Museveni decorates Kayihura before he fell from grace.
Kayihura made very many mistakes but his role is already being missed on many
fronts
The recent crackdown on pro “Free Bobi Wine” protesters in
Kampala is not a sign of President Yoweri Museveni’s strength but
vulnerability. This crackdown is being conducted by the police reinforced by
the army. The soldiers have been excessively arbitrary, not distinguishing
protesters from journalists. They brutally assault anyone they can land their
brutal fingers on.
In one video, our former photo editor at The Independent,
James Akena, who is also a personal friend to me is seen with his hands up in
show of surrender as UPDF soldiers pound him with sticks (enkoni) as if he is a
sack of potatoes. I have since called and talked to James and he told me he is
still in excruciating pain. This blatant abuse of power is unacceptable! Will
the president condemn these actions and bring the perpetrators to book?
Yet these protests are not as massive and as widespread
around the country as the Walk to Work protests that engulfed Kampala and other
towns of Uganda in mid 2011. So why is the state reacting with unprecedented
panic, arbitrariness and brutality?
The first reason is the huge hole created by the removal of
Gen. Kale Kayihura as Inspector General of Police (IGP). This was made worse by
the dismantling of the security and civic infrastructure he had put in place to
detect and contain such protests.
Kayihura understood that these protests are primarily
political. His response was therefore primarily to counter mobilize
politically. He had an understanding of trouble spots in Kampala and built a
robust civil intelligence network to detect potential trouble and a strategy to
reach out to leaders of these protests and literally buy them off. So most
protests were nipped in the bud.
Where he could not nip them in the bud, Kayihura would plant
his own civilian allies among the protesters. These would identify trouble
makers and ring leaders and hand them over to police. He also ensured that
protesters are handled while minimizing harm to bystanders and not assaulting
journalists.
In doing this, Kayihura made mistakes, many of which were
imposed on him by circumstances. He organized groups like Boda Boda 2010, which
had criminal elements in its ranks. But they were highly effective in helping
him contain protests in the city. So he had to make a tradeoff for which he is
paying dearly. But this was not done for his personal gain but for the
collective good of the government he served.
Secondly he saw himself foremost as a National Resistance
Movement (NRM) cadre, not as an IGP. He therefore defined his duty in a
partisan way ie to strengthen and consolidate the NRM and Museveni’s power.
This led him to divert his personal attention and police resources from
strictly crime prevention and containment to reinforcing the ruling party’s
fledging position not only in Kampala but the entire country. The opposition
therefore hated him for the right reasons.
Kayihura did all this because the NRM is an empty shell.
It’s ability to function depends almost entirely on the state for both
financial and human resources. It has little organizational infrastructure of
its own to counter mobilize against the opposition. Kayihura therefore assumed
the role of Secretary General of the NRM, did the work of its Secretary for
Mass Mobilization and at the same time acted as its Secretary for Youths.
Take the example of the elections in Arua which caused the
current insurrection. Kayihura would have camped in the town for two weeks. He
would have studied the mood there and infiltrated every group. He would have
therefore been in possession of information about the planning of any trouble.
He would, for example, have known about the stone throwing mob along the route
the president took, and would have dispersed it long before the president
passed by.
As a leader, Kayihura would have been visible everywhere,
talking to ordinary people, giving interviews to the mass media, personally
directing operations and taking full blame of and responsibility for the
actions of the state. Yet Kayihura was hounded out of office as a villain and
not as a hero. Worse still all the people he worked with in the service of the
NRM and the president were either fired or have been sent to jail.
That has set the example of how this government treats those
who serve it with dedication and loyalty. It also explains why no one,
including those who fought Kayihura, is willing to risk anything to save the
smoldering edifice of this government. Finally it explains why, when the state
let the military loose on the people, there was no one to take care of the
image of the government.
For the last one week, Museveni has alone issued numerous
public statements about the situation as it unfolds. That it is now the
president who issues statements on the matter is telling. He has become his own
press secretary, army spokesman, communications minister, police public relations
officer and director of the media center etc. This is a tragic situation of
government by one man.
The tragedy of the Museveni government in the evening of its
life is that no one believes in it or the president anymore. Only Kayihura did.
Most people gave up on it long ago. No one cares about its imagine except the
president. Yet his own understanding of image management is poor. No one is
willing to fight for it or to defend it. Those who would like his minister for
communication are powerless to act.
It is ironic that in spite of this, opposition activists
make wild claims that Museveni has paid or pays many people to speak for him.
If such allegations are true, then whoever Museveni pays, he must be paying the
wrong people. Last financial year State House spent Shs 300 billion on
“donations.” Yet there is no one online or elsewhere fighting for the
president. The few who do and whom I know have not met Museveni and support him
purely out of personal conviction.
Meanwhile government officials seem too busy involved in
anarchical grabbing of public resources and squabbling among themselves over
their loot to find time to defend the government or Museveni. It looks like the
last days of Marshal Mobutu Sese Seko of former Zaire.
It is therefore tragic that even in such moments of great
opportunity, Uganda’s opposition activists are busy looking for real and
imaginary enemies to fight rather than allies to win over to built a broad and
united front of resistnce. They spread myths about Museveni’s large network of
moles inside their ranks and retainers all over political society . This only
helps the president, projecting him as strong and invincible while spreading
suspicion and mistrust in opposition ranks. This makes it difficult to build a
broad coalition of opposition to Museveni.
More than Museveni’s strength, it is the utter stupidity,
intolerance, virulence, self righteousness and divisive politics of the
opposition that sustains Museveni, the NRM and the government. This is a group
that lacks strategy, does not reflect and is intolerant to all criticism
however well intentioned and constructive. That is the tragedy of Uganda.
Museveni’s government may be in disarray but it won’t fall. Reason? The
opposition are propping it up.
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