When Justice Is Denied, the Mob Becomes the Judge

Recently I wrote an article about justice and I specifically focused on what happens to a society when justice sleeps. In that article, Kisanja No More Sleep is a Test of Justice, I based my arguments on the Islamic teachings and stressed that justice is not merely a legal concept but the foundation upon which political and social order rests. Little did I expect that so soon I would be writing again on the same subject.

A few days after that publication of the article, Ugandans woke up to disturbing videos circulating online. In the footage, a mob was seen descending on Sydney Gongodyo, a celebrated rugby star who played for both Rugby Cranes and Black Pirates Rugby Club.

Gongodyo later succumbed to his injuries after suffering severe internal bleeding from a sustained and brutal beating. He was reportedly attacked by a group largely made up of boda boda riders who accused him of snatching a handbag from a client.

What makes the story even more emotional is that shortly before the attack, Gongodyo had been at a birthday party celebrating his own son in Lugogo and he was going home. However, he never made it.

Gongodyo’s death becomes the latest entry in a long and growing list of Ugandans who have lost their lives to mob violence. Uganda Police records show that over 3,700 people died in mob justice incidents between 2021 and 2025. That works out to roughly 920 Ugandans every year or about 78 every single month and nearly three people every day.

It is worth noting that these are not just figures but they are people who deserved a trial and received a beating instead. They are people who were innocent and instead of being listened to, they were stoned to death.

The numbers therefore demand not just a press conference and announcing of arrests but they call for an honest introspection from our leaders about what is truly driving ordinary citizens to become prosecutors.

To understand mob justice, we must resist the temptation to explain it purely as barbarism or ignorance because the causes seem to be deeper than that.

According to Social Disorganization Theory on a criminological framework which was developed by sociologist Clifford Shaw and Henry McKay in 1942 at the University of Chicago, a person’s physical and social environment directly influences their likelihood of committing crimes.

He further argues that when the police and courts are seen as unreliable or compromised, ordinary people lose faith in formal justice and begin to feel that action must be taken outside the law.

This is what we see in Uganda. Many Ugandans have watched criminals get arrested, only to find them walking freely through the same neighborhood days later, back among the very people they wronged, with no explanation and no consequence.

The pain of such moments does not disappear but it collects and hardens the hearts of the victims. And whenever an opportunity of provocation arises, it explodes upon whoever is nearest without considering whether he or she is guilty or not. This is the reality about mob justice.

In most cases, the people who participate are not driven by proof of guilt. On the contrary they are driven by accumulated grievance of years of watching the law protect the wrong people, or protect no one at all.

By saying this I am not supporting the act of taking the law into one’s own hands.  Mob justice must be condemned fully and without hesitation. There is no version of justice that begins and ends with a crowd and a beating. Those who participate must face the law because no civilized society can permit citizens to appoint themselves judges.

But the question is, if we only arrest the mob and do nothing about the system that produced it, have we solved anything?

Treating mob justice purely as a law and order problem is like treating a wound without asking how it got there. Of course arrests are necessary but they are not enough.

If our security agencies genuinely want to stop Ugandans from taking the law into their own hands, they must give the citizens a reason to trust the law again.

That calls for reforms in our justice system which many times is bureaucratic, expensive, corrupt, and remote from the lives of ordinary people. It means ensuring that when someone is arrested for a serious crime, the process that follows must be visible, credible, and fair.

This is why I reiterated in my earlier article that where there is justice, there is trust. Where there is trust, there is order and that remains true. The mob does not rise in a vacuum, it rises in the space that justice leaves empty.

Sydney Gongodyo deserved better. The thousands before him deserved better. And the Ugandans who, in their anger and despair, become the very violence they fear, they too deserve a system worth believing in.

Until that system is built, we will keep writing these stories.

The Writer is a Ugandan Journalist | Media & Communication Specialist exploring Media Ethics, Religion, Politics, Culture & Society