On Bobi Wine’s parliamentary seat race and why we are the ones we have been waiting for

A common refrain in this column – and one that inspires by far the most number of comments – is citizen agency, or often the lack of it, in our public affairs. Readers often express their shared concern about this or that aspect of life, from schools that don’t teach to hospitals that don’t treat, but often end their feedback with hand-wringing frustration: I don’t know what to do about it!
It is easy to see where the frustration comes from: Citizen agency in Uganda has, over the years, been marinated in violence; from all-out military struggle by those desperate or brave enough to take arms, to virulent abuse by cowardly, but verbose keyboard warriors. The former has tended to replace one set of oppressors with another; the latter ineffective, except in turning abuse into a national art.
Our challenge is to find new ways for citizens to effectively engage in civic duty beyond the five-year ritual of voting, in order to raise the risks of abuse of power.
One way is to jump into the muddy pig-wrestling contest that our politics has become. To this end, it really does not matter whether musician Bobi Wine, aka Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu, wins the Kyadondo East parliamentary seat in today’s by-election or not. His race, and that of non-careerists like Dr Ian Clarke and others, is a reminder that politics is too important to be left to politicians alone.
Now, this can be a hit-and-miss affair, as recent non-traditional entrants to Parliament have demonstrated (Rubaga South voters stop looking at me!) but the election of village hecklers and ‘snake chasers’ across the country is an indictment of more decent folks refusing to stand. In the words of the Greek philosopher, Plato, one of the penalties of refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.
I would thus like to propose two interventions. The first is that young Ugandans must stop mourning about what’s wrong with this country and start working towards fixing it. Elective politics, even our bastardised version, offers a medium for action.
Consider this: Uganda has one of the youngest populations in the world, with about 77 per cent aged 30 and below. Of the total population of just under 40 million, some 7.3 million are aged between 15 and 24. You cannot win any election anywhere in Uganda, be it for president or for a parliamentary seat, without the youth vote. So, why do these young Ugandans vote for corrupt, incompetent and tired old folks? Why aren’t young people organising themselves into a Youth Party that fields candidates or demands pro-youth concessions in exchange for their vote bloc?
Unemployed youths can cause a bit of drama by throwing yellow piglets around Parliament to call out MPs for their greed, but they can cause real change if they fielded and voted for their own candidates.
Secondly, citizen agency can be demonstrated more locally at the community level. I have heard of many people, frustrated by crime, setting up their own neighbourhood watch committees, installing streetlights or building shelters and raising money collectively to pay for security guards.
This small sense of community can spark much bigger changes. A new arrival in such a neighbourhood is unlikely to build their wall fence at the very edge of their property and be left with a narrow path when they can cede a few feet for a wider road that improves property values all around.
Similarly, a motorist allowed to join a busy street by the kindness of another is more likely to return the favour down the road, or stop for pedestrians at a zebra crossing. Kindness begets kindness.
It starts with a few people choosing to do the right thing. Then it snowballs into a habit, then a way of life. Those of us so inclined should get involved in politics, whether it is in running for elective office, voting for the most credible candidates, not the ones with the most cash, even if we do not expect them to win, or simply speaking out against abuse of office and injustice wherever it occurs.
But we must all become more involved in society be it in building the kind of neighbourhoods we wish to live in, or simply not littering. That is something we all can do. If there is a bigger meaning to Bobi Wine’s candidature, therefore, whatever the outcome of the vote, it is that we are the ones we have been waiting for.

Mr Kalinaki is a journalist and a poor man’s freedom fighter.