Video of Missing Ugandan Activist Sparks Outrage
Grainy footage of a frail man seated beside a walking frame has pushed Uganda’s record on enforced disappearances back into public argument, nearly a year after opposition activist Sam Mugumya vanished from a hotel in Mbarara City.
The video, which began circulating on social media around July 31, 2026, appears to show Mugumya, 47, visibly emaciated and dependent on a rollator to move. His family and rights campaigners allege state involvement. AFP, which reported the development, said it had not been able to verify who recorded the footage, when it was shot or where it was filmed.
Mugumya was reportedly seized on August 26, 2025 by plain clothed operatives in the Nyamitanga area of Mbarara, shortly after launching a bid for the Rukungiri Municipality parliamentary seat on the People’s Front for Freedom ticket. By the day the video surfaced, 340 days had passed with his whereabouts publicly unknown.
His mother, Edinansi Katungwesi, told AFP by telephone that she recognised her son in the footage, describing him as “destroyed and bony” and saying she had heard nothing since he was taken. “It is the government that took my son and I am so angry at them,” she said. Activist Agather Atuhaire, also speaking to AFP, called the situation “appalling and shocking” and said she believed the military was responsible for his detention incommunicado.
The army declined to comment when contacted by AFP, with a source pointing to earlier remarks by the defence ministry, which denied in September 2025 that Mugumya was in custody. The Uganda People’s Defence Forces had earlier told court it searched its detention facilities and found no record of him. Police also denied knowledge of his whereabouts.
Court records show the High Court Civil Division, through Justice Collins Acellam, issued a writ of habeas corpus in September 2025 directing that Mugumya be produced within seven days. The application, filed under Articles 23(9) and 44(d) of the Constitution, carried an affidavit by lawyer Tumusiime Kakuru stating that he was being held at a military facility in Mbuya, Kampala, under the Directorate of Intelligence and Security. Article 23(4) requires that any person arrested be produced in court within 48 hours.
The Uganda Law Society has since petitioned for his release. Its vice president, Anthony Asiimwe, said: “If he’s being suspected of committing an offence, let him be produced in court and answer the charges,” adding that such “lawlessness” could not continue.
Mugumya’s history is long. A Makerere University political science graduate and former secretary general of the FDC Youth League, he was central to the Activists for Change movement and the 2011 Walk to Work protests. Arrested in the Democratic Republic of Congo on October 21, 2014 on charges of illegal entry and plotting rebellion, he spent about eight years in Ndolo military prison before his release in October 2022.
The case sits within a broader pattern. UN human rights experts warned in January 2026 that at least 160 enforced disappearance cases were reported in Uganda in 2025 alone, against 18 confirmed cases around the 2021 elections, adding that more than 550 National Unity Platform members had been arrested over political activity. Human Rights Watch reported on January 28, 2026 that two senior NUP leaders had been forcibly disappeared after polls, alongside mass arrests and the suspension of at least 10 non governmental organisations.
Uganda’s Electoral Commission declared President Yoweri Museveni winner of the January 15, 2026 election with 7,946,772 votes, or 71.65 per cent, ahead of Robert Kyagulanyi with 2,741,238 votes, or 24.72 per cent. Turnout stood at 52.50 per cent of 21,649,067 registered voters across 50,739 polling stations. Museveni, 81 and in power since 1986, was sworn in for a seventh term on May 12, 2026.
Kizza Besigye, whom Mugumya once served as aide, has been detained since November 2024 after being seized in Nairobi with aide Obeid Lutale and charged with treason. He collapsed in the High Court on July 29, 2026 and was admitted to intensive care at Mulago. PFF Buganda chairperson Lulume Bayigga said this week that Besigye had left ICU but remained critical, and that the Mugumya video “has given us hope that he is alive.”