Crack whip on errant security personnel

 The Daily Monitor, August 16, in its bold headline, “Museveni dishonest on torture – critics”, is truly supported by Shakespeare’s popular saying “Godly apples rot at the heart”. If the President was serious in the address then the indiscipline rascals in the police force, prisons service, UPDF and intelligence agencies, who are supposed to observe stringent human rights, must be subjected to serious sanctions.

The torture victims of the “unintended consequences” must not be just sympathised with, they must be sufficiently compensated. I was educated by some of the finest Ugandan, Kenyan and Tanzanian senior army officers that any security collapse is collapse of the State and further pointed out that rampant haemorrhage of public resources in all sectors of the economy (corruption) is one of the most dangerous spark offs of state failure. 

Personally when I listened to President Museveni’s latest national media address where  he belatedly condemned the want-on criminality visited on the people of Uganda (taxpayers) by security agencies dressed in national uniforms (The President forgot that there were some who were brandishing superior fire arms while in civilian clothes), I did remember three landmark remarks:

By the President himself when he said: “We are not going to get things done by miracle, we are going to achieve targets through struggle”

Dick Cheney, the former US secretary of state, said :“If there is a benefit of being ignorant, that is also a very big benefit.”

My OB the late Maj Gerald Maswere, said :“Idi Amin’s soldiers were well equipped and not well trained and were easily compromised by Tanzanian internal allies in Uganda who clandestinely paid them (Ugandan soldiers) slightly higher allowances beyond what they were paid by Uganda and they easily gave out war secrets, war passwords and a leeway for Tanzanian soldiers to overrun Uganda army targets.”

“Why should you bark at people because you are a soldier? When the army develops an antagonistic relationship with civilians, whatever happens, that army cannot survive because this relationship is not tactical,” President Yoweri Museveni has severally warned UPDF against poor handling of military-civil relations. He first sounded this warning in my presence while inaugurating the senior command and staff college at Kimaka in Jinja in 2004 where he also gave a 90 minute lecture on “organisation, discipline and employment of military forces. President Museveni empasises that as a crucial element to victory, the relationship of the army with the people must always be good.

“If any of the army officers misbehaves, he/she must be severely punished. Uganda doesn’t have to take any of them to prison because people will not witness their punishment. We must restart to execute them there and then”. What I can remember about the early National Resistance Army is that it succeeded since 1981 because we developed our good relationship with the masses. For example in 1982 in Luweero, two soldiers got drunk and went to the villages killing civilians. They were tried by field court martial and executed in the open (public) at the real spot where civilians were killed. That is when people realised that National Resistance Army was genuine.

The Bible in John 10:12-21 says, “But a hireling, he who is not the shepherd, one who does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and flees; and the wolf catches the sheep and scatters them. The hireling flees because he is a hireling and does not care about the sheep. I am a good shepherd; and I know my sheep,  I am known by My own. As the Father knows Me, even so I know the Father; and I lay down My life for the sheep. And other sheep I have which are not of this fold; them also I must bring, and there will be one flock and one shepherd...

Therefore there was a division again among the Jews because of these sayings. And many of them said, “He has a demon and is mad. Why do you listen to him?” Others said, “These are not the words of one who has a demon. Can a demon open the eyes of the blind?”

Nabendeh S.P Wamoto, [email protected]