Corruption and intrigue driving insecurity

You are the shadow minister of Internal Affairs, who is supposed to supervise your colleagues on the government side. There is insecurity with criminals distributing leaflets, gun violence and break-ins. What is happening in the security structures of the country?
You have to understand from the outset where we are coming from as a country; the facilitators of the situation that we have as a country. One is poverty and the failure to sort out the issue of unemployment.
The second issue which you have is political. When you look at the last 10 years on how we have organised our politics. The NRM government, by-and large, employs the known State agencies; the army and the uniformed police to settle political scores.
This has in a way facilitated the growth of some kind of force that is ununiformed, untrained, unstructured and illegal. Somehow the President is aware that the people of this country have a bad history of the army and police.
They have organised in the name of crime preventers, all these vigilantes who in the open operate alongside uniformed police. The big question is; if they are not chasing [Dr Kizza] Besigye; what else do they do?

Are you saying these paramilitary structures government use are the ones that descend into criminality?
They easily tip over. Without those assignments, they resort to criminality. Then we also have the problem with easy access to weapons.
Every Tom, Dick and Harry can easily access a gun and you can’t tell whether this one is legitimately holding it or not. Then you also have porous borders.
We are surrounded by South Sudan, this side by DR Congo; so whoever wants to acquire a gun somehow does so. Across the border, if you have a few thousand Shillings, you can easily acquire a gun.
We have also failed to manage the veterans. They are poorly looked after and they are languishing in poverty; these could be the facilitators.
The other is outright corruption; you cannot afford a security apparatus that by and large is corrupt and feeds on corruption.
When you go to the current insecurity where you see leaflets being distributed; it is partly because we haven’t tackled the political questions in the country. The bigger one still exists.
There are many Ugandans who believe you will never have a change of power unless you do it violently.

Talk about the leaflets; recently police chief Gen Kale Kayihura said some of the distributed leaflets carry politically connotative messages. Are you saying there is a movement seeking to cause violent political change?
The last time I looked at a survey by Afro barometer, it was highly alarming. More than 40 per cent of Ugandans did not believe that political processes can bring change. When people don’t have the basic trust in political organisations, they may resort to organise what they think is effective means of change, so you cannot rule that out.
That is why it is very critical that this country goes for an honest national dialogue so that all these issues can be tackled in a non-partisan way; in a manner that does not border on political contestations.

As shadow Internal Affairs minister, do you think the security structures are doing enough to deal with the security challenges?
Most of the infrastructure that is causing the insecurity are mentored, facilitated and nourished by the security organs of this country.

Which security organs, for instance?
I can tell you that Kifeesi, Arrow Boys and all these are operating with the full knowledge of the Inspector General of Police and some elements in police command; and there are counter forces to them also from other security agencies. These, we have honestly confronted them in the Defence and Internal Affairs Committee and they are part of our reports in Parliament. We have literally about 15 criminal gangs in this city….

All linked to police?
All linked to security organs. They live alongside security organs and I know them. Now if you surrender the strategic command and control to people like Ssebina Ssekitoleko, Kitatta. In which cadet school did these go to? How knowledgeable are they?
Then you also have a kind of frustration in the police force that senior experienced police cadres are overlooked at the expense of political cadres. You could go all around and hear of [Siraje] Bakaleke, all these other young fellows. You may think it is a club of teenagers.

You mean the security services are in a game of mutual frustration?
For instance, the Criminal Investigations Department of police is broken down into cliques all reporting to the IGP.
But also some of them report directly to the President. So you have the CIID broken, the intelligence broken. You have strategic command in the hands of people like Kitatta who even command some RPCs.

From what you have explained, you seem to suggest that there is no end in sight. What solutions are you offering?
You see, the President recently said there are some mafias, criminals in the police force and that was indicative to the extent, this I know, that he had to give an order to Gen Kale Kayihura. If you look around him now, he has a new ring of officers.
I know he had to tell him ‘I no longer need so and so around you’, that you will never know but I know for a fact that he had to take on a different group to support his office. That indicates his own failure to surround himself with senior police officers. Literally, the IGP’s office of command has been taken over by militia groups and vigilantes.

You seem to suggest that these problems are due, in part, to the incompetence of the IGP
No. He is competent. Why was he taken there? It was not to run a professional police force. He was to turn the police force into an organ fully answerable to NRM and President Museveni, and he is doing an excellent job.

So it wasn’t about the security of this country after all
No, Never. It was about cleaning up the police force.

What do you mean by cleaning up the police force?
It was not cleaning up the police of wrong elements, it was about bringing up a Force that is cadre oriented whose philosophy is to patrol for the regime and to ensure regime control and consolidation and he is doing a perfect job in that endeavour. So all these other things are outside of his core mandate; his brief wasn’t that go out and have a force that is effective.

Your tone bespeaks of surrender; there is nothing to do, it is all doom…
It is not all doom, it could change…

What do we need to do differently?
We need to do a re-orientation of police to their original mandate which is to keep law and order, to maintain peace and to be answerable to the civilian authority and to desist from partisan politics.

As the shadow Internal Affairs minister, what is the clear cut policy that you would propose to effectively deal with challenges of insecurity in Uganda?
The clear cut policy has to begin from top to bottom. For us to take a critical decision that for once we must have security agencies, including the intelligence services and the army that serves their constitutional purposes and de-politicise. And that is not easy. The second is corruption and then you also deal with poverty, you [need to] work on those insecurities that people have. Actually there are no quick fixes.

As a shadow minister of Internal Affairs, you are speaking like a by-stander who can’t do anything. You are watching like the rest of Ugandans. Do you have the ability to check the weaknesses of the security agencies?
The fact that I can sit down and give an interview with Sunday Monitor and give Ugandans information about what is happening in their country, I have answered my primary call. Otherwise, I would know and use this information to promote my own personal goals. The other day I brought a motion on police brutality on the floor of Parliament. What more do you expect me to do, especially in my limited capacity?

On inter-agency rivalry

Out there, there is talk of inter-agency rivalry within the security circles which many believe are responsible for these waves of insecurity…
I am aware about that rift…

Tell us about it
This is all about struggle for political power and control and you have a chief executive that does not respect the structures of power and control.
The struggle is who controls the dirty money for political work where you don’t have to account for it. The struggle is who has the trust of the President to be given the money that does political work.

Are you saying the President no longer has effective control over the security services and he needs someone like Gen Kayihura to run the show?
Yes. When he had [former prime minister] Mbabazi things were slightly better because he would have a real touch on security and a real touch in politics.
He no longer has such people and those are gaps that have been left. The likes of Amanya Mushega...They have left a vacuum.
That is where the struggle between Gen Tumukunde and Gen Kayihura is-who fills the gap left by the likes of Amama Mbabazi.