Isaac Kasamani/AFP via Getty Images
Uganda’s Kizza Besigye has been described as possibly the most arrested man in Africa. Besigye was once President Yoweri Museveni’s ally, and personal physician. He broke ranks with Museveni in 1999, and emerged as the most long-standing political opponent to the ageing president, who has run the country since 1986. For this, Besigye has been jailed, kept under house arrest, renditioned, forced into exile, and endured state violence countless times. He has been in jail since 2024. Barney Walsh and Dennis Jjuuko have studied Besigye’s remarkable political career.
Who is Kizza Besigye?
Kizza Besigye was born in Rukungiri district, south-western Uganda, in April 1956. After graduating with a degree in human medicine from Makerere University in 1980, he joined the National Resistance Army (NRA) rebellion, which dislodged the dictatorial rule of President Milton Obote in 1986.
Besigye served in different senior positions in Museveni’s new government, including minister of state for internal affairs and the president’s office. In 1993, he was appointed the army’s chief of logistics and engineering and later senior military adviser to the defence minister. He was part of the inner sanctum of the National Resistance Movement which became the civilian government.
Besigye remained close to Museveni until 1999, when he abandoned the ruling party. He said the movement had departed from its original principles, like democracy through free elections, security for all and eliminating corruption.
He believed Uganda needed liberation again, this time from a government he’d helped establish. This would define his life’s work.
Under the pressure group “Reform Agenda”, and later the political party Forum for Democratic Change, he was the leading contender against Museveni in successive presidential polls. He scored 27% of the vote in 2001, 37% in 2006, 26% in 2011, and 35% in 2016. The Ugandan supreme court acknowledged irregularities but refused to overturn the result in 2006.
After leaving the government, Besigye became the focal point for Ugandans wary of Museveni’s increasingly vicious authoritarianism. He was forced to flee to South Africa after the 2001 presidential elections. He has been brutalised, detained and charged numerous times. His younger brother died in 2007 from illness associated with incarceration on trumped-up conspiracy charges.
When the opposition one day take the reins of power in Uganda, the debt it owes Besigye will be immense.
What are the highlights of this legacy?
Besigye, 69, stands out as the foremost opposition figure who was part of Museveni’s original Bush War victory. His 2011 “walk to work” protests, in response to dramatic fuel prices and general inflation, will not be forgotten in the history of Uganda’s political economy.
Besigye seemed to think this civil action could be Uganda’s “Arab Spring” moment. Some mocked his efforts as a mis-reading of the socio-economic conditions in sub-Saharan Africa.
The protests were, indeed, subdued in the face of brutal repression by security agencies.
But similar protests would soon remove Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe in 2017 and Blaise Compaoré in Burkina Faso in 2014.
Besigye has developed credibility as someone trustworthy because of what he has been through. And he has a heartfelt connection with supporters.
His leadership has transcended other opposition figures during Museveni’s administration in terms of longevity and consistent vision for change. Other opposition leaders have emerged only fleetingly, failing to sustain any moral standing or coherent transformative vision.
As we argue in our recent paper, it is unclear whether opposition leader Robert Kyagulanyi (better known as Bobi Wine) could have emerged without Besigye laying the foundation and sustaining the momentum for change.
It’s important, too, to recognise his failings.
He is given to outbursts. His call for Chinese debts to be written off as odious was thought to alienate an essential development partner. His storming of what he described as a “rigging centre” during the 2016 election led to accusations of leading mobs to take over elections.
He is also partly to blame for the fact that Uganda’s opposition has not yet mustered a single candidate against Museveni due to competing egos and moral certitudes. Besigye has never seemed to be able to convince other opposition candidates to drop their candidacy and support him (or to do that for them).
Nevertheless, his individual role has been fundamental to the emergence of the idea and principle of peaceful opposition politics emerging in Uganda in the post-1986 era.
This is not to be underestimated in a country which has yet to experience a peaceful change of government since independence in 1962.
What is the context in which you assess his legacy?
Uganda’s post-1986 political landscape has been dominated, and controlled, by Museveni. His most recent election victory in January 2026 will extend his reign beyond 40 years.
While his public popularity has been in decline, Museveni has relied on two things. First is the Ugandan political and military elite. Since the mid-2000s he has taken steps to proof his regime against a military coup, by keeping influential military personnel on board.
Second is external support, mainly from western governments. This stems from Uganda’s involvement as a key security actor in the sub-region at the behest of western powers. This role has gradually been prioritised over the west’s pursuit of human rights.
Partly for these reasons, Besigye was never able to get the full backing of western donors to support his democratic goals. Instead they supported Museveni’s regime.
A lack of support for Besigye in western capitals was evident in 2024 when he was abducted while visiting Kenya, and returned as a prisoner to Kampala. It barely registered international condemnation or action – save for a belated push from US lawmakers.
This silence must be seen within a global context of democratic backsliding, including developments within President Donald Trump’s second term.
In east Africa, Kenya’s violent response to the 2024 Gen Z riots in Nairobi included state-led abductions and enforced disappearances targeting young people linked to the protest movement.
In Tanzania, the October 2025 presidential elections also saw human rights abuses of protestors met with unjustified lethal force.
What next?
Besigye has not managed to shake up Museveni’s inner circle of corrupt powerbrokers. This is because his progressive democratic vision of change threatens their privileges.
Neither has he ever enjoyed the global profile that he would have hoped for, such as Raila Odinga of Kenya or Morgan Tsvangirai of Zimbabwe managed – even as Bobi Wine did briefly before the 2021 election.
But the idea of a free and fair election is now at least ingrained in Uganda’s people. In a February 2025 interview, he revealed the lens through which his life work should be viewed:
We can only influence whether change happens quickly or is delayed, but change is inevitable. Sooner or later, Ugandans will take charge of their destiny and rebuild their country in a way that ensures equal opportunities for everyone.
If Besigye’s decades of sacrifice are to mean anything beyond retrospective praise, they demand engagement now, not memorialisation later. To remain silent is to collude in the slow erasure of a political life spent insisting that a truly democratic Uganda was a cause worth fighting for.