As we mark the 45th Tarehe Sita anniversary at Kabale National Teachers’ College under the theme “Defending the Gains of the Revolution and Honouring the Sacrifice of the Freedom Fighters,” our country, Uganda 🇺🇬 is invited, once again to applaud a story that has never matched our reality.
For nearly half a century, Power-hungry criminal TIBUHABURWA has wrapped himself in the language of revolution while (mis)ruling through fear, force, intimidation and permanent emergency.
If terrorism is the systematic use of violence, intimidation and repression to control a population and silence dissent, then Uganda’s longest-ruling ruthless dictator fits the definition more closely than any other criminal on the continent.
A revolution is supposed to end terror, not normalize it. Yet under criminal Museveni, violence became policy. Elections are ritualized coercion. Expression is met with batons and live bullets. Journalists are tortured, arrested or whisked to rot in dungeons so-called “safe houses”.
Decent political opponents are harassed, abducted and illegally tried by military courts. Citizens are harassed through repeated brutality to fear the state that claims to protect them.
Museveni’s record beyond Uganda’s borders deepens the indictment. His wars in the region especially in Eastern DRC, left millions dead and destabilized an entire subcontinent. International courts documented plunder, proxy militias and atrocities.
No apology. No accountability. Only denial and the insistence that this, too, was “defending his gains.”
At home, the economy tells another story of terror by corruption, indifference and neglect. Youth unemployment is chronic. Corruption is systemic. Public services rot while a narrow elite prospers.
When young people speak up, they are branded criminals. When teachers, doctors and workers demand dignity, they are dispersed with tear gas and live bullets. Poverty is policed; wealth is protected.
Tarehe Sita has become a ceremony of selective memory. The sacrifice of genuine freedom fighters is invoked to sanctify a permanent ruler. The word “revolution” is used to justify dynastic ambition.
“Gains” are defended by crushing the very citizens who were promised freedom.
Museveni’s longest legacy is not stability—it is the normalization of coercion. Not peace—but the quiet of fear. Not liberation—but a state that treats its people as enemies.
After 45 years, the question is no longer whether the revolution succeeded. It is whether Uganda can finally be freed from the monster who turned a liberation struggle into a lifetime project of looting and control.
History is clear: the greatest terror is not always a bomb. Sometimes it is a government that never lets its people breathe. Enough is Enough, this power-hungry criminal despot Museveni must go and the time is now.