Of freedom and Kakwenza’s pen

Author: Phillip Matogo. PHOTO/FILE

What you need to know:

  • Mr Museveni’s humanity was on display again last week when he exercised his constitutional prerogative to pardon 79 prisoners from different correctional facilities across the country.

A few years ago, a senior citizen (name withheld) told me a story.

He was seated with the President and a well-known professor (name withheld) in State House in 1988. As was the case in those days when intellectualism ruled the political roost, they were debating.

The senior citizen and the President couldn’t seem to agree on anything.  

They were both proud, single-minded, focused, and they expressed these traits most dramatically in their debating.

The well-known professor looked on sullenly when the senior citizen spoke. However, when the President talked, he nodded his head cheerfully. 

“Yes, that is correct!” he said repeatedly. 

After about 30 minutes of this back-and-forth between the senior citizen and the President, punctuated by the professor’s cheerleading, the President had enough. 

He abruptly rounded on the professor and said: “There is either something wrong with me or there is something wrong with you. No two people can agree on everything!”

Looking down, the professor’s frame shrunk to the image of a weed wilting on the vine.

Then he meekly said, “You’re right, sir.”

Many of us who were around back in the 80s miss the President’s steadfast humanity, intellectuality and passionate belief in there being more than two sides to every question.

Mr Museveni’s humanity was on display again last week when he exercised his constitutional prerogative to pardon 79 prisoners from different correctional facilities across the country.

According to the President’s grant of clemency, the 79 had been pardoned on medical and humanitarian grounds.

The President has powers under Article 121(1)(a) of the Constitution to pardon prisoners on the advice of the advisory committee on the Prerogative of Mercy. 

In one of his more famous pardons, Mr Museveni pardoned and released Chris Rwakasisi, a former minister of Security during the Milton Obote II regime. 

When still a minister, Rwakasisi had vowed to kill Museveni, who was then waging a war against the Obote regime. Yet, once in power, instead of Museveni having his revenge on Rwakasisi, he pardoned him.  

Today, Mr Museveni has a chance to show mercy again by freeing Kakwenza Rukirabashaija.

He may be a bitter foe of Mr Museveni’s, but he is also a representative of every free-thinking Ugandan who feels it their bounden duty to speak truth to the unacceptable face of power.

This could be precisely why Kakwenza keeps finding himself being persecuted: the regime does not want to encourage free thought because that would lead to free association and free expression, two essential pillars of freedom. 

The third pillar is the courage to associate and express oneself freely, regardless of the consequences. 

When the State arrested Kakwenza, it sent a message to the rest of us that we should not dare associate or express ourselves freely. 

This message has the multiplier effect of collapsing the three pillars of freedom. 

That’s because another message of Kakwenza’s arrest is that courage is unacceptable too. Yet his arrest is an assault on our individual worth. 

Ask yourself, what are you without freedom? 

Nothing, but a slave enchained to the notion that you will never be anything more than unfree. 

Kakwenza’s pen is the key to the lock of our unfreedom, as it were, because his pen symbolises our aspirations to be more than unfree. Especially from a regime that preys on the innocent and feeds off the calculated caution of the fearful.

If Mr Museveni frees Kakwenza, however, he shall rise above his regime by stepping out of his present personality and stepping into his former self to be free from the notion that only his side articulates Uganda’s many-sided story.

Mr Matogo is a professional copywriter