Mr Nicholas Sengoba
Human rights lawyer Isaac Kimaze Ssemakadde (40) has been the man in the news for the last three months. This often cantankerous character who describes himself as an anti-clockwise thinker and legal rebel was elected president of the Uganda Law Society (ULS) on the back of what appeared like a protest vote. He hit the ground running.
In his bid to democratise, decolonise, digitalise the bar and put it back on track, naturally, Ssemakadde has upset many and made friends with others. It is as happens when the weight of change and revolution is imposed and threatens an existing and tested old order.
Ssemakadde, a boisterous creature who is not averse to vehemence and plain speaking in his conduct; things the noble legal profession somewhat frowns upon, has already rubbed some the wrong way. His use of four-letter words and epithets while dismissing ‘respectable’ members of the legal profession who are viewed with rectitude and hitherto treated as above reproach, has forced some to conclude that there is ‘a crisis’ in the legal profession. A situation that needs urgent amelioration.
Where do the Ssemakaddes of this world come from? Ssemakadde like all Ugandans is a child of a very violent, inconsiderate, corrupt, unfair, and above all abusive society at all levels. Go to our hospitals and see the taxpayer sleeping and dying on the bare floor because there are no medical workers to attend to them. The roads we drive on, from which those with power and privilege push as to the side because they are in a hurry.
The children who have no chance because formal education in the rural areas has collapsed. Then the ones we educate with our last penny but can’t find work most of which benefits people of chosen ethnicity. The business persons who have lost money and property because of unfair or ill-conceived government policies. Those have lost land to state protected land grabbers.
The victims of violence at the hands of security agents who also maim and kill with impunity. The many languishing in jail due to ‘case backlog.’ The ones who have failed to access justice because of all the corruption in the justice, law and order sector. Not forgetting those who try their luck at private prosecution but whose cases are taken over by the DPP who as is the wont loses interest.
This sort of society produces four types of children. The first are the ones who find it just too difficult and complicated to live or operate in an environment. They either keep quiet and live under the radar. Others escape into alcohol, drugs and other dangerous living and waste away.
Then there are those who will do everything to please those who lord it over them so that they never become victims of high-handedness. Ssemakadde calls them the ‘goody goodies.’ For these mild manners, they may also be chosen to join the high table. They see the wrongs but keep quiet and work quietly in there, avoiding trouble. They get very angry with those who speak out because they fear the abuser of power may met out a group punishment and make them suffer too.
The third group will join those who abuse power because ‘they can’t beat them.’ They become part of the apparatus and benefit from the abuse of power as a reward for their loyalty. This group will resist change because it affects their fortunes. They will fervently fight anyone who suggests that the king is naked. With a tinge of obsequiousness, they mourn more than the bereaved and will appoint themselves as advocates for the rights of those in power, even when the latter are not complaining.
Lastly you will have the ones who have the conviction that the abuser thinks it is their right to do as they please. They look at those who abuse power as lumpens and common thieves in neckties with great titles which are not commensurate with their actions and conduct. To them they have earned no respect because of their insolent actions. They are only where they are because the they are protected by a violently offensive system that is equally embedded in the law. This group of children think the situation is irredeemable without a total overhaul and in the interim in only effectively interfaced with using violent and offensive language. This is the category in which you find the Ssemakaddes, the torture victims like the exiled prolific, prodigious, protest writer, Kakwenza Rukirabashaija (36), and Stella Basambye Nanyanzi Nyanzi (50) also in exile. These and many other young people on social media usually use four letter words when they take exception to matters especially those occasioned by the people in power.
This growing trend may baffle many because we have all lived in this abusive environment right from independence. Yet the Ugandans who grew up in the 60s, 70s and 80s are not that abrasive. When the NRM came to power in 1986 and clamped down on political party activity, they opened up the media and generally allowed freedom of speech in lieu of the high hand placed on politics. (They would occasionally lock up and close newspapers if they were not happy because they did not honestly believe in this freedom).
Secondly, before 1986, matters of rights of the individual were considered to be the internal affairs of independent states for which interference was unnecessary. The 90s with globalization changed that so activists may be assured of some protection like sanctions if they shoot their mouths off and the state clamps down on them.
The Ssemakaddes benefited and grew up in a culture where it is normal to speak out unlike the children of the Idi Amin and Milton Obote era. Back then you took authority seriously because if they arrested or killed you that was it. Then of course before 86 many benefited from the social safety net with free education, and healthcare. There were also opportunities that came with merit. For instance, instructions to law or accountancy firms were evenly spread out.
On this account, bitterness was not that deeply rooted and wide spread. Today the highly ethnicised politics and increasingly corrupt governance of the NRM has shrunk opportunities for many and advantaged a few. There are several urbanised young people out of work, but exposed to all the nice things they can’t acquire from the gains of their hustle. They have no access to social services like healthcare for their aging parents and themselves. They have no decent living spaces but witness abuse of power, corruption and increasing arrogance by a few. They can only naturally get hopeless and angry. This is something those in power and the privileged describe as bad manners, envy, laziness and lack of acuity to take advantage of the enabling environment provided by the NRM government over the last 38 years.
Unfortunately those in power are hell bent on believing this line and are unwilling to listen, engage effectively and change. The only option many have resorted to, is loudly using colourful language. The beneficiaries of this abusive system take offense and pretend that pointing out the malaise (in a vulgar manner) constitutes a national moral crisis greater than the malady it seeks to remedy.
X:@nsengoba
