Photo: YouTube
These days, almost every prime residential area in Kampala has been converted into a commercial enclave.
The most popular and populous business establishments in such suburban enclaves are often bars and restaurants.
On Acacia Avenue, where I was over Christmas, bars such as Prestige Hotel Suites, Big Mikes, Casablanca, Yasigi Beer Garden, Bubbles O’Leary’s, Riders Lounge, Kampala Entertainment and so on form an unending ribbon in the area.
As I entered one of these establishments, one of the friends I was with revealed that he was carrying a pistol!
This revelation came a tad late as we were already face-to-face with the bouncers when he made it.
However, one of the bouncers was not alarmed. He calmly took the three of us to a room nearby where, when the door was opened, countless firearms were revealed!
The bouncer told us that these firearms belonged to the revellers within.
I last had such an experience in 2004, when a friend of mine who happens to be an officer with the UPDF surrendered his firearm for safekeeping in what appeared to be an armoury in the main building of Steak Out, which was a popular hangout joint in Nakasero Lumumba Avenue, during the aughts (early 2000s).
The danger with fascism is that, these days, it seems dangerously contemporary.
Since so many people have guns in Kampala these days, you could easily mistake the thought control and loss of liberty for an invitation to party with friends!
This is why, on November 12, 2016, Matthew Kanyamunyu causally drew a pistol and fatally shot Kenneth Akena after Akena sideswiped his car at Forest Shopping Mall in Lugogo, Kampala.
In the shooting’s aftermath, questions continue swirling around the issues of crime, punishment, impunity, injustice and even tribalism. Predictably, these questions obviate other questions about gun ownership.
Even though Government has increased license fees for individuals and companies importing firearms into the country, there seems to be a creeping proliferation of gun owners in Uganda.
A number of Ugandans who aren’t in the armed forces own firearms. And, in view of Uganda’s history of violence, this is troubling. Yet this gun proliferation is a direct consequence of the National Resistance Movement’s militaristic policies.
In 1986, when it shot its way to power, the NRM/A junta sought the ‘demystification of the gun’.
It claimed that, in the hands of the ruling few, the gun had been an instrument of terror. Past regimes, it said, had perpetrated gun violence against an unarmed population through extra-judicial killings.
This led to a bush war “demystifying the gun” as a popular uprising deceptively implied a symbiotic relationship between the gun and an armed peasant population.
The gun was no longer a tool of predation, Gen. Museveni said, but an instrument of politico-military liberation.
As a matter of revolutionary course, the NRM/A junta ostensibly tried to ensure that never again would the gun be the monopoly of any particular social grouping. It thus militarized “the public”.
To shore up this militocratic intent, there was “muchaka muchaka” or military training for so-called revolutionary cadres, political mobilizers, civil servants, and local defence units.
The foxes were thus allowed into the henhouse. So it was only a matter of time before they’d be blood and feathers everywhere.
All told, several companies which trade in firearms sprouted all over the country. But mainly in Kampala, and owned by toadies of the NRM junta…led by Gen. Museveni’s brother, Gen. Salim Saleh (he owns several such security imprints).
Thereby giving a “muchaka muchaka” generation newly versed in military science the means by which to use such science.
The gun had been democratized and its use would never be monopolized by the few at the expense of the many. Or so we thought.
With increased licensing fees to import guns, the price of a gun rose to somewhere in the region of 2 to 3M.
Thus, the acquisition of a firearm is anything but democratic. The opportunity cost of buying a gun for most Ugandans would mean forgoing per capita earnings of US$ 825.
So, again, a monopoly of gun ownership has arisen. However, this monopoly of the gun has shifted from the armed forces (where it should be) to the haute bourgeoisie who can afford to buy a firearm.
The latter is associated with the NRM junta. And it is armed against a sub-stratum of Ugandans comprising those who populate the lower rungs of society.
The gun has thus been re-mystified to the poor as NRM policy is rolls forth towards protecting the NRM junta and its associates from the same.
This re-mystification of the gun is personified by Kanyamunyu and other NRM acolytes who are armed to the teeth.
For the gun is wielded by those who can afford it and the byproduct of this is how it is used to protect minority interests belonging to a post-1986 elite.
No wonder the country, especially during times of political contestation, feels like a bar on the verge of a brawl.
God protect us.
