Writer: Benjamin Rukwengye. PHOTO/FILE.
Last week in a bizarre incident in downtown New York, a 26-year-old man named Luigi Mangione shot and killed UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. The assassination was caught on camera and Mangione was eventually arrested a few days later at a Starbucks in another state.
Mangione doesn’t exactly fit the average profile of a poor, powerless, and oppressed person who would be suffering the brunt of big corporate greed. He is a privileged kid from a wealthy family, went to an Ivy League school, and was even the valedictorian of his high school. He is exactly the kind of person who would be a rising executive at UnitedHealthcare or whose family would be investors in the business.
As the story continues to unfold and confound many, public debate around it touches on corporate greed, increasing income inequality, and classism. There don’t seem to be many tears shed for the insurance executive. The only puzzle is figuring out why it is a rich kid who pulled the trigger – not why the killing needed to happen.
New York is thousands of miles and the realities of the protagonists are certainly far from those who read this column. Yet I couldn’t escape the unease around the debate. Especially where the antagonism is a contestation over power between the haves and the have-nots. Keen followers of the news especially in Uganda and recently Kenya might have noticed that there are few sympathies for when grief inevitably befalls the families of (government) politicians.
In fact, we have a host of young people languishing in jail for sending out social media posts where they wished for distress upon their rulers. Social media posts, bad wishes, and the occasional loud-mouthing at burials are all they have – at least for now. But it is not hard to imagine what they would do if had more than that. It is also increasingly getting lonely for those who caution them to exercise restraint and be more measured.
Ergo, there is no telling how long they will hold out for before they literally take matters into their own hands. Somehow it falls on those whose patience isn’t as paper-thin as the leaders’ tolerance to do the legwork. And the dexterity needed for that isn’t always in abundant supply.
Let us use an analogy from many Africans’ childhood to explain the situation in which we are. Anyone who grew up around grandparents might remember how they kept home supplies like sugar, soap, cooking oil, and the like, stashed away in some cupboard in their bedroom. It was a not-so-subtle message to everyone else that they could not self-regulate. It was also easy to miss the message because many of us would rather blame the elderly relatives for being difficult than acknowledge that we are flawed and lacking.
And in cases where they went ahead and said it, then that confirmed our biases. Some even went as far as telling everyone else how Jajja is such a difficult woman. There is another side of the coin to this. The one where the “Mukadde” went through such a rough time while growing up. So, the goodies aren’t taken to the bedroom for safekeeping but so that access to them can be limited for everyone.
Occasionally, a few morsels will be doled out to appease one or two people. Favourites will get given a little more frequently than others while those who fall afoul will not get any.
What do you do in that case? Because that seems to be the case in which Uganda – and recently Kenya – find themselves. With leaders whose primary preoccupation seems to be how much they can take for themselves. Even worse, they have shown in some instances that they are willing to sacrifice lives if that will deliver the goods.
It is easy to argue against the extrapolation of the circumstances that led to this week’s events in New York but extractive systems beget the same results everywhere. This week, Kenyan politicians addressed a press conference where they appealed to their electorate to not attack them during the festive season. It’s coming home.
Mr Rukwengye is the founder, Boundless Minds.
X: @Rukwengye
