Justice in Uganda

On February 2nd, 2009, an act of vandalism occurred at one of our project sites. In the wee hours of the morning, some angry sand miners took it upon themselves to slash down over 60 trees in the sand mine which my organization had reclaimed with funding from major international organizations. While sand mining is illegal in that area, the sand miners blame us for the ban. However, with the law enforcement being what it is, the miners have actually continued mining and the police have pretended not to notice the big lorries that pass their office on a daily basis.

Off we went to the crime scene, but first we had to pick up the police as that particular post has no cars nor even bicycles. The officers have to either walk or use boda bodas (motorcycle taxis) to get around. How they do arrests, I am not sure… Riding with an arrested person on a boda boda does not strike me as the best thing to do.

After our visit to the scene, we had to go back to the station to give statements, which were handwritten by the police secretary. They then told me that I should give them the pictures I had taken. Not realizing the state the office was in, I asked if they had a computer, thinking I could just go there with my flash. How naive was I? At that point I had not yet realized that they didn’t even possess transport. Meanwhile my boss was pushing me to represent the donors, to put pressure on the police so that justice might actually be attained. I did my best, threatening that if nothing was done to remedy the situation funding might get cut completely in that area. Meanwhile my coworkers were trying hard to not laugh as I was trying to sound important.

The police indeed caught one suspect. However, he was last seen having tea with a police officer at the jail and the suspect is now nowhere to be found. Four officers were arrested and while I was told they would serve four years for assisted escape, they were released four days later.

The officer in charge is still trying to gather more suspects by building trust relationships with the miners, so that they will provide him with names. The last time we went to the police office, we actually had to take him to the market where he was meeting one of the sand miners, but we had to drop him off a little distance away, so that the man would not become suspicious by seeing the officer arrive in the enemy’s car.

But there are also other forms of justice.

I was visiting the Ugandan wife of a mzungu I know and she told me of how the villagers had recently captured a chicken-thief. Upon hearing the yelling in the middle of the night, she packed a rope and paraffin into the boot of her car and set off to find out what the commotion was about. There was a group of villagers surrounding a man – they were beating him and pouring paraffin on him. They were angry and seemingly ready to kill.

“Don’t burn him here,” she advised. “Take him to the swamp.”

So they set off for the swamp, dragging the poor man behind. On the way they encountered lorry drivers and the thief pleaded with them for help. At first they seemed concerned, but upon finding out he was a thief, they too started beating him. Finally the police came, much to the thief’s relief, and they took him away. The man died in jail, probably from the amount of paraffin that had ended up in his ears, eyes, mouth and nose.