Civic space in East Africa is shrinking fast. Across Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania, abductions, harassment, and detention of activists and political opponents are becoming frighteningly routine. Even more alarming is how these abuses are increasingly occurring across borders and how our governments seem to collaborate in committing them.
In January, Tanzanian activist Mariah Sarungi narrowly escaped abduction while in Kenya. Months earlier, Kizza Besigye, Uganda’s long-time opposition leader, was abducted in Nairobi and later seen before a Ugandan military court. And just recently, Bob Njagi and Nicholas Oyoo, two Kenyans who traveled to Uganda to support Bobi Wine’s campaign, were abducted and detained. Their only “crime”? Standing in solidarity. These incidents reveal a disturbing regional trend: governments cooperating to crush dissent and silence solidarity. The East African dream of integration is being twisted into a pact of repression. But this is not the East Africa our forebears built.
Our history tells a different story, one of courage and refuge. During Kenya’s repressive years, exiled leaders like Raila Odinga and Koigi wa Wamwere found safety and support in Tanzania and Uganda. Under Julius Nyerere, Tanzania was a hub for liberation movements, a safe haven for those who dared to imagine freedom across Africa.
The pro-democracy wave of the late 1980s and 1990s revived this cross-border spirit. Civil society and lawyers’ networks like the East Africa Law Society united reformers from across the region to challenge one-party rule and demand multiparty democracy. When Kenya repealed Section 2A in 1991, ending one-party politics, it was not an isolated act; it was shaped by regional solidarity and shared struggle.
History teaches us that our freedoms are intertwined. Every democratic victory in one country has inspired movements in another. Our collective progress has always depended on standing together. Today, however, states are working together to repress, sharing intelligence, detaining critics, and coordinating propaganda. If authoritarianism can cross borders, then so must resistance. We cannot remain silent when Ugandans are abducted in Kenya or Tanzanians jailed for speaking truth to power. Silence is complicity, and complicity is how repression wins.
It’s time to rebuild the networks that once bound our region in solidarity. Civil society, journalists, artists, and lawyers must reconnect across borders. Regional forums, universities, and human rights organizations must again be centers of courage, defending not just national freedoms, but the freedom of the region.
Our history of shared struggle must not fade into nostalgia. It must fuel a new era of cross-border solidarity; one that refuses to be silenced.