Africa-Press – Uganda. When NRA/NRM walked into Kampala 35 years ago last week, I saw them. Most of them – some, little boys of nine or less – looked as weather-beaten as famine-stricken kids of little means. Many struggled to hold onto their guns as they walked into town, via Makerere University.
Mitchel Hall must have been a short-cut unless, it was a show. With the backing of London, Washington and of course the BBC, they were presented rather ‘successfully’ as a disciplined lot with much ‘security’ competence after all, they had conquered Luweero with skulls, silenced Teso, neutralised Acholi, resolved Rwanda and guaranteed Congo.
While the jury is generally, still out on these matters among Ugandans, what is not in dispute is that leading to the recent election charade, events characteristic of a military State have manifested and as I write, social media is still blocked.
Reports and incidents of arbitrary arrests, detentions, torture, disappearances and unnecessary, arbitrary and unlawful use and discharge of fire arms have occurred with impunity. Imagine just NRA/NRM primaries!
Over the last several months these reports add up to possibly 30 cases of people who go missing and at some stage, State authorities claim or feign ignorance of their whereabouts.
This week, journalists presented names of at least 10 Ugandans who are missing – having been picked up by armed State operatives during the election period – and yet both Internal Affairs minister Jeje Odong and the IGP Martins Okoth-Ochola have failed to explain.
So I was extremely concerned when shortly before midnight on January 23 two armed men in military uniforms were sighted in my compound in Nagongera, Tororo District, seeming to walk around the house. Mr Museveni has already ‘successfully’ renewed his Luweero mandate and even then, neither before nor anytime after, have I ever had any ballot papers or boxes in my house to interest anyone.
Second, my (ancestral) Nagongera home is a private property that sits on the estate of generations of my great-grand father, Ojwang son of Masanja. I reported this matter to the police (district and regional) and have been courteously visited by both the local OC and his detective chief. I have also informed the IGP and now await their urgent reports. Naturally, being a global citizen, my friends, families and rightful friends are too, aware.
Whoever the two were and, whatever their motives, I suggest Ochieno and his estate is a wrong number, despite Psalm 49 suggesting ‘the confidence of the foolish’. My opposition to NRA/NRM is political and, total. This can only be settled around the table of ideas. My human rights campaigns are global, deep and irreversible.
Meanwhile, one of their best implants has been moral decay, poverty and despair. I have witnessed blood-brothers come to a blow over a mere Shs1,000. I have also witnessed a rather dull NRA/NRM operative boast with a sack of money, in the boot of their public-paid-for-car; the extremes. Yet I have seen too, how despair in politics, ill-gotten wealth, loots and short-cuts to high offices have turned sensible people into mad cows.
But whatever the case, in the very least, I expect Mr Museveni and his 40 ‘wise’ men (with those women of course) to now walk (their) talk and ensure that the two criminal trespassers at my home are brought to book.
Second, that in the unlikely event that these people were donning uniforms ungazetted arms, his well-equipped and substantially resourced security agencies even more urgently, double their efforts with a view to not only getting to the factual roots, but also settling the minds of Ugandans that after all, their future are ‘secured’ under NRA/NRM.
The writer is former UPC [email protected]
