Final week, Ugandan lawyer Agather Atuhaire was lastly let out 5 days after she was detained by the Tanzanian police for unclear causes. She was unceremoniously dumped on the Mutukula border crossing between the 2 international locations.
Particulars of Atuhaire’s situation stay unclear, however an announcement from the organisation she works with in addition to Kenyan activist Boniface Mwangi, who was detained along with her, alleged that she was tortured. He himself confirmed indicators of bodily abuse after he was additionally dumped on the Kenya-Tanzania border a day earlier.
For East Africans, Atuhaire and Mwangi’s ordeal has been a painful reminder of simply how far democracy within the area has retreated. Folks organising to withstand state excesses have been more and more going through structural and bodily violence with little area for redress.
Mwangi and Atuhaire had been amongst a small group of regional activists and political figures who flew into Tanzania to point out solidarity with Tundu Lissu, the chief of the Tanzanian opposition. Lissu is going through a number of fees, probably the most grievous amongst them treason, for feedback he allegedly made at a political rally.
However Lissu is just not alone within the area in going through reprisals for political motion. In neighbouring Uganda, chief of the opposition Kizza Besigye is going through the identical fees, primarily based on the identical concept that organising and main opposition in opposition to an entrenched political energy quantities to treason.
In the meantime, in Kenya, the aftermath of the 2024 anti-finance invoice protests is haunting the nation. Within the absence of a nicely organised political opposition, which is stymied by frenetic deal-making and horse-trading, protesters and youth activists have change into the nation’s unofficial political opposition.
The youth have borne the brunt of political violence throughout final yr’s protests, which killed not less than 82 people. Kidnappings and abductions of protesters spiked after the demonstrations, and activist teams alleged that some folks stay unaccounted for regardless of President William Ruto’s assertion on the contrary.
In Burundi, folks proceed to dwell beneath the shadow of police excesses and in concern of the potential of struggle with its expansionist neighbours.
In Rwanda, a number of opposition figures who tried to run in opposition to President Paul Kagame had been jailed on varied fees. The neighbouring Democratic Republic of the Congo is perennially caught between struggle and political disaster.
So how did we get to this state of affairs? The best reply is that we allowed ourselves to conflate elections with democracy, and the malicious intentions of those that wield energy took benefit of that religion. The fact of constructing strong democratic programs is way extra difficult than lining as much as vote each 4 or 5 years, and actual democracy requires around the clock vigilance.
A significant democracy requires strong native authorities, clear political events in addition to institutional accountability and participation, all of which have been on the retreat within the area previously twenty years.
Energy has remained extremely centralised within the government, enabled by the capitulation of legislatures and the “naomba serekali” (“I’m requesting of the federal government”) method to politics.
Parliaments are empowered by the legitimacy of a preferred vote, however they repeatedly undergo the manager. Proof of this will be simply discovered within the expertise of ladies attempting to run for workplace within the area.
As outlined in a 2018 quantity on the Kenyan election that I co-edited, The place Ladies Are: Gender and the 2017 Kenyan Normal Election, the weak spot begins inside political events, wherein candidates should kowtow to a kingpin to realize permission to look on the poll. Those that don’t are sometimes locked out from aggressive electoral cycles. In consequence, save for constitutional quotas, girls’s participation in electoral politics has declined – a canary within the coalmine of shrinking democratic area.
In the meantime, events have mastered the artwork of managing gender optics as an alternative to actual change, decreasing debates about democracy to the periodic efficiency of voting. Thus, Samia Suluhu’s presidency in Tanzania is just not an indication of enhancing democracy however relatively that of a political machine that picked the least contentious candidate who would enable the ruling get together, Chama Cha Mapinduzi, to proceed managing the nation. Equally, the dominance of ladies in Rwanda’s parliament is just not in itself indicative of progress for girls however of the flexibility of the ruling get together to pick candidates who’re much less more likely to push again.
As soon as these candidates are laundered by the political get together machine, they enter the legislature extra beholden to their political kingpin than to voters. And that is the case whether or not the kingpin is in authorities or within the opposition.
In Kenya, opposition candidates like Edwin Sifuna, who vociferously defended the rights of protesters through the June 2024 protests, have change into tongue-tied in 2025 as a result of their get together kingpin has since struck a take care of Ruto and blind obeisance is the one assured pathway to energy on this system.
In Uganda, politicians are purchased off with state vehicles and loans, and in Tanzania, they’re silenced by arrests, detentions and disappearances of critics of the state. The online impact is that elections change into a efficiency whose precise affect diminishes quickly over time.
A fast scan of world politics will affirm that this isn’t a uniquely East African drawback. The identical disaster is taking form in the USA, significantly after the evisceration of the Republican Get together by Tea Get together politics and of the Democratic Get together by careerist politicians.
However the occasions of the final week present that for East Africa, an additional layer of threat exists due to the unquestioning and blind loyalty of safety providers to the whims of the state – one thing the present US administration seeks to construct into the Immigration and Customs Enforcement company.
The long-term answer to this state of affairs is for atypical folks to change into extra engaged in localised democratic practices, altering the standard of people that stand up the ranks in politics. In fact, this may be troublesome when persons are merely attempting to outlive a hostile political and financial local weather, however in the long run, it creates new entry factors for civic engagement.
Democracy is strengthened when extra folks take part within the governance of civic establishments like faculties, hospitals, commerce unions, cooperatives, neighbourhood associations, and even sports activities and social golf equipment – in processes that they’ll instantly hook up with their high quality of life.
Elections then change into the fruits of 4 or 5 years of normal workout routines of democracy, not a separate course of that floats above the fact of individuals’s lives.
In parallel, the onus is on the legislators of East Africa to seek out their tooth and their function. Their job is just not political survival or the pursuit of political careers. Their job is to defend the individuals who elected them, to rein within the excesses of the manager and to defend the integrity of the structure.
In the meantime, we, the folks, ought to all heed the decision of Nigerian public mental Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem: “Don’t agonise, organise,” and search to rebuild democracy in East Africa from the bottom up.
The views expressed on this article are the creator’s personal and don’t essentially replicate Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.