Last month, Cameroon lost one of its leading opposition political leaders when Anicet Ekane died in custody on December 1, 2025. Ekane, born in the 1950s, led the MANIDEM party, contested for the presidency in 2004 and 2011, and spent decades demanding democratic reform. Yet he died without trial, amid allegations of inadequate medical care, legal isolation, and state neglect. Uganda needs to pay attention, because today Dr Kizza Besigye, a man of similar political generation and stature, is in a dangerously familiar place. Like Ekane, Besigye was also born in the 1950s. Like Ekane, he has spent decades pushing for democratic change through organised political struggle rather than violence.
From PAFO to Reform Agenda, to the Forum for Democratic Change and now the People’s Front for Freedom , he has been the most consistent challenger of state power in Uganda since 2001 through mass mobilisation, legal petitions and non-violent protest. His party describes his condition as critical. The prisons service downplays it. But what cannot be denied is that Besigye’s health deterioration did not begin this year but traces back across years of tear gas, pepper spray, beatings during arrests, long detentions, and repeated siege operations around his home in Kasangati.
Those incidents damage the body slowly and prison merely accelerates the poor health. Ekane died waiting for justice. Besigye risks being dragged through endless legal processes despite a Supreme Court ruling against trying civilians in military courts. The question Ugandans must ask is simple: Do we want to wake up to international headlines announcing that Besigye has died in custody, while we argue for weeks about who is to blame? And Besigye is not alone. According to the National Unity Platform, many agents and supporters were arrested between December and January 2026, many on minor or politically flavoured charges such as ‘noise making,’ ‘unlawful assembly,’ and ‘drills.’
These are political detentions by another name, and they point to a deeper system that treats dissent as a security threat. If a man as prominent as Besigye can deteriorate in custody before our very eyes, what hope do the nameless and voiceless detainees have; those without lawyers, without platforms, and without family access? And for those who say ‘if he committed crimes, he must pay,’ that’s fair but payment in a democracy is through due process, not through medical neglect or endless trial. Justice is not a slow death; it is a lawful and timely verdict. If the State believes anyone has broken the law, let it prove it openly, within constitutional standards with civility.
Also, being in the Opposition is not a crime, President Museveni himself once spent years as an Opposition figure, criticising Idi Amin and Milton Obote, organising underground structures, and mobilising youth against state excesses. Would he have tolerated the treatment now being given to today’s dissenters? Besigye and all the political prisoners need to be tried or freed. Uganda is entering a delicate transition after 4o years of one leader. That journey requires listening to one another, not issuing military-style pronouncements. A nation matures when it learns to confront opposing views, not bury them. Lasting peace grows from dialogue, not suppression.