By Zacharia Kanyonyozi
Photos: YouTube Screenshots
“Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason,” said American humorist Mark Twain.
Although Twain could not have known Uganda existed in its current form in view of his passing in 1910 and our borders having been fully drawn in 1926, he must have been talking about a country that was Uganda-esque.
To be sure, our politics are in diapers and so full of crap.
Only last year, Dictator Museveni, while speaking to worker’s unions and government officials during the Labour Day Celebrations at the Kololo Ceremonial Grounds, said Ugandans should stop complaining about the scarcity of wheat and simply suffer.
“If there is no bread eat muwogo (cassava),” he said.
Today, the Museveni Junta is being called out by Ugandans and all those who love Uganda and good governance for sending a 600-strong delegation to the 2023 United Nations Climate Change Conference or Conference of the Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, more commonly referred to as COP28.
It is the 28th United Nations Climate Change conference, being held from 30 November until 12 December 2023 at Expo City, Dubai.
This outsize delegation makes Uganda one of the African countries with the largest delegations, below Nigeria, the second largest economy on the continent- represented by over 1,400 delegates.
Three months after the budget reading this year, Dictator Museveni dispatched two delegations of 70 airheaded officials to the UN General Assembly in New York, USA, where some of the representatives operated dockets unrelated to the theme of the September summit.
It was a debacle, our very own Travelgate.
But why, you must be wondering, is the Museveni Junta spending the country into the ground?
Well, if you look at these delegations, you will see that they comprise civilians.
This is a clear sign that Dictator Museveni is trying to formalize his coup against civilian rule by making civilians appear profligate and subsequently out of control.
In 1986, when Dictator Museveni shot his way to power, the brilliant Kenyan scholar, Prof. Ali Mazrui explained this phenomenon.
Mazrui noted that in the African state, since independence, two competing tendencies have held sway.
One, the tendency towards the militarization of politics and, secondly, a tendency towards the privatization of the state.
The former tendency arose out of the latter.
To be sure, Mazrui pointed out that the more civilians exhibited capitalist greed and the quest for naked political power, the more they privatized the state by swallowing its resources through waste and corruption.
As a consequence, the more corrupt they became, the more they gave reason to the military to take over.
Mazrui wrote, “… in a technologically underdeveloped society in the twentieth century, ultimate power resides not in those who controlled the means of production [as postulated by Marx], but in those who controlled the means of destruction [captured by the soldier/bandit with an AK-47].”2 Africa has therefore been “… torn between the forces of anarchy on the one side, in the sense of decentralised violence, and the forces of tyranny, on the other side, in the sense of orchestrated centralised repression.”
In brief, to save us from the anarchy of mindless civilian extravagance and incompetence, the forces of tyranny would step in, in all their jackboot glory, to the “save” the day.
Take, for example, the coup d’état in Nigeria on July 28th 1966.
Major Kaduna Nzeogwu gave this reason for the coup: “the political profiteers, the swindlers, the men in high and low places that seek bribes and demand ten per cent, those that seek to help the country divided permanently so that they can remain in office as ministers or VIPs at least, the tribalists, the nepotists, those that make the country look big for nothing before international circles, those who have corrupted our society and put the Nigerian political calendar back by their words and deeds.”
Dictator Museveni, a good student of his history, is drawing upon this lesson by allowing civilians to bleed Uganda white.
This will lead to a public outcry, as is happening. Then, to justify the formal takeover of his military Junta, in the name stopping the current madness, he will legitimize his coup.
And with his Junta officially in control, he can suspend the constitutionality in the name of decency, then install Baby Doc, his son, otherwise known as Junior Dictator, Gen. Muhoozi.
