When a fire finally breaks out, we’ll all burn

If there are any lessons to learn from the ignominious, gruesome, and painful death of Paddy Sserunjogi kak Sobi (there are so many of them), a man who eerily mirrored Museveni’s parliament, it is that finally time catches up with a murderous thief.

And when they die, theirs is often a gruesome ending. Sobi would be hacked to death by some random fella who was simply protecting their property. From the most unexpected of places.

So, the Bible reminds us that if you live by the sword, you will die by the sword. If you lived your ‘large life’ by stealing other people’s lives, cutting them short by denying them essential goods and services for your insatiable appetite, so your life will be violently stolen away from you.

The same fate will be met by your children and grandchildren as the people whose children’s lives you stole. Please note that stealing/killing the lives of innocent persons doesn’t simply mean breaking into their houses and bludgeoning them to death. It is the same thing when you “technically” steal their businesses, eat their roads, eat their medicines, sell their resources to foreigners (such as lakes and coffee), and leave them to eat their skins, starve and die in dilapidated constructions you call hospitals, etc.

This ‘slow death’ is as dangerous as Sobi-style murder. While time might hide your true criminality, and the distance might protect your eyes form your murderous hand, the results are the same: there is death, pain, suffering and stolen dreams. People stealing in big public/ electoral positions think stolen wealth permanently cushions them from the pain of others.

This is temporary. I know, with this stolen money, thieves have acquired a lot of goods (clothes, cars, shoes, houses), and this has given them a false sense of immortality, of security. This is stupid. It is not just the permanent secretaries, town clerks, procurement officers and MPs, as Museveni told us that these are the biggest thieves. All those in this network of graft are trapped in this delusion.

Sobi openly bragged about his dangerous exploits. So, does our folks in parliament, especially their leader. Speaker Anita Among has no problem displaying her loot, thinking we will see her as a successful businesswoman. And all dissenters are accused of being morally corrupt, and working with homosexuals.

Sobi, too, had moral arguments for his exploits, and his family loved him very much. But a small altercation turned bloody, and he could not extricate himself.

SENSELESS VIOLENCE

By our nature, the human spirit does not relent in fighting injustice. Ugandans will keep going at it. Whatever the cost. And it doesn’t have to be many people to keep fighting. But at that critical moment, the oppressed –– tired of living like hounds –– realise that the only language their oppressor understands is violence, and kindly learn to speak that language so as to be understood.

It boggles the mind that Museveni’s government has come to glorify violence. Even on extremely small matters such as expression of dissent. And there is all this loose sloganeering, ‘Museveni does not underestimate anything,’ ‘Museveni is a strategist!’

It is all nonsense, when the only strategy the man understands is violence, buying off opposition, and protecting thieves –– as Justice Irene Mulyagonja told us, and is in the open for all to see –– and, more importantly, auctioning the country to foreigners who have guaranteed him a long-stay. This is not strategy, but opportunism.

The point I am making is this: while being in charge of the tools of coercion, the tools of violence, Museveni and co., need to be reminded that they do not have monopoly over violence. This is the timeless delusion of autocracies.

As Mahmood Mamdani (to cite Museveni’s friend) has told us, the violence of the victim is derivative; it emerges from the original violence of the oppressor. This is originally Frantz Fanon thesis, and it is alleged, Yoweri Museveni wrote his BA dissertation on Frantz Fanon. But he seems to have forgotten these parts once he became president, and became friends with our former colonisers who when they dangerously returned, badly needed compradors to work with.

I would like to extend this thesis on violence: in many moments in history, we have an upgrade of derived violence becoming senseless violence –– a type of violence, which has neither head nor tail; a violence that spreads in all corners and despite being originally meant for the oppressors and their accomplices, it takes many innocent lives along the way.

Indeed, if there are any lessons to take from Mogadishu in 1991, or Khartoum in 2021, it is that at the peak of government (sometimes, clan-tribe-based) corruption, and violence against dissent, the people break their chains violently, and sheer anarchy breaks out. Sadly, this anarchy becomes easily exploited by vultures from outside, and I would tell you, there are many out there waiting.

Dear Yoweri Museveni, as my friend Raymond Mujuni recently put it, Uganda is seated between Bashir’s Sudan and Siad Barre’s Somalia on the one hand, and Daniel Arap Moi’s Kenya on the other. It is Museveni’s choice to make, and endlessly protecting thieves is a bad sign.

yusufkajura@gmail.com

The author is a political theorist based at Makerere University