‘Rebel’ MPs and language of our political intolerance

Embattled Syrian President Bashar Assad refers to his opponents as terrorists; chances are that by the end of this year, they will be in full control of the country, having liberated it from the Assad Dynasty.

Question: When is a bandit not a bandit; or when is a terrorist not a terrorist?
Answer: It depends on who holds the whip hand. Or when they eventually take power, or if they turn out to be Nelson Mandela.
Of course Mandela was once labelled a terrorist; today he is the world’s most celebrated liberator.

Embattled Syrian President Bashar Assad refers to his opponents as terrorists; chances are that by the end of this year, they will be in full control of the country, having liberated it from the Assad Dynasty.

Here at home, in the early 1980s, President Obote used to refer to Yoweri Museveni’s NRA as bandits (rolling his eyes and looking over his spectacles, Obote used to say, in whisky-laced voice: “Those are ‘ben-dits’ [sic]. We shall find them there [in the bush] and leave them there”). Guess who is in power today.

Curiously enough, the Obote and Museveni forces were at one time jointly referred to as ‘kondos’ (common armed thugs). When he came into power in 1971, Gen. Idi Amin found a social problem of ‘kondoism’, or gun-based crime. The country was grappling with armed robbers, and ‘kondoism’ was actually one of the 18 points the army cited for overthrowing Obote to install Amin. And so there was a legitimate fight against violent crime, for which Amin pronounced a shoot-on-sight policy.

Resistance to his rule by the forces of Obote’s Kikosi Maalum and Museveni’s Fronasa (Front for National Salvation), among others, culminated in the abortive invasion of 1972, after which it became easy for Amin to round up his opponents under the guise of fighting ‘kondos’.

So both a social problem and a political challenge were conveniently rolled into one, settled mainly at the firing squad.

Of course it has been said that “one man’s terrorist is another man’s liberator”, and how true it has turned out throughout history.

When you hold the whip hand, when you have power behind you, because of a culture of political intolerance, it becomes easy to paint your opponents with whatever brush you want. Thus George W. Bush, in 2002, pinpointed the ‘Axis of Evil’, comprising Iran, Iraq and North Korea, all America’s enemies with weapons of mass destruction (WMDs).

It eventually turned out, to Bush’s eternal embarrassment, that Iraq did not have WMDs, the reason America used to invade that country.

Which brings us to Niwagaba, Sekikuubo, Nsereko and Tinkasimire – ‘rebel MPs’; so-called because of their outspokenness from within a quiescent ruling party on national issues and matters of governance.
In the newsroom, we once debated whether it is technically correct, in formal newspaper reportage, to refer to them as ‘rebel MPs’, and the conclusion was that it was incorrect; any such references is the media being gullible to the people who so label those they disagree with. Rebels they are not – you may call them maverick, for they can be cheeky, but for the most, these four are people representatives who are brave enough to voice misgivings that many others think but will not say.

They are labelled rebels for not slavishly following an increasingly errant party line. That is all.

Various people have been called various things by those who disagree with them. That is the prerogative of holding power or having influence. Ronald Reagan once called Muammar Gaddafi the ‘Mad Dog of the Middle East’, to which the Libyan leader retorted, calling the US President the ‘Mad Dog of the Atlantic.’ Both were awfully powerful men.

Shall it turn out, one day, that the so-called ‘rebel MPs’ will be rehabilitated and referred to in loftier terms? You would be foolish to count against it as many who have been previously demonised have eventually popped up in positions not only of influence, but of real power. It is only the fullness of time that shall tell.

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He was supposed to have been born with a silver spoon in his mouth but, as it turned out, Prince David Kintu Wasajja’s life got caught up in the turmoil borne of political intolerance in the early years of Independence.

Born as his father, Kabaka Sir Edward Muteesa was fleeing into exile, Wasajja’s is a life of not just foregone privilege as also of an ordinary bloke with feet firmly on the ground. He is the people’s prince, accessible, sensible, level-headed.