NUP should appeal to ‘Woke’ movement

It was reported this week that US president Joe Biden will meet his Ugandan counterpart Yoweri Museveni next month at the US-Africa leaders’ summit.
The meeting will take place at the White House in Washington DC, USA, with the two leaders climbing the greasy pole of diplomacy as they discuss the security situation in Africa.
As Mr Biden and Mr Museveni prepare to glad-hand one another, the chairperson of the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations Robert Menendez has petitioned Mr Biden to withdraw Mr Museveni’s invite. Menendez’s petition is informed by another petition by the National Unity Platform (NUP) which accuses Museveni of gross violation of human rights.

The litany of complaints against Mr Museveni amplify how under his leadership, the ruling party has twice amended the Constitution, severally upended democratic processes, while having commended itself to rampant corruption, illegal detention, violence and torture with impunity. 
Menendez’s proforma petition turns on the broken record of NUP’s ceaseless complaints which, with all due respect, will achieve nothing. 
That’s because Mr Museveni is arguably Africa’s principal guarantor of US interests. 
He might sometimes condemn the West in public, but behind closed doors he’s firmly in Biden’s unromantic embrace.
This is the essence of realpolitik, which has been defined as a system of politics or principles based on practical rather than moral or ideological considerations.

NUP will do well to appreciate the primary objectives of US foreign policy; the protection of the United States, its citizens and allies, continuing access to international resources and markets. 
These objectives are embracive of the preservation of a balance of power in the world, which is code for keeping China and Russia on a short leash. A secondary objective is the protection of human rights and democracy, when the US is not the one violating them.  US foreign policy is underpinned by the notion of American exceptionalism, which posits that the United States is inherently different (read superior) to other nations.
America cares little about Africa and Africans. 

After all, this is the same nation that carried out institutionalised slavery and a policy of racial segregation. Which was “the systematic separation of facilities and services such as housing, healthcare, education, employment, and transportation on racial grounds”. 
This all happened in living memory.  To make matters worse, US policies in Africa led to the deaths of patriots such as Patrice Lumumba, the prolongation of apartheid in South Africa and the promotion of scores of vampiric regimes from Cape to Cairo. 
Politicians such as Menendez (and indeed Museveni) are part of this US conspiracy to entrench itself on the global stage. 
Uganda’s Opposition should thus change tack and find friends outside official Washington. Yes, Uganda’s Opposition should appeal to the so-called “Woke” movement. 

To the uninitiated, Woke is an English adjective meaning “alert to racial prejudice and discrimination”. 
It spawned a number of other movements such as the Black Live Matter movement, which went toe-to-toe with police abuses in America. 
It is peopled by celebrities such as basketballer LeBron James, actress Anne Hathaway and royal Meghan Markle, to name but three. 
These celebrities are willing to battle inequities across the globe. Indeed, in 2012, when violence erupted in South Sudan, Hollywood’s wokest (if that is a word) actors George Clooney, Matt Dillon and Don Cheadle used their celebrity wattage to shine a light on the world’s youngest country. 

Robert Kyagulanyi, who is Uganda’s top Opposition politician and also a celebrity in his own right, would do well to reach out to the woke movement. He may then find that being “woke” extends to the removal of repressive leaders such as Museveni.

Mr Matogo is a professional copywriter  
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