I was annoyed and frustrated by the weekend news of the death of a national rugby player, Sydney Gongodyo Gyabi, 27. The levels of impunity in the graphic details of the gruesome events, are revolting. A mob allegedly comprised of mostly boda boda riders accused him of snatching a woman’s handbag.
Outnumbering him, they pounced. Indiscriminately they rained blows and kicks with one landing a well weighted plank of wood on his head several times. In the background, evil empty-headed people are heard praising the idiocy of the mob. Just like that, the Stanbic Black Pirates player was murdered. Gongodyo, who goes to his early grave today, became part of the statistics of victims of mob action. According to the Annual Crime Report of 2025 released by the Uganda Police, ‘in 2025, at least 950 cases of mob action were reported to the police.
Victims of mob action were largely individuals suspected of committing offences such as theft, robbery, murder, witchcraft, and burglary’. Yet not all cases, especially in the provinces, are reported to the police. So, the statistics could reflect a short landing. In some other cases, adultery, supporting a political rival or even a different English Premier League football team or getting involved in an accident with a boda boda may put one at the disposal of a mob.
The methods of the mob are not limited to just kicks and blows or hurling of projectiles. Many are forced into used car tires, doused with combustible liquid and burnt alive. Mob action is not always only against suspected criminals. In some cases criminal gangs use it to rob innocent victims in broad day light. They simply surround a victim, raise an alarm, snatch their property as they beat them up.
I have witnessed several cases of mob action; one case caught my eye. While walking in Mbuya, Nakawa Division, I found a hoodlum retreating from the circle surrounding what they called a ‘thief’. He was looking for another projectile to aim at the man in the middle. Curiously I asked who the ‘thief’ was. He said he did not know or care. I suggested that we call the police. He looked at me with contempt and said like most educated people, I Iooked intelligent but, was not street smart. He actually called me a fool. He wondered how I did not know that thieves had become a big problem and the police, plus the courts of law, were simply there to encourage them by releasing them on bail? ‘This, (pointing at a sizable rock) sorts it out once and for all!’ And before you could say ‘Rolls Royce,’ the rock had flown out of his hands into the circle where the so-called thief was wailing for his life.
The truth is that we all have a skewed approach towards crime and punishment. The mob is only angry when their personal property is under threat. They are not bothered by what happens to public property. Ironically, that is why many of the people who administer mob action, stand behind politicians who steal public funds. They vote them into office amidst chants of ‘our man, our man.’ They will even threaten not to vote for the President if he ‘touches’ their person and blame the police and the courts of being against one of their own. Because of this, those in charge are emboldened to abuse the power for their enrichment. Corruption increases and in turn negatively affects institutions of State plus service delivery.
Poor hospitals, roads, lack of water, electricity, on and on to the police and the justice system. Everything goes down and loses meaning. It becomes difficult to convince people that only a competent tribunal determines who a criminal is and what their punishment should be when the court system is visibly hapless. When social services shrink, the rights of individuals are eroded and they become angry, desperate and dehumanised. Just imagine a person who sees their child dying on a hospital bed because there is no doctor or oxygen and yet MPs are receiving vehicles running into billions of shillings and the corrupt are forgiven by the President. It teaches people to fend for themselves or die. This unfortunately includes enforcing their own version of justice in the face of crime and punishment.
Then you have all these policies that target the poor like removing them from cities without providing alternatives and sending them to the provinces that are rife with land grabbing. Or even many who go to school and end up frustrated on the streets without jobs joining the armies of the urban poor. We end up with angry people waiting to vent their rage at the slightest provocation. You see this even on social media. The mob behind the keyboards waiting to make false and unsubstantiated allegations against others in the most profane of languages.
Many times they even don’t bother to understand the issues at stake but comment on them to cause ridicule and even hatred without giving victims the benefit of doubt and right to reply. Gongodyo was living in such a world where angry and irrational people have collectively become violent institutions to deliver public services in ways that satisfy their egos. May his soul rest in eternal peace and his loved ones, especially his young family, and his parents, find fortitude.