We have learned to laugh at disorder, joke about traffic madness in Kampala. We create skits about “unwritten rules.” We share videos that turn dysfunction into entertainment. Yet behind the laughter sits a painful truth we have been trained to swallow: Our country, Uganda is surviving, not functioning.
And this is not accidental.
It is the inevitable outcome over 4 decades of deliberate dictatorship under this power-hungry Museveni who is aiming to break the record of Africa’s longest-serving ruler who deploys treacherous mafia schemes to confuse the masses that staying long is directly proportional to leading well, and mistook control is stability.
When chaos becomes “normal,” the state has failed
Let’s be honest, in any functioning country, systems guide behavior but in our country, Uganda, survival instincts do.
Watch it from the video ( https://x.com/Tarehesiita/status/2019508005562380410 ), drivers ignore traffic lights because enforcement is selective, corrupt, and arbitrary, pedestrians don’t trust crossings because planning is decorative, not deliberate.
Citizens don’t rely on institutions because those institutions have been hollowed out and weaponized.
So people improvise, adapt, and they hustle. Sadly, octogenarian Museveni’s regime points at this desperation and calls it resilience but resilience is not a development strategy improvisation is not governance, and endurance is not progress.
A capital city governed by “rules you just have to know” is not vibrant or organic, it is a city abandoned by the state that should protect and organize it.
Museveni did not build institutions, he built dependency. For nearly half a century, Museveni centralized power around himself and a shrinking circle of loyalists. Skills and Competence were replaced by lip-service. Accountability was replaced by intimidation and fear. Public service was replaced by patronage.
The results are visible everywhere:
A bloated security apparatus guarding power, not people; starving health and education systems fed on promises instead of budgets; grand speeches masking collapsing public services; elections that must be rigged to be won, a generation that has known only one president and sees no future.
Uganda is run like a private estate, not a republic.
History is clear on this: when leaders overstay, systems decay. When rulers fear citizens, repression grows. When power becomes personal, the nation pays the price.
From hope to a hostage nation
Museveni once spoke the language of reform. Today, he delivers the reality of permanent stagnation.
Hospitals without medicine.
Schools without tools.
Graduates without jobs.
Roads without planning.
At the same time, state violence is generously funded, dissent is criminalized, and corruption is rewarded with promotion and Ugandans are told to be patient as if 45 of senile Museveni’s rule are not enough time to get even the basics right.
What kind of leadership asks for endless patience while offering recycled excuses?
The cruelest outcome
Perhaps Museveni’s greatest crime is not just corruption or repression. It is something deeper and more damaging: conditioning 55 million Ugandans to expect less from government, leadership and less from the future.
We now laugh at what should outrage us, we adapt to what should be unacceptable and we normalize what should never be normal.
That is not culture, it is trauma produced by prolonged misrule. A nation that stops expecting better has been psychologically conquered.
No country belongs to one man, no leader is indispensable, no ruler clings to power for decades without destroying what he claims to protect.
If after over four decades Uganda still runs on chaos, fear, and improvisation, then the verdict is unavoidable, Museveni has failed Uganda.
Stability without dignity is oppression, order enforced by guns is not peace, longevity in power is not legacy.
Uganda deserves institutions, not improvisation.
Uganda deserves leadership, not a lifetime ruler.
Uganda deserves a future not recycled excuses from an octogenarian who should have stepped aside decades ago.
Enough is enough.