We need to negotiate Museveni out of power

In the past weeks, we illuminated the malaise that has characterised the politics of our country since NRA seized power militarily in 1986. We also made proposals aimed at getting the country out of the mess in the most peaceful and organised fashion. This week, our focus was shifting to articulating ideas that can help shape the post-Museveni Uganda. However, there is one more idea we need to share about causing peaceful transition in Uganda.
There comes a time in the life of a nation that change becomes inevitable. It doesn’t matter how entrenched the regime may be. It doesn’t matter the number and type of guns existent in the arsenal of the regime. Sometimes, it won’t even matter how great the regime’s economic record may be. The people get tired, marshal courage and topple the regime. This has been happening since the beginning of history.
Here in Uganda, we saw Idi Amin, a sworn tyrant, come and go. So did Milton Obote. In more recent times, we saw in the Arab world powerful dictatorships ousted from power within weeks – Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gadhafi, Hosni Mubarak, etc. Even the most powerful empires in history collapsed when the moment arrived. The British, Roman and Ottoman empires are just but a few examples.
Gen Museveni’s regime will also fall. It is a question of when and how. When that moment arrives, we should never again resort to violent methods. Our history is plagued with consequences of violence. Blood. Pain. Misery. We should, therefore, resolve as a people to employ dialogue rather than violence to engender a peaceful transition. Those who doubt the efficacy of dialogue should know that there is nothing a united and determined people can’t achieve. They only need a purpose-driven leadership.
Fellow compatriots, a dictator is like a psychopath. If you want him/her to get psychiatric therapy to overcome the situation, you need to bend over backwards. In the process, the psychopath may do all sorts of embarrassing, undignified and hurtful things to you but you must never lose sight of delivering him/her to therapy.
The ANC understood this very well. They tried the military option but later realised that it was very costly to the nation. Eventually, they opted for dialogue. The shift from violent methods to peaceful means was not an easy one. The apartheid regime was brutally arresting and incarcerating Black South Africans every day. Several Black South Africans were being murdered on a daily basis. But, in spite of that pain and sorrow, the ANC realised that the onus to deliver South Africa peacefully from the mouth of the savage system lied squarely in their hands. Thus, they consistently and deliberately insisted on dialoguing with the diabolical system.
We insist on the use of peaceful means, more specifically dialogue, not because of cowardice. We do so for mainly two reasons. First and foremost, tyrants all over the world use oppressive means to subdue opposition; money to buy off political elites and nominally democratic institutions to rent support and solicit legitimacy. In such an environment, it becomes nearly impossible to use other non-violent means, for instance elections, to cause peaceful change.
Secondly, when tyrants realise that their end is nearing; they inevitably develop fear for the future. A future they hardly have control over. This fear should be allayed by change seekers. Otherwise, the tyrant(s) will seek to go down with the country. This was the case with Muammar Gaddafi and Saddam Hussein. It was averted in Chile under Augusto Pinochet. Kenyans also avoided it under Moi. Precisely because Chileans and Kenyans agreed to negotiate Pinochet and Moi peacefully out of power.
We can also avert it Uganda. However, we must be prepared to make compromises. Also, we should be guided by our aspirations for a better future than our anger about the past. In that regard, Nelson Mandela offers us a wise counsel.
“Our emotions said, the White minority is an enemy, we must never talk to them, but our brain said, if you don’t talk to these men, your country will go up in flames and for many years to come, this country will be engulfed in rivers of blood,” he said.