Let’s not blind ourselves, Museveni wants to stay in power forever

Nicholas Sengoba

There are none so blind as those who will not see.’ Jonathan Swift used this in his Polite Conversation in 1738. This resembles the biblical verse (Jeremiah 5:21,) ‘hear this, you foolish and senseless people, who have eyes, but do not see, who have ears but do not hear.’
It was also used in 1713 in the ‘Works of Thomas Chalkley’.

Here the full saying goes ‘there are none so blind as those who will not see. The most deluded people are those who choose to ignore what they already know.’
When the NRM/A took over government in January 1986, there was a great sigh of relief.

Uganda had been through a lot of chaos and was ready for anything that would arrest the situation.
Uganda was hungry and like it is said in the Bible (Proverbs 27:7,) ‘one who is full loathes honey from the comb, but to the hungry, even what is bitter tastes sweet,’ so we took almost everything hook, line and sinker.
Time did not stand still. The four years became 10. Then the 10 years became 20 years.

In 2005, the Constitution was amended to lift the term limits, which will take us to 35 years by 2021. It is likely to go beyond that, should Article 102(b) be amended to lift the age limit capped at 75.

This will allow Museveni to contest at the age of 77 and as happened whenever he has been on the ballot paper, he will be announced winner. Throughout this period, Uganda changed tremendously in terms of security, infrastructural development, economic growth and order, among many other things.
But it has also had very many dark spots which should have opened our eyes wider to the danger of being lackadaisical to the extent of allowing Museveni to become so dominant and apparently insurmountable.

Political party activities and several freedoms were curtailed to purportedly heal the wounds that Uganda had suffered under the bad regimes of the past. Uganda ‘understood’ and accepted it after all we needed to sleep peacefully.

Whenever President Museveni’s hold onto power was challenged by things as mundane as public rallies by the opposition, he reacted very aggressively and with intolerance. Famously, for the DP Mobilisers group’s attempted rally at the City Square Museveni promised that there would be dead bodies if they dared.

In 2002, Jimmy Higenyi, a Journalism student covering a demonstration by UPC supporters, was shot dead by police, who accused UPC of holding an ‘illegal assembly.’ Still it was said ‘multipartyists’, who had been dumped on the garbage heap of history, were planning to disrupt the peace and tranquility ushered in by NRM.

We acknowledged that this would be putative way of guarding the peace. Media houses were at times closed and journalists locked up occasionally if they wrote stories that did not please the government. Self-censorship became an acceptable culture in the media.
The war in the north and north east documented numerous atrocities by the national army.

The burning alive of people in the Bukora pit and Mukura train wagon incidents were the highlights.

Here many in the south and south west silently acquiesced with these atrocities claiming people in those areas were receiving the comeuppance for what Amin and Obote did to them before NRM arrived as a saviour.

When public money was stolen or squandered, the official line was that those who stole this money invested it here and it did a lot to enhance economic growth and development.

Under NRM, we witnessed several violent and bribe-induced shambolic elections that maintained the status quo and we traded those in for ‘as long as we could do our business peacefully.’

Almost every facet that is supposed to enhance good governance was isolated and weakened while the rest of the country turned a blind eye minding their own business. That is how we ended up with the Judiciary, hapless Legislature, police and local administration that we have today.
Hospitals and schools degenerated. The economy failed to employ the armies of young people who flooded the cities and eventually resorted to crime that threatens the lives and property of everyone.

On the other hand, the sum total of the abuse of power by NRM was the disempowerment of the people of Uganda to the extent that almost no individual or collective group can stand up and speak truth to power without fear.

Meaningful power ostensibly became the preserve of the person of the President.
This mediocrity and acceptance of ominous situations, ‘as long as we can sleep,’ or because yesterday was worse than today, is the convenient blindness Jonathan Swift talked about in his Polite Conversation.

Now that Museveni has come out with bare knuckles to support the amendment of the Constitution, which allows him rule perpetually, we have to make amends and open our eyes to the gloomy reality that stares at us. History will not forgive us if we don’t.

Nicholas Sengoba is a commentator on political and social issues. [email protected]
Twitter:@nsengoba