the legal system, which does lawfare. How do you counter lawfare? Marvin has said there is a price to pay; there are things we must do to impart the spirit of resistance. We are in court now, and I don’t see them. We have done very well here in Agora in raising money for some things, but you know, continue raising money; raise money for bringing accountability to Namungoona police station. How can a Police station be unsafe? So yes, bail is good, and bail is automatic, but Namungoona is being forgotten, yet we can say Namungoona police station is the last place where such things happen. And say our generation won’t accept these things.
The government is creating a narrative, their narrative is that there has been a law broken, so what’s our narrative, the government now enjoys what we call narrative dominance and since it enjoys dominance, it can even escalate, for us we haven’t picked a narrative, the narratives I have seen here, are narratives of weakness, narratives of holding hands singing kumbaya yet the person actually at the dock is a dock is a hero. Is strong.
