I saw an Army General in the traffic and he did not push me off the road!

What you need to know:

  • Worn many hats. Gen Wamala has worn many hats and indeed won many hearts for his country: He was Chief of Defence Forces, the highest position in the army; he was Inspector General of Police, the highest position in the police force; he has served for at least three decades in the military.

On a recent morning, I was nearly forced off the road by a pair of cars that came wailing down the road like a banshee. The one ahead was a police pick-up truck with flashing lights and a hand wildly gesticulating through the front passenger window for motorists to sidle to the side of the narrow road, to make way.

Police cars, of course, have a right of way and for good reason; the long arm of the law should find few obstacles in quickly responding to those in need, or to stop and resolve crime. Behind the police truck, however, was one of those ubiquitous taxpayer-funded 4WD monsters, with government plates, and matching flashing lights.

The on-coming traffic held things up long enough for me to make out the figure sitting pensively in the backseat, a female minister who has been in Cabinet for just a few years. She looked sufficiently bored by the traffic and seemed to wonder who all these people clogging up the roads were and why they did not melt away and allow her to get on with the business of spending their money.

I counted at least four armed policemen on the back of the pick-up truck, The Gesticulator in the front, and the driver. The minister-mobile itself had a bodyguard in the front – the door opener – and the driver. It is safe to assume that the minister has at least one but possibly two guards at her residence, and at least another at the office. That is at least 10 police officers assigned to guard one human being.
If you extrapolate that number to the 70 or so Cabinet ministers, you have 700 police men and women; throw in the other important officials in Parliament, the Judiciary, the coterie of presidential assistants and advisers, and diplomatic missions and you are probably close to 3,000 or more police officers.
I don’t know who wants to assassinate a junior Cabinet minister in Uganda – and whether six guards are necessarily more effective than one or two. But I am sure that deploying even half those police officers in residential suburbs of the city would make them safer neighbourhoods, even for ministers.

As fate would have it, that point was made clear later that day when, stuck in the afternoon traffic, I noticed a similar 4WD monster driving ahead of me. For about two kilometres, we inched forward in tandem: We stopped at the red lights, let other cars through and so on, until the car turned off the road. It was then that I noticed the occupant in the same backseat ‘assassination corner:’ Gen Katumba Wamala.

Gen Katumba Wamala. File Photo

Gen Wamala has worn many hats and indeed won many hearts for his country: He was Chief of Defence Forces, the highest position in the army; he was Inspector General of Police, the highest position in the police force; he has served for at least three decades in the military. I am pretty sure his last two postings at the helm of the armed forces, to say nothing of his rank, entitle him to a phalanx of armed round-the-clock protection. If anyone deserves jeeps with machine-gun and soldiers totting rocket-propelled grenades, by George it is he!

But there he was, in one car, with a driver and one bodyguard in the front, respecting the traffic like everyone else, patiently waiting his turn. He did not pull rank neither did he bully anyone and not because he isn’t capable of it. I have heard that he opens his own car door and does not have a small army camped out at his home.

There are a few others like Gen Wamala: Public officials who go about their work quietly and purposefully, without drama and attempts to draw attention to themselves. We should praise them more and try to emulate them.
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Talking of humbled and dignified people, Matthew Rukikaire launches his autobiography today. I have read the book (and even advised here and there) and can tell you it is a remarkable book by a remarkable man. Read it and make your own judgments.

It is good to see more Ugandans telling their stories in their own words. Our post-colonial history remains contested and the dominant narrative always seeks to airbrush alternative narratives or revise history for self-serving purposes.

Current and future generations need a more nuanced and accurate version of history and the best antidote to misrepresentation and revisionism is more first-hand accounts of who did what to whom, when, where and how. May we have more please?

Mr Kalinaki is a journalist and a poor man’s freedom fighter
[email protected]
Twitter: @Kalinaki