Mr Daniel K. Kalinaki
There is no justification for the torture that 'Eddie Mutwe' and many other supporters of the NUP opposition political party have been subjected to.
Even within the smouldering embers of what is left of the ruling NRM, no one possessed with even a sliver of conscience can, on seeing such sadism and brutality, offer any cogent defence, let alone explanation. On the face of it, the violence seems an end in itself; something done because it can be done without consequence. Utado?
Look more closely, however, and patterns of method begin to appear in the madness. One needs to first zoom out to a decade and a half ago or so when the political contestation was between General Museveni and (mainly) soldiers he had led into the war that brought the NRA into power. Retired colonel Kizza Besigye was the most vocal, but there were Generals Mugisha Muntu, Benon Biraro, Henry Tumukunde, as well as lower ranks like Colonel Samson Mande, et al.
There were also contestants from the political wing like Amama Mbabazi, Eriya Kategaya, Amanya Mushega among others, whose military ranks were footnotes in otherwise expansive political careers.
These were internal NRA/M contradictions spilling out onto the national stage as political contestation. New policy directions of travel were articulated, for instance when the contests took on institutional form and coopted outsiders as was the case in the Forum for Democratic Change and, very briefly, the Go Forward coalition, but it was all laid out on a soundtrack of the betrayed promise of the NRA or Fronasa.
There was extreme violence in and outside electoral contests, but it was very targeted mainly against Besigye in a classic case of "hit the shepherd and scatter the sheep". This narrow targeting enabled an isolationist narrative to emerge; if it was always Besigye and a handful of close allies being brutalised while other opposition politicians went largely unmolested then surely the victims, too, bore some responsibility. Maybe they were just provocative, or militant in their approach, some said, to make sense of it all.
The Bush War generation is inevitably giving way to a new political class and the prospect of a new form of civilianised politics by younger Ugandans who can use history to illuminate the path to the future, and whose political contests can be over ideas, not boxing match outcomes.
Two realities risk undermining these prospects. First, the deepening of military control over the state and the securitisation of its processes, has hollowed out the political class, including within the NRM. Whether by default or design, the military is lodged like a bullet within Ugandan politics; removing it suddenly carries the risk of internal bleeding and perhaps organ failure.
Second, the NUP has taken on a militant posture in its mobilisation rhetoric (we are removing a dictator), its imagery (berets in revolutionary red), and even in substance (marching parades of "foot soldiers", some kitted out in red uniforms with military-like epaulettes and insignia).
This might be mere political spectacle to tap into the energy and restlessness of a young urban demographic that has been left behind. However, it risks appearing like a quasi-legitimate target for the military elite to deal with as a security risk requiring violent repression, rather than a political problem meriting persuasion and problem solving. Once again, the victims risk carrying the blame, as well as the scars of torture.
Ordinarily, state institutions like Parliament and the Judiciary would step in to arbitrate these contests and preserve the integrity of the rule of law. But ordinary times these are not, and those institutions are also cowering under military boots.
In this case, the prerogative shifts back to the NUP cadre as the first-line victims of this violence (and eventually to the wider citizenry) about how to respond. The two obvious options are both bad.
One is to de-escalate and soften the image, rhetoric and substance of the 'resistance'. This is unlikely to fly among an increasingly radicalised cadre. It does not, in any case, guarantee a corresponding reduction in violence from the other side or offer incentives for political reform.
The second option is to press back against the violence, but this risks playing more firmly into the hands of a better organised and armed opponent, ensuring a high price for an uncertain outcome.
There is a third way of a peaceful political resolution, but there is currently limited visible intellectual bandwidth within the political class or the elite, generally, to articulate it. Incidentally, the NRA/M emerged as a third way out of the failure of the post-Idi Amin political settlement. What we are seeing today is history repeating itself not just as farce, but also as violent tragedy.
Mr Kalinaki is a journalist and poor man’s freedom fighter.
[email protected]; @Kalinaki
