Uganda’s life president Gen. Yoweri Museveni. Photo: Facebook
[The View From Uganda]
Uganda’s Gen. Yoweri Museveni’s address to the nation earlier this week was a curious mix of revelation and concealment; yet in trying to hide, he ended up revealing.
“Although we had some success in fighting terrorism, I realized that there were gaps in the policing capacity of the country,” Gen. Museveni said.
The address comes hot on the heels of the Komamboga terrorist attack which left one dead and three people injured, when a bomb was set off in a bar on Oct. 24. There was a subsequent bomb attack on a Swift bus two days later where the alleged suicide bomber Isaac Matovu, a.k.a. Muzafala, died.
Gen. Museveni linked these terror attacks to the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), which the regime says is an Islamic-inspired group operating from the Democratic Republic of Congo. The dictator threaded a connecting motif interlacing the ADF to the attempted assassination of Gen. Katumba Wamala, the kidnapping and killing of a young lady, Susan Magara in 2018, and the killings of: former police spokesperson Andrew Felix Kaweesi, state prosecutor Joan Kagezi, Major Muhammad Kiggundu, and Member of Parliament Ibrahim Abiriga and several others.
Many Ugandans have suspected that the regime was behind some of these killings. The regime has also peddled so many lies that when bombings occur the public wonder whether there are cases of false flags—diversions to rationalize the regime’s subsequent actions.
Then Gen. Museveni hinted at the need to end bail in order to eliminate criminal acts, along with criminals from society.
“We the freedom fighters have never supported bail for murderers, defilers, and rapists,” Gen. Museveni said.
Gen. Museveni is judicializing politics and politicizing law by finding a convenient way to justify his repression against opponents by denying them due process. This shapes the bedrock of the Police State Uganda has become and so the ruling National Resistance Movement’s (NRM’s) future actions shall be characterized by arbitrary arrest and imprisonment of political and ideological opponents in the name of criminality.
In this context, police power is independent of judicial controls. And when this happens, Museveni’s regime, like Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich, will become a dual state. That’s because the normal judicial system, trying non-political cases, shall coexist with the arbitrary power of Gen. Museveni and his police.
Gen. Museveni has tried hard to conceal his dictatorship in plain sight. The intended disappearance of bail from the statute books will ensure that the Ugandan system of justice undergoes “coordination”—alignment with NRM goals and Museveni’s fallacies.
The dictator humbles himself before former U.S. President George W. Bush. Yet he calls other Ugandans “neocolonials.” Photo: The White House
As Gen. Museveni determines the political reliability of the courts, he will soon establish even more special courts under the chilling euphemism “military tribunal”. Naturally, Ugandans are not fooled by this sleight of hand since humankind has been to this rodeo before. In 1933, Hitler established “special courts” all over Nazi Germany to try politically sensitive cases. Unhappy with the ‘not guilty’ verdicts rendered by the Supreme Court (Reichsgericht) in the Reichstag Fire Trial, Hitler ordered the creation of the People’s Court (Volksgerichtshof) in Berlin in 1934.
These “People Courts” were simply an extension of the Nazi system of terror condemning tens of thousands of people as “Volk Vermin” and thousands more to death for “Volk Treason.”
Note how many times Gen. Museveni has used the word “weevils”—read Volk Vermin—to describe opposition. He’s also invoked “the people of Uganda” to justify his Hitlerized course of action. These guileful references to “Ugandans” are a recipe for Hitler-type People’s Courts.
In his speech Gen. Museveni harped on what Ugandans should do to defeat the “neocolonial elite.” This is a thinly veiled plan to turn on right thinking Ugandans whom Gen. derisively calls “neocolonial.” This is a code for “Uncle Tom” or Quisling. Yet it was Gen. Museveni who, in a boot-licking move hoping to gain U.S.-favor said “I love Donald Trump” after the American referred to Africa as “shit hole” countries. The servile comment never secured an invitation to the White House for him.
Hitler also attacked Germans he called unpatriotic. He launched a book burning campaign conducted by the German Student Union to ceremonially set ablaze readings he claimed reactionary in Nazi Germany during the 1930s. Hitler said the campaign targeted those viewed as being subversive or as representing views opposed to Nazism.
Our modern-day Hitler in Africa is setting fire to the statute books—by scrapping bail and due process—to ensure justice and jurisprudence go up in smoke.
