UGANDA – On August 29, Comrades of the newly formed Communist League of Uganda were kidnapped by thugs of the Ugandan Old State, only days after the organization’s inaugural national Congress Vice Chairperson Habibu Twahala, Okede Dan, and Namususwa Patricia were some of the members arrested during a mobilization drive they participated in.
Members were arrested by bureaucrat-capitalist President Yoweri Museveni’s regime, one of many attacks by the Old State against the growing rebellion of peasants, proletarians, youth and democratic forces in Uganda in the past few years. In a subsequent statement by the League, they reported that their members were being subjected to severe beatings while in detention, with major concern about their physical well-being.
However, revolutionary and sympathetic peoples in Uganda and abroad mobilized, demanding all arrested comrades be freed from detention and political repression. Thankfully, the League reported that due to the selflessness of the League and the masses, all targeted League members were released.
The Communist League of Uganda pointed out that these arrests are part of “a broader pattern of State repression against organizers, trade unionists, and left political movements across Uganda who dare to challenge entrenched power, corruption and the economic order” of imperialism, feudalism, and bureaucrat-capitalism that impoverishes the Ugandan people. They noted the ability to collectively organize and mobilize the working people of the country as a threat to the selfish interests of the big landlords and imperialist-backed elites. It was an attempt of the Old State to force the Ugandan people into submission and discourage political struggle, standing firm on the Old State’s inability to tame the masses from taking action.
The League called on revolutionary and progressive organizations around the world to publicize, through their respective channels, the arrests as an act of repression. In the United States, Revolutionary Student Union published a statement of solidarity with the Communist League and the organization of Ugandan workers toward national liberation and a People’s Uganda.
During their first Congress, the organization addressed consolidation of its internal structures and expansion of political work to better serve the people. In a January 2025 interview with German organization Die Rote Front (The Red Front), when the CLU was first formed, the first reactions from the masses were the typical outcomes of impoverishment of revolutionary politics and ideology in Uganda, despite the growing awareness about the worsening domestic economic crisis. Exacerbated by pessimism and ruling-class influence, some react “out of ignorance.” One of the challenges noted was combatting tribalism among Uganda’s Indigenous peoples and national minorities (i.e., the Banyankole, Bagisu, Lugbara) by exposing the colonial roots of preferential treatment of various peoples and adopting a common language to bond the Ugandan people together.
In another interview this past February, the CLU has grown leadership wings and physical offices in some regions and cities, with mass mobilization and engagement with the masses as main aims. Through persistent study by youth cadres, the League is retaking the path of DR AM Obote, rebuilding the cause of the Ugandan Revolution.
The convening of the 1st National Congress of the Communist League of Uganda is of great significance in the fostering of a militant revolutionary movement among the Ugandan people and the oppressed African continent as a whole. Before British Imperialism, Uganda was a conglomerate of feudal Indigenous kingdoms and chiefdoms marked by the peasant-royalty/chief contradiction. The League’s Congress represents a slow but gradual upward trend toward reclaiming the revolutionary road in Africa, led by the proletariat in alliance with the peasantry in every nation. It is precisely this advance, the consolidation of revolutionary organization and the awakening of the masses against the Old Society, that provoked the Old State’s repression against the League.
Rising fascism worldwide pushed the Ugandan people to organize against the Old Society; the revolutionary, progressive and oppressed peoples and nations of the U.S. must stand in unwavering solidarity with the Communist League of Uganda against political repression and their Old State, not merely for the dropping of all charges placed against them but for the militant organization of the Ugandan people towards national liberation and the establishment of a Socialist Uganda, governed by the worker-peasant alliance.
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Revolutionary students in the US stand with revolutionaries in Uganda against state repression!
