MIL Africa Engine

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Simangele Mayisela, Senior Lecturer, University of the Witwatersrand

Corporal punishment – usually referring to adults hitting children – was abolished in South Africa in 1997. The Constitutional Court had already ruled it incompatible with the bill of rights in 1995. In that judgement, the chief justice said that in his view, “juvenile whipping is cruel, it is inhuman and it is degrading” – as well as “unnecessary”. The South African Schools Act of 1996 also outlawed it. Anecdotal evidence suggests, however, that this practice is still common in many schools and homes. Educational psychologist Simangele Mayisela researched the subject for her 2017 doctorate, asking why some teachers and parents (and even children) believed it was an effective and harmless form of discipline.

How did you study the roots of this behaviour?

My PhD research used observations and interviews at a rural public school in a low-income area in South Africa to investigate the historical and socio-cultural origins of corporal punishment. I wanted to understand how teachers’ childhood and cultural exposure to corporal punishment had influenced their use of it, and how punishing children this way could affect their development.

There hadn’t been much research about how corporal punishment in schools could be passed on in culture from one generation to the next.

Under the oppressive apartheid regime’s system of “Bantu Education”, which aimed to keep black people subservient to white people, corporal punishment was widely used.

But even after South Africa became a democracy in 1994, this practice continued.

What did you see that suggested teachers had a deep belief about corporal punishment?

There were numerous examples.

I observed a grade 4 social science lesson on the types and functions of landmarks. The teacher used the example of Table Mountain in Cape Town as a natural landmark and the Ponte City tower in Johannesburg as a manmade landmark. One boy in the classroom raised his hand and, before he was called on to speak, said: “Sir, here in our village Ntabande (a hill) is a natural landmark and the Vilakazi tavern is a manmade landmark”. The teacher was angry because the boy had spoken without permission, and promised him a “hiding” after the lesson.

I also attended a community meeting about various issues, including scholar transport. The chief asked parents to give their children a hiding if they didn’t get to the bus on time. The message for teachers and parents was that traditional authority encouraged corporal punishment.

Study participants told me that parents supported the practice of teachers physically punishing their children.

In another sign of how people in this community thought about order, discipline, punishment and reward, I saw various kinds of sticks at the school where I did my research. They were not all used for inflicting pain; some were used for pointing to charts, for example. They had different names indicating different functions and intentions. In interviews, children referred to sticks as umqondisi (a person who makes something straight, puts things in order), uphiphizinyefu (cleaner of your mess), or “sweets”.

In the early childhood development class, children started the morning by reciting rhymes and moving their little bodies in meaningful imitative rhythm. One of the rhymes has this line:

Shaya tishela, shaya tishela, shaya tishela (hit the child, teacher).

What did teachers and children say about it?

In focus groups and interviews, generations of teachers (retired and working) said that when they were children, it was normal to be beaten at home and at school. It was hard to avoid being beaten, even if you behaved well.

It was not something to negotiate.

Yet they were grateful to their teachers for having used corporal punishment. They believed there was a direct relationship between that form of “discipline” and their academic success. It had enabled them to become teachers themselves. One teacher described it as “the very instrument that made you who you are”. And academic success was what they wanted for the children they were teaching.

Some could still recite things they had “learned” by rote as children. One mentioned how, when they were children, the teacher would walk around the classroom as learners wrote their essays, and unleash the “hookaai” (also a word for a whip used on animals) on them for spelling mistakes. The same kind of experience was described by the current generation of children in the study.

The teachers even referred to corporal punishment as “sweets” – making it sound like a reward.

In the way they spoke, the participants did not separate corporal punishment from the teaching and learning process. They seemed to think of the three – teaching, learning and beating – as one activity.

In my class there is a stick … I made sure that I leave no mark on a child.

Teachers believed that corporal punishment encouraged children to focus:

The person (child) begins to think.

All three generations of teachers in the study accepted corporal punishment as normal. They took this humiliating experience lightly, laughing about it. In psychology, this is a sign of coping and acceptance.

Several teachers spoke of it as part of their culture: “We believe that we must raise a child with a stick.”

Children had already internalised that idea. One said: “At home they say every child needs to be beaten.” And they believed they had called it upon themselves: “It’s me who has started her (the teacher)”. This created feelings of guilt: “If we start them, the teachers feel the pain”. Children also laughed when talking about punishment.

Of all the children interviewed, only one indicated that being beaten made him think about why he’d done what he did.

What are the outcomes of this disciplinary approach?

Being exposed to corporal punishment all the time made the community see it as a normal tool for raising children.

It appeared that teachers believed that corporal punishment produced desired behaviour from a child. But this was mainly from the child’s avoidance of physical pain, not from understanding what was “wrong” about their behaviour.

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Read more: Four reasons why physically punishing school children doesn’t work

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In a classroom where children are motivated by avoiding pain and ridicule, there is little development of higher mental functions. Fear and anxiety interfere with thought processing, hindering development and learning. It’s likely to affect the development of psychological functions related to discipline like problem-solving, self-regulation and agency.

For instance, in this study, I observed two siblings from a child-headed family coming late for the whole week while I was at the school, and they would be beaten every day for latecoming. When I engaged with the siblings, they simply said they woke up late and their brother, in high school, also got to school late. They had not learned to solve the problem of being late for school and to regulate their sleep and waking up pattern. In line with education policy, these learners are an example of children experiencing social and economic learning barriers.

The reliance on corporal punishment as a discipline measure deprives children of a chance to discover for themselves what is true and right, and the knowledge and experience they will need in adulthood.

– Why do South African teachers still threaten children with a beating? A psychologist explains
– https://theconversation.com/why-do-south-african-teachers-still-threaten-children-with-a-beating-a-psychologist-explains-270904

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Jude Kagoro, Postdoctoral Fellow, Institute for Intercultural and International Studies, Universität Bremen

Uganda’s police have long faced criticism for politically charged interventions. These include episodes in which lethal force has been used in ways that observers describe as excessive or indiscriminate. The main targets of restrictive or coercive tactics are supporters of the political opposition.

For example, in November 2020, weeks before the 2021 elections, protests at the arrest of the main opposition candidate escalated into nationwide unrest. More than 100 people died.

Under President Yoweri Museveni – in power since 1986 – the police have become a central pillar of the ruling party, the National Resistance Movement. In the campaigns for the January 2026 general election, police are critical in containing demonstrations, mobilising political support and enforcing loyalty. They can be seen ferrying ruling-party supporters and guarding their processions.

They are also active against the opposition. Party activities of Museveni’s main rival Robert Kyagulanyi, alias Bobi Wine, face routine obstruction, teargas and street confrontations. In November and early December 2025, police violently dispersed or blocked Bobi Wine’s caravans. The UN Human Rights chief condemned this.

I have published widely on themes of militarisation, security and policing, including the relationship between the Uganda police and the ruling party. It’s my conclusion that the role of the police in Uganda cannot be meaningfully analysed through a western-centric expectation of institutional neutrality.

Rather, policing has developed together with Uganda’s broader political direction of personalised authority and an ideology of cadreship that continues to shape expectations within the ruling NRM party. This has fostered, in my view, an ethos in which officers see themselves as active custodians of the existing political order. I’ve concluded that they don’t see themselves as being a neutral institution. They believe their job is to maintain the status quo.

My previous research challenges the common assumption that the police act only on direct orders to protect the regime or target the opposition. In reality, many officers believe that being visibly pro-ruling party defines them as “good officers”.

Based on my research, it’s clear that elections due in 2026 are likely to repeat these old patterns.

History of partisan policing

My extensive engagement with officers over more than 15 years, as both a researcher and a consultant, has given me a nuanced understanding of the attitudes and shared mentalities that shape policing culture. These beliefs are reflected not only in what officers say but also in their everyday behaviour.

For example, several commanders prominently display ruling party symbols or images of the president as their WhatsApp profile photos – clear signs of how pro-NRM attitudes influence officers’ conduct and become woven into police identity.

As a result, officers often take actions that favour the incumbent even without being told to. They want to signal allegiance and do what they think is expected of them as police.

This behaviour is rooted in a long relationship between political power and control of the security forces. Society expects the police to serve ruling elites rather than operate as an impartial institution. Consequently, the force today functions less as a neutral body and more as an extension of the ruling party.

Police in formation

Uganda’s police force played active roles in political policing and in supporting Britain’s colonial administration when it was established in 1906.

It continued to play the same role under the post-independence governments of Milton Obote, Idi Amin, the Tito Okello junta, Obote II, and now under the National Resistance Movement since 1986.

There have been changes in nuance and emphasis. For example, the force was initially sidelined in favour of military and intelligence agencies in the early years of Museveni’s reign. The turning point came in the early 2000s, with the appointment of senior military officers as police chiefs. This signalled a strategic fusion of military command culture with domestic policing.

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Read more: Why Uganda needs new laws to hold police in check, and accountable

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Under General Kale Kayihura, appointed in 2005, the police expanded rapidly in size, budget and operational authority. He aligned the force with the ruling party by reshaping recruitment, sidelining older officers and elevating young and highly educated cadres loyal to the party.

By the mid-2010s, the police were firmly embedded within the political machinery and sustaining Museveni’s rule.

Going beyond the use of force and coercion is also credited to Kayihura’s legacy. Under the guise of community policing, he drafted millions of largely unemployed youth into a nationwide network of so-called crime preventers. Their presence at 2016 election rallies, in villages and on urban streets was decisive in boosting National Resistance Movement turnout.

Their presence also undercut opposition mobilisations.

By 2021, however, Kayihura’s apparatus had largely collapsed. Without his centralised coordination – and confronted by the rapid rise of Bobi Wine’s youth-driven movement – the state increasingly relied on coercion alone. The result was violent campaign scenes in the 2021 elections.

Heading into the 2026 elections, the National Resistance Movement appears to have rebuilt soft-power apparatus to go with strong-arm tactics. The police’s head of the Crime Intelligence department, Christopher Ddamulira, is now central to youth mobilisation. He is using outreach programmes and targeted incentives reminiscent of Kayihura’s tactics.

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Read more: How the Ugandan state outsources the use of violence to stay in power

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They include the temporary integration of ghetto youth into the police intelligence networks, and funding small-scale business ventures. While these have been effective in diluting opposition support, it is the open use of force that dominates public debate.

Equipped with armoured carriers, high-capacity tear-gas launchers, water cannons and fast-response vehicles, security forces use their mobility and intelligence networks to disrupt opposition mobilisation.

It’s part of police strategy to restrict the mobility of opposition candidates. The candidates are especially restricted from densely populated urban areas where they could draw large crowds. Opposition candidates are often pushed onto back roads or sparsely populated routes. There they are less visible and less able to engage voters.

Police are also frequently deployed to bar candidates from being hosted by radio stations.

These police operations are reinforced by the Resident District Commissioners representing the presidency and backed by the military, which intervenes whenever political stakes rise. Together, they form a tightly coordinated apparatus of political control nationwide.

The constitution of Uganda establishes the police force under Article 211, requiring it to be national, patriotic, professional, disciplined, and composed of citizens of good character – standards that are incompatible with partisanship or the oppression of political opponents. Under Article 212, the police are mandated to protect life and property, preserve law and order, prevent and detect crime, and work cooperatively with civilian authorities, other security organs, and the public.

A familiar contradiction

Uganda’s 2026 elections will not simply test the popularity of competing political actors. They will again expose the fusion of policing and politics that has shaped the country for more than a century.

Police have consistently served as instruments of political order rather than neutral guardians of public security. Today’s officers operate within this inherited logic, in a political culture that has never experienced a peaceful transfer of power.

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Read more: Why Uganda needs new laws to hold police in check, and accountable

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The campaign trail reveals a familiar contradiction: a security force constitutionally mandated to protect all citizens, yet increasingly functioning as a political arbiter – shaping who is heard in the public sphere.

– Political policing in Museveni’s Uganda: what it means for the 2026 elections
– https://theconversation.com/political-policing-in-musevenis-uganda-what-it-means-for-the-2026-elections-271316