Two blind men on whether Bobi is better than Museveni

Philip Matogo

What you need to know:

  • Captivity. When considering the presumed superiority of Western civilisation, foreign leaders treat the President and the People Power leader as one would treat two talking monkeys born in captivity.

The bone of their contention was hatched by a mere chicken and egg disagreement since both of them were exercising their grey cells to prove each other wrong.
According to them, however, it was a debate about issues whose gravity centred upon world-changing dynamics. One of the men supported the imperial presidency of Yoweri Museveni, while the other believed State House to be a gathering place of wheeler-dealers.
“The West knows this and that is why America supports Bobi Wine,” clucked the latter debater.

“No, America supports us because we have kept the region secure for her interests,” rejoined the former.
Like many Ugandans, both of these men seemed to be proud that their respective political leaders were dancing on puppet strings pulled by puppeteers in the West.
Yet they believe the West to be peopled by racists. This they revealed as they both stated that the West has policies which favour its own interests. Interests which, they added, include the subjugation of Africa into servility.

However, Bobi Wine and the President both need the Western powers in order to save themselves from each other, they concluded.
By extension, the West views Bobi Wine and President Museveni through a split-screen which balances doctrines about democracy on the one hand, and prejudiced notions about Western civilisation on the other.
When considering the presumed superiority of Western civilisation, foreign leaders treat the President and the People Power leader as one would treat two talking monkeys born in captivity.
Their cognitive skills are defined by which one of them speaks the most intelligently in the Western sense and is least programmed by evolution to sound like an African.

Former US president Calvin Coolidge once said, “The business of America is business.” In this context, the West believes the business of Africa is monkey business. Which is racist, yes.
However, it is also revealing in that when our leaders ape the West, they will Make America Great Again while Ugandans must merely bask in this shine and confuse reflected glory for the thing itself.
So those who jubilated as Bobi Wine met United States congressman Bradley Sherman in his quest to highlight the human rights violations in Uganda are as near-sighted as those who laud President Museveni for being a trustee of US interests in the Great Lakes region.

And as our leaders spout heady rhetoric about democracy, they become like zebras which change their stripes to outsized versions of Stars and Stripes, that colours them more acceptably to the West.
By this token, the Ugandan leader who presses all the right Western buttons on the big issues of the day, such as global warming, US-guided military commitments overseas, periodic elections etc. will be considered the best primate to serve the West.

In the movie The Manchurian Candidate, the politician Raymond Shaw is told by a liberal senator: “You are about to become the first privately owned and operated vice president of the United States.”
Raymond has a chip implanted in his skull which will allow Manchurian Global Corp to control him, suggesting that the whole system has been controlled and compromised by the power of corporations.
In Uganda’s case, corporations are replaced by the nations of the West and the chips implanted into the skulls of Ugandans is the defeatist notion that our leaders must serve as proxies of distant powers whose interests are inimical to our own.
In this vein, official Kampala continually accuses the Opposition of soliciting and getting financial support from the West as a means to subverting home rule. Yet, everybody knows, home rule to government has little to do with our sovereignty and everything to do with the NRM homing in on turning Uganda into a one-party state that will reign like bad weather for all eternity.

Ironically, it is this quest for eternal rule that has transformed the NRM into a comprador – defined as an agent for foreign organisations engaged in investment, trade, or economic or political exploitation.
That is why Uganda doesn’t need a Bobi Wine or Yoweri Museveni, but it does need a Patrice Lumumba. Or somebody bold enough to tell foreign powers what Lumumba told the outgoing Belgians at Congo’s independence: “We are no longer your monkeys!”
If these words are backed by a collective will, our servility will thus be replaced by a parity of esteem between our nation and the nations of the West.
And maybe, just maybe, those two blind men will agree that the world can be made safer for diversity.

Mr Matogo is content editor and writer with KQ Hub Africa
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