Letter to Kizza Besigye at 68

Dear Ndugu Dr Besigye,
Greetings and belated happy birthday! I hope this note finds you well. It has been a while, so I look forward to the opportunity to compare some notes. In the meantime, I thought I should use this moment of your birthday, as you turn 68, to reflect a bit on the struggle for a better-governed Uganda that you have been involved in for the better part of your adult life. 

Some young compatriots may not know it has been nearly a quarter-century since you forcefully and courageously stepped forward to speak out against the direction Uganda was taking under a government in which you were a very prominent member. 

READ: Besigye's 20-year tenure in Opposition

You made a conscious choice you did not have to. You could have betrayed your conscience by enjoying the trappings of power while serving the ssabalwanyi’s unquenchable thirst for power just as most of your peers did; or you could have gone away quietly into private business, perhaps farming away in Rukungiri as some of your 1986 colleagues have done. 

I suspect that you never anticipated staying in the opposition trenches, 25 long years and counting, standing up against a man and government you risked your life to help bring to power as a member of the NRA guerrilla rebel group. 

In many ways, the risks of resisting Mr Museveni head-on since 1999 have been bigger than fighting in the jungles of Luwero, 1982-1986. Your impact on our politics has been far more consequential since 1999 than before. It is arguable that over the last quarter-century, no other Ugandan has shaped our politics in such a profound way, with incredible courage, determination, and moral clarity. 

We owe you a huge debt of gratitude except that we are in a more precarious situation than when you first spoke out in 1999 highlighting the creeping authoritarianism eating away at what then went by the ‘Movement’ government.

MUST READ:Dr Besigye’s return to the political trenches: Reinvention or filling a vacuum? 

I am writing to you from the cold of Edinburgh in the land of our former colonial masters whom many blame for our problems yet increasingly to whom some of our compatriots look back at with uncritical nostalgia and reverence. 

It is now common to hear that we were better under our colonial rulers, that we should have been colonised longer, or that the colonists should return! It is a poverty of imagination thinking that colonialism was a benevolent and progressive project. It was not. Whatever benefits accrued to the colonised peoples were only secondary to the primary and core imperial interests of the colonisers. 

To be colonised is to be oppressed, exploited, and humiliated, but apologists and simplistic defenders of colonialism are wont to note that Africa’s post-independence rulers have done worse.

Even if we grant that this is true, it does not make colonialism worth sanitising. It is not that the choice has to be between the current misrule and the previous colonial occupation. 

That said, we have to recognise the sheer disillusionment and deep sense of loss many Ugandans feel making the clamour for the past appealing, including sentiments that now see Idi Amin’s rule in positive terms. 

Amin left power long before my parents thought of having me, so I never lived the experience, but you and other compatriots know very well that dire chapter of our chequered political history. That some Ugandans can now look back with an iota of nostalgia about Amin is such a staggering indictment of just how disastrous the current rulership has been.

I am patently an optimist, but I have long believed Uganda is tottering on the brink. The longer Mr Museveni has tightened his grip on power the more we are going down a dark alley. I suspect that you share this deep sense of trepidation. If our present is precarious, our future will likely be decidedly hopeless.

The key question of the day is how we can summon our collective ideas and actions to redirect the course of the country, and reimagine a Uganda such that future generations do not carry the burden of our inaction and indifference. The necessity and urgency have never been more pressing. 

During this birthday week, I hope that you will reflect deeply on the enormous challenge at hand, which at any rate you have a better understanding of than many of us, your compatriots. 

The despair and desperation, especially of the masses of young people, the stupendous economic problems we face, the social fragility, and the national identity crisis are deep-seated problems the current broken and irredeemable political system cannot tackle. 

To be sure, there is no magic wand, and as a humble teacher of politics, I cannot claim to have any sound and solid answers. But I believe that we can harness our collective aspirations and turn the corner on the road to a better Uganda.

Blessings, Ndugu!

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