By Mulengera Reporters
Days after human rights defenders like HRNJ’s Robert Sempala and Chapter Four’s Anthony Masake contributed to a newspaper debate by called for responsible use of social media platforms and enjoyment of digital freedoms, Buganda Road Chief Magistrate Ronald Kayizzi remanded Mr. Geoffrey Mugisha, a notorious Tik Toker famous for promoting hate speech against Baganda and their King, to Luzira prison up to Monday 19th May.
Aged 25 years, Mugisha was arrested days prior to his arraignment and is being prosecuted by prosecutor Ivan Kyazze on behalf of the Ugandan state for his last month Tik Tok viral video that was very demonizing of the Kabaka and Baganda. The young man, who was always unrepentant, on Thursday cried before Court while begging to be forgiven on grounds that his hate speech targeting the Kabaka and Baganda as an ethnic grouping was in response to a very angering comment one of his followers posted.
He branded Baganda unworthy and their King Ronald Mutebi unfit to be the Kabaka of Buganda Kingdom. He did all this last month on his Tik Tok, @Kampala2. He branded Baganda failures and their Kabaka the most unworthy leader in the world.
In comparison, he praised Banyarwandas as a superior caste vowing to fight until Buganda is taken over by them. He asked for permission from the President of Uganda to convert all people living in Buganda territory into ethnic Banyarwandas.
The young man, who officially is a resident of Munyonyo but recorded the impugned video from Bulenga, couldn’t escape having to sleep in Luzira because he couldn’t get anyone to stand surety for him.
His sad ending is synonymous with what could befall many irresponsible social media users, especially his agemates who get excited or intoxicated on drinks and prohibited substances, and take to Tik Tok to commit acts of hate speech and defamation forgetting that there will always be a day to be held accountable and that on that day, you stand alone because criminal liability is personal. Indeed, many other similarly placed social media users have previously been apprehended, prosecuted, convicted and made to serve jail sentences.
The laws have always been in place, the most conspicuous one being the Computer Misuse Act plus the Data Protection & Privacy Act, except that Uganda Communications Commission (UCC) mandated with implementing them has been lenient and reluctant to go into strict enforcement of the same.
But with the 2026 electioneering season getting under way and the political tensions rising, UCC Spokesperson Ibrahim Bbossa says that enforcement is going to be heightened to serve the greater public good while protecting everyone else. And this news website can reveal that UCC has over the years built very sophisticated technological capabilities to unmask even those operating anonymously online through using disguised social media account names.
Indeed, that partly explains why the Uganda Police investigators, who are mandated to closely work with UCC, were able to apprehend Geoffrey Mugisha who all along deceptively thought he was beyond reach. The Commission has strengthened and enlarged its manpower for cyber investigations and the legal team.
Already, UCC now has several individual lawyers who are DPP-licensed prosecutors. The law primarily rests prosecution powers with the DPP but who is allowed and is free to license lawyers at different government MDAs to conduct prosecution in their respective areas of specialty. Beneficiaries of such delegated prosecution powers so far include UCC, URA, NEMA etc.
And the establishment of the Magistrate Gladys Kamasanyu-headed Standards, Utilities & Wildlife Court currently based in Makindye, has also over the years enabled the Ugandan state to prosecute cases relating to computer misuse and abusive social media conduct more expeditiously and more effectively.
In its case, UCC these days gets its criminal cases quickly adjudicated at the Makindye Court whose four Magistrates now have a better understanding of the nature of evidence that is required and how to rely on it to conclude matters in such a short time.
On average, the Commission, which prosecutes several other prosecution matters beyond just those relating to abusive social media conduct, gets between 2-5 matters concluded and judgments delivered in a month. The same court handles criminal prosecutions related to vandalism of electricity or even water supply infrastructure and fishing and wildlife-related offences as well.
Because they tend to have such a bad case that is hard to win, Geoffrey Mugisha-like defendants have seldom escaped being convicted, upon prosecution UCC-based prosecutors. And they rarely escalate matters by way of appealing to the High Court. In very rare cases, like it was for Dr. Stella Nyanzi, the convicted social media abusers appeal to the High Court seeking to overturn the decision of the specialized Magistrates Court based at Makindye.
In arraying fears, while pushing back against criticisms that the GoU characteristically tends to become more paranoid and less tolerant of social media scrutiny towards election time, UCC’s Bbossa says there is nothing that has specifically been enacted into existence to cow online dissent. That what is being focused on by the regulator is striking of a balance between free speech freedoms enshrined under Article 29 and responsibility.
Bbossa makes it clear that no new law has specifically been enacted. All these legal provisions have always been in place and the regulator is simply moving to enforce them very strictly and more deliberately since the abusive conduct tends to escalate during campaign time.
He says no one has been or is going to be required to use their social media spaces less. No. It’s only the duty to use these very responsibly, while avoiding committing offences like hate speech which are already created under the law, that is being emphasized.
This news website understands that UCC will also be strengthening its close collaboration with sister agencies like Police’s CID in order to do enforcement more effective. Staff from CID and those from UCC are already synergizing to enforce responsible use of social media.
This is all aimed at making it easier to prevent abuse or even detect those engaging in abusive and irresponsible social media conduct wherever it occurs. And gratefully, judicial officers are these days more understanding and aligned to accepting all manner of evidence including that which is obtained through electronic means, which wasn’t easily admissible in our country’s practice some years ago.
Contributing to the recent newspaper debate on this very subject, human rights defenders Robert Sempala and Anthony Masake made reference to free speech as enshrined under Article 29 of the Constitution but also called for responsible social media usage to avoid hate speech and other abusive conduct that ordinarily would amount to exceeding what is demonstrably permissible in a free and democratic society that Uganda seeks to be.
The duo also raised a red flag on the timing of UCC’s decision to heighten enforcement initiatives while at the same time calling on the regulator to invest more time and resources into public education so that the public gets sensitized as opposed to merely prioritizing the available enforcement levers.
UCC spokesperson Ibrahim Bbossa welcomes all this but makes it clear that the regulator intends to sustain public education efforts besides heightened enforcement operations. He says UCC has always prioritized public education and that won’t be stopping any time soon.
The regulator has a message for those who opt to operate on social media using false or disguised names or identity. They are reminded of Section 26(D)(1) of the Computer Misuse Act which makes it an offence to use disguised account names to cause harm to others.
This provision also takes care of those who willfully resort to creating fake social media accounts to spread harmful propaganda misconstruing the same to be accepted form of conduct simply because its election time.
Yet there are also other laws which could be used to cause abusers of social media freedoms to face severe sanctioning besides the Computer Misuse Act. One of these is the Data Protection & Privacy Act.
Activists like Sempala are of the view that Uganda needs responsible use of the social media space, which UCC is mandated to enforce, in order to mitigate against misinformation and disinformation both of which are big problems for contemporary Uganda.
Sempala implores the GoU to remain progressive as always as opposed to hiding behind regulation to end up suffocating dissenting voices out of the country’s social media eco-system.
While demanding that the Constitutional Court expedites the hearing of the activists’ petition challenging the controversial provisions that were added onto the Computer Misuse Act through the amendment process of 2022, Chapter Four’s Anthony Masake commends the Judicial system for deepening the digital freedoms via the ruling that was delivered in the case of Andrew Karamagi & Robert Shaka vs AG.
In that decision, the court sided with Article 29 and struck down some provisions of the original Computer Misuse Act. (For comments on this story, get back to us on 0705579994 [WhatsApp line], 0779411734 & 041 4674611 or email us at mulengeranews@gmail.com).
