By Peter Kahindi
AS we draw close to the end of the year, one grim memory stays etched on my memories from 2026; the untimely and senseless death of Sydney Gongodyo.
Sydney was a Forward for the Rugby Cranes and for Stanbic Black Pirates, and a student at Makerere University.
Needless to mention, he was also someone’s son, brother and father.
On Friday, 5 June 2026, he was accused of stealing a handbag, then attacked and killed by a mob in broad daylight in Bukoto, one of Kampala’s suburbs.
Videos of the lynching spread quickly across social media. They showed a crowd, including several boda-boda riders armed with sticks and clubs, beating him again and again.
And just like that, Sydney died. Yet there was no evidence that he had stolen a handbag or anything similar.
What Justice Actually Means
We have become too comfortable with the phrase “mob justice.”
Plainly put, “justice” means someone is accused, and the accusation is tested.
The accused can answer it, and an impartial person weighs the evidence. Only after that is there a verdict, and the punishment is proportionate.
Every person has a right to life, and every accused person is presumed innocent until proven guilty.
The reason we have constitutional safeguards in support of the presumption of innocence is that we human beings, left to our own devices, are incapable of impartiality.
A mob has no evidence, and it cannot be corrected.
It is driven by a mixture of an animalistic adrenaline to inflict grievous harm, excitement, and a subconscious awareness that one won’t be held individually accountable.
We cannot say with any confidence what they did or did not do, because the one process that could have told us was never allowed to start.
Mobs Get It Wrong
Mobs get it wrong all the time, and even if they were right about a suspect, it is not their duty to determine a person’s fate in such a manner. We are not short of examples since mob attacks and lynchings seem to make near-daily news around here.
About a year ago, a young constable called Suleiman Chemonges was lynched by a mob in Ibanda as he quietly and innocently presided over the burial of a former prisoner.
Someone accused Chemonges of having participated in the inmate’s death. Next, the crowd ganged up and killed him, even after he fired off a bullet – in the air – to disperse them.
In Iganga, the Speaker of Parliament described an incident in which three people were lynched on suspicion of kidnapping a young man who had gone missing.
A few days later it emerged that the young man was safe and living with his long-lost mother.
Those three men cannot be brought back. Police have also warned that some people exploit mob action to settle personal grievances. A rumour, a grudge, a land dispute or a debt can be dressed up with the shout of “Thief!” with a finger pointed at a victim, leaving an excited, unruly crowd to do the rest.
Does It Deter Crime? The Numbers Say No
Defenders of mob action may say it deters crime and makes thieves think twice.
I have looked for the evidence and have not found any.
I have not seen a credible Ugandan study or crime trend showing that mob killings reduce theft or make our communities safer.
The numbers we have point the other way. Police statistics show that mobs killed more than 3,700 people in Uganda between January 2021 and December 2025, mostly over suspected theft.
An MP told Parliament that 1,039 people died this way in 2023 and 1,019 in 2024.
If this were a deterrent, we would expect the toll to fall as the lesson sank in. Instead, it has stayed above a thousand a year. That is a steady loss of life, and the crime it was supposed to prevent has not gone away.
A Broken System Is No Excuse
Many Ugandans do not trust the criminal justice system, normally for reasons they consider to be good. There are stories of bribes, files that disappear, and suspects being released before the ink locking them up had dried on paper.
There are also officers who arrive late, or never.
These complaints are fair, and the entire system has real cleaning to do. But a failing institution is not repaired by replacing it with an animated crowd.
If a hospital turns you away, you demand a better hospital, and you do not operate on the patient yourself. If we do not trust the system, the answer is to hold it to account using all the means at our disposal, but not to walk around it.
What You Can Do
A few things can be done to curb these attacks. We should continue to call the police and keep calling. Look for your OC Station’s contact, or OC CID, or Community Liaison Officer, or OC Operations, or your DPC, your RPC. Ask around or simply take two minutes off and approach the police station nearest to your home. You will pick a contact that you will find useful. Call them! Give a clear location and describe what is happening.
If you can, secure the suspect and keep him alive until officers arrive. If they are slow, note the time you called and who answered. That is responsible citizenship.
Whatever happens, however provoked you might be or feel, try your best NOT to join in. Hopefully, we are all aware that it is no defence that “everyone else was doing it.” Participation in mob action is a serious crime and can lead to murder charges.
Let us not relent in demanding accountability from the system. Ask for reference numbers, report corruption and slow response to the police’s own oversight bodies, to the Uganda Human Rights Commission, to the media if we must, and to our leadership. Let’s not hesitate to back journalists and lawyers who keep these cases in the public eye.
A criminal justice system that demonstrably knows the country is watching behaves differently.
Jambo (Hi)! I’d be happy to hear your thoughts so…say something here?