The year of the succession battle

The year 2022 was a year riddled with multiple wounds on the country’s anatomy. Namely, soaring commodity prices, heightening crime rate, state-inspired violence and its clubfooted relatives: abductions.

Then the spectre of a lockdown loomed towards the year’s end as Ebola crashed our post-lockdown Covid-19 party.

As to the latter, the government fully opened our economy for business after nearly two years of a pandemic-related lockdown.

The effect should have been cathartic, but people were more concerned about how they would lift themselves up with the economy on its knees.

While the economy hove forth, however, on July 11, security forces fired tear gas and live ammunition at protesters.

There were pockets of dissent, over Uganda’s emptying pockets due to the rising cost of living, in the eastern district of Jinja.

Many protestors were arrested as the protests threatened to spill over into a nationwide imbroglio when, on June 14, police also arrested opposition figure Kifefe Kizza-Besigye ahead of a planned protest in Kampala city centre.

Reports of violent deaths, robberies, and kidnappings involving “criminal gangs and uniformed armed men” spiked.

Similarly, a new rebel group, Uganda Coalition Front for Change (UCFC), was formed.

It allegedly carried out attacks in Wakiso, Mityana and Kiboga, among other places , as mostly security officers were killed and their guns robbed.

The so-called UCFC’s activities did not issue from a vacuum as the country was already experiencing violent ripples expanding into waves of abductions and arbitrary arrests.

Hundreds of supporters of former presidential candidate Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu, popularly known as Bobi Wine, were arrested by gun-wielding personnel and bundled into omnibuses commonly known as “drones.”

Indeed, 2022 proved to be a year in which Uganda seemed to almost sink into the aforementioned abysms. Thankfully, the country survived its open wounds and is here still.

However, in what shape is Uganda?

Beyond glaring economic evidences of poverty and urban blight, there are the knock-on effects that abductions, kidnappings and such random violence have on the country’s psyche.

In general, such random violence resulted in widespread psychological distress, including depression, anxiety, and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

While Ugandans may have not developed psychological disorders after hearing first-hand accounts or viewing graphic, real-time images of such violence; there was a marked impact.

We saw much of the urban Ugandan population, at a conscious and subliminal level, gripped by strong emotions, such as fear, sadness, grief, and anger.

As a consequence of all this, is it any wonder that Butabika National Referral Mental Hospital expanded its VIP section?

The politics of mental illness is such that we are not sure whether it is our politics that causes mental illness or mental illness causes our politics!

Such is the deep interpenetration between politics and psychosis.

Nassir Ghaemi, a professor of psychiatry, who has carried out extensive research on the link between mental illness and politics says: “When times are good and the ship of state only needs to sail straight, mentally healthy people function well as political leaders. But in times of crisis and tumult, those who are mentally abnormal, even ill, become the greatest leaders.”

Accordingly, in 2023, our politics are likely to be further defined by Bedlam as the gulf between reality and rationality widens to a chasm.

Mr Matogo is a professional copywriter 

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