By Zacharia Kanyonyozi
Photos: YouTube Screenshots
The Uganda Police Force has given the thumbs-up to Ugandans for staying cool, calm and collected during the ongoing Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) and Group of 77+China summits, which began this morning at the Commonwealth Resort in Munyonyo, Kampala.
Over 5000 delegates have arrived in Uganda, and 50 heads of state are expected to attend the double summits under the theme “Deepening Cooperation for Shared Global Affluence.”
Police spokesperson Fred Enanga stated that the joint security agencies have not yet recorded any security bugbears.
“Usually when you have such a highly billed events, we have activists who usually take opportunity to carry out protests and acts of public disorder. We have not yet registered any and generally we still have a very peaceful environment,” Enanga said.
So, Ugandans, as former US President John Kennedy would put it, are enjoying the peace of the grave and the security of the slave.
To us older Ugandans, there is also an eerie case of Déjà vu.
In 1975, Gen. Idi Amin became chairman of the 46nation Organization of African Unity (OAU).
There was peace and quiet too, on that day.
The New York Times reported in 1975:
“To the frequent cheers of an audience that included 19 leaders of African governments and the representatives of 24 other nations, Gen. Amin said in his 13‐minute acceptance speech: “I will not embarrass you because you have had the confidence in me to elect me.”
President Amin denied the allegations of murder and atrocities in an interview yesterday, saying that Tanzania’s President, Julius K. Nyerere, had been told “a lot of lies” by Uganda exiles living in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania’s capital. During his brief speech tonight President Amin—dressed in civilian clothes and speaking in an unusually subdued voice—said: “I have nothing against Tanzania, our brothers and sisters. I will never be against them.”
Barely 4 years later, Tanzania would invade Uganda and the rest, as they say, is history.
However, is it history?
Dictator Museveni seems to be as firmly in the saddle as Amin was back in 1975: hosting a major international conference with no domestic protests, but plenty of rage simmering to a boil beneath the carapace of normalcy.
As sure as Gen. Amin was installed as OAU chairperson in 1975, Dictator Museveni will formally succeed President IIhame Aliyev of Azerbaijan as chairman of NAM.
Knowing that he is loathed at home, Dictator Museveni wants to be, to paraphrase Prof. Ali Mazrui: a good global citizen; even as he remains a bad Ugandan.
This is what his excitement with NAM is about, a way of salvaging a reputation that has been damaged since he entered national politics in 1972, when he (Dictator Museveni) fled to Tanzania to start a war against Gen. Amin.
It is also thanks to Dictator Museveni’s brand of politics that Police spokesperson Enanga is at ease.
You see, thanks to Musevenism, many of us are scared of being picked up by Toyota HiAce vans, locally known as “Drones.”
In Amin’s time, such abductors were known as “Computer Men” or “the Computers”, the technological link between a Drone and a Computer is firm indeed.
So Uganda is quiet and seemingly peaceful because we are tired of being brutalized.
On November 29, 2023, the National Unity Platform, Uganda’s most popular political party, reported to the Uganda Human Rights Commission that 25 of its supporters have been missing since 2020.
In March last year, Human Rights Watch published a report documenting years of similar arbitrary arrests and detentions, enforced disappearances, and the use of illegal detention centers by Ugandan security officers.
And then you wonder why are not protesting against NAM? Please.
The next uprising will be spontaneous and nobody but nobody will see it coming.
Then, it will be Dictator Museveni’s turn to enjoy the peace of the (political) grave.
